The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: We want to take care of the things that need to be done today with questions and answers. I do not have time for longer discussions. We want to handle all your wishes and intentions. I do not want anyone leaving something weighing on their soul that they cannot present.

A teacher proposes creating a division between the pure Waldorf School and a college preparatory school. The parents would then decide which their children will attend.

Dr. Steiner: The result would be that we would carry out the school principles and then subject the children to a kind of cramming course. The main problem is that if we did that as thoroughly as necessary, people would still not understand the idea of the Waldorf School. I believe people will understand the idea of the Waldorf School if we make no compromises, which includes not running through things half-heartedly. Instead, we need to show how impossible it is to have a reasonable school system under current conditions. I have never favored slipping through the back door when difficulties arose for the elementary school. I have always favored making it clear to people how things are. You can never do that if you do not energetically work for the idea of the Waldorf School. I do not believe we could ever achieve anything important by slipping out through the back door when difficulties arise.

There is another thing we need to take into account. If we took the standpoint you spoke of, we would have to carry out the idea of the Waldorf School much more broadly and completely than we have done to date. We should have no illusions, and this is something that requires absolute secrecy, that, in fact, our students know anywhere near enough for us to say that the Waldorf School gives them what a human being needs to know by the age of eighteen. They know far too little. We have been, up to now, unable to bring a sufficiently large number of students up to the level of our learning goals. That is the first requirement we need to fulfill for the parents and the world, if we want to offer the world what you have just proposed. It is a simple matter to find a number of things within our teaching goals that have not been achieved through the idea of the Waldorf School. We need to achieve those things, and we must take that into account.

From the results of our teaching, I do not believe we can stand on a corner and shout to the world. The whole question of passing the final examinations is, in the end, a problem, since we need to assume that an ill-willed examination board could fail an entire class. There is almost nothing we can do about that. Were that to occur, all we could do would be to rework the entire curriculum for the last four years—not in art, but in Latin and Greek, for example. Our present Latin and Greek classes were created under the assumption that the students should pass their final examinations. We have always spoken of those classes in that way, namely, how should we create them so that the students can pass their final examinations? I cannot imagine that we could do other than make that compromise, and we need to do it. In that way, we can show that to really achieve the ideal of the Waldorf School requires more than just a controlling will. What you proposed would leave only the question of whether the cramming class would be held here at school or elsewhere. If we create the cramming class here, it would at least have some humor; but if we leave the students at the mercy of an outside cramming class, that would be tragic. That would lead only to a weakening of the Waldorf School idea. All that would gradually lead to an opinion that the Waldorf School is full of odd ideas. The parents would say we know we are not teaching the children enough, and so are turning to an outside cramming class.

A teacher: What should happen concretely in the twelfth grade?

Dr. Steiner: As we said in the last meeting, we will have to meet with the school officials. That is all we can do, but even that may not happen. When the time comes, we could also register our students for the final examination.

A teacher: We would like to know how we could still take the desires and views of the Ministry of Education into account.

Dr. Steiner: That is something we can do or not. You need only look at the curriculum and a number of questions asked on the final examination.

A teacher: It would make taking the final examination easier.

Dr. Steiner: That is superficial and would lead, via a detour, to having our twelfth grade directed by the ministry. It would also be more comfortable for the people there than for us. The main question is whether we want to prepare our students for the examination or not. If we do not prepare them, we could eventually close the last four grades. Parents would not send their children. There seems to be no understanding. The parents connect a large part of the Waldorf School idea with their children being able to take the examination just like anywhere else, only they believe it will be ten times easier in the Waldorf School. They think we can wave a magic wand and make it easier for the children. We should have no illusions about people today, so I see no possibility of doing anything other than that compromise.

Dr. Steiner gives some examples of questions from examinations.

Dr. Steiner: If we interrupt the Waldorf School principle to take up other required subjects, it won’t be too difficult to prepare the students so that they can do the same as others. The students won’t know what we are doing.

I have twice attempted to explain the compromises necessary, once in Dornach, during a course for Swiss and Czech teachers, and a second time when I held a lecture in Prague. At that time a large number of people remained and did not want to go home, so we met together in another room where I gave a second lecture about the idea of the Waldorf School, emphasizing this compromise. Those people understood then that we need to look at things from a very different vantage point. Generally, speaking, we can achieve some understanding for the fact that we need to make compromises.

We need more understanding, but, in order to show how absurd the situation is, we cannot get it through the back door. We need to stand firmly upon our principles and say we are making compromises where necessary.

A teacher: In other schools it is normal to state by a certain deadline who will be allowed to take the examination. We should tell the students before summer vacation begins whether they will be allowed to take the examination or not.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, but we should not do that before we allow the students who were rejected to repeat. However, we cannot do that because it will cause us great problems in the following years.

A teacher: If we allow all the students to take the examination, we risk having 60 percent fail.

Dr. Steiner: We would have to give those students a poor report for the year so the officials will reject them. A rejection by the faculty has no legal consequences. We also cannot register any students. Legally, only the students themselves can do that. We cannot prohibit anyone from registering themselves for the examination. Thus, if some we do not think are capable register, we need to protect ourselves by giving them a poor year-end report. Then, we can say that there is a poor report for one or another. Theoretically, that is the only position we can take since we cannot forbid any of our students from registering for the examination. That is completely out of the question. The situation is that everyone who has reached a certain grade can register. Probably the examination committee will require that such students prove they have completed the necessary courses. Our reports must include a remark that in our opinion, the student is not proficient. The later we ask parents whether their child should take the examination, the easier it will be for us to advise against it.

We can, therefore, not decide other than we did last time. We can, however, try to follow the Waldorf School principle. Of course, in many of our subjects that are not taught elsewhere, our students are, in our opinion, not sufficiently far along. We need to try to find a balance between what we present, that is, what we want to teach in the class, and the students’ work. It is not always the case that the students work enough. In some of the higher grades, they sometimes sit there and doze the whole period. It is true, isn’t it, that there are students who have no idea what you presented when you ask them. That was something that happened even before we spoke about final examinations.

We already determined the instruction for the twelfth grade, but we could include philosophy in the last semester so that they have an acquaintance with scientific gibberish. It is certainly better if the twelfth graders are far enough along in the first semester to take the examination than to wait for the second semester. Usually, the students are prepared during the first semester.

A teacher asks about a continuation school at the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Those who leave school at the age of fourteen need to go to the continuation school; however, they can do that only if we can obtain recognition for our continuation courses. The character of a unified school would be lost in the normal continuation schools the students are required to attend. They have no significance for us here, since we divide our curriculum according to the needs of human nature. Of course, we could stir things up in that regard, but that would mean the beginning of the end. That would mean that we would have to subject ourselves to the Ministry of Education for all grades above fourth grade. We can exist only because there was a hole in the Württemberg Elementary School Law that made it possible to create schools with teachers who are not certified by the state. We could not have done that if we had wanted to create a middle school. In that case, the officials would have demanded that our teachers be certified. We are living in a hole in the law that existed before Germany was “liberated,” that is, under the old regime. Today, it would no longer be possible to create a Waldorf School. People go along with us because they think they are not going along with us. But, in schools where similar things are tried in other places, it is basically nonsense. They have to have certified teachers. Under present-day conditions a second Waldorf School would not be allowed.

A teacher: Is it possible to extend our continuation courses? There are many fourteen-year-olds leaving this year.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do that at the drop of a hat. Intentions are not enough, we also need teachers. I don’t know if we can even maintain the continuation courses without additional faculty. We also have other things to do.

A teacher: There are so many slow children in the classes.

Dr. Steiner: We could easily decline to accept students who show no promise. We could say at the very beginning that we cannot accept them since we could not achieve our teaching goals with them. We could easily throw out the students who we do not think will meet the class goals. We must be more careful in accepting new students.

It is a different question with foreign languages. We cannot do that there since that would give the officials a reason to take the four lowest grades from us. We need to take children into the fifth grade. We might want to keep the whole foreign language question separate so that we could put such students in with the younger ones. We need to arrange things so that those students are with the lower grades for foreign-language class. Such children will simply have to go into the next lower grade. Every child fits into some grade. Perhaps we could also create beginning courses.

It will hardly be possible to say anything during the first three weeks. You need to create your tests positively and ask each child what he or she knows in order find out the child’s capabilities. Always try to determine what a child can do. You should not simply ask questions. Try to determine what a child can do, not what he or she cannot do.

A teacher asks about curative eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: We should maintain the principle of not hacking off some part of main lesson and tacking it on somewhere else.

A teacher asks about a student who has large swings in mood.

Dr. Steiner: He is not enthusiastic. You’ll need to separate him from his mother. You should discuss such things in your faculty meetings. She is unpredictable, someone who suddenly jumps from ninety to one hundred ten degrees in her soul, and he imitates her physically. The situation was always that way. I once said to his mother, who creates a major commotion at every opportunity, that she should distance herself from him. He is a very sensitive boy. It is impossible to imagine anything less rational than the upbringing that exists in that home. It is absolutely impossible. We are powerless, however, because there is no solution other than to free the boy from his mother. We simply need to see some things as karma. The boy was never in a proper school and was always taught sloppily. This is a karmic question.

A teacher asks about visitors.

Dr. Steiner: We should limit visitors to what is absolutely necessary, but we can make some exceptions. We need to get used to asking ourselves what the purpose of the visit is and also to achieve greater respect.

The best would be to print up a form so that people will see we are overrun. In the form, we can state that we can accept visitors only when they explicitly state their reasons and goals.

A teacher: I have gone through the Early and Late Stone Age and then took up the Bronze Age.

Dr. Steiner: You do not need to create analogies between them. It is very good that you present them with those divisions. Cultural periods develop the soul.

A teacher: How should I proceed with history in the twelfth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Give them an overview of all periods so that the ladies and gentlemen know something.

A teacher: In chronology, perspective is most often missing.

Dr. Steiner: Earlier historians did what was necessary. Rotteck has synchronized tables.

The children do not work hard enough in gymnastics, except for maybe a few. They need to learn to tone their muscles. You need to remind them. The children have gone too long without gymnastics, but they are capable. You can do nothing other than to remind them. You need to tell them individually.

A German school essay is mentioned, “The Camel as a Link between the Land and Human Activity.”

Dr. Steiner: School has just begun, and we want to see how things go. This is likely to be a very important year. What do you have to report?

A teacher asks about purchasing a history textbook for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it’s true the students must know something. In the last grade of high school, history class is mainly a kind of review. That is also the case here. Couldn’t you teach from your notes so that a textbook would not be necessary?

You see, what is really very important is that you summarize everything they need to know as efficiently as possible. I happily remember how, when I was in school, we did not have any geometry books. The teacher summarized the important things in dictations. A self-written book gives you reason to know what is in it. Of course, when the children first had to learn everything they need, we could not do it that way. If such things are to be fruitful, it must be possible to summarize what they need to know. Everything they will be asked about history in the final examination can be written down on fifty or sixty pages. It is clear that no one, not even an expert in history, remembers everything in Ploetz. Giving children such textbooks is illusory. They just have chapter titles, but you could summarize all of the material in fifty or sixty pages. It is possible that all the subject teachers would want textbooks, but we should try to avoid that.

In such questions, an efficient summarization is what is important. Other schools have the children underline the things they need to study. They also need to cover things in a given amount of time. You should dictate such history notebooks beginning in the tenth grade.

A middle-grades teacher asks about notebooks according to blocks.

Dr. Steiner: You should give a dictation at the end of the period about what was just covered. Create the dictation with the children. You can summarize the material in a written form during one period and review it in the next. Use key sentences rather than key words.

How are things going in twelfth-grade mathematics?

The mathematics teacher: Very well. We have covered nearly everything.

Dr. Steiner: I have no doubt that they can well understand these elementary concepts of higher mathematics. I would ask the twelfth grade if they can easily solve such examination questions as: Given an oblique circular cone with axis \(\alpha\) making an angle α to the base, with a radius \(\rho\), compute the height of the cone and the length of the longest and shortest slant heights.

\(9x^2 + 25y^2 = 225\). The coordinates are, \(x = 5\), \(y = 2\). Determine the equation of the tangent and its length. They may also need to solve construction problems: Construct the locus of all points equidistant from a given point and a given plane.

Another question might be: Construct the shadow of a surface of a plane bounded by a circle upon a cone. Or further: Draw a cycloid.

The children also need to become accustomed to writing German essays. You could use what you teach in class for such essays.

A teacher: I think we need to teach the children a little about the technique of writing such essays.

Dr. Steiner: You can show them that by correcting their errors. That is true of style also. I would not give any theoretical discussions about that, as they will be disappointed when their essays are poor. A teacher: They have poor punctuation.

Dr. Steiner: It will not be easy to find a reasonable way to teach punctuation to children. We need to look into this question further, including the reasons for punctuation. This is a question we need to examine pedagogically, and I will prepare that for our next meeting. There does not appear to be any natural way of justifying punctuation. Our German punctuation is based upon the Latin and is very pedantic. Latin has logical punctuation. It arose in Medieval Latin at the beginning of the Middle Ages. There was none in Classical Latin.

Morgenstern wrote a poem about that, “Im Reich der Interpunktionen” (In the realm of punctuation marks). Punctuation is something that cannot be understood before a certain age because it is very intellectual. Children can understand putting a comma before an and only after the age of fourteen, but then they understand it quite easily. A book from Herman Grimm shows that there is actually no higher law in regard to these things. You cannot say they are incorrect. You should read the beginning of Herman Grimm’s book about Raphael. He uses only periods. You should also read one of his essays about how a schoolmaster corrected his errors. Grimm gives an answer to that. He gives a very interesting picture in his volume of essays, in the last one. You can also learn a great deal by looking at a letter by Goethe. Goethe could not punctuate. A teacher asks about seating boys and girls together.

Dr. Steiner: It is better to take such dislikes into account when they exist.

A teacher of one of the middle grades asks about “round writing.”

Dr. Steiner: They can do that.

A class had been divided and the new class teacher thought that he had received almost all the poor students.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand how this opinion could arise. Why didn’t we divide the class such that it would be impossible for such an opinion to arise? There is no reason for dividing in any way other than alphabetically. That is better than when all the good students are put in one class, and the other has only the poor students.

A gymnastics teacher: C.H. does not want to participate in gymnastics and does not want to do eurythmy because of his inner development.

Dr. Steiner: When little H. begins such things, he is starting along the path of becoming like his older brother. He needs to be moved to participate in all the classes. That is simply nonsense. If you give in, he will be just like his brother. None of the students can be allowed not to participate in all the classes without good reason.

A gymnastics teacher: The upper two grades do not want to take gymnastics. The way they come to class makes me really feel sorry for them.

Dr. Steiner: Part of the problem is that the children did not have gymnastics before. They do not understand why they should take it now. That is something we cannot overcome. It was an error when the Waldorf School was started, and something will always remain of it.

On the other hand, it is quite possible to do something we thought was important several years ago when Mr. Baumann was teaching deportment, namely, to have the children learn manners. That is completely lacking in the upper grades. However, if it is taught pedantically, though we do not need to do it that way, they will become uncomfortable, particularly the boys. We must teach them manners with manners, with a certain amount of humor. I still find that quite lacking. We need to bring in more humor. It is important that you bring more humor, not jokes of course, into the school and into your teaching. You are really too reserved in that regard.

The spirit of the Waldorf School is certainly here, but on the other hand, overcoming human weaknesses through anthroposophy—which itself is a human being—is not something general, but something unique for each person. You could become something very different through anthroposophy. A great deal could occur in that regard, so that it is not Mr. X. or Miss Y. who stands before the class, but Mr. X. or Miss Y. transformed through anthroposophy. I could, of course, just as well mention other people. We must continue to free ourselves from this heaviness. There is a feeling of heaviness in the classes, and we must remove it. Seriousness is correct, but not this lack of humor. People need to lose this humorless seriousness. We need to overcome ourselves through our higher I so that the children cannot come to us and justifiably complain about our behavior. The faculty needs to round off the rough edges of one another. You should, of course, not allow things to go so far that one person allows everything to slip by while another continually complains. With X., you could certainly put your hands in your pockets, but not with Z. That would not be appropriate. There must be a style in the school that acts to bring things together so that there is a real cooperation. This might be a topic for a meeting when I am not here.

A teacher reports about the behavior of one of the older girls.

Dr. Steiner: The girl will say, “Thank God.” She probably had an afternoon tea, and I could well imagine that she did not want to do gymnastics. That has nothing to do with gymnastics. You need to get past some of the children’s selfishness. X. would think it quite funny of the girls, whereas you think it is bad behavior. It has often happened that other teachers are not the least disturbed by such things, so the children do not understand the problem. We need to teach them social forms with some humor. Good social forms are something that influence moral attitudes and affect moral development later in life. They do not need to be carved in stone.

We must pay more attention to overcoming what is human through our higher self. That will become more possible as our workload decreases. In Norway, the teachers have thirty hours. This year, we will be in a position where some teachers have less than twenty hours. The fewer class hours we have, the better we can prepare, which also includes overcoming our individual idiosyncrasies. We do not need to overcome our individuality, only our idiosyncrasies. We may not let ourselves go. That is something that may not happen in any event.

The gymnastics teacher: Should P. I. do gymnastics?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, and he should also do some curative eurythmy. He should do all of the consonant exercises in moderate amounts. Do them all, but not for too long. He is inwardly crippled.

A teacher asks about a student in an upper grade who speaks very softly.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to have him memorize things. See to it that he learns things from memory, but says them poetically, or at least in well-formed language.

A teacher asks about gardening class for the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: We offer gardening class only until the tenth grade. We should leave gardening out of the upper grades. The children would like to learn grafting, if you can guide them into its mysteries.

The school doctor: One hundred seventy children have taken the remedies for malnutrition.5 I have examined one hundred twenty, and most of them look better. Eighty have gained two to five pounds.

Dr. Steiner: That is not bad for such a short time. The school doctor asks about tuberculosis of the lungs.

Dr. Steiner: Children who have tuberculosis of the lungs often have infected intestines as well. We should examine those who show the effects in their lungs for tuberculosis of the intestines, because intestinal tuberculosis does not often arise by itself at that young age. In that event, it would be best to try to heal the intestines first.

For cases of tuberculosis in the intestines and the pancreas, put the juice from half a lemon in a glass of water and use that in a compress to wrap their abdomen at night. Give them also the tuberculosis remedies one and two. As far as possible, they should eat only warm things without any animal fat, for instance, warm eggs, warm drinks, particularly warm lemonade, but, if possible, everything should be warm.

The school doctor: It is difficult to differentiate between large- and small-headed children.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to go more thoroughly into the reality of it. So many things are hidden. It sometimes happens that these things appear later with one child or another.

I would now like to hear about the first grade. Are the children taking it up? We need to follow the psychology of this first grade. Every class has its own individuality. These two first grade classes are very interesting groups.

A teacher: The little ones are quite individualistic. They are like sacks of flour, yet individualistic.

Dr. Steiner: You need to be clear that all their shouting is just superficial. You need to find out what excites them.

A teacher asks whether the tendency toward left-handedness should be broken.

Dr. Steiner: In general, yes. At the younger ages, approximately before the age of nine, you can accustom left-handed children to right-handedness at school. You should not do that only if it would have a damaging effect, which is very seldom the case Children are not a sum of things, but exponentially complicated. If you attempt to create symmetry between the right and left with the children, and you exercise both hands in balance, that can lead to weak-mindedness later in life.

The phenomenon of left-handedness is clearly karmic, and, in connection with karma, it is one of karmic weakness. I will give an example: People who overworked in their previous life, so that they did too much, not just physically or intellectually, but in general spiritually, within their soul or feeling, will enter the succeeding life with an intense weakness. That person will be unable to overcome the karmic weakness in the lower human being. (The part of the human being that results from the life between death and a new birth is particularly concentrated in the lower human being, whereas the part that comes from the previous earthly life is concentrated more in the head.) So, what would otherwise be strongly developed becomes weak, and the left leg and left hand are relied upon as a crutch. The preference for the left hand results in the right side of the brain, instead of the left, being used in speech. If you give in to that too much, then that weakness may perhaps remain for a later, a third, earthly life. If you do not give in, then the weakness is brought into balance.

If you make a child do everything equally well with the right and left hands, writing, drawing, work and so forth, the inner human being will be neutralized. Then the I and the astral body are so far removed that the person becomes quite lethargic later in life. Without any intervention, the etheric body is stronger toward the left than the right, and the astral body is more developed toward the right than the left. That is something you may not ignore; you should pay attention to it. However, we may not attempt a simple mechanical balance. The most naive thing you can do is to have as a goal that the children should work with both hands equally well. A desire for a balanced development of both hands arises from today’s complete misunderstanding of the nature of the human being.

They discuss a girl. She needs to be immunized since she just went through a bad case of flu.

Dr. Steiner: That lames the senses under the quadrigeminal plate. This is not an easy situation.

A school-age child needs to sleep eight to nine hours. We need to take care of these things individually. I wanted to show only that a child who sleeps too little will have insufficient musical feeling, and that a child who sleeps too much will be too weak for all the things that require a more flexible imagination.

That is how to tell whether the child sleeps too long or not enough. Those who sleep too much will have little capability with forms in geometry, for example. Those who sleep too little will have difficulty understanding music and history.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: B.B. is periodically rude. He will have times when he is better and others when he is worse. Realistically, it will take many years for that to improve.

Dr. Steiner: There are some things that are troubling me about the school, so I think I need to spend two days here next week. There are two things I think we need to discuss, but today we can do nothing but address more pressing problems.

Certainly, all of the points we discussed yesterday are important. The first thing troubling me, particularly after what I saw this morning in various classes, is the issue of punctuation. The second thing we need to resolve is a kind of running wild here at school, which we can certainly not take lightly.

Let’s take that as our starting point. Let’s start with the 9b class. The teachers have described some things to me, but this morning the 9b class was very well behaved. The only thing that troubled me was how they write. It cannot continue that way.

Regarding unruliness, I would ask those of you who have some concerns to present them objectively.

A number of teachers speak about the class and the particularly difficult students F.R., T.L., D.M., K.F., and J.L. Regardless of what the teachers attempted, they were unable to create a respectful attitude toward the great artists. F.R. incited the boys to a pogrom-like attitude. They also wrote some obscene things on the door to the teachers’ bathroom.

Dr. Steiner: First, I would like to say that F.R. suffers from a persecution complex and, aside from that, hates women. T.L. appears to be somewhat weak minded, as are D.M. and K.F. Here we have some psychological problems, and F.R.’s hatred of women affects the others. That is the situation. It would be interesting to know if a large part of his misbehavior is related to that question. The misbehavior I saw certainly comes from that direction.

This is not an easy case. F.R. came to us first in the fourth grade, after having been beaten at home. In addition, he felt he was treated extremely poorly by the fourth grade teacher, and many of the things he told me took on particular nuances in his fantasy. From what he told me, it seems he made an unsympathetic impression upon the teacher, and she took it out on him. Now he feels at least subjectively justified in thinking that the teacher had her favorites in the class, and that he was set back because he was one of the most disliked. At the time, all this created a small crisis, particularly because the teacher was not firm enough. She had to retract much later. In the fourth grade, the boy was not properly handled, so we were not able to move him into the fifth grade. That caused some trouble for me at the time. However, you had him for quite a time. How did it go?

A teacher: In the fifth grade, I had no problems with him. He was strongly impressed then.

Dr. Steiner: At that time, he was four years younger and the impression he got was that there is still some justice. Possibly that was weakened later, but that was the impression he had then. His feeling was that the world was unjust, but that there is still some kind of justice. Now he has some psychological problems. Certainly, since that time it seems to me that the boy—well, what should we do? We can only treat him if he trusts someone. The teachers’ viewpoint may be justifiable, but what he lost is trust. Somehow, he lost trust again.

T.L. is the boy who, when he reads or hears something, becomes possessed. He is possessed by good and by evil. When something dramatic occurs, he is possessed and speaks in that way. When he talked back to you, he did so out of that state. It is really a problem. K.F. is not exactly honest, either. It is not only that he misstates things, but he has a tendency toward absolute lying. He needs a strong hand. It is not easy, you see, because we are not in a position of following things with greater energy.

There is something else we need to take into account. If you think F.R. would write a good essay about Raphael and Grünewald in the ninth grade, you will never come to terms with him. That is completely impossible in his present incarnation. He cannot do it, nor can he understand it. It is something that lies outside his field of vision. When he realizes he cannot understand it, he dries up inwardly and the bad juices, the etherically bad juices, rise and push him on so that he becomes vengeful. The recurring theme of his thinking is that he is unjustly treated.

There is nothing more I can do other than speak with these five boys. It is something that could make the 9b class impossible. I will speak with them next week. We need to have some order here. There is little possibility of doing very much. All these things point to something below the surface. We need to recognize that many of these things are only symptoms. The obscene things you mentioned are only symptoms of something lying deeper within him. He probably did that as revenge against a teacher.

I once knew a class who had to write some letters. You should have seen what the boys thought up as names for the writer. They really thought up some names. They made up names by abbreviating first names in unthinkable ways, when you read the first and last name together, so that the result was a cynical provocation. Everyone in school knew about it.

We really cannot take such things seriously. The situation often depends only upon how you laugh. You need to get used to laughing at such things. If you get angry—well, fifteen-year-old boys are a particular kind of human being. We need to look into the situation further.

The transition years are difficult for these children, and we can see we need to do something. There is not enough energy, not enough punch in the German class in the eighth and ninth grades. That is something the children miss in their German class. We must teach them in an interesting way about the structure and style of sentences. You need to develop a feeling for style through essays. That should begin at the age of twelve. I mentioned these things in the course about adolescents. You should discuss forming pictures with them, metaphors, similes, and anecdotes. I have noticed that this is missing. We will never be able to introduce them to punctuation if they do not comprehend the value of a word in style.

The fact is that the way you are teaching German, they will never understand style and essays. In the ninth grade, they do not even know what a sentence is. They write in such a way that it is clear they have no idea what a sentence is. They have no feeling for style. That is something you must include in your teaching. German class is not quite what it should be, and that has tremendous significance for these developmental years. The boys and girls are changing the inner style of their sentences just as they are changing their speech. If you do not take that into account, they will have an inner deficit.

The important thing is that if you ask yourselves how many of the students in the entire Waldorf School are such that you would have such critical opinions of them, you will find it is nowhere near 5 percent.

I would also like to draw your attention to something else. All kinds of things occur in the Society. Recently, a man came to an official of the Society and said, “I know you have great ideas. The ideas are very good, but no one in the Society has the proper will. The reason for that is that you people in the Society do not take care of the egotists in the proper way. I am a prime example of a real egotist. I have no ideas, although I would like to have some. However, I do have will. A couple of people like myself,”—and you should take note of this—“three or four students like me could get all the students and faculty to do what we want, and in the end, the school inspector too.”

Three or four can dominate an entire class, even the whole school. The school cannot go under simply because of them.

There are some other things also. The 3b class is really horrible, but there is a way to improve it by taking two of the boys out and putting them into the remedial class. We need to make the remedial class not only for those who are intellectually weak, but also for those who are morally weak. That would be good for the 3b class. The two boys, K.E. and R.B., should go immediately into the remedial class. They are infecting the whole class. The class would not be so bad, but then we have these two boys. As long as they are there, you will be unable to do anything with the class.

Dr. Steiner: We need to speak about the class you complained about. I haven’t looked at the ninth grade, yet. What I say to the children must be in harmony with the teachers. I couldn’t have done that today because I did not have a clear picture from our last meeting about what the problem really is. I’m having difficulty understanding what I should tell the children is wrong, and I need to be careful about that. In such discussions it is possible to make things worse than they already are. I would like you to explain things very concretely, so that I can say something to the children in such a way that their replies will not be an accusation against the teachers. The children should not be able to answer by accusing the teachers. This problem is not easy to solve. Today, the children were quite well-behaved. I would particularly like to hear what is bothering K.F. The children are generally well behaved. There are also some slower students. F. has some physical problems, and he does certain things because of that. I must be able to tell the children some things are wrong without them coming back with a report that such and such occurred. We need a good understanding of what happened. Today and the last time I was there, they were very well-behaved.

The teachers report that a group of ninth graders wanted to have F.R. removed. G.T. spoke for the group.

Dr. Steiner: A grudge may be involved here. After it becomes known that students were thrown out because of statements made by other students, then a group may decide they want to get another student thrown out. This conspiracy has gone a little too far. You also said that during other periods they were screaming like wild savages.

A teacher tells about students spitting out cherry pits.

Dr. Steiner: Today, such things will change only as the students gradually become accustomed to the teacher. We cannot change them overnight. The class was not like that before. They did not do such things. Before, some students were simply not very attentive, or disturbed the class by chattering. The children now know that there are some complaints against them. However, they will know we have talked about them in our meeting only when I call them to me tomorrow. Before that, they will know nothing.

Why are they making so much noise in eurythmy? Something must be bothering them. Aren’t these the things you can best cure with humor? F.R. is such a difficult boy because he is treated so poorly at home. T.L. is very gifted.

You also have some complaints about both eighth-grade classes. We should not be surprised by their attitude. It’s not necessarily the children, but it is surprising that it is so strong during class. They seemed very sneaky as they sat there today.

The ninth-grade children should not feel that their teacher is uncertain, that he is not absolutely certain about what he is teaching. They may not have that feeling. I would advise you not to say, “I do not know that.” You should avoid saying you do not know something, especially when you do not know it. You need to be particularly careful when you do not know something. You can bring about that feeling even at an age when children are so critical. At that age, it is very important that they never look at you skeptically. You need to have some humor about such things. I will speak with the children about it; however, I fear it will not go well and they will become still more inwardly critical instead. I find it very difficult that the children will feel that you complained about them to me. Had you not complained, I would have nothing against them. Except that they know nothing about punctuation, we could say they are generally moving along well. They are about fourteen years old. The things you are doing with them assume a level of concentration of which they are capable, so that laziness is only a secondary problem. That cannot be the main problem. Throughout the class, the children are doing things that it is not particularly easy to imagine a fourteen-yearold child doing. So much for the ninth grade.

I will take a look at the young men you mentioned, but I want nothing to do with the group who complained. That is simply the beginning of the same goings-on as last year. I will have a look for myself to see what can be done with those young men.

I had a brief look at the eighth grade. I think the children should not paint when their paper is not properly stretched; their work will be messy. They need to learn how to properly stretch and secure their paper. Allow them to work with paint only on stretched paper. It will hurt nothing if some time is needed for such preparation. The children will learn a great deal if you do it properly with them. The children in the 8a class do things much too quickly. They also paint too hastily. Their notebooks look as if they would give the children terrible ideas.

A teacher comments about B.B.

Dr. Steiner: If he develops some trust, things will improve. He still has quite a number of classes ahead of him, so if he develops some trust, things will change. A particular way to treat him? You would have to give him private instruction. He will sometimes run wild. A teacher asks about German and history in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: Now you need to give them an overview of literature. You cannot leave everything for the twelfth grade. Why don’t you simply continue? You can do what needs to be done in literary history in a few sentences.

The plan for history is that you continue with what you have already begun. In those periods where you have nothing to teach about history, you should try to move on to the next section through a transition. The tenth grade closes with the Battle of Charonia. In the eleventh grade, you need to cover medieval history. You will not be able to give the boys an understanding of Parzival if you do not give them an overview of history. You will need to make a connection with the historical time.

A teacher: That means I would have to finish the history of the Middle Ages now?

Dr. Steiner: Actually, history should come first. Today, you spoke about Barbarosa, so you are already speaking about the history of the Middle Ages. The curriculum even says that you should handle such literary-historical questions with a historical overview. There are also literary themes that point back to history, for example, Alexanderlied (Song of Alexander), or Lied von Troye (Song of Troy). There is a great deal of historical material from this period.

The main problem now is that if the children go to their final examinations with the punctuation they now know, it could be very bad. They use no punctuation at all in the 9b class. Teaching them punctuation depends upon discussing the structure of a sentence in an interesting way. That is something you can do well in the course of teaching them literature.

For example, if you begin with older German language forms, you can show them in an intriguing way how relative clauses arose slowly through the transformation of writing into Latin structure. That could provide the basis for studying commas. You can teach the use of commas when you first show the children that they need to enclose every relative clause within commas. It is interesting to discuss relative clauses because they did not exist in older German. They also do not exist in dialect. You could go back to the Song of the Niebelungs and so forth and show how relative clauses began to come into the language and how it then became necessary to bring this logic into the language. After you have shown how relative clauses are enclosed with commas, you can go into a more thorough discussion of the concept of clauses. The children then need to learn that every kind of clause is set off by some sort of punctuation. The other things are not so terribly important.

From there, you can go on to show how elements of thought developed in language, and thus arrive at the semicolon, which is simply a stronger comma and indicates a greater break. They already use periods.

There is certainly sufficient time to begin that in the ninth grade. You need to develop it through a positive structuring of language, by going into the intent. It is something that you especially need to do with some excitement; you cannot do it in a boring way. Grammar alone is one of the most boring things.

When you speak in dictations, you must make it clear when sentences end and begin. You should not dictate the punctuation to them. The children will have more when they become accustomed to learning punctuation by working with sentences. It would be erroneous to dictate punctuation. I would never dictate punctuation, but instead have them hear it through my speaking. It would be much better, however, if we could do something else. It would be better if we could divide things as was done in old German, but is no longer done in our more Latin writing—they wrote sentence per sentence, that is, one sentence on each line.

You can discuss the artistic structure of a sentence with the children in an unpedantic way. You can give them a feeling for what a sentence is. You can make them aware of what a sentence is. You should also make them aware that well-formed sentences are something positive. You could, for instance, do something like using Herman Grimm’s style to show them the form of a sentence, how a sentence is pictorially formed. Now, he really writes sentences. You do not find sentences in the things most people read, just a string of words. Sentences are completely missing. Give them a feeling for well-formed sentences. Herman Grimm writes sentences. They must learn to see the difference between Grimm’s style and the things we normally read, for instance, normal history books. You can do that in the ninth grade by giving them a certain kind of feeling for the difference between a complete sentence and an interjection.

The curriculum contains something else that would be very helpful, which is poetics. That is completely missing. You are not taking it into account at all. I have noticed that the children have no feeling for metaphor. They should know metaphors, metonyms, and synecdoches. The result will be wonderful. That is all in the curriculum, but you haven’t done it. Teaching the children about metaphors helps them learn how to construct a sentence. When you bring metaphors and figures of speech into the picture, the children will learn something about sentence structure. You can explain these with some examples. You could explain, for example, the meaning of, “Oh, water lily, you blooming swan! Oh, swan, you swimming lily!” That is a double metaphor. Through such examples, young people gain a clear feeling for where the sentence ends, due to the metaphoric expressions.

With those who have good style, it would not be at all bad to try to frame the sentences rather than using commas and semicolons. You can do this well with Herman Grimm’s sentences and a red pencil. Circle the sentences and then circle twice the things that are less necessary for content, once with red and then with blue. In that way, you will have a nicely colored picture of an artistically formed sentence. You could then compare such sentences with those that are normally written, for instance, in newspapers. The weekly Anthroposophie was no exception to this. It used to go on and on just like some boring German, but now it is better.

This is something we most definitely need to do. You should teach the children punctuation to give them some feeling for logic. Such things can also be quite exciting. If you first get the children used to enclosing relative clauses with commas, then everything else will fall into place. You need to go far enough that they understand that a relative clause is basically an adjective. You could say, “a red rose.” You need no punctuation there. But, if you say, “a rose, red,” then you need to place a comma following rose because red is an appositive. If you say, “a rose that is red,” it is quite clearly an adjective.

If you give them such enlivened examples, learning will not be so boring. In dialect, people say, “the father what can write.” The relative clause is an adjective, that is, the clause as a whole is an adjective. This view of relative clauses is also very important for learning foreign languages.

A teacher mentions Philipp Wegener’s opinion that relative clauses developed from interrogative clauses.

Dr. Steiner: The interrogative could be the basis. Every adjective is actually an answer to a question. However, with “Here are some beautiful apples, give me some,” there can hardly be any talk of a question.

Researchers in languages are sometimes curious. I know of a number of papers about it—“it is thundering,” “it is lightning.” Miclosich wrote long papers about it. That is interesting, but the German it is nothing more than a shortened form of Zeus. It has the same meaning as Zeus, the god: Zeus thunders, Zeus lightnings. It is a stunted form. Many German words need to be traced back to their Greek origins. The German word for it is actually Zeus. The English word it needs to be sought also. It is based, in fact, on something lying in the spiritual. Hopefully, Wegener did not want to say that the relative clause is an interrogatory clause.

Well, that is what we want to do, to begin with the relative clause and go from there into clauses that are abbreviations or indications of an adjective. Beginning with that, which is something we need to emphasize, we can then go on to the semicolon, and finally arrive at the period, which is simply an emphasis or a pause. It is easy to convey a feeling for colons. The colon represents something not said, that is, instead of saying, “the following,” or instead of forming a boring relative clause, we use a colon. We express it in speech through tone. For instance, the way every student should name the animals is, “The animals are: the lion, the goose, the dog, the Bölsche,” and so on. The teacher asks, “What is that, a Bölsche?” “It says here on the book, ‘Bölsche, Das Urtier.’”

The school doctor speaks about some medical cases.

Dr. Steiner: That little girl L.K. in the first grade must have something really very wrong inside. There is not much we can do. Such cases are increasing in which children are born with a human form, but are not really human beings in relation to their highest I; instead, they are filled with beings that do not belong to the human class. Quite a number of people have been born since the nineties without an I, that is, they are not reincarnated, but are human forms filled with a sort of natural demon. There are quite a large number of older people going around who are actually not human beings, but are only natural; they are human beings only in regard to their form. We cannot, however, create a school for demons.

A teacher: How is that possible?

Dr. Steiner: Cosmic error is certainly not impossible. The relationships of individuals coming into earthly existence have long been determined. There are also generations in which individuals have no desire to come into earthly existence and be connected with physicality, or immediately leave at the very beginning. In such cases, other beings that are not quite suited step in. This is something that is now quite common, that human beings go around without an I; they are actually not human beings, but have only a human form. They are beings like nature spirits, which we do not recognize as such because they go around in a human form. They are also quite different from human beings in regard to everything spiritual. They can, for example, never remember such things as sentences; they have a memory only for words, not for sentences. The riddle of life is not so simple. When such a being dies, it returns to nature from which it came. The corpse decays, but there is no real dissolution of the etheric body, and the natural being returns to nature.

It is also possible that something like an automaton could occur. The entire human organism exists, and it might be possible to automate the brain and develop a kind of pseudo-morality.

I do not like to talk about such things since we have often been attacked even without them. Imagine what people would say if they heard that we say there are people who are not human beings. Nevertheless, these are facts. Our culture would not be in such a decline if people felt more strongly that a number of people are going around who, because they are completely ruthless, have become something that is not human, but instead are demons in human form.

Nevertheless, we do not want to shout that to the world. Our opposition is already large enough. Such things are really shocking to people. I caused enough shock when I needed to say that a very famous university professor, after a very short period between death and rebirth, was reincarnated as a black scientist. We do not want to shout such things out into the world.

Dr. Steiner reported about his meeting with the students in the 9b class.

Dr. Steiner: They are wonderful boys. T.L. spoke for them and also K.F. They realize they are not angels and admit their misdeeds. It was unconscious boisterousness. F.R. could not write the essay because he did not know enough. They want to work together better and try to create a better tone. The boys are really very reasonable, but that is not being brought out.

Dr. Steiner: First, I would like to return to the situation in the 9b class. Although I already spoke about this, I want to return to it because that situation has some principle significance. First, I would like to say that the discussion with the boys occurred, and I would like to hear what consequences it has had in their behavior. The discussion also showed that something we could expect at this age is present in the boys, namely very strongly developed intellectual forces. These intellectual forces become apparent at puberty. Particularly with boys, this often arises as a certain subconscious desire to exercise their intellectual strength. It is natural that, when left to themselves, boys see rowdy behavior as the only possibility of expressing those intellectual forces. If we do not want them to do that, we must direct them toward other things. Intelligence is simply bursting out of those five boys, though to the least extent with K.F., and it demands to be freed.

At that age, pedagogical activity needs to take a different direction, as I have mentioned in some lectures. The boys must learn to take interest in something that will use their intellect. Otherwise, it remains unused and will live itself out in such things as we have experienced. The main thing is that we work with the boys during the course of instruction so they can exercise their intellect in a way that brings it into a kind of tension and then finds resolution. That is something you can weave into every lecture. You can pose questions that lead to a kind of tension and then allow the students to experience the resolution. Particularly at this age, simply listening has an unfavorable effect. There is no doubt that in the 9b class, you have counted too much upon their simply listening, at least at times. As soon as the boys are occupied, they become well behaved. If they have to just listen, that changes because their intellect, their inner strengths, stagnate.

It would be good if you recognized that their behavior was not the result of disrespect, but arose from a genuinely appropriate human standpoint, and that they denied nothing. You should also be aware that they did not try to gloss over anything. They were quite convinced that they had done quite useless things and that they really should not have done them. They showed an honorable human perspective when they described how T.L. made himself into their spokesman in a most natural way. He began by stating that he actually had no right to speak about the situation since he was the one who had most misbehaved. But, since things had gone so far, he wanted to speak. He spoke very reasonably. They are really very good boys, including F.R. In regard to their understanding of themselves, many adults could learn something from them. They do not embellish things. They recognized that it was very wrong to write on the bathroom doors. Something goaded them on. All the other bathrooms were smeared, and that one was still clean. They did not see why they should not decorate that one, too. When such thoughts arise out of latent intelligence, then that intelligence forces them to smear over blank surfaces so that they are like the others. In that case, a certain attitude has taken over, which we cannot say arises out of boredom.

They said that the school administration signed other documents, so when they wrote something, they thought it should also be signed by the administration. In all these things, we can see that they acted with a great deal of style. The boys were as though possessed, and now they are all very sorry about it. All these things are moods we need to look into, but we need to have some humor; otherwise the boys will get us down.

The boys see the actual cause of the problem in the statement by the 9a class teacher that the 9b class was worthless. They said that if he came into their class, which he knows nothing about, he would learn what it is like. That is quite intelligent. They are filled with a kind of feeling for truth. The boys are not dumb. If we can guide their intelligence in the proper direction, they may, without doubt, be able to achieve a great deal. They are really wonderful boys. I have to say that if you judge them too harshly, then, in my opinion, you have forgotten your own youth some fifteen years ago. Things are different, but if you can remember, some of you will certainly have been there. The main difference is that some years ago, boys did such things more secretively, but now they are more open.

To me, the important thing is that we can expect no improvement if we do not succeed in getting the boys to use their intelligence in class. The situation is such that we must find a way to use their intelligence in our teaching, otherwise it will remain unoccupied and they will use it for getting into trouble.

I asked F.R. how it was that he came to place the discussion between Raphael and Grünewald in the Marquardt Hotel in his essay. He said he knew nothing about Raphael or Grünewald, so he wrote it that way. T.L. then added that he had written something reasonable later.

I said they should let me see something they had written on the walls, but they said they could not say such things to a polite person. They are ashamed and trying to behave.

I would now like to hear what has happened since then. They promised me they would behave as proper young men with the teacher and would be polite to the girls.

A report is given about what occurred in the class since then.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot give the children riddles. I tried that with the anthroposophists in Dornach. You need to use their intelligence as you teach. A great deal is needed to direct your teaching toward the thinking of children at that age and then to maintain that.

In the humanities, there is a danger of teaching unprepared. That is, you are in danger of leaving the material as you know it now, as you learned it yourself. You need to rework it. That is one problem.

The other problem is that you are often too anthroposophical, like Mr. X. Yesterday, I was sitting on pins and needles worrying that the visitors would think the history class was too religious. We should not allow the history class to be too religiously oriented. That is why we have a religion class. The visitors seem to have been very well-meaning people. Nevertheless, had they noticed that, they could easily have categorized the Waldorf School as being too anthroposophical and of bringing that into the classroom.

I came into one class, eurythmy, and it was immediately obvious not only that the students were well behaved, but that they had behaved well before I arrived. We could present such an exemplary class as the 9a eurythmy class to the entire world. You could quite clearly see the class had been well behaved before I came in. You can easily see if a class begins to behave well only when you step into the room. That was a very exemplary class.

Concerning the 8a and 8b classes, I could not see that they were such terribly clever misbehaved children. Initially, you will have to reach B.B. in the only way you can reach him, through his intellect. You cannot reach him through commands. On the other hand, if you make it clear to him that what he wants to do is nonsense, he will do what you ask of him. You could explain things to him as I recently did. He had written in his notebook with a pencil. There is no sense in telling someone with his temperament that he may not write with a pencil. If you do so, you can be certain that things will get worse. I told him he had smeared over everything, and that it looks horrible. I had barely turned around before he picked up his feather, prepared it, and then began to write in ink. Everything depends upon the way you present it. You need to meet the boy with what he understands and does not understand. He is a troubled boy. Sometimes it will occur to him to make a face, but he is a very well intentioned boy. You need to teach him that his faces do not look good. At the proper time, you need to teach him that he looks ugly when he does that. That is something you need to take into account at this age. They no longer accept commands. The power of authority quickly diminishes just when you have become strongly oriented in that direction. Then you encounter opposition. You need to be observant there. I would recommend that you read the four lectures I gave about adolescents. Read them and you will find all kinds of ways you can avoid that. I hope we can move beyond it.

A teacher gives a detailed report about a visit Dr. Steiner and three teachers made to the Ministry of Education and about what they learned regarding the requirements in the various subjects of the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: They are also tested in freehand drawing. Mr. Wolffhügel should take that up in the twelfth grade. I told the men that after we have sufficiently developed our curriculum, I would attempt to develop the teaching of freehand drawing using Dürer’s Melancholia as a basis. It contains all possible shades of light and dark, and it can also be transformed into color. If the children really understand that picture, they should be able to do everything.

In order to find something out, I asked whether, aside from the condition that the student must be eighteen years old, a student who had studied completely privately, who had never gone to school, would be allowed to take the examination. I was told that such a student would be admitted. From that, he admitted that we are not required to obtain official certification from the school board. I asked this question to see if there was some possibility that people could force us to come under the control of the School Review Board. Aside from some of the things that have occurred, the Education Law in Württemberg is one of the most liberal. No other place in Germany or Switzerland has such a liberal education law. Nevertheless, things could change for the twelfth grade.

Now that we know the students will be tested only on the material from the twelfth grade, I think it would be advisable to complete everything else and then begin on what the people there want.

We need to do a little more to complete chemistry and then go on to more of what is required in the final examination. We have done little in geology and the children learn about geological formations only very slowly. Before the holidays, we should at least awaken a little geological thinking, so they know what geological formations are, what kinds of stone and fossils they contain. We could give an overview before the holidays so that the students could learn the details afterward. We need to limit some things. Technology and eurythmy will end in February, as will religious instruction.

You could give some work to X. (a newly hired teacher). I have hired X. so that he will find support within the faculty. If he wastes his time, I will hold you responsible for it. He is so talented that you could give him work; he can do it if he wants to. The whole faculty is responsible for looking after him. For the time being, you need to try to finish chemistry. Before the holidays, give the students an overview about geology up to the Ice Age. Afterward, we will have to teach them about alcohol, the nature of alcohol, concepts about ethers, the nature of essential oils, then the nature of organic poisons, alkaloids, and some idea about cyanide compounds in contrast to organic compounds. They need to understand qualitative relationships. They can understand all of it from that perspective.

When speaking about geology, I recommend you go backward, beginning with the present, the alluvial period to the diluvial. Then discuss the Ice Age. Use the change in the axis of the Earth to give them an idea of the relationship of such events as the Ice Age to things outside the tellurian, without tying them to specific hypotheses. From there you can go back to the Tertiary period. Explain when the second and first realms of mammals arose. When you get back to the carbon period, you can simply teach the change. It would be better if you made the transition in the following way. In the later formations, we have the minerals precipitated out and the vegetable and animal fossilized. Now we are back in the Carboniferous period. What could be fossilized of animals does not exist. We only find fossilized vegetable material. The Carboniferous period is all plant. There is no differentiation, as nothing more than plant material exists. We can go still further back where we find things completely undifferentiated. Tell them in that way.

Perhaps you could give a lecture of mine. I once explained geology to the workers in a living way. I told them everything about geology in two hours. Those two lectures were certainly important. You could find them and work in the same way.

Earlier forms were only etheric. We should imagine the Carboniferous period such that we recognize that the individualization of plants was not nearly so strong as people imagine. Today, people think there were ferns, but actually what petrified was a much more undifferentiated soup. The etheric was continuously active in that soup, resulting in secretions that precipitated and held the organic mass in a nascent state, which then petrified. I would like to take this opportunity to give you, with some reservations, the divisions that can serve as a theme. Though there are some limitations, you could treat the entirety of zoology by dividing the animals into three groups with four divisions each, resulting in twelve classes or types of animals.

FIRST GROUP

1. Protists, completely undifferentiated infusoria, and protozoa
2. Sponges, corals, and anemones
3. Echinoderms from sea lilies to sea urchins
4. The ascidians, in which a proper outer shell is no longer present, that is, the shell formation has receded.

SECOND GROUP

5. Mollusks
6. Worms
7. Articulates
8. Fish

THIRD GROUP

9. Amphibians
10. Reptiles
11. Birds
12. Mammals

In discussing the zodiac, you should begin with the mammals, represented by Leo; then birds, Virgo; reptiles, Libra; amphibians, Scorpio; fish, Sagittarius; articulates, Capricorn; worms, Aquarius. Then continue on the other side, where you have the protists, Cancer; corals, Gemini; echinoderms, Taurus; ascidians, Aries; mollusks, Pisces. You should realize that the zodiac arose at a time when the names and classifications were very different. In the Hebrew language, there is no word for fish, so it is quite reasonable that you would not find fish mentioned in the story of creation. They were seen as birds that lived in water. Thus, the zodiac is divided in this way, into seven and five parts for day and night.

There is also something in that which corresponds to the threefolding of the human being. The first group are the animals related to the head, namely, the protists, sponges, echinoderms, and ascidians. The second group are the rhythmic animals, the mollusks, worms, articulates, and fish—that is, the middle part of the human being and the head. The third group are the animals of the limbs, so you can see how each aspect is added. Thus, we have the limbs, the rhythmic system, and the head. These all tend toward a threefolding, but are not yet complete.

If you look at it from the perspective of the human being, the head corresponds to the first group, the human rhythmic system to the second group, and the human limbs to the third group.

From a geological perspective, things begin with the head. You need to follow geological formations through the twelve stages. You should begin with the first group, go on to the second, and then to the third. You need to complete that with geological formations. The infusoria go back to the beginning and are the first group. The forms of that first group that still exist are degenerated forms of the etheric forms from very early times. The forms of the second group are half degenerated. Actually, only their antecedent nondegenerated forms belong to that. Only in the third group do we find really primary forms not yet degenerated, which therefore form the basis for teaching about formations.

When teaching animal geography, you need to consider the zodiac in connection with what I have just said, that is, look at the projection of the zodiac upon the Earth. You will then find the areas of the animal groups on the Earth. You have some globes where the zodiac is drawn upon the Earth. They will provide you with what you need.

We can actually not speak about volcanic formations, only volcanic activity that goes through geological formations.

We should also try to bring the plants into twelve groups. I will do that later.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: You have already read nineteenth-century German literature. You should, of course, try to give the students some examples. You could read Tieck’s Phantasus and some small pieces from Zacharias Werner. They should also read from Wilhelm Müller, Novalis, Immermann, Eichendorff, Uhland, including some small examples from Herzog Ernst, then Lenau, Gustav Schwab, Justinus Kerner, Geibel, Greif, Heine, but only his decent things, Hebbel, a little of Otto Ludwig, and Mörike. That is approximately what they need. Also, Kleist and Hölderlin. I would advise some of the other things in the curriculum for other classes, namely, Lessing, Herder, and Klopstock. Logau was good—better sayings were never written. He makes up wonderful sayings. Then, also, Gottfried Keller and Grillparzer. From the poets that I mentioned, use only lyric examples. The students need to read something from Keller, but tell them Der grünen Heinrich (Green Henry). Read Richard Wagner also.

[That was all given as preparation for the final examination.]

Dr. Steiner: I wanted to discuss the zoological division and the curriculum. What remains to discuss?

A teacher: What should we tell students about the examination?

Dr. Steiner: You need to tell them only that we are completely informed about it. There is a basic inner rule of pedagogy that those being taught should never know or discuss the secrets of education. That has become a problem here and must be eliminated as quickly as possible. It cannot continue. The perspective which has slowly arisen that no differences of age are taken into account has led to the children’s thinking about how they are taught and the methods used.

We could tell them the following: You need to be eighteen years old, and you need a report from us. We could go on to say that we know what is needed, and that if they study industriously, they will pass the examination. What more can we do? We can say only external things. It is not good for the children to become accustomed to having conferences with us. They should feel that the teachers will do what is right. They are afraid they will miss a number of interesting things.

A number of classes were cancelled because of the heat.

Dr. Steiner: Those are natural events. Winter will certainly be cold again.

(Speaking to an eighth-grade teacher) The children should know that when you are occupied with one or two, others may still be questioned. The children should be interested in the others in the class. Basically, when it is not a question of helping with an arithmetic problem, but is some instruction that can be heard by the others, it should be interesting not only to one individual, but to everyone. They should expect to be called upon at any time. You should do it in such a way that you continue with one of the others who has been inattentive. Then, they will get the feeling that they may be required to continue with the reading at any time.

When you ask about material previously covered, you must do it in a different way. You must ask the questions so that the children can answer. In time, you will learn how to do that in practice, but you will need to be lively in your manner. You should skip from one student to the other so that the children notice that you are skipping around. You now have a contact with the students that a few years ago you did not have at all. On the other hand, I think you too often “show them how.” Many classes are terribly restless because they are always being shown how to do something. That should be limited. You can do that by calling more often upon specific students who are able to respond.

One thing is troubling me, and that is the question of how to solve the problem of painting in the notebooks. The children should paint only on stretched paper. We cannot afford painting boards because they are too expensive. We could just use smooth boards. Wouldn’t it be possible in the shop class to make smooth boards for stretching the paper? It is not good to have the children paint in their regular notebooks. When they begin painting, they should also stretch their paper.

Ch.O. has a dangerous condition. He is clearly malnourished, and he will soon have a blood problem. When you go through these classes and look at the children, it is terrible. We need to determine which children are right on the edge. The real problem is not how much they eat, but that they digest it properly.

There are also a number of troubled children we need to give some attention to. St.B. in the first grade sees astral flies. He needs to be treated with something. His whole astral body is in disarray. There is a strong asymmetry of the astral body in all directions. Try to have him do some curative eurythmy exercises where he has his hands behind his back. Have him do exercises we normally do toward the front, but have him do them toward the back.

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I could not be here at the end of school. It was not possible, though I thought we would be able to meet at that time. You have told me there are a number of things we need to discuss, so I would like to begin there.

A teacher reads a letter from F.R.’s father. The boy had stolen sixteen silver spoons, and his father wants to keep him home.

Dr. Steiner: This story about the spoons is old. The boy’s relationship to his father was never any different. The father would like to take him out if he will go. We need to find a way to work with the boy. We can certainly not throw him out. The boy needs a little moral support at these times. We have to give him some moral support. He is only in the ninth grade, and the children in that class need some moral support. They need a certain relationship to the faculty. They need to love the faculty. I think you have lost contact with the whole ninth grade. The boys immediately see that is very wrong. I think this whole theft problem has caused an enormous amount of remorse in F.R. We need to help him. Under no circumstances can we allow the boy to be taken out. We should not give any cause for removing him from school. We need to work with him.

Doesn’t G.T. have a little tendency to fool himself? He seems to play the part of a pleasant boy.

You need to avoid expressing subjective judgments. If you use such expressions, you will have a subjective relationship. Even when the boys do the worst things, you need to stick to the facts and never relate them to the person. If you reprimand the boys, you can achieve nothing more.

Certainly old R. is someone who cannot control his anger. His treatment of the boy is such that you can almost understand when he exhibits such behavior. When the situation is like that at home, we can only feel sorry for the boy.

We need to have more contact with the students in the upper grades. At that age students cannot stand going through a whole morning of class without any personal contact. They want you to be interested in them personally. They want you to know them, to be interested in them, that is what they want. In those grades this is still a school, not a college; the class is too much like a college, like a seminar, and not enough like a school. They want some contact with the teacher.

I already said it was five, but these five are not just some boys we can throw out into the street. If we threw them out into the street, it would be an unnecessary loss for humanity. We cannot allow that to happen. F.R. is not nearly so talented as T.L.

The father can do what he wants, and we can only try to help. It is crazy to say we should try to force him. The father can do what he wants during the holidays. I think we need more personal contact with the students in the upper grades. It is important that we attempt to have a more personal relationship with them.

One of the ninth-grade teachers says that he would like to visit the class of the previous teacher.

Dr. Steiner: You could make some interesting observations if you visited, but it is very important that you have no difficulties when you stand before your class. During your free time, you should have worked through the material so completely that it causes you no effort while you are teaching, so that you can give all your attention to how you are teaching. The material should be second nature. This whole discipline question is primarily a question of good, methodical preparation. That is true for all the subjects in all grades. It is a question of preparation. Perhaps a basic question is whether there is enough time for preparation. Many of you have told me that there is not enough time for proper preparation. It is obvious that here in the Waldorf School we must do what is necessary to prepare thoroughly, so that the material itself gives us no difficulty when we stand before the class. The students notice very quickly when that is not the case. Then they feel themselves to be above authority. That’s when the problems start.

I can see nothing more than that these five boys are really very good. F.R. is a little weak. He is quite dependent upon being treated such that he feels that you mean what you say honestly. This is a feeling he does not have with his father. He is always wondering subconsciously whether things at school will be the way they are at home. He wants to be understood, but he thinks he is treated without any understanding. His father does not know he is so angry. Everything depends upon the interest the boys have for the content of your teaching. They all pay attention in algebra. They have not been so bad. I have often observed how you can work quite well with them.

It is silly that the father wrote this letter. He did so even after I told him that the way to avoid such problems is for no one to speak about them, not to anyone, and that we have to teach the boy that he should also not speak about them to anyone. Then the father did this anyway. The old man is less well behaved than the boy. This is all very difficult. The boy does not lie to anyone, even when he has to admit some misdeed, but the old man lies all the time. The problem is that the boy knows his father lies every time he opens his mouth. He knows that from his own experience. It would have been best if the boy had seen that, as bad as his action was, we still have so much sympathy for his moral situation that we will cover it up. He can only lose more if we hang it from the bell tower. It would be best if we could remove F.R. from his parents.

All kinds of problems are coming up. I have a new student to enroll, S.T. He is sixteen and will go into the ninth grade. The boy is very well versed in philosophy, knows Plato and Kant and also Philosophy of Freedom. He is good in mathematics, but poor in Latin and German, poor in history, knows a little about geography and natural history, and is horrible in drawing. We need to take all of that into account, but we cannot put him in the eighth grade, since he has already attended the ninth grade at another school. He would also be too old. We must find a place for him to stay, somehow we need to find one. Since there is no room with the teachers, we need to see if we can’t find somewhere else where he can stay.

A teacher mentions there is always so much noise in the eighth grade. She wants either to teach two students separately, or to divide the class.

Dr. Steiner: Taking them aside is not a particularly good method. You need to try to stop their running around. You could give them some extra help, but it is not good to teach them separately. You can divide the class if that is possible. The class is too large for the situation as it is. It would be quite good if you were to give them some extra help, but do not take them away from the class. Such things will always arise, that you have students who are difficult to handle. In normal schools you would not have such students, but with us, they need to move with the class. I think, however, that things would go better if you were better friends with them.

A teacher asks about B.B. in the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Such people exist, and your task is not simply to rid yourself of them, but to really work with them. I do not believe we should try to influence them. What the mother wants to do is another thing. Just because we see there are some difficulties, we cannot simply remove a student from school. You need to interest him. You can work with him if you give him some reason. B. said he didn’t take any of the plums, but when Mr. S. asked him if they were ripe or not, he said Mr. S. was really very sly. He gave the impression that he was defeated.

You must give him some reasons for turning inward, otherwise his thinking will always be like nailing a box shut with a hammer that is always falling off the handle. There are clumps of fat between the various parts of his brain, so that he cannot bring them together. If you get him to really think, he withdraws, but in that way he can get through the fat. I am convinced that he is a good boy, and that you can work with him.

You need to try to move him on so he can move to the next class. You still have five weeks. You can learn to be sly also.

Nettle baths would be useful for him. It might also be useful to add some lemon juice to the bath; in any event, bitter things, bitter plants. I could even say sauerkraut. If possible, use a mixture of all three, but no licorice. Do this three times a week, but not too warm. He should not eat too many desserts. If he has bread, try to toast it, so it has as little water as possible. He has a tendency to form fat, and we must eliminate that. He is also lazy. You could also do the standard curative eurythmy exercises for fat with him. You can also give him some coffee.

A teacher: How can I learn to be sly?

Dr. Steiner: Did you read the issue of Das Goetheanum that contained Brentano’s riddles? Try to get the book and then solve all the riddles. I am serious about that. I selected the four most difficult for the article. That is all there is to say about being sly with B.

A teacher: The Association for School Reform has invited us to participate in a pedagogical conference.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you have any interest in going there and speaking. It is senseless. Anyone who would write such a letter was not born to be a school reformer. This is all just nonsense. On the other hand, though, our perspective could be that we would just say something. We could take the standpoint that we would say as much as possible about the subject. Someone who is not afraid of doing that could go and speak about our work, although what you would say would serve no real purpose. Someone who would write such a letter has not been called to that task. It is all just show. That is immediately clear from the letter.

A teacher asks about participating in the art conference in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: Only the things we initiate under our full control have any real purpose. Participation in such a conference would make sense only if you took the standpoint that you wanted to go and talk about our work. Someone could become aware of our Waldorf School method in nearly every kind of gathering. Of course, it would have to be people with whom you could achieve something, as at the English conferences. We need to see them in a different way. This stuff here is just garbage, so we need to view it without any great expectations. If you have no particular desire to go, then simply write that in the near future we are so occupied with developing the Waldorf School and its methods that we need to devote our entire attention to it. That would be more useful than such a conference. We need to be careful to look at what people’s real interest is, otherwise we would degrade the Waldorf School. We can easily reply that we have no time because we need to further develop our methods. I don’t think it is very pedagogical simply to put children’s paintings on display.

We cannot discuss any principle questions today. Perhaps there are still some questions about the material to be taught or how to treat the children.

A teacher asks about algebra in the eleventh-grade curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: What I said was that you should go far enough for the children to have an understanding of Carnot’s theorem and how it is used. That essentially describes the whole curriculum. A great deal of algebra is involved. They will need to understand a lot of algebra, series and functions. The curriculum can stay with that. They should be able to solve problems requiring the use of Carnot’s theorem in all its aspects.

(Speaking about a new teacher) I have made the whole faculty responsible for his education as a human being. You need to be careful that he does not deviate.

A religion teacher: What should I use as examples for folk religions?

Dr. Steiner: The Old Testament. The Hebrew people.

Teachers ask about art class, Goethe’s poetry in the tenth grade, and metaphors.

Dr. Steiner: That material is included in almost all the grades. Of course you can teach them about metaphors and similes. You can teach them a feeling for poetic forms. We cannot say that Goethe could do that only after a certain age, that he could write a verse only after the age of forty. If we do, the students will ask themselves why they should do it when Goethe could do it only at the age of forty. Such things cause reactions, and you need to be very careful. Nevertheless, you can do it. In art, the problem is the material. You can, however, be guided by what the students understand.

A teacher asks about King Henry II.

Dr. Steiner: What I said was that it was his desire to found an ecclesia catholica, non Romana. That is a well-known story. You can certainly find a description of Henry II. Lamprecht is not a historian, he is a dilettante.4 He is interesting as being characteristic of the 3. See lecture of March 13, 1924, in Die Geschichte der Menschheit und die Weltanschauungen der Kulturvölker (GA 353, not in English). development of historical science. You will need to find some source book about Henry II. It is all written down. It is not some phrase, but something he really felt. Henry II introduced the Breviary as something holy. In that connection, we can always say that at that time it was possible for someone to come to the Divine Office who wanted a catholic, but not a Roman Catholic, church.

Lamprecht is more appearances, he has no real feeling. He is always speaking so smugly.

A teacher: What do Parzival’s words lapsit exillis mean as the name for the Grail?

Dr. Steiner: No one knows that now.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: The main thing is that you recover, refresh yourself. It is important that your enthusiasm blossom during the holidays, and that the flower will have become a fruit when you return again, particularly where the class is not so good. The children are already happy to know you will be here again.

The situation in Germany has become increasingly worse, and it will be complete chaos.

The lectures from Oxford should be printed. We are considering one thing. This morning Leinhas said to me that, in his view, there are so many people who have so much to say, but who write nothing. Why don’t they write anything? Even Das Goetheanum is slowly beginning to suffer from a deficiency of material.

A teacher asks how the pedagogical lectures should be prepared for publication.

Dr. Steiner: The pedagogy should be published independently, much as Steffen reproduces my lectures. Those working with the material should prepare it. You should speak about your personal experiences. Support and describe those areas of the Waldorf School that you have as an ideal, so that what results is a living discussion of the pedagogical principles of the Waldorf School. You could write some beautiful essays about art instruction. Das Goetheanum needs some real essays. There must be a real desire to do something independent, even if it is only an independent honoring of things already begun. But do something.

Where do all these useless manuscripts come from? Are they also coming from the Society? Sometimes they print really useless things. It would be good to present the things that arose in the art conference in a more universal way. Why shouldn’t that be the occasion for giving special presentations.

There is also a possibility of discussing very interesting questions of method, for example, questions like those I spoke about in Dornach. There is too little literature about the Waldorf School available to the public. Couldn’t you write something about your principles of teaching? We have forty-two teachers, almost enough that four could write something for each issue. These things need to develop here. We need to develop a feeling for how to present things from various perspectives. I wanted to give an example of that in the introductions to the various eurythmy performances, when I attempted to present something from various points of view. That is what I tried to do with the eurythmy introductions.8 When I gave such an introduction recently, people stood outside and did not come in to listen. That was during the General Meeting, after a session where the German delegates had distinguished themselves so much by saying that the Goetheanum was already in ruins before it burned. Four hours of pure rubbish were spoken during that session. It was just dirty garbage, four hours long.

I hope you will refresh yourselves in every way. In all the various areas of the anthroposophical movement, we need a renewal of our strength. It is really so that we should give consideration to renewing our strength, just as plants renew themselves each year. We need a new inner enthusiasm, a new inner fire. Of course, living conditions are difficult, and they become more so each week. Now the Mark has no value whatsoever; it is only a means of computing. There is no way to foresee what chaos we will slide into. Our monthly budget is now about DM 400,000,000. By August, it could easily be two billion, perhaps even more.

A man in Austria wrote me that he had completed a business transaction for which he will be paid in dollars. He wants to keep only six hundred dollars for himself, and what he receives beyond that he wants to give us. That will apparently happen. I asked him to contact the Waldorf School. That is about DM 500,000,000, but it is really only a drop in the bucket. It is totally crazy, the situation. I think that for a while, it will be just as necessary to have outside money for the Waldorf School as it is for the Goetheanum. This is something we should present properly. It was not done properly in Dornach. Now we need to close.

Dr. Steiner: Before I leave, we need to discuss the fate of the fifth grade, and I would also like to hear about your experiences.

The teachers who went to England will tell you about their experiences themselves. Haven’t you already reported your successes? It is a fact that the teachers’ activities made a great impression; seen from behind the scenes, each Waldorf teacher is a person who made a great impression. Everyone did that individually.

Baravalle made an enormously deep impression with his presentation of the metamorphosis of surfaces, which merges into the Pythagorean theorem. Miss Lämmert’s presentation on teaching music also made a very deep impression. Dr. Schwebsch then made an impression through his knowledge and ability, and Dr. Schubert was very convincing about the truth of the Waldorf School as a whole. We must, of course, say the same about Dr. von Heydebrand, an impression so large that most people said they would like to have their children taught by such a person. That was the impression she made. Miss Röhrle was more active behind the scenes, and I think she could tell you about her success herself.

Is the last issue of The Goetheanum here? I would like to recommend that you all read the book by Miss MacMillan, Education through the Imagination. In my copy, I wrote something I did not include in my essay: “It is as though someone were very capable of describing the dishes on the table without knowing how they were prepared in the kitchen.” What is so interestingly described in the book is the surface, an analysis of the surface of the soul, at least to the extent that it develops imaginative forces, but she does not describe the work that gives rise to them. It is excellent as a description of the child’s soul, only she does not understand the forces that give rise to it. I think that if you apply the foundation anthroposophy offers, it would illuminate everything. Every anthroposophist can gain a great deal from that book because a great deal of anthroposophy can be read into it. It is a sketch everyone can develop wonderfully for themselves—it is a reason for working thoroughly with anthroposophy.

Miss MacMillan would like to come with some assistants at Christmas. I would ask that you treat her kindly. For some, she is one of the most important pedagogical reformers. If you go into her school, you will see a great deal, even if the children are not present. She is a pedagogical genius. She wants to arrange things so that she will see some of your teaching. I already told her that if she looks at our school without seeing the teaching, she will get nothing from it.

We had planned the Zurich course, but when Wachsmuth and I came back from England and heard that it was being seriously undertaken, we both nearly fainted. We will need to change it to Easter. We will also present an Easter play for the first time. I have already arranged for that. It will be at Easter. Perhaps the teachers who were in England would like to say something.

A teacher asks whether such things as sewing cards are proper to use at the age of twelve for developing the strengths of geometry.

Dr. Steiner: That is correct. After twelve, they would be too much like a game. I would never use things at school that do not exist in real life. The children cannot develop a relationship to life from things that contain nothing of life. The Fröbel things were created for school. We should create nothing for school alone. We should bring only things that exist in real life into school, but in an appropriate form.

Some teachers report about their impressions of England.

Dr. Steiner: You need to take into account that the English do not understand logic alone, even if it is poetic. They need everything to be presented in concrete pictures. As soon as you get into logic, English people cannot understand it. Their mentality is such that they understand only what is concrete.

A teacher thought that the people organized through improvisation. He had the impression they were at the limits of their capabilities.

Dr. Steiner: All the anthroposophists and a number of other guests drove from Wales to London. All of the participants were from Penmaenmawr. There was an extra train from Penmaenmawr. We had two passenger cars and a luggage car. The train left late so it could go quickly. The conductor came along, and the luggage was still outside. Wachsmuth said it needed to be put aboard. The passengers saw to it that the train waited. That is something that is not possible in Germany. At some stations there was a lot of disorder. Here, people don’t know what happens, and there you have to go to the luggage car yourself. In Manchester, two railway companies meet, and the officials there had a small war. One group did not want to take us aboard, and the other wanted to get rid of us. They often lose the luggage but then find it again. These private companies have some advantages, but also disadvantages. No trains leave from such stations on Sunday because the same people who own the hotels also own the railways. People have to stay over until Monday because there are no trains on Sunday. I discussed the inner aspects of Penmaenmawr in a lecture.

A teacher: In England they spoke about the position of women in ancient Greece and how women were not treated as human beings. Schuré describes the Mysteries in which women apparently played a major role.

Dr. Steiner: Women as such certainly played a role, particularly those chosen for the Mysteries. They were, however, women who did not have their own families. Women who had their own family were never brought into public life. Children were raised at home, so everyone assumed women would not participate in public life. Until the child was seven, he or she knew almost nothing of public life, and fathers saw their children only rarely. They hardly knew them.

It was a different way of life that was not seen as less valuable. The women chosen for the Mysteries often played a very important role. Then there were those like Aspasia.

We need to divide the fifth grade. I would have liked to have a male teacher, if for no other reason than that people say we are filling the faculty only with women. However, since we don’t have an overwhelming majority of women and the situation is still relatively in balance, and, in fact, I was unable to find a man, we can do nothing else. As I was looking around for someone capable, I put together some statistics. I looked at how things are. It is the case that in middle schools women have a greater capacity. Men are more capable only in the subjects that are absolutely essential, whereas women can teach throughout. Men are less capable. That is one of the terrible things of our times. Thus, there was nothing to do other than to hire this young woman. I think she will make a good teacher. She did her dissertation on a remark in one of my lectures about how Homer begins with “Sing me, Muse, of the man,” and on something from Klopstock, “Sing, undying soul!” The 5c class will thus be taken over by Dr. Martha Häbler. I think she is quite industrious. I want you, that is, the two fifth grade teachers, to make some proposals about which children we should move from the current classes into the new class. We will take children from both classes. Dr. Häbler will be visiting, and I will introduce her when I come on the tenth. She will immediately become part of the faculty and will participate in the meetings.

That leads me to a second question. I am going to ask Miss Klara Michels to take over the 3b class. I have asked Mrs. Plinke to go to Miss Cross’s school in Kings Langley.

The gardening teacher asks whether they should create class gardens.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against that. Until now the garden work has been more improvised. Write something up. It can go into the curriculum.

The science teacher: From teaching botany, I have the feeling that we should grow plants in the garden that we will study in botany.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible. In that way there will be more of a plan in the garden.

A teacher asks about handwork.

Dr. Steiner: Mrs. Molt can turn over her last two periods in handwork to Miss Christern.

Since we have let a number of things go, I would ask you to present them now.

I would like you to take a serious look at S.T. He is precocious. He is very talented and also quite reasonable, but you always have to keep him focused. I gave him a strong reminder that he needs to take an interest in his school subjects. He has read Plato, Kant, and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom. He pretty much has his mind made up. If you think he needs some extra help, he should receive it. He would prefer that you analyze esoteric science for him. He has gone from school to school and was in a cloister school first. He will be a hard nut to crack.

A teacher asks about a second conference for young people and also about lectures for anthroposophical teachers outside the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: We are planning another conference for young people, but you will need to decide how you want it. It is all the same to me, as I can adjust my lectures accordingly.

It would be good if we arranged to have lectures just for the teachers of the Waldorf School during the school year. That would be good. But it does not appear possible during the holidays. I don’t know about such a conference when so many deadly thoughts fly around between such beautiful ones. Those four days were terrible. Such conferences are not very useful for what we need here at school.

It seems to me, and I think we should discuss this, as though a somewhat different impulse is living here. That is what I think. I believe that an entirely new feeling of responsibility will arise out of the seriousness with which the pedagogy was taken up in England. That clearly indicates that we must develop very strong forces. I certainly think we need something. From the perspective of the entirety of Waldorf pedagogy, it would be desirable for us to speak about the effects of moral and religious impulses upon other subjects. We should speak about direct teaching experience, which we could do more easily at a youth conference. The youth conference will have open meetings. I think that is easier than if we have a conference where people sit from morning until evening. I will be here again from the tenth to the fourteenth of October, so we can plan to speak about this question in more detail then. Other than your participation, you will not have much to do with that conference. Since today’s youth want to be let loose, I think I will not have very much to do with such a conference either. It might be possible to have no school during those days, so that it would be easy to give a lecture.

I cannot easily be here at any other time; I have too many things to do. If we are to build, I must be in Dornach. During the fall holidays, we can speak about higher pedagogical questions, but only Waldorf teachers can attend. The public could attend the conference. We could arrange things so that everyone gets something from the conference, the parents as well as the teachers, but what they receive would be different. If I can present everything I have to say as something living, it will be that way.

(Speaking about a newly hired teacher, X.) I was satisfied with the periods I observed. He is really serious about the work and has found his way into the material well. The students understand him, but he needs some guidance. I have not allowed him here today because I wanted to say that. He needs to feel that you are all behind him. He needs to remain enthusiastic, which he is very much so now.

The music teacher asks about presenting rhythms in music that are different from those in eurythmy. He uses the normal rhythms and would like to know whether only the two-, three-, and four-part rhythms are important, or whether he should go on to five- and seven-part.

Dr. Steiner: Use five- and seven-part rhythms only with the older children, not under fifteen years old. I think if you did it with children under fifteen, it would confuse their feeling for music. I can hardly imagine that those who do not have the talent to become musicians would learn it alone. It is sufficient to go only up to four-part rhythm. You need to be careful that their musical feeling remains transparent as long as possible, so that they can experience the differences. It will not be that way once they have learned seven-part rhythm. There are certainly pedagogical advantages when the children actively participate in conducting—they participate dynamically, but everyone should do that. You can use the standard conductor’s movements.

The music teacher: Until now, I have only done that with all of them together. Should I allow individuals to conduct in the lower grades?

Dr. Steiner: I think that could begin around age nine or ten. Much of what is decisive during that period comes out of the particular relationship that develops when one child stands as an individual before the group. That is also something we could do in other subjects; for example, in arithmetic one child could lead the others in certain things. That is something we could easily do there, but in music it becomes an actual part of the art itself. A teacher asks about the order of the eurythmy figures.

Dr. Steiner: I had them set up so that the vowels were together, then the consonants, and then a few others. There are twenty-two or twenty-three figures.

You could, of course, put the related consonants together, in other words, not just alphabetically. It would be best to feel the letter you are working with and not be completely dependent upon some order. You should perceive it more qualitatively, not simply as a series of one next to the other.

If this were not such a terribly difficult time, I believe there would be a great deal living here. The difficulties are now more subtle. Before the children have learned a specific gesture, they cannot connect any concept with the figure, but the moment they learn the gesture, you should relate it to the figure. They must recognize the relationship in such a way that they will understand the movement, not just the character and feeling. The feeling is expressed through the veils, but the children are too young for veils. Character is something you can gradually teach them after they have formed an inner relationship to the movement. When they understand what the principle behind the figures is, that will have a favorable effect upon the teaching of eurythmy. Over time, they will develop an artistic feeling; when you can help develop that, you should do so.

How is the situation in the 9b class?

A teacher: T.L. has left.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad.

A teacher: L.A. in the fourth grade is stealing and lying. She also has a poor memory.

Dr. Steiner: She is lying because she wants to hide that. It would be good if, and this always helps, you could dictate a little story to her so that she would have to learn it very well. The story should be about a child who steals and then gets into an absurd situation. Earlier, I gave such stories to parents. Make up a little story in which a child ends up in an absurd situation due to the course of events, so that this child will no longer want to steal. You can make up various stories; they could be bizarre or even grotesque. Of course, this helps only when the child carries it in a living way, when she has to review it in her soul time and again. The child should commit the story to memory just as she knows the Lord’s Prayer, so that the story lives within her and she can always bring it forth from her memory. If you can do that, that would really help. If one story is not enough, you should do a second. This is also something you can do in class. It would hurt nothing if others also hear it. The child should repeat it again and again. Others can be around, but they do not need to memorize it. You should not say why you are doing it, don’t speak with the children about it at all. The mother should know only that it will help her child. The child should not know that, and the class, absolutely not. The child should learn in a very naïve way what the story presents. For her sister, you could shorten the story and tell it to her again and again. With L.A., you could do it in class, but the others do not need to memorize it.

A teacher asks whether an eighteen-year-old girl who is deaf and dumb can come to the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against it. However, it would be good if she remained at the commercial art school and took some additional classes here, for instance, art or eurythmy. She is completely deaf. An association can develop just as well with the movements of the limbs as with the movements of the organ of speech.

A teacher asks about the groups of animals and whether that should be brought into connection with the various stages of life.

Dr. Steiner: The children first need to understand the aspects of the human being. What follows is secondary. You can do that after you tell them about the major divisions of the head, rhythmic, and metabolic animals, but you cannot do it completely systematically.

A teacher asks about Th.H. in the fifth grade, who is not doing well in writing.

Dr. Steiner: It is quite clear that with this child certain astral sections of the eye are placed too far forward. The astral body is enlarged, and she has astral nodules before her eyes. You can see that, and her writing shows it also. She transposes letters consistently. That is why she writes, for example, Gsier instead of Gries. I will have to think about the reason. When she is copying, she writes one letter for another. Children at this age do not normally do that, but she does it consistently. She sees incorrectly.

I will need to think about what we can do with this girl. We will need to do something, as she also does not see other things correctly. She sees many things incorrectly. This is in interesting case. It is possible, although we do not want to do an experiment in this direction, that she also confuses a man with a woman or a little boy with an older woman. If this confusion is caused by an incorrect development in the astral plane, then she will confuse only things somehow related, not things that are totally unrelated. If this continues, and we do nothing to help it, it can lead to grotesque forms of insanity. All this is possible only with a particularly strong development of the astral body, resulting in temporary animal forms that again disappear. She is not a particularly wideawake child, and you will notice that if you ask her something, she will make the same face as someone you awaken from sleep. She starts a little, just as someone you awaken does. She would never have been in a class elsewhere, that is something possible only here with us. She would have never made it beyond the first grade. She is a very interesting child.

A teacher: Someone wants to make a brochure with pictures of the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: I haven’t the slightest interest in that. If we did that, we would have The Coming Day print it. If we wanted such a brochure, we would publish it ourselves. Aside from that, we cannot go so far as to create competition for our own companies. It would be an impossible situation to undermine our own publisher by having publications printed somewhere else. Under certain circumstances, it could cause quite a commotion. Considering the relationship between the Waldorf School and The Coming Day, it would not be very upright. If we were to make such a brochure, I see no reason why we should not have it published by The Coming Day. We would earn more that way. For now, though, it would not be right.

Did one of the classes go swimming? I am asking because that terrible M.K. who complains about everything also wrote me a letter complaining about the school. I didn’t read it all. He is one of those sneaky opponents we cannot keep out, who are always finding things out. He is the one I was speaking of when I said it is not possible to work bureaucratically in our circles as is normally done, by having a list and sending things to the people on it. The Anthroposophical Society needs to be more personal, and we do not need to send people like M.K. everything. We need to be more human in the Anthroposophical Society. I mean that in regard to how we proceed, whether we are bureaucratic about deciding whether to send something to someone or not. He just uses the information to create a stir and to complain. He complains with an ill intent, even though he is a member.

Following the three lectures of Deeper Insights into Education.

Dr. Steiner: This morning we created the third fifth-grade class, 5c. You all know Dr. Häbler, their new teacher.

There is something weighing heavily on my heart, which I would like to discuss first. That is all the events surrounding the very disturbing letter Mr. X. wrote me, saying he no longer wants to be active in the administrative committee. He does not think there is enough of the trust he assumed existed between himself and the faculty. I know the faculty has asked him not to leave, but as I told him, it is really very important in our faculty that not only the external forms of interaction, but also the basis of those interactions, be healthy. It will be impossible for us, as I just discussed in the lecture, if all the underlying principles of the faculty are not healthy, that is, if everyone will not work together, both inwardly and outwardly. We need to pay much more attention to that in our school. If you go to a teacher in another class, you should always be able to know and feel what that teacher is doing. Sometimes when I visit one or another class, I have to admit that such and such could not occur if the right things were being done in another class. If all of you go your own way and do what you want, we will never be able to fulfill our task. So, this is not a solution. Instead, I would ask each of you connected with the matter to state clearly what, from your perspective, happened, both inwardly and outwardly.

The current administrator: I do not think I am so much personally responsible as it is that the position itself undermines trust. It would be good if something happened that would really guarantee our forward movement. That is more important than what is connected with my own person.

Another teacher: You (the teacher who just spoke) said that our meetings were not as you would like them. You did not think you were able to enliven our meetings. But, that is something none of us could achieve. Due to its size, the faculty has become somewhat unresponsive.

Dr. Steiner: I do not quite agree that enthusiasm should suffer as the faculty grows. That would be a sad thing. New teachers should become a source of new enthusiasm. If you want it brighter in a room, you do not turn out the lamps. Instead, you turn on more. Have any significant things occurred?

There are shouts of “No!”

Dr. Steiner: Well, I do not understand why you would resign if there is no real reason. Resigning cannot be right if you say nothing important has happened. We need to take things seriously. The current administrator: I have lost trust in the will of the faculty and in the cooperation within the meetings. They proceed in such a way that I had to admit to one faculty member that he was right when he said he would not attend because nothing would be accomplished anyway.

A teacher: You need to tell us why you are not satisfied with our meetings.

Dr. Steiner: I wanted to ask that also, namely, to what extent you feel the meetings are not fruitful.

The current administrator and a number of teachers speak about things that have happened.

Dr. Steiner: You can either discuss or not discuss things like those you have mentioned. During such a discussion, it is possible that people might shake their heads, as happened in the situation concerning Miss A. However, discussing them shows that differing but complementary feelings can lead to a conversation. It might be a good idea to discover why such things are discussed at all. I think much has resulted from misunderstandings, but all those come from being for or against one another.

A teacher: I have tried to create a picture. The current administrator feels responsible for creating a certain kind of discipline within the faculty, and, given people’s temperaments, that has created misunderstandings.

Dr. Steiner: There you have touched upon something I would like to discuss with you. In my lecture today, I mentioned that we need to find our way past the temperaments. The goal of my lecture was to show how to come to an inner understanding that lies beyond people’s temperaments. I would like to hear about how these misunderstandings due to temperaments arose. If I were to restate what you just described, I might say that you think the administrator wanted to create a thirteenth grade within the faculty. The faculty, however, was not pleased by that and rejected the pedagogical method of that desire.

A teacher describes some of the events.

Dr. Steiner: I can see such things only as sparks falling on a powder keg. What I wanted to hear was more about what lies behind such events.

A number of people give their impressions.

Dr. Steiner: The question has only been put off, not resolved. The present administrator is resigning at the end of his period of activity. The other two members of the committee will have the position for the next four months. The question is whether we can live in such a difficult time with this thorn in our sides, which is what putting things off would be. During this next period of time, which will be so difficult because we do not know if we can create a truly lively relationship between Dornach and Stuttgart, we really do need a solution. It would not be good to have only a provisional decision during these difficult times.

A teacher reports about the previous meeting.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that things have come to such a pass as a result of the last faculty meeting; otherwise the administrator would have simply finished out the remaining two weeks of his activity, and then thought about whether he wanted to take it up next time. The current administrator speaks about how the situation has now changed and the possibilities he sees of continuing. He wants to see how the next two weeks go.

Dr. Steiner: It seems to me that you have given a certain indication of agreement regarding the thirteenth grade.

A teacher: We decided to trust the current administrator in spite of the thirteenth grade.

Many teachers comment about that.

Dr. Steiner: Now that I have listened to the discussion for some time, it still seems to me that there are some underlying reasons. I understand neither the objective starting point nor how it could lead to such results. I can only believe that the real problem lies in more personal things that could not be brought up here, where we need to remain objective.

The current administrator is asked to continue and he agrees.

A teacher: Which subjects should we drop in the twelfth grade so that we can prepare the students for their final examinations?

Dr. Steiner: Sadly, technology and shop, as well as gymnastics and singing. We cannot drop eurythmy or drawing. Religion will have to be limited to one hour, but in the morning. The twelfth grade will take religion for one hour with the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: We should talk about everything that has happened during this long period.

They discuss a letter to the Ministry of Education about the students who will take the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: Why was it necessary to add that it lies in the nature of block instruction that some subjects have not been taught? In such official things, the smartest thing to do is not to get people upset by telling them things they don’t want to hear. What still needs to be done in literature?

You need to proceed efficiently. Some of the things you want to teach should be taught, but for the examination you do not need to teach the students anything about Goethe as a natural scientist, nor will they be asked questions about his letters on aesthetic education. His poetry will cause them some pain because it is not so easy. Hauptmann’s Hannele is better than Die Weber. They don’t have any idea about Goethe as a natural scientist. For such examinations it would be a mistake to feel you need to set up such a curriculum. Those things are not expected even for someone who is working toward a doctorate. They cannot be done in two years in school. Look here, here we have Faust, Part I.

I would like to know how you could do all that in school. Do you think you will find some themes for German in them? You need to cover what will come up in written examinations.

If you go to the ministry too often, they will think you have a bad conscience, and will get the feeling that things are not going right here. You should not go into such things so much, but only answer when the ministry writes. We will see how things go, we can always withdraw.

In the last part of school, you need to be sure that the students write and answer as much as possible themselves. They need to be much more active individually. If a student does not already know something, you should not be so quick to help. They need to develop their will and find the answers themselves. This is much better than it was before, when the students had to do nothing more than listen. I need to go through all the classes again and will do so at the next opportunity.

They present a letter inviting the Waldorf School to present some student work in Berlin.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if we had more exact information. You need to find out what he wants. Exhibits of student work have a real purpose only when a course is being undertaken, that is, when the entire context and content of the Waldorf School are presented. But just displaying work? As long as people do not know exactly what the goals of the Waldorf School are, those who look at the work will not know what we expect of the students. It is the same as if we said we want to present only the pictures from an illustrated book of children’s tales. People will not understand anything. The people in Berlin need to say whether they will support the Waldorf School.

They discuss C.H. in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: His relationship to the class needs to come from his character. You should have him draw what is on the object, not the object itself. How light affects the object. The illuminated side and the shadow side. Not the table, but the light upon the table and the table’s shadow. He lacks a sense of perspective in painting. It is a clear defect, and it is good to work on his deficiencies. Let him try to draw a human face, but he should not draw a nose, only the light upon it and the shadows from it. You need to try to speak with him about things. He is disturbed. You need to make him imagine things sculpturally. He will be better in arithmetic than geometry, so you will need to make sure he understands geometry and isn’t just doing it from memory.

Cliques in the eleventh grade are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: Give them “Outsiders and Sociable People” as an essay topic, so that they have to think things through.

A teacher asks about eleventh-grade English. They have read Macaulay’s Warren Hastings.

Dr. Steiner: You could also read some English poetry, for example “The Sea School.” In addition, you could give them some characteristic prose, for example a chapter by Emerson such as the ones about Shakespeare and Goethe. Have them read that and then try to show the abrupt changes in the style of his thoughts. Discuss aphoristic and nonaphoristic styles and things in between, and show the relationships of those styles, how they arise. You should discuss that with the students and bring in a little psychology also. Emerson’s method of writing was to take all the books out of his library and spread them in front of himself. He then went around, walked around the room, read a sentence here or there, and wrote it down. He did the same thing again and then wrote down another sentence, independent of the first, and so forth. He found his inspiration in the library, and you can see the resulting jumps in his writing. Nietzsche wrote about the things he read by Emerson, for instance about Nature. In his own copy, Nietzsche circled certain things and then numbered them. Anyway, read poetry and Emerson.

A teacher: What should we read in tenth-grade French? Could we read Poincaré? A number of students want to leave.

Dr. Steiner: That is still a dangerous, a strange thing. In principle, you could do that, but not with Poincaré because there is so much untruth in it.

For those who want to leave, perhaps you should choose something that appears to be foreign to life, but actually leads to it. Something like Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril. That could be read in the tenth grade.

There is a collection of French essays by Hachette that contain essays by the other Poincaré, the mathematician. There is also a second part about technical thinking. That is something that might be useful.

For twelfth-grade English, you might also consider MacKenzie’s Humanism. We cannot go along with dropping French as they are doing in public schools.

A eurythmy teacher asks about difficulties with the upper grades. Some of the students want a different teacher.

Dr. Steiner: You need to treat that with some humor. Appear to agree and then develop it ad absurdum. There are always some students who want a different teacher. You need to be firm in your position and take it with some humor. You could perhaps ask, “What do you have against me? I am really a very nice lady; there is no reason for you to hate me.” Sometimes, you can quiet things in a couple of minutes that way.

A teacher asks about P.Z. in gymnastics class.

Dr. Steiner: He does not align the main direction of his body with gravity. You should try having him do exercises on the high bar so that he hangs. I mean that literally. Such an exercise would free his astral body. Sometimes you have children who look as though their astral body is too large, so that it is like a loose-fitting cloak around their I. Through such exercises, the astral body will become more firmly connected with the I. They feel good when their feet are off the floor, for instance, when they climb a ladder and sit there quietly. With such children, you will usually notice that they have something like oily or fatty skin when they hang their astral body. It will be like that in some way. Or, they may have wrinkled and loose skin.

Perhaps you can arrange gymnastics class so that groups of children do what is necessary according to their temperaments.

A teacher asks about the dramatic presentations done by the children at Miss MacMillan’s school.

Dr. Steiner: They do many things there that are not appropriate for the age of the children. It is impossible to put on dramas with children younger than ten, though afterward that goes quite well. It is not the method, but Miss MacMillan’s strength and spontaneity, that is effective. The method is strongly affected by the English tendency to do things too soon. That arises from the unusual relationship English people have to their experience of themselves as human beings. They want to be seen as human beings, and that is something taught them through such things. Such people have a strongly developed astral body, which limits their I to a certain level. That is not the case in other European countries. Spiritually, Englishmen look like human beings who go around not fully clothed, who do not have a collar. That is how their I lives within them and how they are in their surroundings. They have a certain human sociality in their character that makes up their national character. They like dramatic presentations of the human being, also Bernard Shaw. They want to do something that has validity, something others will recognize.

A teacher: S.T. in the ninth grade is very clumsy in his written expression. Should I have him do some extra work in writing essays?

Dr. Steiner: You should work with his handwriting, very basically, through exercises. As an extra task, you could have him write a quarter page while paying attention to how each letter is formed. If he would do that, if he would pay attention to forming each letter, it would affect his entire character.

Aside from that, his lines of vision converge at the wrong place. His eyes do not properly fix upon the object. We should correct that. Remind him often so that his eyes look in parallel. You can also have him read as though he were shortsighted, although he is not. His eyes droop just like he droops when he walks. He does not walk properly, he drags his feet. Have you ever noticed, for example, that when he is at the playground and wants to run from one place to another, he never does it in a straight line, but always in some kind of zigzag. You should also look at how his hair always falls across his forehead. He also has no sense of rhythm. If he has to read something rhythmic in class, he gets out of breath. In gymnastics, you could have him move firmly, stamp his steps along.

Karmically, it is as though he has two different incarnations mixed together. In his previous incarnation, his life was cut off forcefully. Now, he is living through the second part of that incarnation and the first part of the present incarnation at the same time. Nothing fits. He has already read Kant. He cannot do things any other child can do, but he asks very unusual questions that show he has a very highly developed soul life. Once, he asked me if it is true that the distance between the Sun and the Earth is continually decreasing. He asked whether the Sun was coming closer to us. He asked such questions without any real reason.

You need to show him other perspectives, and have him do odd things in a disciplined way, for instance, some mathematical things that pique his curiosity, that are not immediately clear to him. You could, for example, have him make knots with a closed loop. Oskar Simony discusses that in his paper on forming knots with closed loops.

Since this was unknown to most of the teachers, Dr. Steiner showed how a strip of paper pasted together to form a closed loop crossed itself in the middle when twisted one, two, or three times. One twist resulted in a large ring; two twists resulted in two rings, one within the other. With three twists, the result was a ring knotted in itself. While doing this Dr. Steiner discussed Oskar Simony in detail.

Dr. Steiner: Simony counted the prime numbers. He once said that in order to bear occult events, you need a great deal of humor. That is certainly true.

Simony was like S.T. He drags himself around, has little sense of rhythm and needs to learn to observe what he does. Everything he does that causes him to think about what he has done is good. St.B. should do eurythmy exercises in which he has to pay attention to forming the letters with his arms toward the rear. He should pay attention to doing the exercise without it becoming a habit. He cannot integrate his etheric body into the periphery of the astral body.

We cannot consider K.F. a Latin student. Perhaps it is quite good for him to sit there like a deserted island. Sitting there in isolation may not be bad at all. I just now am clear that it is good if he is isolated.

A report is given about L.K. in the first grade. She does not like fairy tales or poetry.

Dr. Steiner: She should make the letter i with her whole body, u with her ears and forefinger, and e with her hair, so that she does all three exercises with some sensitivity. She needs to awaken the sensitivity of her body, so she should do that for a longer period of time.

A teacher: S.J. in the seventh grade is doing better writing with her left hand than with her right.

Dr. Steiner: You should remind her that she should write only with her right hand. You could try having her lift her left leg so that she hops around on her right leg, that is, have her jump around on her right leg with her left leg drawn up close to her. She is ambidextrous.

If there are children who are clearly left-handed, you will need to decide. That is something you can observe. You need to look at the left hand. With real left-handed children the hands appear as though exchanged; the left hand looks like the right hand in that it has more lines than the right hand.

This could also be done through the eyes. You could have children who are really left-handed raise the right hand and look at it with both eyes. Observe how their eyes cross as they move their gaze up their arm until they reach the right hand and then move their gaze back. Then have them stretch their arm. Do that three times.