The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I could not come sooner, but it was not possible. We have a number of things to catch up on, and I am really very happy to be here today.

A member of the administrative committee: (After greeting Dr. Steiner) After we came back from the Christmas Conference in Dornach, we felt responsible for doing everything to make the Waldorf School an appropriate instrument for its new task. I have been asked to tell you that the members of the administrative committee now place their positions in your hands. Since it seems possible that the relationship of the school to the Anthroposophical Society may change, we would like you to redetermine from this new standpoint how the school should be run.

Dr. Steiner: I certainly understand how this view could arise among you, since the intent of the Christmas Conference was to do something for anthroposophy based upon a complete reformation, a new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. On the other hand, the Christmas Conference gave the Anthroposophical Society an explicitly esoteric character. That seems to contradict the public presentation, but through the various existing intentions, which will gradually be realized over the course of time, people will see that the actual leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, the present board of directors [Vorstand] in Dornach, will have a completely esoteric basis. That will also effect a complete renewal of the Anthroposophical Society.

Now, it is quite understandable that the various institutions connected with anthroposophy ask themselves how they should relate to what happened in Dornach. In my letter to members published in our newsletter, I said that the conference in Dornach will have a real purpose only if that purpose is not forgotten for all time. The conference will realize its complete content to the extent individual anthroposophical institutions slowly make the intent of the Dornach conference their own.

The Christmas Conference was the second part of a decision in principle. The first part was that if anthroposophists want it, the board of directors will do some things from Dornach, and that includes a continuous questioning of life within the Anthroposophical Society. In principle, there is a decision that—to the extent that this intention is realized, that we bring it into reality—the board of directors in Dornach is justified in taking over the responsibility for anthroposophy, not just for the Society. That is the esoteric purpose, but of course the esoteric impulses must come from various directions. I would like to ask the individual institutions to understand that whatever emanates from Dornach always has an esoteric background. It is, of course, just as understandable that the Waldorf School particularly, and its representatives, question its relationship to Dornach and to the Free School of Spiritual Science.

Perhaps, as you have considered the question in more detail, you already feel there are some significant difficulties, particularly concerning the final decision about the administrative committee. The situation is this: First, we must find the form through which the Waldorf School can make the connection to the School of Spiritual Science. Formally, the Waldorf School is not an anthroposophical institution; rather, it is an independent creation based upon the foundations of anthroposophical pedagogy. In the way it meets the public, as well as the way it meets legal institutions, it is not an anthroposophical institution, but a school based upon anthroposophical pedagogy. Suppose the Independent Waldorf School were now to become officially related to the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. Then the Waldorf School would immediately become an anthroposophical school in a formal, external sense. Of course, there are some things that would support making such a decision. On the other hand, though, we must consider whether the Waldorf School can fulfill its cultural tasks better as an independent school with an unhindered form than it can as a direct part of what emanates from Dornach. Everything that emanates from Dornach is also collected there. If the Independent Waldorf School entered a direct relationship to Dornach, all activities of the Waldorf School falling within the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society would also be the responsibility of the leadership of the School of Spiritual Science and fall within their authority. In the future, Dornach will not be simply a decoration, as many anthroposophical institutions have been. Dornach will be a reality. Every institution belonging to Dornach will, in fact, must, recognize the authority of the leadership in Dornach. That will be necessary. At the same time, the leadership of the Waldorf School would then take on an esoteric character.

On the other hand, given the state of the world today, we could certainly weigh the question of whether the Waldorf School could best achieve its cultural goals that way. This is definitely not a question we can immediately brush aside. Weighed with nothing but the most serious feeling of responsibility, the question is extremely difficult since it could mean a radical change throughout the Independent Waldorf School.

Pedagogical life in the modern world may still be subject to the error, or better said the illusion, expressed through the various goals of all kinds of pedagogical organizations. However, everything in those pedagogical organizations is really nothing more than talk. In reality, pedagogy is increasingly falling prey to three factors of development, two of which are making giant steps today. Anthroposophy, the third factor, is very weak; it is only a shadow and is not seen by opponents as anything of any importance. Pedagogy is slowly being captured by the two main streams in the world, the Catholic and the Bolshevik, or socialist, streams. Anyone who wants to can easily see that all other tendencies are on a downward path in regard to success. That says nothing at all about the value of Catholicism or Bolshevism, only about their strength. Each has tremendous strength, and that strength increases every week. Now people are trying to bring all other cultural movements into those two, so it only makes sense to orient pedagogy with the third cultural stream, anthroposophy. That is the situation in the world.

It is really marvelous how little thought humanity gives to anything today, so that it allows the most important symptoms to go by without thinking. The fact that a centuries-old tradition has been broken in England by MacDonald’s system is something so radical, so important, that it was marvelous that the world did not even notice it. On the other hand, we from the anthroposophical side should take note of how external events clearly show that the age whose history can be written from the purely physical perspective has passed. We need to be clear that Ahrimanic forces are increasingly breaking in upon historical events. Two leading personalities, Wilson and Lenin, died from the same illness, both from paralysis, which means that both offered an opening for Ahrimanic forces. These things show that world history is no longer earthly history, and is becoming cosmic history. All such things are of great importance and play a role in our detailed questions.

If we now go on to the more concrete problem of the administrative committee putting their work back into my hands, you should not forget that the primary question was decided through the conference in Dornach. From 1912 until 1923, I lived within the Anthroposophical Society with no official position, without even being a member, something I clearly stated in 1912. I have actually belonged to the Anthroposophical Society only as an advisor, as a teacher, as the one who was to show the sources of spiritual science. Through the Christmas Conference, I became chairman of the Anthroposophical Society, and from then on my activities are those of the chairman of the Society. If I were to name the administrative committee now, that committee would be named by the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society. The highest body of the Independent Waldorf School would thus be designated by the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society. That is certainly something we could consider, but I want you to know that when we go on to discuss this whole problem. If the Waldorf School and Dornach had that relationship, then the Waldorf School would be something different from what it is now. Something new would be created, different from what was created at the founding of the Waldorf School. The Christmas Conference in Dornach was not just a ceremony like the majority of anthroposophical activities, even though they may not have a ceremonious character, particularly in Stuttgart. The Christmas Conference was completely serious, so anything resulting from it is also very serious.

The Independent Waldorf School can relate to Dornach in other ways. One of those would be not to place the school under Dornach, but instead to have the faculty, or those within the faculty who wish to do so, enter a relationship to Dornach, to the Goetheanum, to the School of Spiritual Science, not for themselves, but as teachers of the school. The Waldorf School, as such, would not take on that characteristic, but it would emphasize to the outer world that from now on the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum will provide the impulse for the Waldorf School pedagogy, just as anthroposophical pedagogy previously provided it. The difference would be that, whereas the relationship to anthroposophical pedagogy was more theoretical, in the future the relationship would be more alive. Then, the faculty as a whole or as individuals would conform to the impulses that would result when one, as a teacher at the Independent Waldorf School, is a member of the School of Spiritual Science. That relationship would make it impossible for the Goetheanum to name the administrative committee. The committee would, of course, need to remain as it is now because the thought behind it is that the committee was chosen, even elected, by the faculty. It may not even be possible from the perspective of the legal authorities here for the administrative committee to be named from Dornach. I do not believe the laws of Württemberg would allow the administrative committee of the Independent Waldorf School to be chosen from the Goetheanum, that is, from an institution existing outside Germany. The only other possibility would be for me to name the new administrative committee. However, that is unnecessary.

These are the things I wanted to present to you. You can see from them that you should consider the question in detail yourselves. Now I would like you to tell me your thoughts about the solution of the question. Whether you want to give me more or less control over the solution, whether you want me to decide how you should operate. You do not need to do this in any way other than to say what you have already discussed in the faculty, and what led you to say what you said at the outset.

A teacher: For us, the question was whether the Christmas Conference in Dornach changed the relationship of the Waldorf School to the Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: The Waldorf School has had no relationship to the Anthroposophical Society. Because it was outside the Society, the Christmas Conference has no significance for the Waldorf School. That is the situation. It is different, though, for institutions that arose directly from the Anthroposophical Society. That is quite different. The Waldorf School was founded as an independent institution. The relationship that existed was unofficial and can continue with the new Society. The relationship was completely free, something that came into existence each day because the vast majority of the teachers here belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and because anthroposophical pedagogy was carried out in a free manner, since, as the representative of anthroposophical pedagogy, I also was chairman of the faculty. We need change none of that.

A teacher: How should we understand the Pedagogical Section?

Dr. Steiner: We can only slowly put into practice the intentions of the Christmas Conference, particularly those of the School of Spiritual Science. To an extent, that is because we do not have enough money right now to construct all the buildings that we will need for everything we want to do. What we need will gradually be created. For now, the various sections will be created to the extent possible with the people and resources available today. My thought was that the basis for creating the Independent University as an institution of the Anthroposophical Society would be the membership of the School of Spiritual Science. I have now seen that a large number of teachers of the Waldorf School have applied for membership; thus, they will also be members and from the very beginning become a means for spreading the pedagogy emanating from the Independent University. We will have to wait and see which other institutions join the Independent University.

Other institutions have often expressed a desire to form a relationship with Dornach. The situation is simple with those anthroposophical institutions that have either all the prejudices against them or none. For example, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute here in Stuttgart can join. Either it has been fought against from the very beginning as an anthroposophical institution, in which case no harm is done if it joins, or it has been recognized because people are forced to see that the healing methods used there are more effective than those found elsewhere, in which case it is obvious that it joins. That institution is not in the same situation in regard to the world as a school. The clinic can join without any further problems.

However, if a school suddenly became an anthroposophical school, that would upset both the official authorities and the public. There is even a strong possibility that the school officials would object. They actually have no right to do so, and it doesn’t make any sense to object to the pedagogical methods, which can certainly be those of anthroposophy. There is also no reason to object even if all the teachers personally became members of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. That is of no concern to the officials, and they can raise no objection to it. However, they would immediately object if an existing relationship between the Waldorf School and the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum required the Waldorf School to accept pedagogical decisions made there, so that, for example, those in Dornach controlled the curriculum here. That is certainly true for the first eight grades. If we had only the higher grades, from the ninth grade on, hardly any objections could be raised except for possibly not allowing the students to take their final examinations, but the officials would hardly do that. Nevertheless, they would not allow it for the elementary school grades.

The basic thought of the School of Spiritual Science is that it will direct its primary activity toward insight and life. Thus, we can say that every member has not only the right, but, in a certain sense, a moral obligation to align him- or herself with Dornach in regard to pedagogical questions. Certainly, there will be people at the School of Spiritual Science who want to learn par excellence. However, once having learned, they will remain members, just as someone who has earned a diploma from a French or Norwegian or Danish university remains a member of the university and has a continuing relationship with it. In France, you do not simply receive a piece of paper when you earn a degree, you become a lifelong member of the university and retain a scientific connection to it. That is something the old Society members who will be members of the school under the assumption that they already know a great deal of what will be presented there should consider from the very beginning. The school will, however, continually have scientific or artistic tasks to resolve in which all members of the school should participate. To that extent, the life of each individual member of the school will be enriched. In the near future, we will send the same requests to all members of the other sections that we have already sent to the members of the Medical Section, requesting that they turn toward Dornach in important matters. We will also send a monthly or bimonthly newsletter, which will contain answers to all the questions posed by the membership. However, you would not be a member of the section, but of the class. The sections are only for the leadership in Dornach. The board of directors works together with the sections, but the individual members belong to a class.

A teacher: Should we work toward making it possible for the Waldorf School to be under Dornach?

Dr. Steiner: As with everything that can really be done, the moment we wish to join the school with Dornach we are treading upon a path we once had to leave, had to abandon, because we were not up to the situation when we undertook it. That is the path of threefolding. If you imagine the Independent Waldorf School joined with the School of Spiritual Science, you must realize that could only occur under the auspices of what lies at the foundation of threefolding. We would be working toward a specific goal if all reasonable institutions worked toward threefolding. However, we have to allow the world to go its own way after it intentionally did not want to go the other one. We are working toward threefolding, but we have to remember that an institution like the Independent Waldorf School with its objectively anthroposophical character, has goals that, of course, coincide with anthroposophical desires. At the moment, though, if that connection were made official, people could break the Waldorf School’s neck. Therefore, the way things presently are, I would advise that we not choose a new administrative committee; rather, leave it as it is and decide things one way or another according to these two questions. First, is it sufficient that the teachers here at the school become individual members of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach? Or, second, do you want to be members through the faculty as a whole, so that you would have membership as teachers of the Independent Waldorf School? In the latter case, the Pedagogical Section in Dornach would have to concern itself with the Waldorf School, whereas it would otherwise be concerned only with general questions of pedagogy.

That is certainly a major difference. Our newsletter might then have statements such as, “It would be best to do such and such at the Independent Waldorf School.” In a certain sense, such statements would then be binding on the teachers at the Waldorf School, which would be connected with the School of Spiritual Science. There is no danger in joining all branches and groups with the Anthroposophical Society. Actually, they have to do that. All such groups of many individuals who fulfill the requirements, and such institutions as, for example, the biological institute, the research institute, and the clinic can join. You could have problems otherwise. The difficulties that would arise for the Waldorf School would not be of concern there. When the school was founded, we placed great value upon creating an institution independent of the Anthroposophical Society. Logically, that corresponds quite well with having the various religious communities and the Anthroposophical Society provide religious instruction, so that the Society provides religious instruction just as other religious groups do. The Anthroposophical Society gives instruction in religion and the services. That is something we can justifiably say whenever others claim that the Waldorf School is an anthroposophical school. Although anthroposophy believes it has the best pedagogy, the character of anthroposophy is not forced upon the school. That is a very clear situation. Had The Coming Day approached the Anthroposophical Society for exercises everyone who wanted to could do, then the remarks in the Newsletter would not have been necessary. We can clearly see the real formalities through such things.

A teacher: Hasn’t a change already occurred since you, the head of the Waldorf School, are now also the head of the Anthroposophical Society?

Dr. Steiner: That is not the case. The position I have taken changes nothing about my being head of the school. The conference was purely anthroposophical and the Waldorf School had no official connection with the Society. What might happen if, in the course of time, the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach takes over the guidance of the religious instruction, is a different question. Were that to occur, it would be a situation of organic growth.

A teacher: Is the position we took at the founding of the Waldorf School still valid today?

Dr. Steiner: When you present the question that way, the real question is whether it is even appropriate for the faculty to approach the question, or whether that is actually a question for the Waldorf School Association. You see, the outside world views the Waldorf School Association as the actual administration of the school. You know about the seven wise men who guide the school. This is a question we should consider in deciding whether the Waldorf School is to be joined with Dornach or not, that is, should the faculty of the Waldorf School decide whether to join as a whole or as individual teachers? Everything concerning pedagogy can be decided only in that way. Under certain circumstances, this is a professional question. The Waldorf School is as it is, outside of that. You need to look at things realistically. What would you do if you, here in the faculty, decided to connect the school with Dornach, and then the school association refused to pay your salaries because of that decision? That is something that is at least theoretically possible.

A teacher asks about the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with the question of the final examination, which is purely a question of compromise, what would change through the connection to the Society?

The teacher explains his question further.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the only other viewpoint would have to be that we absolutely refuse to take into account whether a student wishes to take the final examination or not, that we consider it a private decision of the student. Until now, no one has been thinking of that, and the question is whether we should consider that as a principle. Thus, all students’ parents would be confronted with the question, “Do I dare consider sending my child into life without having taken the final examination?” Of course, we can do that, but the question is really whether we should do that. All that is quite independent of the possibility that we may have no students at all or only those who cannot go anywhere else. It seems to me very problematic whether we can bring that question into the discussion of final examinations. I do not believe a connection with Dornach would change anything in that regard. In some ways, we would still have to make a compromise.

I believe we first need to choose a form. Such things are not permanent; they can always be reconsidered. I think you should decide to become members of the School of Spiritual Science as individual teachers, but with the additional remark that you want to become a member as a teacher of the Independent Waldorf School. I think that will achieve everything you want, and nothing else is necessary for the time being. The difference is that if you join as an individual without being a member as a teacher, there would be no mention of the Waldorf School in our newsletter, and, therefore, questions specifically about the Waldorf School would not be handled by Dornach. Of course, if you add that you are joining as a teacher, that has no real meaning for you, but for the cultural task of the Waldorf School it does have some significance, because all other members of the School of Spiritual Science will receive news about what those in Dornach think about the Waldorf School. The Independent Waldorf School would then be part of anthroposophical pedagogical life, and interest would spread to a much greater extent. Everywhere members of the School of Spiritual Science come together, people would speak about the Waldorf School: “This or that is good,” and so forth. The Waldorf School would thereby become a topic of interest for the Society, whereas it is presently not an anthroposophical activity. For you, it is all the same. The questions that would be discussed in Dornach would of course be different from those that arise here. It could, however, be possible that we need to discuss the same questions here in our meetings. For the Society as a whole, however, it would not be all the same. It would be something major for anthroposophical pedagogy, and in doing that you would fulfill the mission of the Independent Waldorf School. Through such an action, you would accomplish something you actually want, namely, making the Independent Waldorf School part of the overall cultural mission of anthroposophy. It could, for example, happen that a question arises in the faculty meeting in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart that then becomes a concern of the School of Spiritual Science.

A teacher: That would mean the school would send reports about our work for publication in the newsletter.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to make reports about the pedagogical methods so long as they do not concern personnel questions, unless, of course, these had pedagogical significance.

The teachers ask Dr. Steiner how he envisions the Easter pedagogical conference and ask him to give a theme for the conference.

Dr. Steiner: The only thing I have to say is that the conference at Easter must take into account that there will also be a pedagogical course in Zurich beginning Easter Monday.

I would like to bring up another question, which relates to something we mentioned earlier. What we can do from the Waldorf School is the following, although I need to consider what I’m now going to mention in more detail. There is another way that could immediately bring you closer to achieving your intention of a complete connection with the anthroposophical movement. The proposal is that the Waldorf School declare itself prepared to host a conference that the Anthroposophical Society would present at Easter at the school. No one could complain about that. Certainly, the Independent Waldorf School could hold an anthroposophical conference on its own grounds. That is something we can do. I would like to think some more about whether this is the proper time. However, I do not think there will be any public objection, and the officials at the ministry will not even understand the difference. They will certainly not understand what it means. That would be a beginning. I will set up the program.

There is one other thing I would like to say. The Youth Conference of the Christian Community in Kassel was quite in character in terms of the desires you now bear in your hearts. What happened was that the Christian Community priests held small meetings from Wednesday until the end of the week with those who wished an introduction to what the Christian Community, as a religious group, has to say. The whole thing closed with a service for the participants of the conference. The last two or three days were available for open discussions, so that the people who attended had an opportunity to meet officially with the Christian Community and see that it is independent of the Anthroposophical Society.

I should mention that the participants consisted of young people under the age of twenty, and others who were thirty-six and older, so that the middle generation was missing, something characteristic of our time. They participated in a Mass, followed by open discussion that assumed the topic would cover what had been experienced. What actually happened, however, was that what had been experienced awakened a longing for something more, so that the anthroposophists present then spoke about anthroposophy. It could be seen that all of what had occurred had anthroposophy as its goal. That was a very characteristic conference because it shows that what is objectively desired is a connection with Anthroposophy. There will be something about the Kassel youth conference in the next newsletter.

A teacher discusses the question of the final examination and says that some students will be advised to not take it.

Dr. Steiner: The question is how we should give the students that advice. If you handle the question from the perspective you mentioned, the principles will not be readily apparent when you give that advice. I would like to know what you have to say about the principles.

A teacher: If students are to take the final examination at the end of the twelfth grade, we cannot achieve our true learning goals in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. Instead, we will have to work toward preparing the students to pass the examination. They should take both a thirteenth school year and the examination at another school.

Dr. Steiner: On the other hand, the whole question of final examinations arose from a different perspective, namely, that the students wanted to, or their guardians wanted them to, take the test. Has anything changed in that regard? The students, of course, are unhappy, but students in other schools are also unhappy that they need to learn things they don’t want to learn. I mean that our students are unhappy about the same things all other children with the same maturity at eighteen or nineteen years are unhappy about. The question of final examinations is purely a question of opportunity. It is a question of whether we dare tell those who come to us that we will not prepare them for the final examination at all, that it is a private decision of the student whether to take the final examination or not. That is the question. For the future, it would be possible to answer that question in principle, but I do not think it would be correct to decide it for this year at the present stage.

A teacher asks whether it would be better to have the students take a thirteenth school year at another school and take their examinations there. Should a note be sent to the parents with that suggestion?

Dr. Steiner: You can do all that, but our students cannot avoid having to take an entrance examination. The question is only whether they will fail the entrance examination or the final examination.

Most of the parents want their children to have an opportunity to attend a university, in spite of the fact they gave the students to us. Both parents and students want that. At the beginning, the children did not believe it would be a problem. Their concern was that they would be able to take the final examination. That is certainly a possibility, and they can try it, but we cannot solve the problem simply by sending the students to a thirteenth school year at another school. The question is only whether we can solve it in the way we already discussed but found very problematic and therefore rejected. If we are firm about completing the school, the question is whether we could consider the alternative of creating a preparatory session in addition to the school. We rejected that because we thought it very unpedagogical. The question is whether to create a preparatory group or ignore the curriculum. I think it would be best if we did not send the students to another school. They would then need to take an entrance examination. However, if we completed the curriculum through the twelfth grade, we could use a thirteenth year to prepare them for the final examination.

Let’s consider the question pedagogically. Suppose a child comes into the first grade at the age of six or seven and completes the twelfth grade at the age of eighteen or nineteen. At that time and not later, the child should actually begin the transition into the university. Adding another year then is just about as smart as what the state does when it believes there is more material to be learned and adds an additional year for medical education. Those are the sorts of things that can drive you up the wall. Those who do not want to attend the university will need to find their own way in life. They will be useful people in life without the final examination, since they will find what they need for life here. Those who are to go to the university can use an additional year to unlearn a little. I think we can certainly think of the thirteenth year as a year of boning up. Nevertheless, we will certainly need to be careful that they pass, since we cannot put the children in a different school. We will need to separate it in some way from the Waldorf School, and we could hire instructors. We would have to enlarge the faculty to include the thirteenth grade. If we hired such people and the faculty kept control of things, we could possibly do that. That is what I think.

A teacher asks about the students who are not yet ready for the examination.

Dr. Steiner: We could suggest that, in our judgment, they are not yet ready. At other schools, the question of taking the final examination is also handled by advising the relatives of such students in the last grade not to enroll them, but to wait a year. We could also give such advice, and tell the officials that we gave it. You have always said something that is true: we have had these students only from a particular grade. We could give the ministry a report stating that it was impossible for us to properly prepare the students for the final examination during the time they were with us. We believe they need to wait a year. You should try to advise them against it, but if they want to enroll for the examination, you should inform the officials in the way we discussed by saying we think the students need to stay in school one more year.

A teacher asks about counseling students for choosing a career.

Dr. Steiner: That can be done only in individual cases. It would hardly be possible to do it in principle. In most instances, the school has little influence upon their choice of career. Determining that is really not so simple. By the time a boy is eighteen or nineteen, he should have come to an opinion about which career he should work toward; then, based on that desire, you can counsel him. This is something that involves much responsibility.

A teacher asks about pedagogical activities relating to writing essays and giving lectures.

Dr. Steiner: That would be good in many instances, particularly for eurythmy students. I think that if you held to the kind of presentations I gave in Ilkley, it would be very useful.

I do not know what you should do to revise my lectures. It is not really possible to give a lecture and then tell someone how to revise it.

A teacher asks about reports on work at the school.

Dr. Steiner: Why shouldn’t we be able to report on our work? I think we should be able to send reports to the Goetheanum on things, like those, I believe it was Pastor Ruhtenberg, has done about German class. You could give the details and the general foundation of what you as a teacher think about the specific subject. For each subject you could do things like what Ruhtenberg did and also a more general presentation about the ideas and basis of the work done up to now.

It would probably be quite good if you did some of these things the way you previously did. Keep them short and not too extended, so that the Goetheanum could publish something more often, something concrete about how we do one thing or another. the Goetheanum now has a circulation of six thousand, so it would be very good for such reports to appear in it or in some other newspaper.

A shop teacher thinks it is too bad that painting instruction cannot be done as regularly and in the upper grades as often as in the lower grades. He also asks about painting techniques for the lower grades.

Dr. Steiner: It does no harm to interrupt the painting class for a few years and replace it with sculpting. The instruction in painting has a subconscious effect, and when the students return to the interrupted painting class, they do it in a more lively way and with greater skill. In all things that depend upon capability, it is always the case that if they are withheld, great progress is made soon afterward, particularly when they are interrupted.

I think painting instruction for the lower grades needs some improvement. Some of the teachers give too little effort toward technical proficiency. The students do not use the materials properly. Actually, you should not allow anyone to paint on pieces of paper that are always buckling. They should paint only on paper that is properly stretched. Also, they should go through the whole project from start to finish, so that one page is really completed. Most of the drawings are only a beginning.

Since you are a painter, what you want will probably depend upon your discussing technical questions and how to work with the materials with the other teachers. No other practical solution is possible.

In the two upper grades, you could have the talented students paint again. There is enough time, but you would have to begin again with simpler things. That could not cause too many problems if you did it properly. With younger children, painting is creating from the soul, but with older children, you have to begin from the perspective of painting. You need to show them what the effects of light are and how to paint that. Do all the painting from a practical standpoint. You should never have children older than ten paint objects because that can ruin a great deal. (Dr. Steiner begins to draw on the blackboard with colored chalk.) The older the children are, the more you need to work on perspective in painting. You need to make clear to them that here is the sun, that the sunlight falls upon a tree. So, you should not begin by drawing the tree, but with the light and shadowy areas, so that the tree is created out of the light and dark colors, but the color comes from the light. Don’t begin with abstractions such as, “The tree is green.” Don’t have them paint green leaves; they shouldn’t paint leaves at all, but instead areas of light. That is what you should do, and you can do it.

If I were required to begin with thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds, I would use Dürer’s Melancholia as an example of how wonderfully light and shadows can be used. I would have them color the light at the window and how it falls onto the polyhedron and the ball. Then, I would have them paint the light in the window of Hieronymus im Gehäus. And so forth. It is very fruitful to begin with Melancholia; you should have them translate the black and white into a colorful fantasy. We cannot expect all the teachers to be well-versed in painting. There may be some teachers who are not especially interested in painting because they cannot do it, but a teacher must be able to teach it without painting. We cannot expect to fully develop every child in every art and science.

A teacher: Someone proposed that the school sell the toys the shop class makes.

Dr. Steiner: I do not know how we can do that. Someone also wanted to sell such things in England, with the proceeds going to the Waldorf School, I believe. However, we cannot make a factory out of the school. We simply cannot do that; that would be pure nonsense. This idea makes sense only if someone proposes building a factory in which the things we make at school would be used as prototypes. If that is what they meant, it is no concern of ours. At most, we can give them the things for use as prototypes. However, I did not understand the proposal in that way, so it really doesn’t make much sense. In the other case, someone could make working models. If someone were to come with a proposal to create a factory, we could still think about whether we wanted to work that way.

A teacher requests a new curriculum for religion class in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: We have laid out the religious instruction for eight grades in two groups, the first through fourth grades in the lower group, and the others in the upper. The religious instruction is already arranged in two stages. Do you mean that we now need a third?

A teacher asks whether the curriculum could be more specialized for the different grades, for instance, the fifth, eighth, and twelfth grades.

Dr. Steiner: You can show me tomorrow how far I went then.

A teacher asks about the material for religion class in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: St. Augustine and Thomas à Kempis.

A teacher asks if Dr. Steiner would add something more to the ritual services throughout the year, for example, colors or such things.

Dr. Steiner: The Youth Service for Easter is connected with the entire intention of youth services. I am not certain what you mean. Were you to do that, you would preoccupy the children with a suggested mood. That is not good while they are still in school.

Through that, you would make them less open. Certainly, children need to remain naïve until a certain age, to do things without being fully conscious of them. Therefore, we should not have a complete calendar of the year, as that would suggest certain moods. Children need to be somewhat naïve about such things, at least until a certain age. You certainly could not have a small child who has just learned to walk, walk according to a vowel or consonant mood. You can work only with the Gospel texts in the Mass. I think that in the Youth Services we can proceed more objectively. The Mass is also not given according to season; it does not adhere strictly to the calendar. What was done historically comes in question only for the reading. During the period from Christmas until Easter, there is an attempt to present the story of the birth and suffering, but later, we can only take the standpoint that the listeners should learn about the Gospels. I don’t think we can do this strictly according to the calendar.

A teacher asks about creating new classes at Easter.

Dr. Steiner: It is a question of space and even more so of teachers. The problem is that there are no more people within the Anthroposophical Society who could teach within the Waldorf School. We can find no more teachers, and male teachers are nowhere to be found within our movement.

A teacher asks what they can do about the poor enunciation of the children.

Dr. Steiner: You mean you are not doing the speech exercises we did during the seminar? You should have done them earlier, in the lower grades. I gave them for you to do. It is clear the children cannot speak properly. You should also do the exercises for the teachers, but you need to have a feeling for this improper speaking. We have often discussed the hygiene of proper speech. You should accustom the children to speaking clearly at a relatively early age. That has a number of consequences. There would be no opportunity for doing German exercises in Greek class, but it is quite possible during German class. You could do speech exercises of various sorts at nearly every age.

In Switzerland, actors have to do speech exercises because certain letters need to be pronounced quite differently if they are to be understood, g, for example. Every theater particularly studies pronouncing g. Concerning the course by Mrs. Steiner, you should never give up requesting it. At some time you will have to get it from her. If you request it often enough, it will happen.

Some teachers ask about the school garden and how it could be used for teaching botany.

Dr. Steiner: Cow manure. Horse manure is no good. You need to do that as well as we can afford to do. In the end, for a limited area, there can be no harmony without a particular number of cattle and a particular amount of plants for the soil. The cattle give the manure, and if there are more plants than manure, the situation is unhealthy.

You cannot use something like peat moss, that is not healthy. You can accomplish nothing with peat. What is important is how you use the plants. Plants that are there to be seen only are not particularly important. If you grow plants with peat, you have only an appearance, you do not actually increase their nutritional value. You should try to observe how the nutritional value is diminished when you grow seedlings in peat.

You need to add some humus to the soil to make it workable. It would be even better if you could use some of Alfred Maier’s manure and horn meal. That will make the soil somewhat softer. He uses ground horns. It is really a homeopathic fertilizer for a botanical garden, for rich soil. In the school garden, you could arrange the plants according to the way you want to go through them. Sometime I will be able to give you the twelve classes of plants.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to propose that we begin today with the disciplinary problems.

A teacher: F.R. threw a stone at another student and hit him on the head. He has been suspended.

Dr. Steiner: I do not agree with the proposal that was made to deal with this problem. It would look as though we thought we could have a strong effect upon such boys by dealing with them in a way that is something of a caricature. We actually know only from what other students have said how bad the situation was. Now, however, things are better. We can hardly do more than require F.R. to appear before a committee or perhaps the entire faculty over Easter, and then we can question him. I would like to speak with him then, also. Has his father reacted?

A teacher: The father has given up leaving him at school.

Dr. Steiner: I think we should decide that I will speak to F.R. when I come. The situation is, of course, not good, but I would not recommend expelling him. He always behaves well after you speak with him, and that lasts for a time. There is always a reason when he behaves like that, but afterward he is sorry.

A teacher speaks about a girl, S.F., in sixth grade. She ran away from the people she was living with and tried to walk to where her mother lives, a long distance away. The police found her while she was walking there. Dr. Steiner received a letter from her uncle mentioning that the housemother had spoken deprecatingly about the girl.

Dr. Steiner: Are we simply here to marvel at all the good children? Children are not the way we would like to have them. This whole situation shows only that Mrs. N., her housemother, doesn’t know how to handle her. It is quite clear she hasn’t the least idea about how to handle the girl. Our task is to educate children, and not to judge how good or bad they are. This situation shows that we should not send any more children to live with Mrs. N. Her uncle has certainly maintained a good attitude. Of course, it would make someone angry when such things are said about a child. To call her a whore is so silly that I am at a loss for words. We cannot allow Mrs. N. to mix into our affairs here. The girl has a very good character. Physically, she is not quite normal and is a little smaller than she should be. All these things show that she needs to be treated carefully. We should just leave things as they are with her and simply tell her that after Easter she will be moved to a better home. It would also be good if we wrote to her uncle and told him that we do not agree with Mrs. N.’s behavior. We still do not have sufficient contact with the children here. Although we are very careful with our methods, we should not simply leave the children to themselves. They need contact with the faculty. With the methods we use, we cannot, as a faculty, live in Olympian heights, above the private situations of the children. The children also need a little human contact with the faculty.

A teacher reports about N.N. who had stolen something and had behaved very poorly.

Dr. Steiner: His is a difficult case. We need to remember that no father is present. His mother, who has always been a rather unfortunate woman with no inner fortitude, hangs onto the boy. She does not know what to do and has always been disturbed by every message she receives from Stuttgart. She also did not know whether she had enough money to leave him here. With her, all this insecurity is constitutional. She is quite unstable psychologically. That is clear from the fact that she is now here in an insane asylum. That is something that could have just as easily occurred earlier. She may well return to her earlier situation.

This woman’s entire psychological makeup was transferred from her astral body into the boy’s etheric body. He has absorbed it organically, so that his behavior is a genuine picture of his mother’s psychological situation. In the astral body, it is only an insecurity in making decisions, in not knowing what to do. With him, it results in a desire to show off. Take, for instance, one of the worst cases, when he acted shamelessly in front of a window. His mother’s psychological situation remains in the realm of judgment, so that allowing her soul to be seen in a shameless way is a psychological illness. With the boy, it has gone into physical exhibitionism. Here you can see how heredity actually proceeds. The things that exist in the parents’ souls can be seen in the physical bodies of the next generation. That is something that is known medically.

It is quite clear to me that it is important for us to treat this boy with good intentions until he reaches the age of eighteen or nineteen, when his conscience will speak. First, he needs to properly integrate the part of his I from his previous incarnation that is the basis of his conscience. It is not yet properly integrated, so his conscience does not play the same role as conscience does in others who are further along. He experiments with all kinds of things. People always experiment with their higher self when their lower self does not yet contain what keeps them firm and strong. This will last until he reaches eighteen or nineteen. You need to treat him with good intentions, or you will have it on your own conscience that you allowed him to be corrupted; and what develops in that way will remain corrupted. He is really very talented, but his talent and his moral constitution are not developing at the same rate. Today, he has an organic moral insanity. We need to carry such children past a certain age through our well-intentioned behavior without approving of what they do. Conscious theft was not at all present in the case where they hid some money, and so forth. Keep him in the remedial class; that will be good for him. We should continue to treat him in the same way.

The situation with his mother is much more unpleasant for us as anthroposophists. Her coming to the place she had always dreamed of certainly caused her present situation. She had always dreamed about Stuttgart.

We have other situations that are a result of current events and the effects of German nationalism upon the school. I have already been told about them. I do not feel that this trend began with one boy alone. The question is whether the boys do this just because they have too much time on their hands, or whether they belong to some group. This situation is difficult to understand. You can do something positive here only by undertaking things that would tend to include these boys and girls. Recall for a moment that nationalism does not need to play a very large role at that age. What attracts them is all the fanfare. They have the impression that our Waldorf teachers sit at home on Sundays making long faces down to their waists and meditating and so forth. The preacher is something else, again. “What kind of people are these, anyway?” If we do nothing about that, the problem could increase, under certain circumstances. The impression that the faculty sits on Olympic thrones has spread too far.

You can do something else to counter that. Of course, you don’t need to do everything yourself, but you could support Dr. X. so that the children have something to do. I thought it was a very good idea to carefully choose a number of our younger people from the Society and ask them to undertake some trips with the students. Surely even Waldorf School teachers could learn something from that about what is needed to arrange such things. Otherwise, the perception of your sitting on an Olympic throne will remain. Of course, the first responsibility of the faculty will always be leadership of the school, but you should still do something like that. These nationalistic things could have a far-reaching impact—we might end up with a corps of ruffians. I am not so afraid of the attitude as I am of the children turning into ruffians. If the students know we are together with them, they will not be caught by such things.

This also played a major role in the debates we had in Dornach about founding a youth section. Somehow, we must find a way within the Youth Section to create some kind of counterforce against all these other movements. You need only think about the youth groups within Freemasonry that use nationalistic aspirations everywhere. Here, under the careful guidance of the faculty, we must find a way to bring the youth movement into a healthy whole. Here, everything is still much too individual, too atomized. Our faculty needs to counter the general principle in Stuttgart of never working together, always working separately. A teacher asks about the upcoming final examinations.

Dr. Steiner: The children in the twelfth grade have written that they wish to speak with me. I can do that only when I am here Tuesday for the conference. I would like you to tell the whole class that.

In general, I think the results of the final examination have shown unequivocally that everything we have discussed is still true. It would, of course, have been better had we been able to add a special class and keep the Waldorf School pure of anything foreign to it. Everything we discussed in that regard is still the same and should not be changed. Nevertheless, the statistics seem to indicate that the poor results were due to the fact that the students were unable to solve problems for themselves because they were used to solving them as a group. You know it is very useful to have the children work together, and we have also seen that the class gives a better impression when they speak together than when they speak individually. We were somewhat short on time, but it seems you did not have the students work enough on solving problems alone. They did not understand that properly and were thus shocked by tasks to be solved alone. I have the impression that you overdid what is good about speaking together. For example, if a few were causing some trouble, you quickly changed to having them all speak together. It has become a habit to work only with the class as a whole. You did not make the transition into working with the children individually. That seems to me to be the essence of what was missing. We should have no illusions: The results gave a very unfavorable impression of our school to people outside. We succeeded in bringing only five of the nine students who took the test through, and they just barely succeeded. What will happen now with those who did not take the final examination or who failed it? When I am here on Wednesday, we need to discuss all these things with the twelfth-grade teachers.

A teacher requests some guidelines for the pedagogical conference to be held at Easter in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: The basis of the Vorstand’s decision about the conference was that the conference should express the significance of the Waldorf School within all of modern education and that we should clearly demonstrate the importance of the Waldorf School principle. In other words, you should say here and there why the Waldorf School and its methods are necessary. Such a presentation gives people the opportunity to notice the difference between Waldorf School pedagogy and other reform movements. Another perspective is that we can demonstrate what we have said to the youth movement in our letters to the newsletter.

The second letter to young members says that human beings presently do not do at all well to be born as children. It is really the case that now, when human beings are born as children, they are pushed into an educational method that totally neglects them and requires them to be old. It does not matter whether someone tells me about the content of today’s civilization when I am eighteen or when I am seventy-five. It sounds just the same, whether I hear it at eighteen or at seventy-five. That is either true or not. It can be proven or refuted logically. It is valid or not. You can grow beyond such a situation only after eighteen, so you might need to decide not to come into a child’s body at all, but instead to be born as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old body. Only then would things work.

An initiate from an earlier time, if born today, could not be an initiate again if he or she had to go through our present-day schools. I discussed that in Dornach in my lectures about the Garibaldi incarnation. He was an initiate, but his earlier initiation could appear only after he became separated from the world, a practical revolutionary. Garibaldi is only one example of how people today cannot express what exists within them. We must give children back their childhood. That is one task of the Waldorf School. Today’s youth are old.

We received a number of replies from young people in Dornach following the announcement of the Youth Section. They were all very honestly meant. The main thing I noticed was how old even the youth in Dornach are. They speak about old things, they cannot be young. They want to be young, but know that only in their subconscious. What has gone into their heads is mostly old. They are so clever, so complete. Young people must be able to be brash, but everything they say is so reasonable, so thought out, not at all spontaneous. I am happiest when spontaneous things happen; they may be unpleasant, but I like them best. What we spoke about at a youth meeting in Dornach a short time ago was so well thought out that it could have been said by professors. I made a joke about something, and they took it seriously. They have put on a cloak of thoughtfulness, which is ill-fitting at every point. You can see that in the way they speak. You feel very much like a child when today’s youth speak.

Regarding such things, you should express the responsibility of the Waldorf School to today’s youth with some enthusiasm at the Easter conference. We should not simply give clever lectures; we need some enthusiasm. We need to have some wisdom about how we speak of the relationship of the Anthroposophical Society to the school so that we do not offend people. We do not want them to say that we have been able to accomplish what we wanted since the beginning of the school, namely, an anthroposophical school. We need to show them that we have extended anthroposophy in order to do the things that are genuinely human. We need to show them that anthroposophy is appropriate for presenting something genuinely human, but we must do that individually. We should not give too strong an impression that we are lecturing about anthroposophy. We should show how we use anthroposophical truth in the school, not lecture abstractly about anthroposophy. That is the perspective we had at the time. The board of directors in Dornach follows such things with great interest. They want to be informed by everyone and to work on everything, but we need to round off some rough edges. The letters in the newsletter will, over time, discuss all aspects of anthroposophy.

The people in Bern are not asking the Waldorf School teachers for detailed lectures at the Easter pedagogical course. What they want are introductory remarks that will lead to discussions as they are usually held.

A teacher asks whether the present two eighth-grade classes should be combined in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: We need a third fifth grade class more than a second ninth-grade class. We could combine them. The children are fourteen or fifteen years old. You should be able to keep them under control. It is difficult to find an appropriate teacher, though I have tried. We can discuss the whole thing later.

A teacher asks whether it would be better pedagogically if the upper grades also had one class teacher for the whole time, like the lower grades.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do what is necessary simply by having one class teacher, if that teacher does not do what is really necessary. What we need is that everyone concerned with the upper grades wants to do what is necessary. I do not believe it is very important to have a single class teacher. If we all want a better relationship with the children, I do not see why we would need to restrict it.

A teacher asks about a possible summer camp in Transylvania.

Dr. Steiner: That may be possible, but I find it difficult to imagine how. The situation there is quite different. It is very much in the East. You can have some strange experiences there. I went to a lecture in Hermannstadt in the winter of 1888-89. When I arrived in Budapest, I was unable to make my connection. I had to travel via Szegedin and arrived at about two in the afternoon in Mediaš. I was told I would have to remain there for some time. I went into a coffee house in town where you had to scrape the dirt away with a knife. A number of players came in. There was something Vulcan- like and stormy in their astral bodies; they were somehow all tangled together. Everything went on with a great deal of activity and enthusiasm. The room was next to a pigsty and there was a horrible smell. You can get into such situations in that region, so we would have to protect the children from such experiences. Everyone gets bitten by all kinds of insects as well.

There had been some difficulties with Mr. Z., one of the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: I had the impression we should offer Mr. Z. a vacation to give him an opportunity to collect himself. My impression was that he needed some rest. The question now is to what extent we can still keep him in school. If he intensely felt how he is, we might be able to keep him. X. says he is unstable. We really can’t do anything other than send him on a vacation and bring him back again.

Concerning the entire matter, I would like to say that it seems to me that we must direct our attention toward not allowing such things as discussions with the students to develop. Where would we be if we had more discussions where the students can complain about the teachers? We cannot allow that. It was already very bad in the other case, which resulted in our expelling the students. Now, it is coming up again—a few students come and want to discuss things with the teachers. We cannot allow that. Z. does do all these things, but we cannot allow the students to undermine the authority of the teacher. That would result in the students judging the teachers, which is really terrible. Students sitting as judges over the teachers. We have to avoid that. Of course, one teacher yells at them more and another less, one is more creative, another less. However, we really cannot take such discussions seriously, where the students put the teacher before a tribunal. That doesn’t work. Were that to occur, what would happen is what they once proposed, that the teachers no longer give grades, but the students grade the teachers each week. After Easter, we have to see if we can have him work only in the lower grades. There is not much more we can do.

I fear Z. will always fall into such things. He will need to feel that behaving that way does not work, but that will take a longer time. You need to make the situation clear to him and tell him we may have to send him on a permanent vacation. He is a real cross to bear, but on the other hand, he is a good person. He did not find the right connection, and that has happened here also. A time may come when we can no longer keep him in school, but now we need to give him an opportunity to correct his behavior. I fear, though, he will not take it up.

In such cases, there is generally nothing to do but hope the person finds a friend and makes a connection, and that the friend can then help the person out of such childishness. In a certain way, everything he does is rather childish. In spite of his talents, he has remained a child in a certain area. He is at the same stage as the students, and that causes everything else.

His living conditions seem to be horrible, but I do not see the connection between his behavior and his living conditions. Others could have even worse living conditions and still not come up with the idea of doing such things in school. I feel sorry for him. He needs to find a friend, but has not done that. He would then have some support. There is no other way of helping such people. Apparently, he has nowhere to turn. It was perhaps a karmic mistake that he came into the faculty. If he found someone he belongs with, what I said would probably occur. I do not think, however, that there is anyone within the faculty that Z. could befriend. It is, perhaps, something like it was with Hölderlin, but not as bad.

Dr. Steiner: I am meeting with the students who took the final examination tomorrow at noon. The teachers who taught the twelfth grade should also come.

A teacher: We have received complaints about two grade reports.

Dr. Steiner: I have the impression that the style used in the reports was rather sloppy. We should not do that. When we write such a report as we discussed, we should make an effort to express things so that someone else can make something of it. That was not the case with these two reports. To my horror, I noticed that the name of one student was incorrectly spelled. To do that, you would really have had to have been very superficial. The two reports really depressed me. Actually, you need to rewrite these reports. You simply cannot use such phrases as, “He is not exactly the best.” Yes, it is difficult to write such reports, but if we cannot find some way of doing it, we will have to stop writing them. I understand it is difficult. Regardless of how terrible normal grading is, it does have the advantage that people cannot criticize it in this way. I also understand that there are things playing in the background, but I do not understand their playing a role in writing a report, particularly in a case where the children will be moving to America. If you want to make the report more personal, you must take that into account. Americans wouldn’t know what to do with such a report. If the children go to an American school, they will be treated like pariahs from the very beginning because of this. Perhaps we need to look into the case in more detail. In any event, I think you should rewrite the reports. People cannot get a picture of the children through these reports, but providing such a picture is exactly what they were intended to do. You can see you need to write them in a different style. The facts do not need to be changed. That is not what I mean at all, but you need to choose a different style. You need to take more care in writing the reports, otherwise such personal reports will not have the value they should have.

A teacher: What can we do about student tardiness?

Dr. Steiner: When the students are tardy in the morning, it has a bad effect on your teaching. Sometimes when I came here early, I had the impression that the way class was begun in the morning left much to be desired of the teachers. I thought someone should be in the corridor, so the children wouldn’t play hide and seek there. You should not be surprised that when children are left to themselves, they become excited in their play. We all would have done that. It seems to me there is something behind all this, leading me to believe that it was not just by chance that the few times I came early, there was no teacher, far and wide.

A teacher: Before class, we say the weekly verse together.

Dr. Steiner: Couldn’t you arrange to read the verse so that the school does not suffer? Anthroposophists commonly use esoteric things as an excuse. Esoteric practices exist so that other people will not see them. However, people see them quite clearly when everything becomes chaotic because the teachers want to prepare themselves in the proper way. I was also here once when the verse was spoken, but I did not find that it offered much esoteric deepening. I also noticed that a number of people were not present. I have to admit that I think the problem is that the teachers get up too late. It’s like old Spielhagen said, “I never leave a dinner party without being last.” For teachers, the exact opposite would be proper, namely, that they are always first at school. I don’t think that is the case here. What do you think about this?

They divide the classes and subject areas among the various teachers.

Dr. Steiner: We need to consider one other thing. It is connected with all the possibilities of development within the Anthroposophical Society, and the effects they can have. I would like to have Dr. Röschl come to Dornach for a while and do some work that is quite necessary if the pedagogical work is to continue. She should begin teaching at our continuation school there to create a form of “youth anthroposophy.” I have often spoken of the need to rework anthroposophy for youth. Anthroposophy as it is now is intended for adults. For grown-up young people, anthroposophy is, of course, good. What I am speaking of here is an anthroposophy appropriate for the rough-and-tumble years. That needs to be developed through genuine instruction. For that reason, I and the Vorstand intend to call Dr. Röschl to Dornach. We could do that by giving her a sabbatical, since non-citizens cannot be hired in Switzerland. She would, therefore, receive her salary from here. So, we need to find a replacement for Latin and Greek, as well as a teacher for the fifth grade.

A teacher reports again about the situation with F.R. and reads a letter signed by eight parents.

Dr. Steiner: This is a difficult case to decide. For now, only eight people signed, but if a larger number want F.R. expelled, it will be difficult to get around it. It is difficult to throw a child out, particularly when we have had him for as long as we have had F.R. He has been here five years. If we did that, we would also be throwing ourselves out, because it would show we did not know how to work with him. I also need to mention that the physician’s bill was only fifteen Marks, which is objective proof that the situation cannot be so bad. We need to remain objective, and I can see no real reason that would force us to throw the boy out. There is no really accepted authority in that class.

We should not take such things so seriously. I once experienced a similar situation in a class on drawing theory. The teacher was leaning over the drawing board and had a rather short frock coat on. One of the students gave him quite a slap on the part of the body that is normally hit. The teacher turned around and said to the student, “You must have confused me with someone else.”

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t know whether we should bring cramming into this or not. That is something we could consider for the next school year, but in that case it would be important for the children in the twelfth grade to participate. The main question is whether we should retain the Waldorf School method to the end and then add a cramming year. We could do that only for next year, since those now going into the twelfth grade would first have to complete the twelfth grade.

The difficulty with adding a cramming year is that we would not have enough teachers. We cannot just create another grade with the teachers that we now have. We would need quite a few new teachers.

A teacher asks about the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach.

Dr. Steiner: You should not imagine the school in Dornach as a replacement for other universities. Rather, it is a place where the things other universities do not teach are offered. It is not as though we would train doctors in Dornach. Imagine what a task that would be for Dr. Wachsmuth, to be in so many places at once. It is not as though we will transform the Scientific Section into a scientific faculty. That is particularly true since the Science Section is the newest member of the Vorstand. How should Dr. Wachsmuth, who is not so very big, do all that? I think Dr. Mellinger should spend half her time in Dornach in order to work with the social-economic questions we have decided upon. The truth is that it is ridiculous to continually start such things and then let them lie. The socioeconomic course exists, and it would be a good idea if we could create a fund here that would pay Dr. Mellinger so she could lecture on socioeconomics here a quarter of a year and then work a quarter year in Dornach.

The university exists in Dornach and must begin to really work. It must begin to do something.

Dr. Steiner: The classes are overfilled in the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. In the eighth grade and above, there are still some openings. We are limited by law in grades one through four; however, we will petition to be allowed to increase the number of students. We have had a number of new enrollments due to the conference. There are enough rooms.

They make a list of class teachers for the coming school year.

Dr. Steiner: You should telegraph Dr. Erich Gabert in Wilhelmshaven that he is to take over the 5c class, but he should first visit us for three weeks. The children should remain in the 5a and 5b classes until, but we will have to put sixty in each class. We will need to do that until he has settled in.

By Thursday we should hire Miss Verena Gildemeister to teach Latin and Greek.

The next question is what we do in the upper grades, nine through twelve. We can divide the ninth grade.

They divide the main lesson blocks for the upper grades among the teachers. They also assign teachers for foreign languages, religion, and eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have the question of what to do about the final examinations for this coming year. Do we want to continue as in the past or keep the twelve grades pure and then add a thirteenth year? In that event, the question will not arise this year. For now, we need to know what the students want. A large number want to take the final examination.

The students from the first grade will come tomorrow at 9:00, and the opening ceremony will be at 10:00. I will meet with the students of the present twelfth grade at 12:00 in one of the classrooms. I will find out to what extent they want to take the final examination. The teachers should also attend the meeting. If the students expect to take their final examinations this year, we will have to swallow the bitter pill. That would ruin the twelfth grade. If possible, we should try to avoid the final examination this year and create a cramming class for next year.

A teacher asks about the physics curriculum for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: We need to develop the twelfth-grade curriculum. We still need to discuss that.

We teach the following in physics: In the ninth grade, the telephone and steam engine; the theory of heat and acoustics. In the tenth grade, mechanics as such. In the eleventh grade, modern electrical theory. So now in the twelfth grade, we should teach optics.

Use pictures instead of rays. We need to emphasize the qualitative. Light fields and light-filled spaces. Do not talk about refraction, but about how a light field is compressed. We need to remove discussions about rays. When you discuss a lens, you should not show a cross section of a lens and this fantastic cross section of rays. Instead, you need to present a lens as something that draws a picture together and compresses or expands it. Thus, you should remain with what can be directly shown through vision. Leave rays out entirely. That is what you should do in optics. Other things need to be considered in other areas, but what is important is to remain within the qualitative. I do not mean the theory of color, but simply the objective facts. Don’t go into some thought-up picture, remain with the facts.

Concerning optics in the broadest sense, it is important to present:

1. Light as such, that is the first thing. Then the expansion of light and how the intensity decreases in relation to the expansion, that is, photometry.
2. Light and matter, what is often called refraction. Enlargement and reduction of pictures and distortions.
3. How colors are created.
4. Polarization.
5. Double refractions, as they are called. That is, things associated with incoherence and the way light expands.

In the first section on how light expands, you should include mirrors and reflections.

Optics is very important because so much of it is connected with spiritual life. You can certainly see why there is so little understanding of the spiritual. That understanding could exist. There is so little understanding of the spiritual because there is no real epistemology. Instead, there are only abstract, crazy ideas. But why is there no genuine cognitive theory? It is because since Berkeley wrote his book about vision, no one has properly made the connection between seeing and knowing.

If you were to seek the connections, you would not explain what occurs in a mirror reflection by saying, “Here is a mirror and a light ray falls upon it perpendicularly.” Instead, you would say, “Here is the eye,” and then you would explain that when the eye looks in a straight line, nothing happens other than that it looks in a straight line. You need to present a picture that shows that a mirror basically “draws” a picture of the object for the eye.

You therefore have a subjective attraction. You need to begin with vision, and then all optics will present itself to you differently. If you look straight at something, then your view is in balance. However, if you look at something in the mirror, your view is no longer balanced, but one-sided in the direction of the object. The minute you have a mirror, your vision is polarized. One aspect of the spatial dimension disappears when you look into a mirror. I discussed this to an extent in my lectures on optics.

A teacher asks about history for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Well, you have already gone through everything, so now the twelfth grade needs to gain an overview of the connections within history. As you know, I discuss in my pedagogy that at about age twelve, children should begin to understand causal concepts. Instruction in causal relationships would then continue until the twelfth grade, but you must enliven it and make it personal. In the twelfth grade, it is important to go a little below the surface, to try to explain some of the inner workings of history.

By presenting the entire picture of history in outline, you can show, for example, how the Middle Ages and more recent history are contained within ancient Greece, in a certain way. Thus, the Homeric period contains aspects of the time of the major tragedies of the Middle Ages, and the time of Plato and Aristotle relates to more recent times. The same is true for the Age of Rome. Thus, you should use individual peoples and cultures to treat history such that you show how things come together. You can show that ancient periods contained a Middle Ages and a more recent period. Therefore, show an ancient period, a middle period, and a recent period in each culture. The beginning of the Middle Ages is just as much an ancient period as the one in Greek history beginning with the ancient Greek myths.

Then you could also bring in broken cultures or incomplete cultures, like that of America which has no beginning, or the Chinese, which has no end, which ends in petrifaction, but is actually only the ancient period. Present the life of a cultural group in that way. Spengler was a little aware of this. Begin from the perspective that it is not just a sketch of historical events, but that different interwoven pieces have a beginning, middle, and end.

A teacher asks about twelfth-grade art class.

Dr. Steiner: The most proper thing to do would be to take Hegel’s aesthetic structure, symbolic art, classical art, romantic art. Symbolic art is the first, the art of revelation. Classical art goes more into external forms, and romantic art deepens that further. This can be seen in the art of various peoples. We find symbolic art with the Egyptians. We find all three in Greece, though symbolic and romantic art come up short. In more recent times, we find more classical and romantic art, and symbolic art comes up short.

Hegel’s Aesthetics is interesting even in the details. It is really a classic on aesthetics. That would be something for the twelfth grade. Symbolic art is typified in Egyptian art, where the other two were very rudimentary. Classical art is developed in Greece, where the forms that came before and after come up short. More modern art is classical and romantic, as Hegel describes. The most modern is actually romantic.

We begin instruction in the arts in the ninth grade, don’t we?

A teacher reports on how they have taught art in the past. In the ninth grade, specific areas of painting and sculpting; in the tenth grade, some things about German classical poetry; in the eleventh grade, how the poetic and musical elements are interwoven. One theme was to see how poetry and music since Goethe’s time move together under the surface.

Dr. Steiner: Work toward what I said for the twelfth grade; otherwise, what you have done until now is quite good. You should introduce them to the basics of architecture. If someone is teaching about architecture and construction in the twelfth grade, you could continue that discussion into architectural styles. We begin technology class in the tenth grade. We have weaving in the tenth grade, and you should show them how to make simple woven cloth. A sample is sufficient for that. In the eleventh grade, we have the steam turbine. They should have two hours a week in the tenth grade and one hour in the eleventh and twelfth grades.

A teacher asks about the ascidians as one of the twelve categories of animals.

Dr. Steiner: Those are the tunicates and salpas. Until now people have not seen them as being a separate genus.

A teacher asks about a student, B.K.

Dr. Steiner: I do not think it is really so terrible if such a boy is simply there. That will not pass by without a trace. The subconscious hears it. You will have to wait until he is fourteen. He should be unburdened as far as possible, so give him only a little bit to learn, but that should have a strong effect. His mother lies terribly. He should be required to paint at home.

A teacher asks about P.Z. in the sixth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Pay no attention to him. Let him play his tricks until he becomes tired of them. You should also see that the others pay no attention to him, so that he does his things alone.

A teacher: How should we seat the children in language class?

Dr. Steiner: In foreign languages, you could arrange the seating so that those who are interested in the sound sit together, and those who are interested in the content of the language sit together. In that way you would have groups of children you can treat differently and balance against one another.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing I would like to discuss is my discussion today with the present twelfth-grade students. With one exception, the students stated they did not need to take their final examinations at the end of this year, but could wait a year. At the end of the Waldorf School, they would go through a cramming class. It was important to them, however, that this cramming for the final examination be taught by the Waldorf School.

A teacher comments.

Dr. Steiner: The point is that we said we wanted to resolve this matter after meeting with the twelfth-grade students. We cannot handle such things if someone comes afterward and says there is still one more thing. If arguments are always presented about everything after it is done, then we will never finish anything. Things will only become confused. How is it that now there are suddenly two? Where did that come from? The problem is, that was overlooked. It makes no sense that such things occur suddenly. Is the faculty in control, or the children? The results should remain as they were today at noon, and that girl will need to have some sort of private instruction. In general, we should teach the class in a way appropriate to a twelfth-grade Waldorf School class.

The first thing we need to consider for the curriculum is literary history. Yesterday, I mentioned that, in general, they should have already covered the main content of literary history. A cursory survey will have to suffice for the things they have not learned. On the other hand, you should undertake a complete survey of German literary history in relation to things that play into it from outside.

Therefore, you have to begin with the oldest literary monuments and work them all into an overview. Begin with the oldest literary monuments, starting with the Gothic period, then go on to the Old German period and continue into the development of the ,em>Song of the Nibelungs and Gudrun. Do that in a cursory way, but so that they get a picture of the whole. Then, go on to the Middle Ages, the pre-classical period, the classical and romantic periods, up to the present. Give them an overview, but one that contains the general perspectives. The content should enable them to clearly know what they need to know about such people as Walther von der Vogelweide, Klopstock, or Logau. I think you could cover that in five or six periods. You can certainly do that.

I would then follow that with the main things they need to know about the present. You should discuss the present in much more detail with the twelfth grade. By present, I mean you would discuss the most important literary works of the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, then follow that with a more detailed treatment of the subsequent movements, so that they would have some insight into who Nietzsche and Ibsen were, or such foreigners as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and so forth. The result should be that we graduate well-educated people.

Next is history, which you should do in a similar way. Start with a survey of history as a whole, beginning with the history of the East, which then gives rise to Greece and more modern Christian developments. You can surely go into these things without teaching anthroposophical dogma. You can present things that have a genuine inner spirituality. At the workers’ school, for example, I once showed how the seven Roman kings followed the model of the seven principal aspects of the human being, since that is what they are. Of course, you cannot simply say that Romulus is the physical body, and so forth. Nevertheless, Livius’s History of Kings has that in its inner structure. We find that the fifth king, Tarquinius Priscus, is clearly a person of intellect, corresponding to the I. He brings a new impulse, just as with the spirit self, the Etruscan element. You should treat the last one, Tarquinius Superbus, such that the highest we can reach sinks in most deeply, as it, of course, did with the Roman people, where it sunk into the Earth.

In the same way, you can very beautifully develop oriental history. In Indian history, we find the formation of the physical body, in Egyptian history, the etheric body, and in Chaldaic- Babylonian history, the astral body. Of course, you cannot teach it in that form. You need to show how those human beings living in the astral developed astronomy, how the Jews have the principle of the I in the principle of Yahweh, and how the Greeks for the first time developed a true understanding of nature from a human perspective. The viewpoint of the earliest peoples was still within the human being. You could give them an overview you can be proud of. Historical events form a complete series.

Geography class will also consist in giving them an overview. In both history and geography, what is important is to give them an overview. They can then search out the details by themselves.

You could divide aesthetics and art class as we discussed yesterday: into symbolic, classical, and romantic art. You could also treat not only the science of art by saying that in Egypt it was symbolic, in Greece classical, and in what followed, romantic, but also, the arts themselves, in that architecture is a symbolic art, sculpture is a classical art, and painting, music, and poetry are the romantic arts. Thus you can view the arts themselves in a way that offers a kind of inner division.

In teaching aesthetics and art, you can treat the elements of architecture so that the young people will have a proper understanding of how a house is constructed, that is, you could include construction materials, the construction of a roof, and so forth, in aesthetics.

Then we have languages. There, it is better if we describe the goals by saying that in English or French the students should get an idea of modern literature.

Now we have mathematics. How far did the eleventh grade come in mathematics?

A teacher: In the eleventh grade we got as far as indeterminate equations in algebra. In trigonometry, aside from spherical trigonometry, they went as far as computing acute-angle triangles. In complex numbers, as far as Moivre’s theorem, then polynomial equations. In analytic geometry, we went as far as working with second-order curves, but we worked in depth only with the circle. In constructive geometry, we did sections and intersections.

Dr. Steiner: Our experience with last year’s class has shown that we cannot do it that way. It is too much for the human soul to do such things.

What is important is to go through spherical trigonometry, that is, the elements of analytical spatial geometry, in a way that is as clear as possible.

In descriptive geometry we have Cavalieri’s perspective. The students should be able to draw a complicated form, such as a house, in Cavalieri’s perspective. The inside as well as the outside.

In algebra, you need only cover the beginnings of differential and integral calculus. They do not need to be able to compute maximums and minimums. They will learn that in college. You should teach them only the basic concepts of calculus, but do that thoroughly.

You should emphasize spherical trigonometry and how it is used in astronomy and geodesy in a way appropriate to their age, so that they have a general understanding of it.

Spatial analytical geometry should be used to teach them how equations can express forms. I would not be afraid to complete this subject by giving them examples of questions like, What curve is represented by the equation

which results in an astroid. The main thing is to make equations so transparent that the students have a feeling for how things are hidden within equations.

You should also do the opposite. If I draw a curve or place a body in space, they should be able to recognize the general form of the equation without necessarily having it correct in all details, but at least have an idea of what the equation would be.

I don’t think the normal mathematical education that connects differential and integral calculus with geometry is particularly useful. I think it should be connected with quotients instead. I would begin with the quotient

then make the dividend and the divisor smaller and smaller, simply as numbers, and then go on to develop differential quotients. I would not begin with the idea of continuity, because you do not really get an idea of differential quotients that way. Don’t begin with differentials, but with differential quotients. If you begin with a series, then go on to geometry only after you have presented tangents, that is, move from the secant to the tangent. Go on to geometry only after the students have completely comprehended differential quotients purely as numbers or through computations, so that they are presented with the picture that geometric visualization is only an illustration of what occurs numerically. You can then teach them integrals as the reverse process. Thus, you will have a possibility of showing them that the computation is not a fixing of geometry, but that geometry is an illustration of the computation. That is something people should consider more often. For example, you should not consider positive and negative numbers as something in themselves, but as a series of numbers such as

In the last instance, I do not have enough, I am missing one, and I write that as (-1). Emphasize only what is missing without using a number line. You will then remain within numbers. A negative number is the amount that is not present. It is a deficiency of the minuend. There is much more inner activity in working that way. You can excite some of the students’ capacities in a much more real way than when you do everything beginning from geometry.

A teacher: Where should we begin?

Dr. Steiner: Now that the class is ready for spherical trigonometry, you will need to move from trigonometry to developing the concept of the sphere qualitatively, that is, without starting computations. Instead of drawing on a plane, they need to begin drawing on a sphere, so that they get an idea of what a spherical triangle is, that is, how a triangle lies upon a sphere. You need to make that visible for the children, then go on to show them how the sum of the angles is not equal to 180°, but is larger. They need to really understand triangles on a sphere, with their curved lines, and then begin the computations. In geometry, the computation is only the interpretation of the sphere. I do not want you to begin by considering the sphere from its midpoint, but from the curvature of the surfaces. Then you can go on to a more general discussion of the non-linearity, how you could look at a corresponding figure on an ellipsoid, or how it would look on a paraboloid, where it is no longer completely closed. Don’t begin with the center, but with the distortion of the surface; otherwise you will have difficulties with other solids. In a way, you will need to think of yourself on the surface; in a sense, you will have to form a picture of what you would experience if you were a spherical triangle. You need to ask yourself, What would I experience as a triangle on an ellipsoid?

In that connection, you will also have to show the students what would happen if you used the normal Pythagorean theorem on a spherical triangle. You cannot, of course, use squares for that. Doing things this way has an effect upon the general education, whereas normally they affect only the intellect.

You can cover permutations and combinations quickly, and, if there is enough time, the beginnings of probability theory, for instance, the life expectancy of a human being.

In the eleventh grade, you need to go through sections and intersections, shadows and indeterminate equations, and analytical geometry up to conic sections. In eleventh-grade trigonometry, teach the functions in a more inner way, so that you present the principle relationships in sine and cosine. There, of course, you will have to begin from geometry.

Begin twelfth-grade physics with optics, as we discussed yesterday.

Natural history. We have already discussed zoology. In geology and paleontology, begin with zoology, since only then do they have some inner value. You can begin with zoology, go on to paleontology, and arrive at the various layers of the Earth. In botany, you can begin with flowering plants (phanerogans), and then also go on to geology and paleontology.

Chemistry. We want to consider chemistry in its innermost connections to the human being. In the twelfth grade, our students already have an idea of organic and inorganic processes. It is now important to go on to those processes found not only in animals, but also in human beings. We can speak without hesitation about the formation of ptyalin, pepsin, and pancreatin. You should teach the metallic processes in the human being by developing things from principles, for instance, something we could call the lead process in the human being, so that the students understand them. You need to show that within the human being all materials and processes are completely transformed. In connection with the formation of pepsin, what is important is to begin with the formation of hydrochloric acid, showing that it is lifeless. Then go on to consider the formation of pepsin as something that can occur only within the etheric body, even though the astral body has some effect upon it. In other words, show how the process completely disintegrates and then is rebuilt. Begin hydrochloric acid, with the inorganic process using salt. Discuss all the characteristics of hydrochloric acid, then go on to show how that differs from what occurs in an organic body. The result should be the demonstration of the differences between vegetable protein, animal protein, and human protein, so the students have an idea that there is a progression of protein based upon the various structures of the etheric body. Human protein is different from animal protein. You can also begin with differences by looking at a lion and a cow. In the lion, we find a process that is much more directed toward the circulation than in a cow where the entire process is more directed toward the metabolism. In the lion, the metabolic process is formed together with the breathing, whereas in the cow, the breathing is supported by the digestion. This will enliven the processes more. You need to have an inorganic, an organic, an animal, and a human chemistry. Some examples for children might be hydrochloric acid and pepsin, or blackthorn juice and ptyalin. Then they will get the picture. You could also use the metamorphosis of folic acid into oxalic acid.

A teacher asks whether to include quantitative chemistry.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is certainly very difficult to explain these things with what you can normally assume. You need to begin with cosmic rhythm to explain the periodic system. That is the way you need to go, but you cannot do that in school. It is complete nonsense to begin with atomic weights; you need to begin with rhythms. You can explain all of the quantitative relationships through harmonics. The relationship between oxygen and hydrogen is, for example, an octave. But, that would go too far. I think you should develop the concepts we mentioned before and that will be enough for the twelfth-grade curriculum.

Eurythmy is not intended for the final examination.

Religion class. In general, the character of religious instruction is already in the curriculum. I can certainly not add much to what you have already presented. There is nothing we really need to change. The question is what to do in the upper grades. In the end, you should be able to give the twelfth grade a survey of world religions, but not in a way that gives the children the idea that some of them are untrue. Instead, you need to show the relative truths in their individual forms. That would be the ninth level. In the eighth level, you need to go through Christianity so that it appears in the ninth level as the synthesis of religions. Develop Christianity in the eighth level, and in the ninth level emphasize world religions so that, once again, their high point is Christianity. In the seventh level, you should present a kind of evangelical harmony, present Christianity in its essence and in the way it appears. By then, the children will all know the Gospels. Therefore, at the seventh level, a harmony of Gospels, at the eighth, Christianity, and at the ninth, world religions.

I will prepare the curriculum for modern languages in the ninth through twelfth grades and give it to you at a meeting about the foreign language classes.

There is a discussion about the university classes in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to hear whether you think what has been proposed for the courses is too much or not. I would like to hear what you expect. What you thought of for the course that is just beginning and will continue until the next summer vacation? If we want to avoid a terribly chaotic situation, we certainly should not do things more than five days a week. I thought of doing a five-lecture series; Wednesday and Friday are not available. I could give lectures on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and two on one day.

I think we should present only five areas. We cannot present social understanding yet. It would also be very good to teach some practical subject, say, geodesy. We don’t want to have any specific themes. I think Dr. Schwebsch could teach aesthetics and literature; Stein, history; Unger, epistemology; Baravalle, mathematics; and Stockmeyer, geodesy.

It seems that one error has been that there is too much lecturing. Sometime we will also need to present something about music theory. We should do that in the course next winter. So that there will be a certain amount of liveliness, I propose that wherever possible, you bring the most recent events into the discussion. It would be good, for example, to work through our perspective on aesthetics as I discussed in the two little essays. Since there is only one lecture per week, you can only give a sketch. You should, for instance, handle the theme “Beauty arises when the sense-perceptible receives the form of the spirit” as I did that in my essay “Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetic.” You could show that for the various arts, for architecture, painting, and so forth. In literature, I think you should discuss the most recent publications, namely, how Ibsen, Strindberg, and so forth reveal an unconscious movement toward a certain kind of spirituality, and then also, of course, the pathological, like for instance, Dostoyevsky.

Marie Steiner: Shouldn’t we also discuss Morgenstern, Steffen, and Steiner?

Dr. Steiner: You could extend Steffen’s characterization of lyrics.

In history, you could present an overview of the period from 1870 until 1914, stopping at that point. People would leave with rather long faces saying that you have only gotten to the World War and now they need to give some thought to the war itself. Go only to the assassination at Sarajevo.

In mathematics, you will have to orient yourselves by what was presented previously. I think it is important to treat the most important mathematical things. (Speaking to Dr. von Baravalle) You could present the things you have in your dissertation. It would also be very good if you developed mathematical concepts, such as those of normal functions or elliptic functions, in a visual way. Don’t just drone on about formal mathematics. Present how things are qualitatively. It would also be good to use that as a starting point to go into the entirety of relativity theory, how it is justifiable or not. I think people should have an idea of the following: You could present the question of relativity theory through the example of a cannon that is shot in Freiburg. It can be heard at some distance and you can compute the distance. You would then go on to compute how the time would change if you moved toward or away from the noise. The time it takes to hear the noise would lengthen if you moved from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt. If you then moved in the opposite direction the time would shorten until it was zero when you heard the cannon in Freiburg itself. You could then continue past Freiburg, so that you would have to hear the cannon before it was shot. That is the basic error of the theory of relativity. It can’t be so difficult to develop this mathematical concept of movement.

I think the problem with these courses is that they are actually unnecessary. With some differences, you have simply continued what other popular lectures offer, which is unnecessary; there is no real need for them.

What is important in geodesy is to get away from presenting a copy of the Earth. For example, if you begin, as people do, to try to avoid error through differential methods, you will need to explain geodetic methods to a certain extent. You will then have asymptotic methods. You could then discuss to what extent human beings depend upon approaching only certain things. You can show how extremely useful it is not to think in a determined way about some things, such as the character of a human being, but to think in a way similar to the way you measure with a diopter, where there is always some small difference. You can come closer to the truth in that way than you can when you state everything in specific words. We should characterize people only by looking at them from one side and then another. A person can be a choleric and a melancholic at the same time. This is the perspective you should bring to the fore. If you use geodesy as a basis for explaining the problems of the Copernican system, you can achieve a great deal.

You should form the lectures series by using such titles as: “What Can Aesthetics and Literature Add to Life?”; “What Can History Add to Life?”; “What Can Epistemology Add to Life?”; “What Can Mathematics Add to Life?”; and “What Can Geodesy Add to Life?” Under that, you could put “The Board of Directors of the Anthroposophical Society and the Faculty of the University Courses,” and above it, as a title, “Goetheanum and University Courses.”

These proposals are being made to you from Dornach.

A teacher reads aloud the ninth lecture from Practical Advice to Teachers and the curriculum directions given until this time as summarized by Mr. B.

Dr. Steiner: The foreign-language teachers were interested in hearing what directions have already been given. We should not forget there has been a certain difficulty in the foreign language class. In the past, students of the most differing ages came to us, so that we also needed to take new students in the higher class. We could assume that if a nine-year-old child came, he or she had already learned a certain amount. That was, however, not the situation with foreign languages. Children who had never learned a single word of French or English came into the fifth grade, so we could not establish a strict curriculum. It is still a question whether we are able to set up a specific curriculum for a given year or whether we can have only a general perspective we would follow as best we can throughout all the classes when we accept new children into the first grade.

Our teaching of foreign languages is somewhat independent. We consider what is taught in the first two hours to be the basis of education. In the future, we must treat our foreign language teaching somewhat more freely.

In general, we should teach a child in the first grade a foreign language, and we should teach foreign languages through speaking until the end of the third grade. We should avoid having the children learn words or phrases through translation. Instead, they should learn things directly from the word or phrase. Therefore, we should not associate a foreign word with the corresponding German word, but with the subject itself, and should always speak in the foreign language. That is particularly important until the end of the third grade. During that period, they should not even notice that grammar exists.

In working with longer pieces, do not be disturbed if the children learn a verse or a poem purely by sound, even though they may have little understanding of the content. In an extreme case, a child may learn four, six, or eight lines that he or she remembers only by the sounds. Under some circumstances, that could be of considerable help in learning the language, since the child would later learn to understand things memorized by sound. Quite clearly, poetic material is to be preferred over prose during the first three years. It is quite clear from this that we cannot view the individual years separately. Instead, we must handle them completely equally.

We now come to the fourth grade. Then it is best to no longer avoid the beginnings of grammar. However, do not make the children learn rules, but make visible the texts they have already learned. Thus, you develop the rules of grammar inductively, and once they have been formed, you should require the children to remember them, so that they then have rules. You should not fall prey to the extreme by thinking that children should learn no rules at all. Instead, you should develop the rules inductively, so that they will know them by heart. Remembering rules is part of the development of the I during the period from nine to ten years. We can support the development of the I by giving the children the rules of grammar in a logical way based upon the structure of the language.

You can then go from poetry to prose. Until the end of the third grade, you should hold prose to a minimum. Beginning in fourth grade, you can choose material such that the grammar and the material can be learned in parallel. For that, you should select only prose. We would make poetry pedantic if we only used it for abstracting grammatical rules, but prose can certainly be used for that. While using prose, you can gradually move into a kind of translation.

Of course, the foreign language teachers have tried to teach in this way until now. Nevertheless, it has come up that the teaching has been more from the direction of lexicography, and that you have not sought the connection between the subject and the foreign word. Instead, you made the connection between the German word and the foreign word. That is easier for the teacher, but it results in teaching languages in contrast to one another, so the feeling for the language is not properly developed.

We need to begin that in the fourth grade, but we need to limit ourselves primarily to teaching how words are formed.

In the fifth grade go on to syntax, continuing with it in the sixth grade into more complicated syntactic forms. The readings would, of course, follow in parallel. You should not have the children translate from German into the foreign language. Instead, have them write short essays and such things. You should work with such translations only by saying something short and then having the children express the same thing in the foreign language. Thus, you would have them say in the foreign language what they have heard in German. That is how you should work with translations until the end of sixth grade. In any event, you should completely avoid having them translate longer German passages directly into the foreign language.

On the other hand, the children should read a great deal, but their readings should contain much humor. The class should have an enjoyable discussion of everything connected with the readings, particularly concerning customs. You should discuss the living situations and attitudes of the people who speak the foreign language. Thus, you should include, in a humorous way, a study of the people and customs in the fifth and sixth grades. Also take idiomatic expressions into account in the fifth grade by including the sayings and idiomatic expressions contained in the foreign language, so that the children have a corresponding saying in that language for the various occasions in life where they would use a German saying. These are often expressed in a much different way.

For the seventh grade, the instruction should take into account that a large number of children will leave the school following the eighth grade. In the seventh and eighth grades, you should emphasize reading and working with the character of the language evident in sentences. Of course, it is important that they learn about the things that would occur in the everyday life of the people who speak the language. They should practice by reading texts and retelling things in the foreign language so that they gain a capacity for expression. You should have them translate only rarely. Have them retell what they have read, particularly dramatic things. Do not have them retell lyric or epic readings, but they can retell in their own words the dramatic things they have read. In the eighth grade, you should also teach them rudimentary things about poetry and meter in the foreign language. Also, in these two last classes, you should give a very brief overview of the literary history of the respective language.

We now have ninth grade. There, you need to review grammar, but do it with some humor by always giving them humorous examples. Through such examples, you can go through all the grammar of the language in the course of the year. Of course, you do that in parallel with the exciting readings the class does.

In the tenth grade, emphasize the meter of the language by reading primarily poetry. In the eleventh grade, the readings should be mostly drama in parallel with some prose texts and a little about the aesthetics of the language. You can develop poetry from the dramatic readings, and you should continue that into lyric and epic poetry for the twelfth grade. There, the class should read a number of things related to the present and to the area where the foreign language is spoken. The students should, therefore, have some knowledge of modern foreign literature.

That is, then, the general curriculum we will want in the future. You should never read anything without making the children aware of the entire content. In the fourth and fifth grades, you can begin with the basics of grammar, but see that the children also speak.

I would like to say something else in regard to drama in the seventh and eighth grades. You could find, for example, some longer passage from one of Moliére’s comedies that you want to read. In a humorous way, you need to tell the children the content—be as detailed and dramatic as possible—then have them read the passage.

In the course of the past years, we have made small additions to what was said earlier, and we should leave it that way, in principle. They should begin their written work only at that stage presented in the course.

The teaching of ancient languages has, of course, a particular position, and it actually needs a special curriculum, which I will work out in more detail and give to you. You probably already know what we did previously and the things we slowly changed.

A teacher requests a seminar on languages and Dr. Steiner agrees.

Dr. Steiner: I would now like to hear about some of your teaching experiences since Easter.

A teacher asks about Bible stories for the third grade.

Dr. Steiner: I have seen that some of you use the Hebel edition of the Bible. My feeling is that we should use only the Schuster edition because of its exemplary structure. It is better not to work exactly with the text of the stories, but to present them freely. You should give only free renditions to the children, and the book itself is only a help for remembering and reviewing. In that case, the older Schuster edition is still the best; the new edition is not nearly so good. As interesting as it may be to read Hebel, if you want to read something you already know, it is not appropriate for teaching about the Bible, quite aside from the fact that the printing in the present edition is terrible. I think we should stay with the old Schuster edition. Its structure is really very good. On the other hand, it is rather pedantic and Catholic-oriented, but I do not think you run any danger of being too Catholic.

A religion teacher asks about the difference between working with the Bible stories in religion class and in the main lesson of the third grade.

Dr. Steiner: You can learn a great deal if you recall the principle for working with Bible stories in these two different places. When we teach Bible stories in the main lesson, that is, in the actual curriculum, we treat them as something generally human. We simply acquaint the children with the content of the Bible and do not give it any religious coloring at all. We treat the stories in a profane way; we present the content simply as classical literature, just like all other classical literature.

When we work with the Bible in religion class, we take the religious standpoint. We use these stories for teaching religion. If we approach this difference with some tact, that is, without giving any superficial explanations in the main lesson, then we can learn a great deal for our own pedagogical practice by working with this subtle difference. There is a difference in the “how,” an extraordinarily important difference in “how.”

What was told before is then read so that it is firmly seated. I cannot believe the Schuster Bible is poor reading material. The pictures are quite humorous and not at all bad. Perhaps a little cute, but not really sentimental. It is good enough as reading material for the third grade and can also serve as an introduction to reading Fraktur.

A teacher asks about difficulties with new students in the stenography class.

Dr. Steiner: The only thing we can do is to make stenography an elective. We will make it something the children should learn.

Suppose a student comes into the eleventh grade. In previous years, he had a Catholic teacher for natural history. Now he comes and says he wants to learn only Catholic natural history. There is nothing we can do to free him of that.

We are teaching the best stenographic system, Gabelsberger’s, and it is obligatory because in our modern times it is needed for a complete education. I do not think it is prejudice at all. It is the only system that has some inner coherence. The others are all simply artificial. We need to think about having this class in a lower grade.

A teacher: Don’t the first-grade children have too much school because of the language class?

Dr. Steiner: If you see the children are tired, it would be better to drop that subject in the first two grades rather than to try some sort of tricks. I would prefer that we teach the little children only two hours a day if that were possible.

The school doctor asks about curative eurythmy exercises.

Dr. Steiner: That can be only a question of using the time most efficiently. Some children are given curative eurythmy exercises for a particular period, and they should be done daily. The children will have to leave class for that. If they are doing some curative eurythmy exercises, then they are sick. Since it is a therapy, you should be able to remove the children from class at any time except during religion class. If they miss something in class, it is just karma. There can be no difficulties if curative eurythmy is given the importance it is due. No one should hold curative eurythmy in such low regard that a child is not allowed to go.

A teacher asks about Cavalieri’s perspective in twelfth-grade geometry.

Dr. Steiner: Cavalieri’s perspective is more realistic. In it we see everything in small pieces. That perspective should be used wherever possible. It is designed for architecture. The architrave in the first Goetheanum was done in Cavalieri’s perspective, as though you were walking around a room while looking at the walls.

I want the children to have an equal opportunity to do all of the geometric constructions, for example, the sections through a cone, to sketch them freehand. They can do the actual drawing, the real construction, with a compass and a ruler.

A teacher asks about year-end reports.

Dr. Steiner: There is not much to say about the reports. The first school-year reports were really very interesting. Not giving grades was new; instead you evaluated the children in your own words. Many people received that in a very good way. You wrote the sentences with tremendous love. If you look at those reports today, you will see they were written out of love.

When I read some reports because someone complained, I found that for a large number of teachers writing the reports had gradually become a burden, just as in other schools, so that the teachers were happy when they were done. You can see they are no longer written with love. They have been formulated in the driest prose. It would be better if we used the 4, 3, 2, 1 grading system. We need to be more careful about how we write and be somewhat more creative. You should be more diligent and more loving, otherwise the result might be something like, “Can’t do anything, but will be better,” or, “Behavior leaves something to be desired,” and so forth. Then, the reports would no longer serve any purpose. I have nothing against it if you think it is too great a burden. Then we will have to swallow the bitter pill and give regular reports. That would be a shame, though. We cannot allow them simply to be written in the last week, but we cannot have any rules about them, because we would need a special rule for each student.

I was disturbed by S.T.’s report. When I decided to accept him, I said explicitly that we could not do so if we were going to be stuffy about it. We would have to be more open. That was when I was in J. We cannot have a Waldorf School and depend upon support if we set ourselves outside the world. It would have been much easier to say that we cannot accept such a student. The question was one of solving a more difficult problem, and thus that young boy came to us. I certainly did not hide the fact that we were subjecting ourselves to a real problem. I said all of that at the time. We needed to solve a problem: a boy who was very gifted for his age came into the ninth grade. Look at the questions he asked, but on the other side, he couldn’t do anything. He was lazy in every subject. But then he received a report that neglected everything that was said at the time. This drives me up the wall! It was written very pedantically, with no consideration of the special circumstances, and with no consideration of his psychology. I was just mortified by the faculty here. The report had no meaning for the boy, and his mother lost her head. The report was a wonderful example of disinterest. In this case, you did not seem to be as talented as usual. You wrote in the style of a very average middle school teacher.

You should write the reports for those who are to learn something about the child. You can tell the children what you have to say in a much more direct way throughout the year. The reports are for others to read. This report gives no indication whatsoever that the boy went through the most important year of his life and was very different at the end of the year than he was at the beginning. The positive things that occurred are not at all visible. We did not need to bring him to the Waldorf School to get such a report. Of course, you can take the position of a schoolmaster, but we should actually be much more open.

You need to write the reports with more love. You did not do that. You need to look at the individual students with more love. This report is sloppy, even superficially. Something like this looks bad. A report like this should be well organized and carefully written. You may have to describe the inner development of some children. If our teaching fails, it would be better not to take any risks if we fear things will get worse because the care needed for such an individual is not here.

A teacher asks whether L.K. from the third grade should go into the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: Her mother is horrible. She was that way already as a young girl. It would not be appropriate to put the child into the remedial class where we should really have only children with some intellectual or emotional problems. K. is simply bad, and that would only be a punishment. She would not fit into the remedial class. Don’t put everyone in the remedial class.

A teacher: Should we consider K.E. in the fourth grade as normal?

Dr. Steiner: What is normal? You cannot draw some line. K.E. is not abnormal, but under such circumstances, you could put such a child in a lower grade.

A teacher asks about R.A. in the fifth grade, who had stolen something.

Dr. Steiner: For four years he has stolen nothing, but now he is beginning to steal. It is our task to make him into a proper young man. There must be something missing in the contact between the faculty and the children. If the children have genuine trust in the teachers, it is actually not at all possible for such moral problems to arise. You should certainly keep him in the class. He is not a kleptomaniac. He did it alone. You need to understand the children’s psychology better. It is possible that sometimes children do things because of a dare. It is also possible a hidden laziness exists. I certainly told him my mind quite clearly.

A teacher asks about a course in voice eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: The eurythmy teachers and Mr. Baumann should have been at the tone eurythmy course in February.

In this case, the question is somewhat different. I began tone eurythmy in 1912. At that time a number of students came, Kisseleff, Baumann, and Wolfram. The course expanded when a number of eurythmists also came. Lori Smits continued it, but something foreign came into it then. This course should be used to make a new beginning. We will have to see how far we get. This is something that could be especially important. Since eurythmy is also done here in school, it could lead to closing the eurythmy class.

Dr. Schubert, Dr. Kolisko, and anyone else who can should attend the curative pedagogy course.

Miss Michels will go to the agricultural course. Someone will have to take over the children at that time.

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, I could not visit the classes, but you could tell me about them. I have not finished the curriculum for the ancient languages yet.

A teacher asks whether there will be levels of grammar in the foreignlanguages classes like those in German.

Dr. Steiner: Well, this is the situation. What I gave was according to the needs of the respective ages of the children. What they need is that you give them the nuances of the state of their souls at their age. Children learn how to enliven such nuances most easily through their mother tongue. It is best to make a connection with other languages after they have learned things in their mother tongue, for instance, to show how differently other languages express the same mood of soul. You can certainly make comparisons like that.

You should not begin teaching them grammar before the age of nine or ten. Develop your language teaching during the earlier stages purely from speaking and from the feeling for what is spoken, so that the child learns to speak from feeling. At that age, which is, of course, not completely fixed but lies between the age of nine and ten, you should begin with grammar. Working with the grammar of a language is connected with the development of the I. Of course, it is not as though you should somehow ask how you can develop the I through grammar. Grammar will do that by itself. It is not necessary to have specific teaching examples in that regard. You should not begin grammar earlier, but instead, attempt to develop grammar out of the substance of the language.

A teacher: You said that in eighth grade we should begin to give them the basics of meter and poetics, and then in the eleventh grade, the aesthetics of the language. What did you mean?

Dr. Steiner: Metrics is the theory of the structure of verses, the theory of how a verse is constructed. Poetics is the various forms of poetry, the types of lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry. That is what metrics and poetics are. You can then go on to metaphor and figures of speech. Always give the children some examples.

The children have a rather large vocabulary, German, French, and English, which you can use as a basis for comparing the different languages. Teaching the aesthetics of a language means that you draw their attention to such things as whether a language is rich in the o and u vowels or in the i and e vowels. You can then try to give them the feeling of how much more musical is a language that has many o and u sounds than one that has e and i sounds. You can try to give them a feeling for how the aesthetic beauty of a language decreases when the possibility of inwardly transforming words in various cases is lost and when endings disappear. Thus, the structure of the language is part of its aesthetics, whether it is flexible or more lyrical and musical, whether it can express complicated interjections, and so forth. That is different from actual metrics and poetics. The aesthetics of a language is concerned with the actual beauty of the language.

Sanskrit is very rich in a’s. U and o make a language musical. E and i make it discordant. The German language is discordant. Sanskrit is somewhat monotonic due to the predominance of a, but lies between the musical and flexible. It has a strong tendency to be musically flexible, that is, not to be unmusical in its plastic forms. That is how a works. It stands in the middle. It is particularly characteristic to find a vowel next to an a in Sanskrit. It is very characteristic, for example, to hear an Indian say, “Peace, peace, peace,” since an a comes first and then there is a soft hint, almost a shameful hint, of the I. That is because they say, “Shanti, shanti.” I is the most egotistical vowel. It is as though the Indian immediately becomes red in the face from shame when he says i.

A teacher: The Finnish language also has many a’s.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, but you should also consider how long a language has been at the stage of this particular peculiarity. There is something hardened in the a of the Finnish language, which, of course, relates to its tendency toward consonants. It is a kind of hardening that begins to become sympathetic. All these things are based upon a subtle aesthetic feeling for the language, but such subtle feelings are no longer natural for people today. If an Englishman spoke the ending syllable of English words the way a German- or a French-speaking person does, that would be a hardening for the English person. English-speaking people have begun to drop the end syllables because they are moving out of the language. What is a hardening for one can be something quite natural for the other.

A teacher asks another question about metaphors and figures of speech.

Dr. Steiner: Metaphors correspond to the imagination, figures of speech, to inspiration. First you have what is absolutely unpoetic and characterizes the greatest portion, 99 percent, of all poetry. You then have one percent remaining. Of that one percent, there are poets who, when they want to go beyond the physical plane, need to strew pictures and figures of speech over the inadequacies of normal prose. How could you express, “Oh, water lily, you blooming swan; Oh swan, you swimming lily!” That is a metaphor. What is expressed is neither a water lily, nor a swan; it floats between them. It cannot be expressed in prose, and the same holds for figures of speech. However, it is possible to adequately express the supersensible without using a picture or a figure of speech, as Goethe was sometimes able to do. In such cases, he did not use a picture, and there you find the intuitive. You stand directly in the thing. That is so with Goethe and also sometimes with Martin Greif. They actually achieve what we could objectively call lyric. Shakespeare also achieves it sometimes with the lyric poetry he mixed into his drama.

In the pedagogical course given by Dr. Steiner in Ilkley in August 1923, he characterized four languages in the eleventh lecture without naming them. A teacher asks which languages he meant.

Dr. Steiner: The first language is English, which people speak as though the listener were listening from a distance, from a ship floating on the waves of the sea, struggling against the wind, struggling against the movement and spray of the sea, that is. The second language, which has a purely musical effect when heard, is Italian. The third, which affects the intellect, which comes through reasoning and is expressed through its logical forms, is French. The fourth, which sculpts its words, is German.

A teacher: What is the basis of French meter?

Dr. Steiner: As hard as this may be to believe, the basis of French meter is a sense of systematic division, of mathematics in language. That is unconscious. In French meter, everything is counted according to reason, just as everything in French thinking in general is done according to reason. That is, of course, somewhat veiled since it is not emphasized. Here, reason becomes rhetoric, not intellect. Rhetoric is audible reasoning.

A teacher asks which texts they should use for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We have already spoken a great deal about the twelfth grade, and I gave you some suggestions, for example, MacKenzie. In the preceding grades, it would depend a little upon what the teacher has already read and what the teacher likes, and for that reason, I gave only the qualities. For the tenth grade, you should certainly consider older and more recent lyric poetry.

A teacher says that he began with lyrics from Milton’s time.

Dr. Steiner: You should do it in the following way. In the tenth grade, read the lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s time and then give a short review in the twelfth grade. We cannot completely ignore lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s time because it gives a curiously deep indication of the period of European development when the Germanic languages were much more similar to one another than they are only a few centuries later. English lyric poetry is still unbelievably German. If you read Shakespeare’s lyrics, you will see they are not at all un-German. We can show that in the twelfth grade, so that a feeling will arise that is very important for humanity in general.

Thus, for the tenth grade, Robert Burns, some things out of the period of Thomas Percy. Some things from the Sea School, for example, Coleridge, and then Shelley and Keats. You will, of course, need to be selective, but do what you prefer, since you will then do it better. You could also present some particular points of view. There is, however, one thing in these lyrics that you will find throughout almost all English lyric poetry, namely, that where it is good it has a sentimental element. Sometimes that is very beautiful, but there is certainly a sentimental element throughout.

Something else is that when the English way of thinking becomes poetic, it is not at all appropriate for representing humor. English then becomes trivial and has no humor in a higher sense. There is not even a word for it. How could you say “humor” in English? The way Falstaff is handled would not represent humor today. We would, of course, say there is much humor in it, but we would not refer to the way the whole thing is presented as humor itself. What is apparent to us is how precise the characterizations are. We perceive what is human, but in Shakespeare’s time it was not perceived in that way. The well-roundedness and exactness of characterizations was unimportant for people in earlier times. What was important then was that the humors be good for presentation on the stage. People thought much more as actors at that time.

Today, we can no longer call Falstaff humorous. By the word humor, we mean someone who dissolves in a kind of fog, that is, someone not so well defined in regard to his temperament. Humor is the kind of temperament someone has. The four temperaments are humors. Today, you can no longer say that someone has a melancholic humor. Thus, someone whom you cannot really quite grasp, who dissolves in the fog of their temperaments, has humor.

In drama, you should show that the development of the English people resulted in the height of English drama being reached by Shakespeare, and that since then nothing else has reached the same height. It is, of course, interesting, but you should draw the students’ attention to how development proceeds only in the twelfth grade. You can mention how in Middle Europe, the German Reformation kept its basic religious character through the great importance of church lyric. In France, the Reformation does not have a religious character; it has a social character, and this can be shown in the poetry. In England, it has a political/moral character, something we can see in Shakespeare. That is connected with the fact that for a long time the English did not have an idealistic philosophy, so they lived it out in poetry. That gives their poetry a sentimental tendency. That is what made the rise of Darwinism possible.

A teacher: We still need to group the three fifth-grade classes for Latin and Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether Mr. X. will take over that instruction.

A teacher asks about religious instruction in the Waldorf School and in the Christian Community.

Dr. Steiner: One thing we need to consider is that the Christian Community also gives religious instruction to the children. There are continuing questions. First, how is the independent religious instruction in the Waldorf School connected with the religious instruction of the Christian Community, and, second, how are the school’s Sunday services related to the Christian Community Sunday services? I would like to hear your feelings about these things. I would also like to say beforehand that we cannot object in principle to the children participating in both the Waldorf School religious instruction and the Christian Community instruction and also attending both services. Our only possible objection might be that it might be too much. You should speak about it, though, as we should not decide something dogmatically.

The situation is this: We have seen how the Christian Community has grown out of the anthroposophical movement. There cannot be any discrepancy within the content of the two. The question concerning religious instruction is that if the Christian Community were to request to instruct the children who belonged to the Christian Community, we would have to give them the same rights as other confessions. The children who do not belong to the Christian Community will, in the majority, have the independent religious instruction. Thus, we will have just one more religion class. But why should we allow an extra religion class for the Christian Community other than the independent religious instruction? I do not actually see how we can decide this question in principle, since we cannot put ourselves in the position of advising someone not to participate in our religious instruction. To do that would be incorrect.

Take, for instance, the situation of a Catholic father saying that he wants to send his boy to the Catholic religious instruction as well as to the independent religious instruction. We could certainly not say anything against that if it was possible to schedule things that way. We cannot decide it, the Christian Community must decide it for themselves.

[,em>There is a break in the transcript here, and the following is not completely clear.]

It should not be possible for a child to make comparisons and conclude that the religious instruction given by the Waldorf teacher is not as good. The school exists within the framework of anthroposophy, so if a child makes such a comparison of which teacher is better, it should be obvious that due to the nature of the subject, the Waldorf teacher is better.

A teacher asks about the selection of a new religion teacher.

Dr. Steiner: This situation could someday cause us very large problems, greater than all previous ones. As you know, it was very difficult to find religion teachers. The teachers here are more concerned with their own specific subjects, and there is a certain prerequisite for teaching religion. It might occur that we will need to find a religion teacher for the school within the Christian Community. I would try to avoid that as long as possible, but it may someday be necessary. I do not see why we should be so exclusive. We can leave it up to the parents and children whether they want to participate here and there; however, I think it would be good if they participated in both, so that there would be a harmonious discussion of the material by the religion teacher here and the religion teacher there.

You should also not forget that the priests of the Christian Community are also anthroposophists, and they have made great strides in a very short time. The priests are not the same as they were, they have made enormous progress in their inner development. They have undergone an exemplary development in the life of their souls during the short time the Christian Community has existed. Not everyone, of course, but it is true in general, and they are a great blessing in all areas. There was a youth group meeting in Breslau, and two theologians worked with them. That had a very good effect. Young Wistinghausen is a blessing for the youth there.

A teacher: What should we do with the newly enrolled students? They have already been confirmed by the Christian Community. Should they immediately go to the Youth Service?

Dr. Steiner: That would not be good, as they would not begin the Youth Services with an Easter service. It is extremely important that they begin the Youth Services at Easter. You should make it clear to them that they should attend the Youth Services somewhat later. You could allow them to attend as observers, but not for a whole year. Those children should attend the Youth Services beginning at Easter when they have completed the eighth grade. The Youth Service has its entire orientation toward Easter.

A teacher: What should we do with those who have gone through the Protestant confirmation or Catholic First Communion?

Dr. Steiner: The main problem is that these children have been confirmed or have taken First Communion, and now they are taking independent religious instruction. By doing that, they lose the entire meaning of confirmation or First Communion; they negate it and strike it out of their lives. Once they have been confirmed or have taken First Communion, they cannot simply take independent religious instruction. Being confirmed means to be an active member of a Protestant church, so they cannot participate in the independent religious instruction because that negates the confirmation. That is even more true with First Communion. Our task is to indicate to the children in a kind way that they need to first live into their new life, so that it will not be so bad if they do not participate in the Youth Service until next Easter. You need to prepare them for renouncing their faith and direct them to something quite different. These are things we should take quite seriously. At worst, these seven will have participated too early, but not too late if they come only at Easter. We should perhaps consider this if a dissident is there.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand at all why someone who was confirmed by Priest K. should not go through the Sunday services for a year, since he had not been confirmed before. In his case, our only question is whether he should go to the Sunday services for a year.

If you look at the inner meaning of our Youth Service and that of the Christian Community, you will see they are compatible. The inner meaning of our Youth Service is to place a person into the human community, not into a specific religious community, whereas the Christian Community’s is to place the person into a specific religious community. It is, therefore, completely compatible for someone to attend the Christian Community Youth Service after attending our youth services; that is not a contradiction. The other way around, for someone who is confirmed before attending our Youth Service, is not compatible. However, the first way is compatible. Parents from the Christian Community have asked me about this. First, the children should go to the youth services here, and then go through confirmation in the Christian Community. If a child attends the Christian Community youth services, we should not object. It is compatible because we do not place the children into the Christian Community. I did not say they must be confirmed into the Christian Community, rather, they may. Our Youth Service does not replace that of the Christian Community because it does not lead to membership in the Christian Community. If children have been confirmed in the Christian Community, they will need to wait here until next Easter.

A religion teacher says the older students do not like to go to the services for the younger ones. They think they are too old for that.

Dr. Steiner: They completely misunderstand the service. They have a Protestant understanding of ritual, which means a rejection of it. It is possible to attend the service throughout your entire life. Their understanding is based upon the perspective that these teachings are preparations, not a ritual. We need to overcome that Protestant understanding.

A teacher asks how to handle students who only audit the classes.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question we can decide quite objectively, but then there can be no differing opinions. The instruction we give in the Waldorf School assumes a certain methodology. We present the material according to that methodology, and we cannot take other circumstances into account. Those who audit the Waldorf School need to assume that they will be treated according to that methodology. We cannot answer this question with a subjective opinion. You cannot modify the methodology by saying you will ask one student and not another, since you would no longer treat the students according to the Waldorf methodology. As long as he is in the class, you have to treat him like the others.

I do not understand why his report is not different from the others. If someone attends all the classes, I do not see why he is an auditor. His report should clearly state that he took only some classes. That should be summarized somewhere. At the end of the report, you should state that the student did not receive remarks about all subjects because, as an auditor, he did not attend all classes. The reports are uniformly written, and it should, therefore, be evident that the student was an auditor unless we have cause to view him differently. We spoke about this when we discussed how the reports were becoming more bland and that we should stop that. If you do not write them with enough care, they no longer have any real meaning. I do not see why that should be any different now. If we give an auditor a report—to the extent that we can give such a report—we should do it according to the principles of the Waldorf School or not at all. That is really self-evident.

The only question could be whether he should automatically receive a report, or only if he requests it. That is not a major question and has no further consequences. Certainly, you could give him a report regardless of whether he asks for it or not, and he might tear it up, or you could ask him and if he does not want it you simply save yourself the work of writing the report; that is really not so important. If he is to audit, then he must be an auditor in the Waldorf School. To treat him differently would not correspond to teaching in the Waldorf School. His extended leaves from school are a different question.

There is further discussion about S.T. Some letters to his mother are read aloud.

Dr. Steiner: I recently discussed this whole matter very clearly and said that when he was enrolled I assumed he would be treated according to his very specific nature. I continue to assume that, otherwise I would have advised him not to come to the Waldorf School. At that time, I said it was absolutely necessary for him to live with one of the Waldorf School teachers. I also said he does not tend to progress in individual subjects in a straightforward fashion, but we have not gotten past that problem. We appear to have characterized him, but that is really not much more than just giving grades. He has not been treated as I intended he should be treated. In a certain sense, the way T. has been treated is a kind of rejection of me by the faculty. That is something that is actually not possible to correct. These letters are simply a justification of his report. I do not agree with the report nor with your justification of it. You have not taken his particular situation into account. He is difficult to handle, but you also have no real desire to work with him as an individual. I need to say that in an extreme way as otherwise you will not understand me clearly. You could have said everything in his report differently. Now there is nothing to do other than to send this letter. What else can we do? I think, however, that we can learn a great deal from this report because most of what is in it is said in a devious way. He is also now living in R.’s boarding house. You have done nothing I wanted. Some of the students are living with teachers.

I do not think we can achieve more by rewriting the letters. What we should have achieved should have been done throughout the year. What is important is to be more careful in carrying out the intentions. Otherwise, we should not have accepted him.

A teacher: Should we advise an eleventh-grade student who wants to study music to no longer attend school?

Dr. Steiner: As a school, we can really not say anything when a student no longer wants to attend. We do not have compulsory attendance. However, as the Waldorf School, we can certainly not advise such a young student that he should no longer attend. That is something we cannot do. We need to take the viewpoint that he should continue and finish. That is the advice we can give. If it is necessary for the boy not to complete the Waldorf School in order to become a musician, then we will lose him, and his mother will not be able to keep him, either. If he is to become a good musician, we cannot advise him not to continue in school.

A teacher asks about a child in the third grade who has difficulties concentrating and cannot make the connections necessary to write short essays.

Dr. Steiner: Have the child repeat a series of experiences forward and then backward. For instance, a tree: root, trunk, branch, leaf, flower, fruit. And now backward: fruit, flower, leaf, branch, trunk, root. Or you could also do a person: head, chest, stomach, leg, foot. Then, foot, leg, stomach, chest, head. Try to give him some reminders also.

A teacher: How often should we have parent evenings?

Dr. Steiner: When possible, parent meetings should be monthly.

Dr. Steiner: I had thought a meeting with the faculty would not be possible during this short visit. In light of the bad news I received today, though, I thought it was absolutely necessary to have this meeting and discuss the latest events. We cannot have a long meeting, since I have another meeting right after this one. However, we need to discuss the events of the past days. Before I go into the situation, I would like you to tell me about the events first.

A report is given about a theft by S.Z. and W.R.

Dr. Steiner: Aren’t both boys in the eleventh grade? Have you noticed anything unusual recently?

A teacher: Not in school. W.R. was very active in class, but S.Z. is less interested in learning.

Dr. Steiner: S.Z. lived with Mrs. A. and W.R. said they wanted to look at her furniture. That is undoubtedly when the boys took the key; now we have the question of whether Z. himself was truly active or whether R. is the real instigator, as appears to be the case. How long have the boys been in the school?

A teacher: S.Z. has been here for three years and W.R. for four.

Dr. Steiner: W.R. also stole some money. Which teachers worked with him?

A number of teachers report.

Dr. Steiner: These cases certainly give us a lot to think about. Now that I have heard what you said, there is even more to consider. These are symptoms of something that has recently become quite visible in other areas.

Through our Waldorf School methods, we bring children very far in one respect, which is in regard to intellect and spirit. Our students are very much farther along than other students of the same age. That is something no one can deny. From eighth or ninth grade on, the whole student body consists of very different young human beings than those in other schools. Now, of course, the human being is a whole, and bringing people forward in an intellectual/spiritual way requires that we also bring their souls just as far along morally. No one can deny that what we achieve in teaching in the Waldorf School is primarily limited to the period the children are actually in school, and that the relationship to the students primarily results from what happens during classroom hours. That is the relationship that results, and we can hardly change it when the faculty is so overworked that personal relationships to the children don’t actually arise as they should in order to achieve a moral and soul development parallel to the intellectual and spiritual development. Beginning in the eighth grade, the moral influence of the faculty upon the students is very much lacking. There is also no contact between the students and teachers outside class of the sort that should exist, so when the students of the eighth grade have certain tendencies, they are left too much to themselves morally. We do not speak about the students in the way we would if we had closer contact with them. The letter you wrote me about R. resulted from your classroom relationship. There was nothing visible in it to indicate that you had a personal relationship to the students. It was also quite clear from your verbal reports today that you have no real contact with the students. I can certainly see that there is not enough time and that the teachers are overworked; on the other hand, it is an objective fact that things have been this way for a long time. What we are missing is something that should absolutely occur through the attitude of the Waldorf School pedagogy; an exact psychological picture of the students should live within the teachers, but a detailed psychological picture of the students does not live in the teachers’ souls. I do not know how the way you have developed this student psychology in your recent faculty meetings compares with the way it could have developed in meetings with me. You could have given some of the students in the higher grades some special attention here. I don’t know to what extent you do that when you meet by yourselves, but what exists is certainly not what it should be.

We now have these three children, N.N., S.Z., and W.R. There was a slight limitation in N.N.’s mental capacities, which could have been healed through energetic and longer-lasting psychological treatment. Whenever we spoke about N., I said that if he were treated such that he developed some trust, then he would be able to come to a teacher when he was in need and relate to that teacher as he would to a father. That would have improved the situation. My impression is that you did not do that, so N.N., who would have been easy to treat, in fact did not develop the deep love for a teacher that would have enabled him to improve. In such cases, discussions about morality do not help. The only thing that can help is for the student to form such a close relationship with a teacher that he or she feels especially drawn to that teacher. However, such contact has not developed, though I had hoped it would. Now he has left, but we have certainly not earned any medals for helping him firm up his moral stance.

Now we come to S.Z. Although I do not know him as well, it seems he has a moderate moral and intellectual weakness. He seems to be a boy who is intellectually weak and easily influenced. Probably he is relatively suggestible, so that a strong moral influence would affect him just as much as a less-good one. As things stand, he is to a large extent morally ruined, and the effects of this have been going on for several months, so that the moral problem exists in addition to the moderate intellectual weaknesses.

Now we have W.R. He is clearly not just moderately, but extremely weak intellectually. In saying this, I need to remind you that young people can be extremely weak-minded in that they cannot use their intellects for doing anything more than busywork well. Such people can create basic and exact judgments and can seem quite clever. Nevertheless, in W.R. we have an absolute and constitutional weak-mindedness. We could have held him only if there had been an inner harmony between the care he receives at school and where he is living, so that he would have been strongly influenced by the school and by where he lives. Neither of these happened. Both where he was living and the school left him to himself in regard to his morals. No one worked with him. R.’s inner problems are therefore extremely great. These are things we must clearly examine from a psychological perspective. If the Waldorf School is to continue to exist, we need to think seriously about how we can overcome them. If the Waldorf School is to continue, everyone’s goodwill must act together, perhaps by having, prior to a new school year, a series of teachers’ meetings where we discuss the moral position of the school. We cannot move forward otherwise. We have a major deficiency in that regard. My first thought is that you have forgotten there must be a strong contact between the teachers and the students, and that concerns the school.

Concerning the two students, Z. and R., in spite of the fact that they were in the Waldorf School, they have come to behave as they did recently, and we have no real hope of favorably influencing them if they continue at the Waldorf School. Your lack of contact has become too great to have any real effects upon them. Thus, after what we have seen, we must unfortunately say, and this is quite painful, that if these two students remain in the Waldorf School, they will become worse and worse from a moral standpoint, and, in addition, they will infect others. What you have said in this meeting completely proves that. There is no possibility of thinking anything other than that they will become more and more morally depraved. We are faced with the fact, at least from our present knowledge of the situation, that we might be able to work with Z., but most certainly not with W.R. Z. may improve, and that is something we could attempt. Due to his suggestibility, we may be able to achieve an improvement with S.Z. We could consider that. As long as we had to deal only with Z., I said we should keep him, and I wanted to do that even against his father’s wishes. However, if both boys remain, they will most certainly become worse. There can, however, be no discussion about W.R. remaining in the school. The situation is extremely tragic, primarily because it is a question of conscience for our school. We need to admit that we presented the school to these two boys in such a way that the school was incapable of improving them morally.

Neither of the boys is a kleptomaniac. They are weak-minded, not kleptomaniacs, and they have an intellectual and moral weakness in addition to the weakness in their souls, which makes the problem particularly difficult. If they were kleptomaniacs, we could consider giving them some therapy, but since they are weakminded, there is nothing we can do but put them in a class for weak-minded children. That, however, is unthinkable.

The way things now stand, we have no real authority with W.R. It is quite clear that there has been an inner corruption of both boys for several months. Therefore, there is nothing we can do with R. other than advise that he be removed from the school.

We could give S.Z. a short probationary period during which we would really have to pay attention and try to work with him. With W.R., the situation is difficult. He should go someplace where there is a systematic working toward moral improvement. Of course, I don’t mean a normal juvenile home. If he remains in the school, he will become worse than he already is. If he leaves school and is left to himself, he will become even worse than if he remains in school. He needs to be placed with a family who will improve him morally, or maybe in some institution. There is nothing more that can be done with this boy. You need to accept his situation by recognizing that his inner moral corruption has reached an enormous level as a result of his intense constitutional weak-mindedness. It would be dangerous for both the school and the boy himself for him to remain in school in the same situation. We should look for a family.

We cannot protect the two boys from the juvenile court. They will most certainly be sentenced. Is there some way we can involve an expert in the sentencing? In such a situation, we would have to find a local doctor willing to be an expert for the cases.

I have to admit it is, in a certain sense, very strange that it is particularly the children of anthroposophists who develop so poorly in the Waldorf School. The children who were expelled some time ago were also children of anthroposophists.

What I mentioned before from a general perspective, namely, that you lack contact with the children, is something we should concern ourselves with. That weighs on me heavily, and I have also noticed it through other symptoms. The faculty has not developed a sufficiently penetrating psychological view of the individual students because—the problem is not that you need more time, but that you need to develop a desire for this contact, so that what the teacher wants is also wanted by the students. That is a quality you can learn, but now you engage in a certain distancing.

When I was going through the classes, I also noticed a tone I have often mentioned, an academic tone, which has increased rather than decreased. You are lecturing. To an extent, you make some attempts to use the Socratic method, but take a closer look at what often occurs. You lecture and ask questions now and then, but the questions you ask are generally trivial. You delude yourselves when the students answer such obvious things correctly. You simply throw everything else at the children in overwhelming lectures. There is a major difference in the way the lower grades are taught, but beginning with the eighth grade, you no longer have any appropriate intimate contact with the students. So far, there is no lecturing in the little children’s classes. There, things are considerably better. This certainly lies heavily upon my heart. I have often mentioned it, but you have not really done much to relieve the situation. You should say what you wish now; then we need to discuss some other things.

A teacher: What exists in the constitutions of these children? You spoke of a constitutional weak-mindedness.

Dr. Steiner: Where kleptomania is present, the situation is such that the human being has polaric constitutional aspects. The head tends to want to assimilate everything. The head is one pole, whereas the metabolism, which carries moral perception, is the other. It is possible to show that schematically by drawing a lemniscate. The head does not recognize property rights, it recognizes only an absolute ownership of everything that comes into its realm. The other pole recognizes morality. When, however, the function of the head enters the will, kleptomania results. This illness results because the aspect that belongs in the head exists in the will. Stealing is something quite different from a tendency to kleptomania, which is expressed through mental absences during stealing. The person takes things upon seeing them, because the item stolen seduces the person into doing clever things to obtain it. The symptoms of kleptomania are clearly delineated.

The situation with N.N. could have been a borderline case of kleptomania; with the other two boys, though, we are dealing with moral insanity, an absolute inability of the physical functioning of the head to comprehend lying. They have not fully come into their etheric and physical bodies. This is not a sudden event like epilepsy, but a continuous mental absence.

W.R. is someone who is never quite here. He does not go around like other people, but more like a sleepwalker. He even soaks up the rays of light that fall upon him from the side. He does not see like other people. The position of his eyes is quite abnormal. Also, his temples have hardened, so the astral body cannot enter. There is, therefore, a clear case of weak-mindedness inherited from both the father and mother, which inhibits him from comprehending what is allowable or not. He cannot grasp it, it always slips away from him. It is like trying to grasp a piece of glass that has been covered with oil. Since intellectual judgments occur within the etheric body and are then reflected back by the astral body, he can be quite extraordinary intellectually. If a human being is to develop moral impulses, the etheric body must grasp the physical body, but that is not the case with him. He is incapable of saying this is good so I may do it, and that is not, and so forth. In order to form a judgment, it is necessary to do more than simply to connect the subject and the predicate. An intense strength is also needed to feel or live your way into the judgment. He can certainly connect subject and predicate, but only in pictures, not in the will. That is why he is unable to develop a sense of morality. Just think for a moment how strong the hereditary influence is in him. It is really very strong.

Why does he lie? He lies because it is not possible for him to judge something due to the weakness of his will power, and thus he cannot develop a sense for truth. It does not matter to him whether he says something is white or black, whether he says yes or no. It has nothing to do with the integrity of his insight. You need to differentiate between integrity of insight, which can be completely present, and the intensity with which judgments can be grasped and held. Weak-minded people are lacking in their capacity to retain judgments. They simply cannot grasp the judgment. That has nothing to do with logic. It is a purely psychological phenomenon.

A teacher: What should we tell the class?

Dr. Steiner: You should tell the class that R. can no longer be in the class because of what he has done. You do not have to moralize about him. You could mention that in human society we must respect property, and that that is necessary in earthly life. As much as we like him, it is impossible for him to remain at the school. S.Z. is a little weak-minded.

I need to give things a new direction. At the beginning of September, I will be giving two courses in Dornach, one about pastoral medicine and the other on theology. I will be here later in September to give a seminar on these questions.

A teacher says it is difficult to develop contact with the students in the short period of time available and asks Dr. Steiner to help.

Dr. Steiner: I will do what I can, but do not forget that the problem is primarily a question of your interest in the children and young people, and is a question of enthusiasm. It is not without reason that I emphasize at every opportunity that we cannot move forward in any area without enthusiasm and without some inner flexibility. Actually, if I—I mean it is really bad. I do not see any of that enthusiasm. I do not see you making any effort to really create it. If I could actually do everything I need to do, I would, for example, look to see how many chairs I could find pitch on following a teachers’ meeting. It seems to me as though you are glued to your seats, you are tired. You cannot be tired if you are to live in the spirit. Being tired is simply a lack of interest. These are things that must be said.

You have to use some pedagogical tricks to get a psychological picture of the students, and we want to speak about those later. The most important things, however, are enthusiasm and interest, but enthusiasm cannot be taught. I have a slight impression that for some of you, teaching has become boring. You have not the least interest. We need enthusiasm. We have no need for superiority or clever thinking. We need to use the method upon ourselves in order not to become tired. You are also tired in the classroom when you should be teaching. That cannot continue. That is the same as if a eurythmist sat through rehearsal. This picture is terrible; it is without any style.

A teacher: What is actually an “old member”?

Dr. Steiner: Some people can be old members even though they have been in the Society only three days.

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, I am here for only a short time, but I want to discuss some important things with you. I must be in Dornach tomorrow for certain to take care of some things concerning the construction of the Goetheanum.

A teacher asks about visitors.

Dr. Steiner: You can admit student teachers. But you must treat each case individually. You should limit the visits to a specific time and number of visitors. You should have no more than three visitors in a class, but perhaps you should not separate them. It is important to realize that each such visit is a disturbance. You should never have more than three visitors in a class. The people from the Ostheimer school should wait for a better time, perhaps the beginning of the month.

A teacher: Does each teacher have the right to allow someone he or she believes proper to visit the class, or is it only you that can decide that?

Dr. Steiner: In principle, it should be the latter. In principle, the teachers have complete freedom in how they teach, but not in things connected with the administration of the school. Therefore, you cannot allow just anyone to visit. I do not think the teachers should decide that. Even in cases where a teacher discusses it with the administrative committee, you should also call me in Dornach.

A teacher: Can we demonstrate some gymnastics at a monthly festival?

Dr. Steiner: It would be very nice to have gymnastics then.

A teacher presents a report about the desire of a mother to have her son placed in a parallel class.

Dr. Steiner: We need to tell her that in general we cannot do that, that we do it only when there are truly important reasons.

A teacher: Some parents in Nuremberg have requested that pedagogical courses be held there. They wish to form a school.

Dr. Steiner: Of course we will need to give the lectures. I think they have everything there except the money, but that is true of nearly everything.

A teacher: We should give some public pedagogical lectures in Munich.

Dr. Steiner: What is the current situation in Munich? Are they unable to turn to some association to do the organizing? Then there would be no problem. They should work with a pedagogical association. It would be detrimental if another problem arose there.

A teacher: A church newsletter made an incorrect comment about the Youth Service.

Dr. Steiner: You should correct it, but it will not hurt us. We could just as well ignore it. I would simply send an official correction.

A teacher: Who should take over the art class for the ninth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Uehli could do that.

A teacher asks about the outline of twelfth grade history, particularly about India and Egypt.

Dr. Steiner: The Indian etheric body is appropriate for a human being, but not for a civilization. Of course, I am thinking only of the original Indian, and not the people of later India. In the original Indians, human beings lived strongly in a separation of the physical and etheric bodies. The result was that they could very clearly perceive the structure of their own physical body and everything that lived in the physical body. Because their etheric body was particularly well-developed, the physical body was open to their understanding. Their comprehension was based upon an observation of the physical body through the etheric body.

When you consider this you can see that the original Indians perceived the secrets of the world reflected in the human physical body and, thus, recognized how wonderful the human physical body is. They realized that the entire human physical body is a reflection of memory—a wonderful memory—of the entire macrocosm. That was the basis of their whole life and worldview.

For example, they had no connection between the two halves of their life. Consequently, they experienced a complete break in the middle of life. Remember that you can look to the physical body only until the beginning or middle of your thirties. After that, the decline of the physical body becomes so strong that it no longer gives you anything. After they became older, the ancient Indians more or less wholly forgot what they had experienced before the age of thirty. They had something like a register, of course not so primitive as people think, where they could inquire about who they were earlier, because after a certain point in their life, they no longer knew who they were. Individuals could officially determine who they were. It could happen that two friends, one thirty-two years old and the other twenty-eight, might find from one day to the next that the thirty-two-year-old no longer recognized the other. It was more likely, however, that the younger friend would recognize the older, but the older friend would not realize the situation, having first to learn about it. Thus, people were born twice, and the later expression “twice born” is based on the concrete earlier experience of actually being born twice.

The Egyptian astral body was well developed and could, under certain circumstances, observe the etheric body well. Egyptians could see the astral areas of the etheric body particularly well, that is, the Sun, Moon, and stars. That is expressed in the Book of the Dead, in the clear view of life following death. The Persians belong in the same group as the Chaldeans.

A teacher: Should the eurythmy teachers go to the drama course in Dornach?

Dr. Steiner: I do not know why a eurythmy teacher should attend the course on speech formation. The course is really for comedians and actors, and we will present it that way. The only reason for attending is if you have a talent for drama. The teachers would have to have a reason connected with the school. We are holding the course for speech on the stage, and the second part is connected with directing, set design, and the relationships of the stage to the public and of the theater to critics. The purpose of the course is to help form a traveling group of actors, similar to the traveling troupe. Haaß-Berkow, Gümbel-Seiling, Kugelmann, and other actors and actresses will be there. They have sent word they will attend. Miss Lämmert, Schwebsch, Kolisko, Schubert, and Rutz should attend this course in September.

A teacher asks about the final examinations.

Dr. Steiner: This year we do not expect anyone to take the final examinations, so we will finish the Waldorf School pedagogy. Next year, we will attempt to prepare the students ourselves. You heard the discussion today. It is clear from that how much these young people depend on the Waldorf School. The current twelfth grade seems to have no desire to take the examination this year. We will also create a very strenuous year of cramming. The children, however, really love their teachers and their school. We will not call it the thirteenth grade, but a preparatory class for the final examination.

I want to give some lectures later in September or early October about the moral aspects of education and teaching.

My dear friends:

After almost two years of Waldorf education, and in view of the opening of yet another important class in September, we shall again consider a number of curriculum issues. I shall, however, leave this till tomorrow. Today I shall take a look at the results of our work so far. New ideas may arise from this review that could further improve our teaching.

In order to prevent a possible misunderstanding of what I am going to say today, I can assure you that I have noticed and appreciated the progress made during these two years. The way you are teaching—the presentation of subjects—is already such that it can be said: You have progressively come to grips with your tasks. You have, in an extraordinarily healthy way, fused with the goals of these tasks.

But it behooves us to consider such details as can provide the basis for a positive development of our work. I believe that in reviewing your work, all of you will have this initial feeling that our work with the children has kept helping us to improve our methods. There is, however, something we might have missed—perhaps with a degree of pain. It is relatively easy to mediate the subject matter to the children, to give them a momentary understanding for what we teach them. But we have not yet succeeded in making the subject matter last for them, in making it a part of their whole being, so that it can stay with them throughout their lives, so that we may achieve the same results with our teaching as with our talks at special festive occasions.

Our teaching must live. It must reach beyond the ideas, images, feelings, and skills the children have acquired. We must give them something that can—depending on their dispositions and possibilities—continue into their adult lives.

Just as the limbs of any living creature are developing during the growing stages, are becoming bigger and more complicated, so also should the ideas, feelings, and skills we give our children be not fully formed but rather capable of growth and development. We must see to it that our teaching does not remain rigid, static, but that it can grow with them, change as they change during the course of development, so that at the age of thirty or forty they will still have the benefit of what they learned at seven or eight, because the learning has grown and developed as their complicated limbs have developed, because it has slowed down at the appropriate time, and so forth. Our teaching must enter the children’s being deeply, so that it can continue to develop with them, can live or fade away. This means that the children will have to absorb whatever we present to them and make it their own. The question arising from this realization is: How can we achieve this? The answer will come from assumptions quite different from those we generally make.

My dear friends, what we need to do is to make every effort at understanding the human being in his or her totality—in our case, this is the child—as a being consisting of body, soul, and spirit. Such understanding will allow us to comprehend the inner processes in the children when we teach them various subjects, and, as a result, we shall learn to adjust our work to these processes. Today, therefore, we shall concentrate on gaining a complete picture of how we ought to teach and educate.

To begin, let me draw your attention to the many erroneous ideas that are current regarding the human being. Teachers, especially, are convinced that what and how we teach—be it through visual perception or stories or activities—will increase children’s skills, ideas, and concepts, will strengthen their feeling, and that the increase and strengthening will last throughout the children’s lives. But this is not so. Let us proceed by example. We give the children certain ideas and mental images—in a history lesson, in the history of literature, in mathematics, or in geography—assuming that they will retain them as lasting possessions. It is generally assumed that such concepts descend somewhere into the lower regions of the soul, into the sub- or unconscious spheres, and that there they remain in one way or another, to be called upon whenever a situation arises. This is the function of memory, so they say.

But this assumption is not true. The ideas, the mental images, which we produce in the children and which, with us, they elaborate and develop, immediately change when the children occupy themselves with other things after the lesson. In no way does a concept swim about in the unconscious in its original form, to be called up at random. This is certainly not the case. The ideas and concepts we produce in the children are, when the children are no longer thinking about them, no longer present anywhere. They are not swimming about; they are no longer there. The process by which children later recollect is quite different from what is generally assumed—namely, that the ideas and concepts are called forth from the unconscious.

Not only may the processes taking place in recollecting and perceiving be compared; in a certain respect, they may be considered as one and the same. When we perceive something, when in the case of children we direct their soul activity to some outer object and develop with them an idea or concept, the activity will certainly be the children’s very own; they are preoccupied, are working with the idea or concept. We call this process perception.

When the children remember something, the same process is involved, but now it is directed inward. Something is happening within the children. The children are working with, developing, something in the same way as in the perception of an outer object. These inner processes that continue when the original mental images of perception are no longer directly present are extremely complicated. It is very difficult to describe in any specific instance how a mental image prepares to reconnect with the human being in order to emerge as memory—so that the image may again be perceived, this time as an inner event. But when we remember, we really perceive inner events in the same way we perceive outer objects.

It is really not all that important to have an exact knowledge of these processes. We need to be aware of something else. We need to know that the continuing effects of mental images and ideas that, later, emerge in memory actually take place in the sphere of our feelings. It is our life of feelings—with its joys, pains, pleasures, displeasures, tensions, and relaxations—that is the actual vehicle for the enduring qualities of the ideas and mental images that we can recall at a later stage. Our mental images change into stirrings of feeling, and it is these stirrings of feeling that we later perceive and that enable us then to remember.

It is important for us to understand this process because we must pay special attention to it in education. If in line with the convictions of most teachers today, we merely present to the children things to be looked at, to be accurately perceived by the senses, we are not giving them anything that will help them to remember later in life. Their memory will be greatly enhanced, however, if we put feeling into our words, if we teach with warmth, if we spice our lessons with the possibility of allowing the children to experience corresponding emotions, if we make them smile or feel sad, if we endeavour to go beyond the merely intellectual aspects to the life of feeling. I cannot overemphasize the importance of such an approach. It is, of course, more difficult. It demands great presence of mind. Mere intellectual instruction is easier than a teaching that wishes to stimulate the children’s feeling, that makes for an inner connection with a subject. We need not be pedantic in this teaching, need not necessarily always connect feeling directly to the subject taught. We may refer to something else in order to stimulate feelings. The important thing is that the children’s feelings are engendered during a lesson. Such stirrings of feeling aid memory. And this fact we must not lose sight of. Even in the driest of subjects, such as physics or geometry, we should try to appeal to the children’s feelings. If, for example, we interrupt a thought process and ask a child, “If you were to do this and something unexpectedly were to happen …?”—we add feeling to the lesson. We add tension, expectation, and relaxation that will permeate and benefit the thought process.

Never underestimate the effect of the unknown or half known. The effect of such on feeling is extremely important. If toward the end of a lesson we say, “and tomorrow we shall do this…”—the children need not know anything about “this”; their expectation and curiosity will still be aroused. If, for example, I have taught the properties of the square before those of the triangle and I conclude the lesson by saying, “Tomorrow we shall learn about the triangle”—the children do not yet know anything about the triangle, but it is exactly this fact that causes a certain tension, an expectation of what is to come, a looking forward to the next day’s lesson. The effect will carry the day. We ought to make use of the unknown or half known in order to facilitate the children’s effort at fitting the details into a totality. We really must not ignore such matters.

As we get used to working in this way we shall, on the one hand, in a quite elementary way, connect teaching with education and, on the other hand, feel the need to make ourselves ever more familiar with the nature of the human being, the child. And then, as out of our anthroposophical knowledge we ponder this nature, this wisdom of the human being, much will become clear to us and lead to increased teaching skills.

Developing such wisdom and teaching skills will ever more be of the gravest importance. It will allow the subject matter to fuse with the children, to become their very own possession. We have not yet achieved enough here.

Essentially our lessons consist of two interacting parts. We instruct, we exhort the children to participate, to use their skills, to be physically active. Be it in eurythmy, music, physical education, even writing or the mechanical processes in arithmetic—we try to engender activity. The other part of our lessons is concerned with contemplation. Here we ask the children to think about, to consider the things we tell them.

Although these two aspects always interact, they are fundamentally different. It is not generally appreciated how much the teacher of a contemplative subject, such as history, owes to a colleague who is more concerned with skills and aptitudes. Concentrating merely on contemplation leads the children to a stunted, prosaic adult life, with a tendency to boredom. They will have a superficial view of life, will not feel inclined to observe accurately, will not pay attention to events around them. Children who are trained predominantly in contemplation become benumbed, confused adults. We really owe a great deal, as teachers of contemplative subjects, to the teachers of handwork, music, and eurythmy. We can go so far as to say that the history teacher actually lives off the music or singing teacher and that, vice versa, the singing and music teachers live off the contemplative elements in history, and so forth.

In a situation that calls for directing the children’s attention to something of a contemplative nature, when they are sitting on their chairs listening to and concentrating on a story or on something that demands their judgment—however great our efforts may be to get them to think for themselves, if they merely sit and listen, this is no more than, if I may use the paradox, a “waking sleeping activity.” The children are, in a certain sense, outside the body with the soul and spirit, and it is only because the separation is not as complete as in sleep that the body’s participation continues. Indeed, especially during a contemplative lesson, we can observe the same phenomenon that is present in sleep—namely, an ascending organic activity. In children who are merely listening to stories, organic processes are called forth that are identical to those occurring during sleep, when the metabolic processes ascend to the brain. Making the children sit and listen, we engender in them, in the organism, a delicate sleep-like activity.

It is generally assumed that sleep strengthens and replenishes the organism. Waking up with a headache could correct this view. We must be clear about the fact that the unhealthy parts of our organism are kept back by the awake activity of the upper organs, so that they cannot ascend. But during sleep they rise, ascend. And this rising upward of what is amiss in the organism is continuously engendered by our insistence on making the children listen, think, and contemplate. When, on the other hand, we teach them eurythmy, when we make them sing, or play instruments, when we employ them in physical activities, as in handwork and gymnastics, even when we make them write something—when they are in fact doing things, the organic processes thus stimulated are an intensification of waking activity.

Even if the effect is not noticed, singing and eurythmy are hygienic, even therapeutic activities. This cannot be denied. This hygienic, therapeutic activity will perhaps be the healthier the less we approach it in an amateurish medical way, the more we simply do it out of our healthy imaginative conception of life.

Still, it is good for the teachers to know that they cooperate as partners, that the children owe the healthy ascent of their body fluids—essential during a contemplative lesson such as history—to the singing or eurythmy lesson of the previous day. We can only benefit from such a comprehensive overview of education, which will encourage us, should a problem arise, to cooperate with our colleagues. We shall discover that we can advise each other if, for example, as a teacher of history I can discuss a child with the music teacher.

Little, if anything, will happen if this consultation takes place in a didactic, routine way. Positive results will be achieved only when—from the comprehensive overview—we feel the urge to discuss a problem with a colleague. Then we may be convinced that when the physics teacher notices a problem and talks it over with the singing teacher, the problem will be lessened or solved when the appropriate steps are taken in singing. The singing teacher will know better what to do than the physics teacher and will be grateful to that teacher for having drawn attention to the problem. Only in this way will we establish a fruitful cooperation as teachers. Only in this way will we be enabled to consider the totality of the human being. The rest will follow, one thing developing from another.

This greater mobility in education will result also in something we cannot do without—humor. We need humor not only for thinking, at the right moment, of the unknown or half known, through which we evoke tensions and relaxations as memory aids, but for something else as well. As we make our teaching ever more mobile, as we get used to considering the whole human being instead of merely the subject matter, we shall in time learn to enlarge certain aspects of our lessons. This widening of subject in all directions is again of enormous importance, especially when it occurs in the direction I shall shortly speak about.

Consider a physics lesson. We are certainly not in favor of having apparati in our classrooms or of methodically developing experiments. Such methods can be employed, can even be very intelligent. It could be asserted that such an approach has proved itself and that a great deal is achieved by it. But the effect is short-term, and we cannot be concerned merely with short-term effects. What we intend to do is to provide the children with something that will benefit them throughout life. To succeed in this intent, we have continuously to enlarge concepts. We must, of course, teach the phenomena in optics and hydraulics. But we must also learn to be ready, at appropriate moments, to relate certain aspects of lessons to other things in life.

Let me give you an example. We could, at a given opportunity, spontaneously refer to the weather, to climatic conditions, to phenomena occurring across the globe in a distant country, so that the students realize that there are connections everywhere in the world. They will then experience the feelings that arise when we are led from one phenomenon to another; the tensions and relaxations that result will allow them to identify with the subject, grow together with it, make it their very own possession.

The most important connection we can establish is the one with the human being. We should never miss an opportunity for making this connection. Every situation—be it during a discussion of an animal, of a plant, or of the phenomenon of warmth—every situation presents an opportunity, without losing sight of the subject, without diverting the students from it, to connect with the human being. What, indeed, is there to prevent us, when talking about the phenomenon of warmth, from mentioning fever? What is to prevent us, when talking about elastic balls in physics, from mentioning the phenomenon of vomiting, a process similar to the repulsion in elastic balls? Vice versa, what is there to prevent us, during a lesson on reflexes in the human organism, from mentioning the simple phenomenon of repulsion in elastic balls, and so forth?

Such connections to life in general can be established already in the lower grades, can gradually get the children used to seeing the human being as the confluence of all world phenomena. When we teach the things that lie outside the human being as natural phenomena, they will always tend to be forgotten. When, on the other hand, we relate them to the human being, when we consider the corresponding phenomena in the human being, we shall notice another tendency: that it is really impossible to regard something that is connected with the human being without feelings. We cannot describe the functions of the ear or of the heart without evoking feelings in the children. By relating the outer world to the human being we always stimulate their feelings—and this is so very important.

Making this connection is, therefore, so very important in subjects treating the objective world, subjects that are usually taught “objectively,” as unconnected with the human being. We should always try to find such connections, and in fact, the most objective subjects are the ones that lend themselves most easily to our doing so, because all the world can be found within the human being.

Again, we have the means of aiding the children’s memory. We can be quite sure that the children will soon forget facts learned by rote in physics. They will not identify with them; the facts will not become inner possessions. But as soon as we relate such facts to the human being, demonstrate what is happening for the human being, the facts will remain, will become an intrinsic part of the children’s experience. What is explained to the human being about the human being becomes the human being’s very own possession. It is necessary for us to avoid abstractions, on the one hand, and on the other hand, what Schlegel referred to as the “crude-material-concrete.” Both should be avoided, especially in our lessons and education.

Let me give you another example. Recently I observed a lesson on comedy and tragedy in class eight. It is relatively easy to think of quite persuasive definitions of the comical, the humorous, the tragic, the beautiful, and so on. They can be found in current literature. But most, if not all, of them are abstractions and will not allow living mental images to arise. What actually happens is that our experience of a tragic, a sad event affects our metabolic processes, slows them down. Our experience of tragedy is, indeed, connected with our physical processes, as though something in our stomach cannot be digested, cannot pass into the intestine.

A deeply sad experience has the effect of literally hardening our metabolism, even though these processes are delicate. Indeed, if you happen to be unhappy, sad, or depressed, you are working against your digestion. The experience is identical to the feeling one has when food lies like a lump in the stomach, a crudely material but qualitatively comparable phenomenon. In a healthy digestion, the food passes naturally from the stomach to the intestine, is absorbed by the villi, passes into the blood, then penetrates the diaphragm, so that it can be distributed in the upper organism. This physical process is, qualitatively understood, identical to the effect of laughing, when we artificially induce the vibrations of the diaphragm. Laughing is a process that makes us organically healthy; its effect is similar to that of a healthy undisturbed digestion.

Such knowledge will allow us to relate the humorous to the digestive processes. We are learning to think in the way the ancient Greeks did, are beginning to understand the Greeks’ concept of hypochondria, of abdominal ossification. An objective observation will confirm this connection. Living toward the upper organism, getting the diaphragm into movement, stimulated by a healthy digestion and passing to the world outside—this physical process does, indeed, provide the connection of a humorous, happy mood to the physical body. By avoiding such abstract explanations as “humor allows us to rise above a situation,” we shall succeed in establishing the confluence of the abstract with the concrete. We establish a totality. We show the children how to combine, in their minds, spirit and soul with the physical, corporeal. We repress the absolutely harmful modern ideas of continuously teaching the human cultural aspects—soul and spirit—without relating them to the physical and, vice versa, at the other pole of the pendulum, of speaking about the physical in crudely materialistic ways. Taken separately, neither approach is truthful; for the ideas interact, flow into each other.

It behooves us to evoke total, comprehensive ideas and images, by binding humor and tragedy not to abstract concepts but to the diaphragm. A possible objection is that doing so might encourage a materialistic view of the world. This is certainly not so. It is exactly by showing how spirit and soul are living in the physical that we bring people to the point of seeing that the whole of the material world owes its existence to soul and spirit. As soon as we can imagine—when somebody is laughing, when somebody experiences laughter in the soul and spirit—that the event is connected with the diaphragm, we shall also gradually arrive at the idea of the effects of spirit and soul in rain, thunder, and lightning. We are led to these realizations by relating everything to the human being.

In relating everything to the human being it is important not to dwell too much on the egocentric—because much or exclusive self-interest, egocentricity, would result in contemplative egotism. If, on the other hand, in our contemplative lessons, we connect everything to the human being, we produce in the human being—simply by making one see oneself as consisting of body, soul, and spirit—a disposition that provides the best basis for one’s working from the depths of one’s being during physical activities. If our lessons allow the contemplative thinking elements to connect with the human being, we shall educate our students through history, geography, physics to become singers, to become truly musical people. Affecting our students in such a way that we let them think what they themselves physically want, we produce something in them which we really ought continuously to be creating.

In order to achieve this creation, we must acquire certain concepts. As you well know, it is not possible to remain well fed without the need of eating again. We cannot feed a person and say: “This is it, you need no longer be hungry!” Living processes proceed in rhythms. This truth applies to music, to everything in life. A human being must live in rhythmic alternations, so that one’s “being led back to oneself” is subjected to the highest tension and, in turn, to relaxation. The concepts we teach our students about stomach, lungs, and liver will produce in them a disposition that will again be offset in singing, in the way hunger alternates with eating—a rhythmic process. Only rhythm maintains life. The correct handling of the contemplative subjects will produce faculties that will correspondingly manifest in the other subjects.

If instead of merely enumerating Julius Caesar’s actions, successes, and failures, we would at the same time give the children imaginative pictures of the man, paint as it were a historical situation, so that the children feel impelled to have in their imagination a kind of shadowy picture of him, see him walk, follow his walk in their minds—if they were to imagine Julius Caesar in such a way that they did not merely copy the image in a painting but actually modeled it in their minds, and if they then proceeded to a handwork lesson, you may be absolutely sure that they would knit better than they would have without Caesar.

Such connections are as mysterious as those between hunger and satiation. Ignoring the connections produces different results. For example, if we teach for an hour without stimulating the imagination of the children, their stomachs will be filled with acid, will have excessive pepsin. This cannot be avoided in a contemplative lesson. It is, however, not only a matter of acidifying the food in the stomach; there is also a spiritual dimension. All matter is at the same time spirit. When the children are singing, the pepsin’s role is to produce in them the inner prickling they should feel during singing. This prickling cannot occur if the pepsin remains stuck in the folds of the stomach. And it does remain there if one only talks, without stimulating the imagination. When the imagination is stirred, the pepsin is distributed throughout the body, with the result that the singing teacher will be confronted by children whose organs are permeated by this prickling, this effervescent sensation. Without such experience—especially in the speech organs—the children will be lethargic and lazy, and they will sing without enthusiasm.

I tell you these things so that you can appreciate the importance of considering the totality of the school organism, of seeing it as a unit. Interfering in things that do not concern one does not help. Of course, each teacher must feel free to do what he or she thinks best. But one will gradually acquire the necessary skills by studying the nature of children and by appealing to their imagination. The children long for this attention, need it. And the teacher will greatly benefit from a preoccupation with this aspect of education.

A lively interest in human nature is, of course, the condition for succeeding in this endeavor. Such interest can be developed, and anthroposophy will provide you with all the hints you need. What I especially recommend to you—from a direct pedagogical/didactic point of view—is that you avoid getting stuck in abstractions when you develop your own concepts. You should instead endeavor to understand the human being in regard to organization.

You must actually become pioneers in a certain sphere, must tell yourselves: “We have today, on the one hand, the abstract sciences—history, geography, even physics, and so on. They are practiced in the most abstract ways. People acquire concepts. On the other hand, we have the sciences of the human being—anatomy, physiology—by means of which we learn about the human being, as though the organs were cut out of leather and reassembled.” Truly, as cut from leather—because there is really no difference between the descriptions of living organs presented by our anatomists and cut-out leather pieces. The human being is not described as a totality. The spirit is ignored.

You can, however, be pioneers. You can contribute positively to education by making use of both the abstractions, the lifeless concepts propagated today, and the crudely materialistic approach. You may teach both, but only in order to combine them in a living way, by interweaving them. You could teach history in such a way that it enlivens anatomy, and anatomy in order to bring life to history. The function of the liver could, for example, give you an idea for treating the history of the later Egyptian culture, because the nuance, this special nuance in the presentation, the (let me say) aroma one has to spread across the later stages of Egyptian history, one acquires during the contemplation on the function of the liver in the organism. The effect is the same.

By interweaving subjects in this way you will not only give humanity something that is culturally interesting; you will also meet an educational need by bringing together the so-called physical, which does not as such exist, and the abstract spiritual, which again has no meaning as such. Thus you may enter the classroom in such a way that your words carry weight and, at the same time, acquire wings. You will not torture the children with words that merely fly away, nor will you teach them skills and aptitudes that weigh them down.