The Renewal of the Social Organism
GA 24
14. The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School
[ 1 ] The aims Emil Molt is trying to realize through the Waldorf School are connected with quite definite views on the social tasks of the present day and the near future. The spirit in which the school should be conducted must proceed from these views. It is a school attached to an industrial undertaking. The peculiar place modern industry has taken in the evolution of social life in actual practice sets its stamp upon the modern social movement. Parents who entrust their children to this school are bound to expect that the children shall be educated and prepared for the practical work of life in a way that takes due account of this movement. This makes it necessary, in founding the school, to begin from educational principles that have their roots in the requirements of modern life. Children must be educated and instructed in such a way that their lives fulfill demands everyone can support, no matter from which of the inherited social classes one might come. What is demanded of people by the actualities of modern life must find its reflection in the organization of this school. What is to be the ruling spirit in this life must be aroused in the children by education and instruction.
[ 2 ] It would be fatal if the educational views upon which the Waldorf School is founded were dominated by a spirit out of touch with life. Today, such a spirit may all too easily arise because people have come to feel the full part played in the recent destruction of civilization by our absorption in a materialistic mode of life and thought during the last few decades. This feeling makes them desire to introduce an idealistic way of thinking into the management of public affairs. Anyone who turns his attention to developing educational life and the system of instruction will desire to see such a way of thinking realized there especially. It is an attitude of mind that reveals much good will. It goes without saying that this good will should be fully appreciated. If used properly, it can provide valuable service when gathering manpower for a social undertaking requiring new foundations. Yet it is necessary in this case to point out how the best intentions must fail if they set to work without fully regarding those first conditions that are based on practical insight.
[ 3 ] This, then, is one of the requirements to be considered when the founding of any institution- such as the Waldorf School is intended. Idealism must work in the spirit of its curriculum and methodology; but it must be an idealism that has the power to awaken in young, growing human beings the forces and faculties they will need in later life to be equipped for work in modern society and to obtain for themselves an adequate living.
[ 4 ] The pedagogy and instructional methodology will he able to fulfill this requirement only through a genuine knowledge of the developing human being. Insightful people are today calling for some form of education and instruction directed not merely to the cultivation of one-sided knowledge, but also to abilities; education directed not merely to the cultivation of intellectual faculties, but also to the strengthening of the will. The soundness of this idea is unquestionable; but it is impossible to develop the will (and that healthiness of feeling on which it rests) unless one develops the insights that awaken the energetic impulses of will and feeling. A mistake often made presently in this respect is not that people instill too many concepts into young minds, but that the kind of concepts they cultivate are devoid of all driving life force. Anyone who believes one can cultivate the will without cultivating the concepts that give it life is suffering from a delusion. It is the business of contemporary educators to see this point clearly; but this clear vision can only proceed from a living understanding of the whole human being.
[ 5 ] It is now planned that the Waldorf School will be a primary school in which the educational goals and curriculum are founded upon each teacher's living insight into the nature of the whole human being, so far as this is possible under present conditions. Children will, of course, have to be advanced far enough in the different school grades to satisfy the standards imposed by the current views. Within this framework, however, the pedagogical ideals and curriculum will assume a form that arises out of this knowledge of the human being and of actual life.
[ 6 ] The primary school is entrusted with the child at a period of its life when the soul is undergoing a very important transformation. From birth to about the sixth or seventh year, the human being naturally gives himself up to everything immediately surrounding him in the human environment, and thus, through the imitative instinct, gives form to his own nascent powers. From this period on, the child's soul becomes open to take in consciously what the educator and teacher gives, which affects the child as a result of the teacher's natural authority. The authority is taken for granted by the child from a dim feeling that in the teacher there is something that should exist in himself, too. One cannot be an educator or teacher unless one adopts out of full insight a stance toward the child that takes account in the most comprehensive sense of this metamorphosis of the urge to imitate into an ability to assimilate upon the basis of a natural relationship of authority. The modern world view, based as it is upon natural law, does not approach these fact of human development in full consciousness. To observe them with the necessary attention, one must have a sense of life's subtlest manifestations in the human being. This kind of sense must run through the whole art of education; it must shape the curriculum; it must live in the spirit uniting teacher and pupil. In educating, what the teacher does can depend only slightly on anything he gets from a general, abstract pedagogy: it must rather be newly born every moment from a live understanding of the young human being he or she is teaching. One may, of course, object that this lively kind of education and instruction breaks down in large classes. This objection is no doubt justified in a limited sense. Taken beyond those limits, however, the objection merely shows that the person who makes it proceeds from abstract educational norms, for a really living art of education based on a genuine knowledge of the human being carries with it a power that rouses the interest of every single pupil so that there is no need for direct “individual” work in order to keep his attention on the subject. One can put forth the essence of one's teaching in such a form that each pupil assimilates it in his own individual way. This requires simply that whatever the teacher does should be sufficiently alive. If anyone has a genuine sense for human nature, the developing human being becomes for him such an intense, living riddle that the very attempt to solve it awakens the pupil's living interest empathetically. Such empathy is more valuable than individual work, which may all too easily cripple the child's own initiative. It might indeed be asserted—again, within limitations—that large classes led by teachers who are imbued with the life that comes from genuine knowledge of the human being, will achieve better results than small classes led by teachers who proceed from standard educational theories and have no chance to put this life into their work.
[ 7 ] Not so outwardly marked as the transformation the soul undergoes in the sixth or seventh year, but no less important for the art of educating, is a change that a penetrating study of the human being shows to take place around the end of the ninth year. At this time, the sense of self assumes a form that awakens in the child a relationship to nature and to the world about him such that one can now talk to him more about the connections between things and processes themselves, whereas previously he was interested almost exclusively in things and processes only in relationship to man. Facts of this kind in a human being's development ought to be most carefully observed by the educator. For if one introduces into the child's world of concepts and feelings what coincides just at that period of life with the direction taken by his own developing powers, one then gives such added vigor to the growth of the whole person that it remains a source of strength throughout life. If in any period of life one works against the grain of these developing powers, one weakens the individual.
[ 8 ] Knowledge of the special needs of each life period provides a basis for drawing up a suitable curriculum. This knowledge also can be a basis for dealing with instructional subjects in successive periods. By the end of the ninth year, one must have brought the child to a certain level in all that has come into human life through the growth of civilization. Thus while the first school years are properly spent on teaching the child to write and read, the teaching must be done in a manner that permits the essential character of this phase of development to be served. If one teaches things in a way that makes a one-sided claim on the child's intellect and the merely abstract acquisition of skills, then the development of the native will and sensibilities is checked; while if the child learns in a manner that calls upon its whole being, he or she develops all around. Drawing in a childish fashion, or even a primitive kind of painting, brings out the whole human being's interest in what he is doing. Therefore one should let writing grow out of drawing. One can begin with figures in which the pupil's own childish artistic sense comes into play; from these evolve the letters of the alphabet. Beginning with an activity that, being artistic, draws out the whole human being, one should develop writing, which tends toward the intellectual. And one must let reading, which concentrates the attention strongly within the realm of the intellect, arise out of writing.
[ 9 ] When people recognize how much is to be gained for the intellect from this early artistic education of the child, they will be willing to allow art its proper place in the primary school education. The arts of music, painting and sculpting will be given a proper place in the scheme of instruction. This artistic element and physical exercise will be brought into a suitable combination. Gymnastics and action games will be developed as expressions of sentiments called forth by something in the nature of music or recitation. Eurythmic movement—movement with a meaning—will replace those motions based merely on the anatomy and physiology of the physical body. People will discover how great a power resides in an artistic manner of instruction for the development of will and feeling. However, to teach or instruct in this way and obtain valuable results can be done only by teachers who have an insight into the human being sufficiently keen to perceive clearly the connection between the methods they are employing and the developmental forces that manifest themselves in any particular period of life. The real teacher, the real educator, is not one who has studied educational theory as a science of the management of children, but one in whom the pedagogue has been awakened by awareness of human nature.
[ 10 ] Of prime importance for the cultivation of the child's feeling-life is that the child develops its relationship to the world in a way such as that which develops when we incline toward fantasy. If the educator is not himself a fantast, then the child is not in danger of becoming one when the teacher conjures forth the realms of plants and animals, of the sky and the stars in the soul of the child in fairy-tale fashion.
[ 11 ] Visual aids are undoubtedly justified within certain limits; but when a materialistic conviction leads people to try to extend this form of teaching to every conceivable thing, they forget there are other powers in the human being which must be developed, and which cannot be addressed through the medium of visual observation. For instance, there is the acquisition of certain things purely through memory that is connected to the developmental forces at work between the sixth or seventh and the fourteenth year of life. It is this property of human nature upon which the teaching of arithmetic should be based. Indeed, arithmetic can be used to cultivate the faculty of memory. If one dis-regards this fact, one may perhaps be tempted (especially when teaching arithmetic) to commit the educational blunder of teaching with visual aids what should be taught as a memory exercise.
[ 12 ] One may fall into the same mistake by trying all too anxiously to make the child understand everything one tells him. The will that prompts one to do so is undoubtedly good, but does not duly estimate what it means when, later in life, we revive within our soul something that we acquired simply through memory when younger and now find, in our mature years, that we have come to understand it on our own. Here, no doubt, any fear of the pupil's not taking an active interest in a lesson learned by memory alone will have to be relieved by the teacher's lively way of giving it. If the teacher engages his or her whole being in teaching, then he may safely bring the child things for which the full under-standing will come when joyfully remembered in later life. There is something that constantly refreshes and strengthens the inner substance of life in this recollection. If the teacher assists such a strengthening, he will give the child a priceless treasure to take along on life's road. In this way, too, the teacher will avoid the visual aid's degenerating into the banality that occurs when a lesson is overly adapted to the child's understanding. Banalities may be calculated to arouse the child's own activity, but such fruits lose their flavor with the end of childhood. The flame enkindled in the child from the living fire of the teacher in matters that still lie, in a way, beyond his “understanding,” remains an active, awakening force throughout the child's life.
[ 13 ] If, at the end of the ninth year, one begins to choose descriptions of natural history from the plant and animal world, treating them in a way that the natural forms and processes lead to an understanding of the human form and the phenomena of human life, then one can help release the forces that at this age are struggling to be born out of the depths of human nature. It is consistent with the character of the child's sense of self at this age to see the qualities that nature divides among manifold species of the plant and animal kingdoms as united into one harmonious whole at the summit of the natural world in the human being.
[ 14 ] Around the twelfth year, another turning point in the child's development occurs. He becomes ripe for the development of the faculties that lead him in a wholesome way to the comprehension of things that must be considered without any reference to the human being: the mineral kingdom, the physical world, meteorological phenomena, and so on.
[ 15 ] The best way to lead then from such exercises, which are based entirely on the natural human instinct of activity without reference to practical ends, to others that shall be a sort of education for actual work, will follow from knowledge of the character of the successive periods of life. What has been said here with reference to particular parts of the curriculum may be extended to everything that should be taught to the pupil up to his fifteenth year.
[ 16 ] There need be no fear of the elementary schools releasing pupils in a state of soul and body unfit for practical life if their principles of education and instructions are allowed to proceed, as described, from the inner development of the human being. For human life itself is shaped by this inner development; and one can enter upon life in no better way than when, through the development of our own inner capacities, we can join with what others before us, from similar inner human capacities, have embodied in the evolution of the civilized world. It is true that to bring the two into harmony—the development of the pupil and the development of the civilized world—will require a body of teachers who do not shut themselves up in an educational routine with strictly professional interests, but rather take an active interest in the whole range of life. Such a body of teachers will discover how to awaken in the upcoming generation a sense of the inner, spiritual substance of life and also an understanding of life's practicalities. If instruction is carried on this way, the young human being at the age of fourteen or fifteen will not lack comprehension of important things in agriculture and industry, commerce and travel, which help to make up the collective life of mankind. He will have acquired a knowledge of things and a practical skill that will enable him to feel at home in the life which receives him into its stream.
If the Waldorf School is to achieve the aims its founder has in view, it must be built on educational principles and methods of the kind here described. It will then be able to give the kind of education that allows the pupil's body to develop healthily and according to its needs, because the soul (of which this body is the expression) is allowed to grow in a way consistent with the forces of its development. Before its opening, some preparatory work was attempted with the teachers so that the school might be able to work toward the proposed aim. Those concerned with the management of the school believe that in pursuing this aim they bring something into educational life in accordance with modern social thinking. They feel the responsibility inevitably connected with any such attempt; but they think that, in contemporary social demands, it is a duty to under-take this when the opportunity is afforded.
Die pädagogische Grundlage der Waldorfschule
[ 1 ] Die Absichten, die Emil Molt durch die Waldorfschule verwirklichen will, hängen zusammen mit ganz bestimmten Anschauungen über die sozialen Aufgaben der Gegenwart und der nächsten Zukunft. Aus diesen Anschauungen heraus muß der Geist erstehen, in dem diese Schule geführt werden soll. Sie ist angegliedert an eine industrielle Unternehmung. Die Art, wie sich die moderne Industrie in die Entwickelung des menschlichen Gesellschaftslebens hineingestellt hat, gibt der Praxis der neueren sozialen Bewegung ihr Gepräge. Die Eltern, die ihre Kinder dieser Schule anvertrauen werden, können nicht anders, als erwarten, daß diese Kinder in dem Sinne zur Lebenstüchtigkeit erzogen und unterrichtet werden, der dieser Bewegung volle Rechnung trägt. Das macht notwendig, daß bei der Begründung der Schule von pädagogischen Prinzipien ausgegangen wird, die in den Lebensforderungen der Gegenwart wurzeln. Die Kinder sollen zu Menschen erzogen und für ein Leben unterrichtet werden, die den Anforderungen entsprechen, für die jeder Mensch, gleichgültig aus welcher der herkömmlichen Gesellschaftsklassen er stammt, sich einsetzen kann. Was die Praxis des Gegenwartslebens von dem Menschen verlangt, es muß in den Einrichtungen dieser Schule sich widerspiegeln. Was als beherrschender Geist in diesem Leben wirken soll, es muß durch Erziehung und Unterricht in den Kindern angeregt werden.
[ 2 ] Verhängnisvoll müßte es werden, wenn in den pädagogischen Grundanschauungen, auf denen die Waldorfschule aufgebaut werden soll, ein lebensfremder Geist waltete. Ein solcher tritt heute nur allzu leicht dort hervor, wo man ein Gefühl dafür entwickelt, welchen Anteil an der Zerrüttung der Zivilisation das Aufgehen in einer materialistischen Lebenshaltung und Gesinnung während der letzten Jahrzehnte hat. Man möchte, durch dieses Gefühl veranlaßt, in die Verwaltung des öffentlichen Lebens eine idealistische Gesinnung hineintragen. Und wer seine Aufmerksamkeit der Entwickelung des Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens zuwendet, der wird diese Gesinnung vor allem andern da verwirklicht sehen wollen. In einer solchen Vorstellungsart gibt sich viel guter Wille kund. Daß dieser anerkannt werden soll, ist selbstverständlich. Er wird, wenn er sich in der rechten Art betätigt, wertvolle Dienste leisten können, wenn es sich darum handelt, menschliche Kräfte für ein soziales Unternehmen zu sammeln, für das neue Voraussetzungen geschaffen werden müssen. - Dennoch ist gerade in einem solchen Falle nötig, darauf hinzuweisen, wie der beste Wille versagen muß, wenn er an die Verwirklichung von Absichten geht, ohne die auf Sacheinsicht begründeten Voraussetzungen in vollem Maße zu berücksichtigen.
[ 3 ] Damit ist eine der Forderungen gekennzeichnet, die heute bei Begründung einer solchen Anstalt in Betracht kommen, wie dieWaldorfschule eine sein soll. In ihrem pädagogischen und methodischen Geiste muß Idealismus wirken; aber ein Idealismus, der die Macht hat, in dem aufwachsenden Menschen die Kräfte und Fähigkeiten zu erwecken, die er im weiteren Lebensverlauf braucht, um für die gegenwärtige Menschengemeinschaft Arbeitstüchtigkeit und für sich einen ihn stützenden Lebenshalt zu haben.
[ 4 ] Die Pädagogik und Schulmethodik wird eine solche Forderung nur erfüllen können mit wirklicher Erkenntnis des heranwachsenden Menschen. Einsichtige Menschen verlangen heute eine Erziehung und einen Unterricht, die nicht auf einseitiges Wissen, sondern auf Können, nicht auf bloße Pflege der intellektuellen Anlagen, sondern auf Ertüchtigung des Willens hinarbeiten. Die Richtigkeit dieses Gedankens kann nicht angezweifelt werden. Allein man kann den Willen und das ihm zugrunde liegende gesunde Gemüt nicht erziehen, wenn man nicht die Einsichten entwickelt, die in Gemüt und Willen tatkräftige Antriebe erwecken. Ein Fehler, der nach dieser Richtung hin in der Gegenwart häufig gemacht wird, besteht nicht darin, daß man zu viel an Einsicht in den aufwachsenden Menschen hineinträgt, sondern darin, daß man Einsichten pflegt, denen die Stoßkraft für das Leben mangelt. Wer glaubt, den Willen bilden zu können, ohne die ihn belebende Einsicht zu pflegen, der gibt sich einer Illusion hin. - In diesem Punkte klar zu sehen, ist Aufgabe der Gegenwarts-Pädagogik. Dieses klare Sehen kann nur aus einer lebensvollen Erkenntnis des ganzen Menschen hervorgehen.
[ 5 ] So wie sie vorläufig gedacht ist, wird die Waldorfschule eine Volksschule sein, die ihre Zöglinge so erzieht und unterrichtet, daß Lehrziele und Lehrplan aufgebaut sind auf die in jedem Lehrer lebendige Einsicht in das Wesen des ganzen Menschen, soweit dies unter den gegenwärtigen Verhältnissen schon möglich ist. Es ist selbstverständlich, daß die Kinder in den einzelnen Schulstufen so weit gebracht werden müssen, daß sie den Anforderungen entsprechen können, die man nach den heutigen Anschauungen stellt. Innerhalb dieses Rahmens sollen aber Lehrziele und Lehrpläne so gestaltet werden, wie sie sich aus der gekennzeichneten Menschen- und Lebenserkenntnis ergeben.
[ 6 ] Der Volksschule wird das Kind anvertraut in einem Lebensabschnitte, in dem die Seelenverfassung in einer bedeutungsvollen Umwandlung begriffen ist. In der Zeit von der Geburt des Menschen bis zum sechsten oder siebenten Lebensjahre ist der Mensch dazu veranlagt, sich für alles, was ihm nächststehende menschliche Umgebung ist, hinzugeben, und aus dem nachahmenden Instinkt heraus die eigenen werdenden Kräfte zu gestalten. Von diesem Zeitpunkte an wird die Seele offen für ein bewußtes Hinnehmen dessen, was vom Erzieher und Lehrer auf der Grundlage einer selbstverständlichen Autorität auf das Kind wirkt. Die Autorität nimmt das Kind hin aus dem dunklen Gefühl heraus, daß in dem Erziehenden und Lehrenden etwas lebt, das in ihm auch leben soll. Man kann nicht Erzieher oder Lehrer sein, ohne mit voller Einsicht sich so zu dem Kinde zu stellen, daß dieser Umwandlung des Nachahmungstriebes in die Aneignungsfähigkeit auf Grund selbstverständlichen Autoritätsverhältnisses im umfänglichsten Sinne Rechnung getragen wird. Die auf bloße Natureinsicht begründete Lebensauffassung der neueren Menschheit geht nicht mit vollem Bewußtsein an solche Tatsachen der Menschenentwickelung heran. Ihnen kann nur die notwendige Aufmerksamkeit zuwenden, wer Sinn hat für die feinsten Lebensäußerungen des Menschenwesens. Ein solcher Sinn muß in der Kunst des Erziehens und Unterrichtens walten. Er muß den Lehrplan gestalten; er muß in dem Geiste leben, der Erzieher und Zöglinge vereinigt. Was der Erzieher tut, kann nur in geringem Maße davon abhängen, was in ihm durch allgemeine Normen einer abstrakten Pädagogik angeregt ist; er muß vielmehr in jedem Augenblicke seines Wirkens aus lebendiger Erkenntnis des werdenden Menschen heraus neu geboren sein. Man kann natürlich einwenden, solch ein lebensvolles Erziehen und Unterrichten scheitere an Schulklassen mit großer Schülerzahl. Innerhalb gewisser Grenzen ist dieser Einwand gewiß berechtigt; wer ihn über diese Grenzen hinaus macht, der beweist aber dadurch nur, daß er von dem Gesichtspunkte einer abstrakten Norm-Pädagogik aus spricht, denn eine auf wahrer Mensclienerkenntnis beruhende lebendige Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst durchzieht sich mit einer Kraft, die in dem einzelnen Zögling die Anteilnahme anregt, so daß man nicht nötig hat, ihn durch das unmittelbare, «individuelle» Bearbeiten entsprechend bei der Sache zu halten. Man kann, was man im Erziehen und Unterrichten wirkt, so gestalten, daß der Zögling im Aneignen es selbst individuell für sich faßt. Dazu ist nur nötig, daß, was der Lehrende tut, genügend stark lebt. Wer den Sinn für echte Menschenerkenntnis hat, dem wird der werdende Mensch in einem solch hohen Maße zu einem von ihm zu lösenden Lebensrätsel, daß er in der versuchten Lösung das Mitleben der Zöglinge weckt. Und ein solches Mitleben ist ersprießlicher als ein individuelles Bearbeiten, das den Zögling nur allzu leicht in bezug auf echte Selbstbetätigung lähmt. Wiederum innerhalb gewisser Grenzen gemeint, darf behauptet werden, daß größere Schulklassen mit Lehrern, die voll des von wahrer Menschenerkenntnis angeregten Lebens sind, bessere Erfolge erzielen werden als kleine Klassen mit Lehrern, die, von einer Normpädagogik ausgehend, solches Leben nicht zu entfalten vermögen.
[ 7 ] Weniger deutlich ausgeprägt, aber für Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst gleich bedeutungsvoll, wie die Umwandlung der Seelenverfassung im sechsten oder siebenten Lebensjahre, findet eine eindringliche Menschenerkenntnis eine solche um den Zeitpunkt der Vollendung des neunten Lebensjahres herum. Da nimmt das Ich-Gefühl eine Form an, welche dem Kinde ein solches Verhältnis zur Natur und auch zur andern Umgebung gibt, so daß man zu ihm mehr von den Beziehungen der Dinge und Vorgänge zueinander sprechen kann, während es vorher fast ausschließlich Interesse entwickelt für die Beziehungen der Dinge und Vorgänge zum Menschen. Solche Tatsachen der Menschenentwickelung sollen von dem Erziehenden und Unterrichtenden ganz sorgfältig beachtet werden. Denn wenn man in die Vorstellungs- und Empfindungswelt des Kindes hineinträgt, was in einem Lebensabschnitt gerade mit der Richtung der Entwickelungskräfte zusammenfällt, so erstarkt man den ganzen werdenden Menschen so, daß die Erstarkung das ganze Leben hindurch ein Kraftquell bleibt. Wenn man gegen die Entwickelungseinrichtung in einem Lebensabschnitt arbeitet, so schwächt man den Menschen.
[ 8 ] In der Erkenntnis der besonderen Anforderungen der Lebensabschnitte liegt die Grundlage für einen sachgemäßen Lehrplan. Es liegt darinnen aber auch die andere Grundlage für die Art der Behandlung des Lehrstoffes in den aufeinanderfolgenden Lebensabschnitten. Man wird das Kind bis zum vollendeten neunten Lebensjahre in allem, was durch die Kulturentwickelung in das menschliche Leben eingeflossen ist, bis auf eine gewisse Stufe gebracht haben müssen. Man wird gerade die ersten Schuljahre deshalb mit Recht zum Schreibe- und Leseunterricht verwenden müssen; aber man wird diesen Unterricht so gestalten müssen, daß die Wesenheit der Entwickelung in diesem Lebensabschnitt ihr Recht findet. Lehrt man die Dinge so, daß einseitig der Intellekt des Kindes und nur ein abstraktes Aneignen von Fertigkeiten in Anspruch genommen werden, so verkümmert die Willens- und Gemütsnatur. Lernt dagegen das Kind so, daß sein ganzer Mensch an seiner Betätigung Anteil hat, so entwickelt es sich allseitig. Im kindlichen Zeichnen, ja selbst im primitiven Malen kommt der ganze Mensch zur Entfaltung eines Interesses an dem, was er tut. Man sollte deshalb das Schreiben aus dem Zeichnen heraus entstehen lassen. Aus Formen, an denen der kindlich-künstlerische Sinn des Kindes zur Geltung kommt, entwickele man die Buchstabenformen. Aus einer Beschäftigung, die als künstlerisch den ganzen Menschen zu sich heranzieht, entwickele man das Schreiben, das zum Sinnvoll-Intellektuellen hinführt. Und erst aus dem Schreiben heraus lasse man das Lesen erstehen, das die Aufmerksamkeit stark in das Gebiet des Intellektuellen zusammenzieht.
[ 9 ] Durchschaut man, wie stark aus der kindlich-künstlerischen Erziehung das Intellektuelle herauszuholen ist, so wird man der Kunst im ersten Volksschulunterricht die angemessene Stellung zu geben geneigt sein. Man wird die musikalische und auch die bildnerische Kunst in das Unterrichtsgebiet richtig hineinstellen und mit dem Künstlerischen die Pflege der Körperübungen entsprechend verbinden. Man wird das Turnerische und die Bewegungsspiele zum Ausdrucke von Empfindungen machen, die angeregt werden von dem Musikalischen oder von Rezitiertem. Die eurhythmische, die sinnvolle Bewegung wird an die Stelle derjenigen treten, die bloß auf das Anatomische und Physiologische des Körpers sich aufbaut. Und man wird finden, welch starke willen- und gemütbildende Kraft in der künstlerischen Gestaltung des Unterrichtes liegt. Wirklich fruchttragend werden aber nur solche Lehrer in der hier angedeuteten Art erziehen und unterrichten können, die durch eindringliche Menschenerkenntnis den Zusammenhang durchschauen, der besteht zwischen ihrer Methode und den in einem bestimmten Lebensabschnitt sich offenbarenden Entwickelungskräften. Der ist nicht wirklicher Lehrer und Erzieher, der Pädagogik sich angeeignet hat als Wissenschaft von der Kindesbehandlung, sondern derjenige, in dem der Pädagoge erwacht ist durch Menschenerkenntnis.
[ 10 ] Bedeutungsvoll für die Gemütsbildung ist, daß das Kind vor Vollendung des neunten Lebensjahres die Beziehung zur Welt so entwickelt, wie der Mensch geneigt ist, sie in phantasievoller Art auszugestalten. Wenn der Erziehende selbst nicht Phantast ist, so macht er auch das Kind nicht zum Phantasten, indem er in märchen-fabelartiger und ähnlicher Darstellung die Pflanzen- und Tier-, die Luft-und Sternenwelt in dem Gemüte des Kindes leben läßt.
[ 11 ] Wenn man aus einer materialistischen Gesinnung heraus den gewiß innerhalb gewisser Grenzen berechtigten Anschauungsunterricht auf alles mögliche ausdehnen will, so beachtet man nicht, daß in der menschlichen Wesenheit auch Kräfte entwickelt werden müssen, die nicht durch Anschauung allein vermittelt werden können. So steht das rein gedächtnismäßige Aneignen gewisser Dinge im Zusammenhang mit den Entwickelungskräften vom sechsten oder siebenten bis zum vierzehnten Lebensjahre. Und auf diese Eigenschaft der menschlichen Natur soll der Rechenunterricht aufgebaut sein. Er kann geradezu zur Pflege der Erinnerungskraft verwendet werden. Berücksichtigt man dieses nicht, so wird man vielleicht gerade im Rechenunterricht das anschauliche Element gegenüber dem gedächtnisbildenden unpädagogisch bevorzugen.
[ 12 ] In den gleichen Fehler kann man verfallen, wenn man ängstlich bei jeder Gelegenheit über ein richtiges Maß hinaus anstrebt, daß das Kind alles verstehen müsse, was man ihm übermittelt. Diesem Bestreben liegt gewiß ein guter Wille zugrunde. Aber dieser rechnet nicht damit, was es für den Menschen bedeutet, wenn er in einem späteren Lebensalter in seiner Seele wieder erweckt, was er sich in einem früheren rein gedächtnismäßig angeeignet hat, und nun findet, daß er durch die errungene Reife jetzt zum Verständnisse aus sich selbst kommt. Allerdings wird notwendig sein, daß die bei dem gedächtnismäßigen Aneignen eines Lernstoffes gefürchtete Teilnahmslosigkeit des Zöglings durch die lebensvolle Art des Lehrers verhindert wird. Steht der Lehrer mit seinem ganzen Wesen in seiner Unterrichtstätigkeit drinnen, dann darf er dem Kinde auch beibringen, wofür es im späteren Nacherleben mit Freude das volle Verständnis findet. Und in diesem erfrischenden Nacherleben liegt dann stets Stärkung des Lebensinhaltes. Kann der Lehrer für solche Stärkung wirken, dann gibt er dem Kinde ein unermeßlich großes Lebensgut mit auf den Daseinsweg. Und er wird dadurch auch vermeiden, daß sein «Anschauungsunterricht» durch das Übermaß an Einstellen auf das «Verständnis » des Kindes in Banalität verfällt. Diese mag der Selbstbetätigung des Kindes Rechnung tragen; allein ihre Früchte sind mit dem Kindesalter ungenießbar geworden; die weckende Kraft, die das lebendige Feuer des Lehrers in dem Kinde entzündet bei Dingen, die in gewisser Beziehung noch über sein «Verständnis » hinaus liegen, bleibt wirksam durch das ganze Leben hindurch.
[ 13 ] Wenn man mit Naturbeschreibungen aus der Tier- und Pflanzenwelt nach dem vollendeten neunten Lebensjahre beginnt und dieselben so hält, daß aus den Formen und Lebensvorgängen der außermenschlichen Welt die menschliche Form und die Lebenserscheinungen des Menschen verständlich werden, so kann man diejenigen Kräfte im Zögling wecken, die in diesem Lebensabschnitt nach ihrem Entbundenwerden aus den Tiefen des Menschenwesens streben. Dem Charakter, den das Ich-Gefühl in dieser Lebensepoche annimmt, entspricht es, das Tier- und Pflanzenreich so anzusehen, daß, was in ihnen an Eigenschaften und Verrichtungen auf viele Wesensarten verteilt ist, in dem Menschenwesen als dem Gipfel der Lebewelt wie in einer harmonischen Einheit sich offenbart.
[ 14 ] Um das zwölfte Lebensjahr herum ist abermals ein Wendepunkt in der Menschenentwickelung eingetreten. Der Mensch wird da reif, diejenigen Fähigkeiten zu entwickeln, durch die er in einer für ihn günstigen Art zum Begreifen dessen gebracht wird, was ganz ohne Beziehung zum Menschen aufgefaßt werden muß: des mineralischen Reiches, der physikalischen Tatsachenwelt, der Witterungserscheinungen und so weiter.
[ 15 ] Wie aus der Pflege solcher Übungen, die ganz aus der Natur des menschlichen Betätigungstriebes heraus gestaltet sind ohne Rücksicht auf die Ziele des praktischen Lebens, sich andere entwickeln sollen, die eine Art Arbeitsunterricht sind, das ergibt sich aus der Erkenntnis des Wesens der Lebensabschnitte. Was hier für einzelne Teile des Lehrstoffes angedeutet ist, läßt sich ausdehnen auf alles, was dem Zögling bis in sein fünfzehntes Lebensjahr hinein zu geben ist.
[ 16 ] Man wird nicht zu befürchten haben, daß der Zögling in einer dem äußeren Leben fremden Seelen- und Körperverfassung aus der Volksschule entlassen wird, wenn in der geschilderten Art auf dasjenige gesehen wird, was aus der inneren Entwickelung des Menschenwesens als Unterrichts- und Erziehungsprinzipien sich ergibt. Denn das menschliche Leben ist selbst aus dieser inneren Entwickelung heraus gestaltet, und der Mensch wird in der besten Art in dieses Leben eintreten, wenn er durch die Entwickelung seiner Anlagen mit dem zusammenfindet, was aus den gleichgearteten menschlichen Anlagen heraus Menschen vor ihm der Kulturentwickelung einverleibt haben. Allerdings, um beides, die Entwickelung des Zöglings und die äußere Kulturentwickelung, zusammenzustimmen, bedarf es einer Lehrerschaft, die sich nicht mit ihrem Interesse in einer fachmäßigen Erziehungs- und Unterrichtspraktik abschließt, sondern die mit vollem Anteil sich hineinstellt in die Weiten des Lebens. Eine solche Lehrerschaft wird die Möglichkeit finden, in den heranwachsenden Menschen den Sinn für die geistigen Lebensinhalte zu wecken, aber nicht weniger das Verständnis für praktische Gestaltung des Lebens. Bei solcher Haltung des Unterrichtes wird der vierzehn- oder fünfzehnjährige Mensch nicht verständnislos sein für das Wesentliche, was aus der Landwirtschaft, der Industrie, dem Verkehre, dem Gesamtleben der Menschheit dient. Die Einsichten und die Fertigkeiten, die er sich angeeignet hat, werden ihn befähigen, sich orientiert zu fühlen in dem Leben, das ihn aufnimmt. Soll die Waldorfschule die Ziele erreichen, die ihrem Begründer vorschweben, so wird sie auf der hier gekennzeichneten Pädagogik und Methodik aufgebaut sein müssen. Sie wird dadurch einen Unterricht und eine Erziehung geben können, die den Leib des Zöglings seinen Bedürfnissen gemäß sich gesund entwickeln läßt, weil die Seele, deren Ausdruck dieser Leib ist, in der Richtung ihrer Entwickelungskräfte entfaltet wird. Es ist vor der Eröffnung der Schule versucht worden, mit der Lehrerschaft in einer solchen Art zu arbeiten, daß nach einem Ziele, wie es hier angegeben ist, durch die Schule gestrebt werden kann. Durch diese Zielrichtung glauben diejenigen, die an der Einrichtung der Schule beteiligt sind, in das pädagogische Lebensgebiet zu tragen, was der sozialen Denkungsart der Gegenwart entsprechend ist. Sie fühlen die Verantwortlichkeit, die mit einem solchen Versuch verbunden sein muß; aber sie meinen, daß gegenüber den sozialen Anforderungen der Gegenwart es eine Pflicht ist, derartiges zu unternehmen, wenn eine Möglichkeit dazu vorhanden ist.
The educational basis of the Waldorf School
[ 1 ] The intentions that Emil Molt wants to realize through the Waldorf School are connected with very specific views on the social tasks of the present and the near future. The spirit in which this school is to be run must arise from these views. It is linked to an industrial enterprise. The way in which modern industry has placed itself in the development of human social life gives its character to the practice of the newer social movement. The parents who entrust their children to this school cannot but expect that these children will be educated and taught in a way that takes full account of this movement. This makes it necessary for the foundation of the school to be based on pedagogical principles that are rooted in the demands of contemporary life. Children should be brought up and taught to live a life that meets the requirements to which every person, regardless of which of the traditional social classes they belong to, can aspire. What the practice of contemporary life demands of man must be reflected in the facilities of this school. What is to act as the dominant spirit in this life must be stimulated in the children through education and teaching.
[ 2 ] It would be disastrous if a spirit alien to life prevailed in the basic pedagogical views on which the Waldorf school is to be built. Such a spirit emerges all too easily today where one develops a feeling for the part played in the disintegration of civilization by the absorption in a materialistic attitude to life and mindset during the last decades. Prompted by this feeling, one would like to introduce an idealistic attitude into the administration of public life. And those who turn their attention to the development of education and teaching will want to see this attitude realized there above all others. A great deal of good will is manifested in such a way of thinking. It goes without saying that this should be recognized. If it is exercised in the right way, it will be able to render valuable services when it comes to gathering human forces for a social enterprise for which new conditions must be created. - Nevertheless, it is precisely in such a case that it is necessary to point out how the best will must fail if it goes about realizing intentions without taking full account of the preconditions based on factual insight.
[ 3 ] This is one of the requirements that come into consideration today when establishing an institution such as the Waldorf School. Idealism must be at work in its pedagogical and methodological spirit; but an idealism that has the power to awaken in the growing human being the strengths and abilities that he will need in the further course of his life in order to be able to work for the present human community and to have a supportive life for himself.
[ 4 ] Pedagogy and school methodology will only be able to fulfill such a demand with real knowledge of the growing person. Insightful people today demand an education and teaching that does not focus on one-sided knowledge but on ability, not on the mere cultivation of intellectual abilities but on the training of the will. The correctness of this idea cannot be doubted. But one cannot educate the will and the healthy mind on which it is based if one does not develop the insights that awaken energetic impulses in the mind and will. A mistake that is often made in this direction in the present day is not that too much insight is brought into the growing human being, but that insights are cultivated that lack the impetus for life. He who believes that he can form the will without cultivating the insight that enlivens it is indulging in an illusion. - It is the task of contemporary pedagogy to see clearly on this point. This clear vision can only emerge from a vital knowledge of the whole human being.
[ 5 ] As it is provisionally conceived, the Waldorf school will be an elementary school that educates and teaches its pupils in such a way that the teaching aims and curriculum are based on the insight into the essence of the whole person that is alive in every teacher, insofar as this is already possible under present conditions. It is self-evident that the children in the individual school levels must be brought to the point where they can meet the requirements of today's views. Within this framework, however, teaching objectives and curricula should be designed in such a way that they result from the characterized knowledge of man and life.
[ 6 ] The child is entrusted to the elementary school at a stage of life in which the constitution of the soul is undergoing a significant transformation. In the period from birth to the sixth or seventh year of life, the human being is predisposed to devote himself to everything in his immediate human environment and to shape his own nascent powers out of his imitative instinct. From this time onwards, the soul becomes open to consciously accepting what the educator and teacher impose on the child on the basis of a self-evident authority. The child accepts the authority out of the dark feeling that something lives in the educator and teacher that should also live in him. One cannot be an educator or teacher without with full insight relating to the child in such a way that this transformation of the instinct of imitation into the ability to appropriate on the basis of a self-evident relationship of authority is taken into account in the most comprehensive sense. The view of life of modern mankind, which is based on a mere insight into nature, does not approach such facts of human development with full consciousness. Only those who have a sense for the subtlest expressions of life in the human being can pay the necessary attention to them. Such a sense must prevail in the art of education and teaching. It must shape the curriculum; it must live in the spirit that unites educator and pupil. What the educator does can only depend to a small extent on what is inspired in him by general norms of abstract pedagogy; rather, he must be born anew from a living knowledge of the developing human being at every moment of his work. Of course, it can be argued that such lively education and teaching fails in school classes with a large number of pupils. Within certain limits, this objection is certainly justified; however, anyone who raises it beyond these limits only proves that he is speaking from the point of view of an abstract standard pedagogy, for a living art of education and teaching based on true knowledge of human nature is imbued with a power that stimulates sympathy in the individual pupil, so that it is not necessary to keep him on task through direct, "individual" work. One can shape what one does in education and teaching in such a way that the pupil grasps it individually for himself in the process of assimilation. All that is necessary is that what the teacher does lives strongly enough. Those who have a sense of genuine knowledge of human nature will see the developing human being to such a high degree as a life puzzle to be solved by him that he awakens the co-living of the pupil in the attempted solution. And such co-living is more rewarding than individual work, which all too easily paralyzes the pupil in terms of genuine self-activity. Again, within certain limits, it can be said that larger school classes with teachers who are full of life inspired by true knowledge of human nature will achieve better results than small classes with teachers who, based on a standard pedagogy, are unable to develop such a life.
[ 7 ] Less pronounced, but equally significant for the art of education and teaching as the transformation of the soul's constitution in the sixth or seventh year of life, a penetrating knowledge of human nature takes place around the time of completion of the ninth year of life. There the ego-feeling takes on a form which gives the child such a relationship to nature and also to the other environment that one can speak to it more of the relationships of things and processes to one another, whereas previously it developed an interest almost exclusively in the relationships of things and processes to man. Such facts of human development should be very carefully observed by the educator and teacher. For if one introduces into the child's world of imagination and feeling what coincides with the direction of the forces of development at one stage of life, one strengthens the whole developing human being in such a way that the strengthening remains a source of strength throughout life. If one works against the developmental mechanism in one phase of life, one weakens the human being.
[ 8 ] The basis for an appropriate curriculum lies in recognizing the special requirements of the stages of life. However, this is also the other basis for the way in which the subject matter is dealt with in the successive stages of life. By the age of nine, the child will have reached a certain level in everything that has flowed into human life through cultural development. The first years of school will therefore rightly have to be used for teaching reading and writing; but this teaching will have to be organized in such a way that the essence of development finds its rightful place in this stage of life. If things are taught in such a way that the child's intellect and only an abstract acquisition of skills are utilized, then the nature of will and mind will atrophy. If, on the other hand, the child learns in such a way that his whole person participates in his activity, he will develop in an all-round way. In childish drawing, even in primitive painting, the whole person develops an interest in what he is doing. Writing should therefore be developed from drawing. Letters should be developed from forms that bring out the child's artistic sense. From an activity that draws the whole person to itself as artistic, one develops writing, which leads to the sensible-intellectual. And it is only from writing that reading emerges, which draws the attention strongly into the realm of the intellectual.
[ 9 ] If one realizes how strongly the intellectual can be drawn out of the child's artistic education, then one will be inclined to give art the appropriate position in the first elementary school lessons. The musical and also the visual arts will be properly included in the curriculum and the cultivation of physical exercises will be appropriately combined with the arts. Gymnastics and movement games will be used to express feelings that are stimulated by music or recitation. The eurhythmic, meaningful movement will take the place of that which is based solely on the anatomical and physiological aspects of the body. And one will find what a strong will- and pleasure-forming power lies in the artistic design of the lessons. However, only those teachers will be able to educate and teach in the manner indicated here who, through a penetrating knowledge of human nature, see through the connection that exists between their method and the developmental forces that manifest themselves in a particular stage of life. He is not a real teacher and educator who has acquired pedagogy as the science of treating children, but the one in whom the pedagogue has awakened through knowledge of human nature.
[ 10 ] It is important for the formation of the mind that the child develops its relationship to the world before the age of nine in such a way that the person is inclined to shape it in an imaginative way. If the educator himself is not a fantasist, he does not turn the child into a fantasist either, by allowing the world of plants, animals, air and stars to live in the child's mind in fairy-tale, fable-like and similar representations.
[ 11 ] If, from a materialistic point of view, one wants to extend the teaching of visualization, which is certainly justified within certain limits, to everything possible, one does not take into account that forces must also be developed in the human being which cannot be conveyed through visualization alone. Thus the purely memorial acquisition of certain things is connected with the powers of development from the sixth or seventh to the fourteenth year of life. And arithmetic lessons should be based on this characteristic of human nature. It can actually be used to cultivate the power of memory. If this is not taken into account, the descriptive element may be preferred to the memory-building element in arithmetic lessons in an uneducational way.
[ 12 ] The same mistake can be made if one anxiously strives at every opportunity to ensure that the child understands everything that is taught. This endeavor is certainly based on good will. But it does not reckon with what it means for man when, at a later age, he reawakens in his soul what he has acquired purely by memory in an earlier age, and now finds that, through the maturity he has attained, he now comes to understand from within himself. However, it will be necessary that the apathy of the pupil, which is feared when learning material is acquired by memory, is prevented by the lively nature of the teacher. If the teacher puts his whole being into his teaching activity, then he can also teach the child what the child will later experience with joy and full understanding. And in this refreshing re-experience there is always a strengthening of the purpose of life. If the teacher can work for such strengthening, then he gives the child an immeasurably great life-good on the path of existence. And in this way he will also avoid his "visual teaching" degenerating into banality through an excessive focus on the child's "understanding". This may take account of the child's self-activity; but its fruits have become unpalatable by the time the child reaches infancy; the awakening power which the teacher's living fire kindles in the child for things which in certain respects lie beyond his "understanding" remains effective throughout life.
[ 13 ] If one begins with descriptions of nature from the animal and plant world after the completed ninth year of life and holds them in such a way that the human form and the life phenomena of the human being become comprehensible from the forms and life processes of the non-human world, one can awaken those forces in the pupil that strive in this stage of life to be released from the depths of the human being. It corresponds to the character that the ego-feeling assumes in this epoch of life to view the animal and plant kingdoms in such a way that what is distributed in them in terms of characteristics and activities among many types of being is revealed in the human being as the summit of the living world as in a harmonious unity.
[ 14 ] At around the twelfth year of life, another turning point in human development occurs. The human being then becomes mature enough to develop those abilities through which he is brought to comprehend in a way that is favorable to him what must be understood entirely without relation to the human being: the mineral kingdom, the physical world of facts, weather phenomena and so on.
[ 15 ] How the cultivation of such exercises, which are formed entirely out of the nature of the human instinct for activity without regard to the aims of practical life, is to develop into others which are a kind of work instruction, is clear from the knowledge of the nature of the stages of life. What is indicated here for individual parts of the teaching material can be extended to everything that is to be given to the pupil up to the age of fifteen.
[ 16 ] There will be no need to fear that the pupil will leave the elementary school in a state of mind and body alien to external life if the principles of teaching and education are based on the internal development of the human being as described above. For human life is itself formed out of this inner development, and man will enter into this life in the best way when, through the development of his inherent dispositions, he finds together with that which, out of the like human dispositions, men before him have incorporated into the development of culture. However, in order to harmonize both, the development of the pupil and the external cultural development, a teaching staff is needed which does not close itself off with its interest in a specialized educational and teaching practice, but which places itself with full participation in the vastness of life. Such a teaching staff will find the opportunity to awaken in young people a sense for the spiritual content of life, but no less an understanding for the practical shaping of life. With such an approach to teaching, the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old will not be without understanding of the essentials of agriculture, industry, transportation and the life of mankind as a whole. The insights and skills he has acquired will enable him to feel oriented in the life that welcomes him. If the Waldorf school is to achieve the goals envisaged by its founder, it will have to be based on the pedagogy and methodology described here. In this way it will be able to provide teaching and education that allows the pupil's body to develop healthily according to its needs, because the soul, of which this body is an expression, is unfolded in the direction of its powers of development. Before the school was opened, an attempt was made to work with the teaching staff in such a way that the school could strive to achieve the goal described here. Those who are involved in the establishment of the school believe that this goal will bring into the pedagogical field of life what is appropriate to the social way of thinking of the present. They feel the responsibility which must be connected with such an attempt; but they believe that, in view of the social demands of the present, it is a duty to undertake such a thing if there is a possibility of doing so.