The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If you were to look back at the time-tables which were issued fifty or sixty years ago, you would see that they were comparatively short. A few short sentences summarized the ground to be covered in every school year in the different subjects. The time-tables were at the most two or three or four pages long—all the rest in those days was left to the actual process of teaching itself, for this out of its own powers should stimulate teachers to do the part left to them by the curricula. To-day things are different. To-day the syllabus for the schools has more and more increased. The Official Gazette has become a collection of books. And in this book there is not only a suggestion of what is required, but there are all kinds of instructions as to how things should be taught at school. That is, in the last decades people were on the way to letting State legislation swallow up the theory of education. And perhaps it is an ideal of many a legislator gradually to issue as “Official Publication,” as “Decrees and Regulations” all the material formerly contained in old literary works on pedagogy. The Socialist leaders quite definitely feel this subconscious impulse—however ashamed they may be to admit it; their ideal is to introduce in the form of decrees what was until recently common spiritual property even in the sphere of education.

For this reason those of us here who wish to preserve the educational and teaching system from the collapse which has overtaken it under Lenin—and which might overtake Central Europe—must approach the curriculum with a quite different understanding from that in which the ordinary teacher approaches the Official Gazette. This, even in the days of the monarchy and in the days of ordinary democratic Parliamentarianism, he has solemnly studied, but he will study it with feelings of greater obedience if it is sent to his house by his Dictator-Comrades. The potential tyranny of socialism would be felt quite particularly in the sphere of teaching and education. We have had to approach the curriculum differently.

That is, it has been incumbent on us to approach this curriculum with an attitude of mind which enabled us really to create it for ourselves at every turn, so that we learnt to tell the needs of all children at any age. Let us put side by side this ideal curriculum and the curriculum at present in use in other schools of Central Europe. This we shall do and we shall have prepared ourselves thoroughly for this estimate if we have really assimilated into our feelings all that we should absorb on the way to an understanding of a curriculum.

Here, again, is a very important aspect which is falsely estimated in these days in official pedagogy. I concluded my last lecture¹ with a direct talk on the “Morality of Educational Theory;” the moral tendencies which must be the basis of all pedagogy. It will only result in the practice of teaching if the many examples given in modern books on didactics are ignored. These speak of “object lessons.” They are quite sound, and we have referred to the way in which they should be conducted. But we have constantly had to emphasize the fact that these object lessons should never become trivial, that they should never exceed a certain limit. This eternal cross-questioning of the child on self-evident things in the form of object lessons simply extends a pall of weariness over the whole of teaching, and this should not be. And it robs teaching of precisely what I emphasized at the end of my last lecture² as so necessary: the cultivation of the child's imaginative faculty or the faculty of fantasy. If, for the sake of giving an object lesson, you discuss with the children the shape of any cooking utensil you like to choose, you undermine his imagination. If you describe the shape or origin of a Greek vase, you may do more for his understanding of what he finds around him in daily life. Object lessons, as given to-day, literally stifle the imagination. And you do not do amiss in teaching if you simply remember to leave many things unspoken, so that the child is induced to continue working with his own soul-force on what he has learnt in the lesson. It is not at all a good thing to want to explain everything down to the last dot on the “i.” The child simply leaves the school feeling that he has learnt everything already, and looking out for other things to do. Whereas if you have sown his imagination with seeds of life he remains fascinated by what the lesson offered him and is less ready to be distracted. That our children to-day are such rough tomboys is simply due to the fact that we go in for far too much false object teaching and too little training of the will and the feelings.

But in still another respect we really need to identify ourselves quite inwardly in our souls with the curriculum.

When you receive a child in the first years at the elementary school he is quite a different being from the same child in the last years of the school course. In his first years he is still very much immersed in his body, he is still very much part of his body. When the child leaves school you must have enabled him to cling no longer to his body with all the fibres of his soul, but to be independent of his body in thinking, feeling, and willing. Try to penetrate rather more deeply into the nature of the growing being and you will find, relatively speaking, particularly when the children have not been spoilt in their very first years, that they still have very sound instincts. They have then not acquired the craving to stuff themselves with sweets and so on. They still have certain sound instincts with regard to their food, as, of course, the animal too, because he is still very much dominated by his body, has very good instincts in the matter of his own nourishment. The animal, just because he is limited to his body, avoids what is hurtful to him. The animal world is not likely to be overrun by any evil like the spreading of alcoholic consumption in the human world. The spread of evils such as alcohol is due to the fact that man is so much a spiritual being that he can become independent of his bodily nature. For physical nature, in its reasonableness, is never tempted to become alcoholic, for instance. Comparatively sound food instincts are active in the first years at school. These cease in the interests of human development with the last years of school life. When puberty comes upon the individual he loses his food-instincts; he must find in his reason a substitute for his earlier instincts. That is why you can still intercept, as it were, the last manifestations of the food and health instincts in the last school years of the growing being. Here you can still steal a march on the last manifestations of the sound food-instincts, of the instinct of growth, etc. Later you can no longer find an inner feeling for the right care of food and health. That is why particularly the last years of the elementary school course should include instruction in nourishment and the care of personal health. Precisely in this connection object lessons should be given. For these object lessons can reinforce the fantasy or imagination quite considerably. Put before the child three different substances; place these before him, or remind him of them, for he has, of course, already seen them: any substance which is composed primarily of starch or sugar, a substance composed primarily of fat, a substance composed primarily of albumen. The child knows these. But remind him that the human body owes its activity primarily to these three constituents. From this explain to him in his last years of school the secrets of nutrition. Then give him an accurate description of the breathing and enlarge on every aspect of nutrition and breathing connected with the care of personal health. You will gain an enormous amount in your education and teaching if you undertake this instruction precisely in these years. At this stage you are just in time to intercept the last instinctive manifestations of the health and food instincts. That is why you can teach the child in these years about the conditions of nutrition and health without making him egoistic for the rest of his life. It is still natural to him to satisfy instinctively the conditions of health and nutrition. That is why he can be talked to about these things and why they still strike a chord in the natural life of the human being and so do not make him egoistical. If the children are not taught in these years about matters of nutrition and health they will have to inform themselves later from reading or from other people. What the child learns later, after puberty, about matters of nutrition and health, makes him egoistic. It cannot but produce egoism. If you read about nutrition in physiology, if you read a synopsis of rules about the care of the health, in the very nature of the case this information makes you more egoistic than you were before. This egoism, which continually proceeds from a rationalized knowledge of how to take personal care of oneself, has to be combated by morality. If we had not to care for ourselves physically we should not need to have a morality of the soul. But the human being is less exposed to the dangers of egoism in later life if he is instructed in nutrition and health in his last years at the elementary school, where the teaching is concerned with questions of nutrition and health rules, and not with egoism—but with what is natural to man.

You see what very far-reaching problems of life are involved in teaching a particular thing at the right moment. You really provide for the whole of his life if you teach a child what is right at his particular age. Of course, if one could imbue children of seven or eight with precepts of nutrition, with precepts of health, that would be the best way of all. They would then absorb these rules of nutrition and health in the most unegoistic way, for they are hardly aware at that moment that the rules refer to themselves. They would see themselves as objects, not as subjects. But they cannot understand it so early. Their power of judgement is not yet sufficiently developed to be able to understand it. For this reason you cannot take rules for nutrition and health at this age, and you must save them up for the last school years, when the fire of the inner instinct of food and health is already dying down, and when, in contrast to these dying instincts, there has already emerged the power to comprehend what comes into consideration. At every turn it is possible to intermingle for the older children some reference to rules of health and nutrition. In natural history, in physics, in the lessons which expand geography to its full scope, even in history lessons, every moment lends itself to an opportunity of instruction in dietetics and health. You will see from this that we do not need to accept it as a subject in the school time-table, but that much of our teaching must contain such vitality that it absorbs this with it. If we have a right feeling for what the child is to learn—then the child himself, or the community of children in school, will remind us every day of what we have to introduce into the rest of our teaching. And for this purpose we have to cultivate and practise, because we are teachers, a certain alertness of mind. If we are drilled as specialists in geography or history we shall not develop this mental alertness, for then we are exclusively concerned, from the beginning of the history lesson to the end of the history lesson, with teaching history. And then there can come into play those extraordinarily unnatural conditions whose injurious effects on life are not by any means fully appreciated.

It is profoundly true that we do the human being a service, and one that discourages his egoism, when we teach him the rules of dietetics and health, as I have explained, in the last years at the elementary school.

But here, too, it is possible to refer to many aspects which permeate the whole of teaching with feeling. And if you attach a certain amount of feeling to every step of your teaching, the results at which you are aiming will persist throughout life. But if in the last years at the elementary school you only teach things of interest to the reason, to the intellect, very little lasting impression will be made. You will have to permeate your own self with feeling whenever you give something to the children in the years from twelve to fourteen. You must try to teach, not only graphically, but with vivid feeling, geography, history, natural history, in the last school years. Imagination or fantasy is not enough without feeling.

Now in actual fact the curriculum for the elementary school (aged seven to fourteen) falls into three distinct periods which we have traced: first, up to nine years of age, when we introduce to the growing child chiefly conventionalities, writing, reading; then up to twelve, when we introduce to him the uses of this conventionality, and on the other hand to all learning based on the individual power of judgement. And you have seen that into this school period we put the study of animals, and nature-study, because the individual at this stage still has a certain instinctive feeling for the relationships here involved. I laid down lines for you on which to develop, from the cuttle-fish, the mouse, the lamb, and the human being, a feeling of the relationship of man with the whole of the world of nature. We have taken great pains, too—and I hope not in vain, for they will flower and come to fruition in the teaching of botany—to develop man's relation to the plant world. These ideas of things must be rooted in feeling during the middle period of the elementary school course, when the instincts are still alive to this feeling of intimacy with the animals, with the plants, and when, after all, even if the experience never emerges into the ordinary light of reasoning consciousness, the child feels himself now a cat, now a wolf, now a lion or an eagle. This identification of oneself now with one animal, now with the other, only occurs up to about the age of nine. Before this age it is even more profound, but it cannot be used, because the power to grasp it consciously is non-existent. If children are very precocious and talk a great deal about themselves when they are still only four or five, their comparisons of themselves with the eagle, with the mouse, etc., are very common indeed. But if we start at the ninth year to teach natural history on the lines I have suggested, we come upon a good deal of the child's instinctive feeling of relationship with animals. Later this instinctive feeling ripens into a feeling of relationship with the plant world. Therefore, first of all the natural history of the animal kingdom, then the natural history of the plant kingdom. We leave the minerals till the last because they require almost exclusively the power of judgement. So it is in accordance with human nature to arrange the curriculum as I have suggested. The intermediate school period, from eight to eleven, presents a fine balance between the instincts and the powers of discernment. We can always assume that the child will respond intelligently if we rely on a certain instinctive understanding, if we are not—especially in natural history and botany—too obvious. We must avoid drawing external analogies particularly with the plant world, for that is really contrary to natural feeling. Natural feeling is itself predisposed to seek psychic qualities in plants; not the external physical form of man in this tree or that, but soul-relations such as we tried to discover in the plant system.³

And the actual power of discernment, the rational, intellectual comprehension of the human being which can be relied on, belongs to the last school period. For this reason we employ precisely the twelfth year in the child's life, when he is gravitating in the direction of the power of discernment, for merging this power of judgement in the activities still partly prompted by instinct, but already very thickly overlaid with discerning power. These are, as it were, the twilight instincts of the soul, which we must overcome by the power of judgement.

At this stage it must be remembered that man has an instinct for gain, for profiteering, for the principle of discount, etc., which appeals to the instincts. But we must be sure to impose the power of discernment very forcibly upon this, and consequently we must use this stage of development for studying the relations existing between calculation and the circulation of commodities and finance, that is, for doing percentage sums, interest sums, discount sums, etc.

It is very important not to give the child these ideas too late, for that would really be appealing to his egoism. We are not yet reckoning on his egoism if we teach him at about the age of twelve to grasp to some extent the principle of promissory notes and so on, commercial calculations, etc. Actual book-keeping could be studied later; this already requires more intelligence. But it is very important to bring out these ideas at this stage. For the inner selfish appetite for interest, bills of exchange, promissory notes, and so on, is not yet awake in the child at this tender age. These things are more serious in the commercial schools when he is older.

You must absorb these facts quite completely into your being as instructors, as teachers. Try not to do too much, whatever your inclination may be, let us say, in describing plants. Try to teach about plants so that a great deal is left to the child's imagination, that the child can still imagine for himself, in terms of his own feeling, the psychic relations prevailing between the human soul and the plant world. The person who enthuses too freely on object lessons does not know that there are things to be taught which cannot be studied externally. And when people try to teach the child by object lessons things which ought only to be taught through moral influence and through the feelings, this very object teaching does him harm. We must never forget, you see, that mere observation and illustration are a very pronounced by-product of the materialistic spirit of our age. Naturally, observation must be cultivated in its proper place, but you must not apply the method when it would only spoil the intimate relation between the child and the world in the sphere of his imaginative mind.

• 1. See Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, Lecture 14.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. See The Art of Education (“Erziehungskunst”), No. 7; Rudolf Steiner, The Training of Teachers (“Pädagogisches Seminar”).

This ends the lectures of Rudolf Steiner on 5th September, 1919.

On the following day he sketched the teaching aims in the different subjects, at the different ages, in the different classes; he indicated the subjects which could be connected in practice.

In concluding this fortnight's work for teachers Rudolf Steiner made the following remarks:

“I should now like to bring these observations to a close by reminding you of what I should like you to take to heart: that is, to keep to four principles:

“Firstly that the teacher in general and in detail, in the general spiritualizing of his profession and in his manner of uttering individual words, of stating individual ideas, of creating every single feeling, reacts on his pupils. Remember that the teacher is a person of initiative, that he must never be slack; but must put his whole being into what he does in school, in his behaviour with the children. That is the first thing: The teacher must be an individual of initiative in general and in detail.

“The second is that as teachers we must take an interest in everything in the world and everything that concerns people and mankind. As teachers we must be interested in all worldly and all human matters. To keep ourselves aloof on any occasion from anything of possible interest to man—if we were to do this as teachers, it would be greatly to be deplored. We ought to be able to take an interest in the biggest and smallest matters that concern the individual child. That is the second thing: The teacher must be interested in every aspect of the world's life and human life.

“And the third thing is: The teacher must be an individual who never strikes a bargain with untruth. The teacher must be profoundly and inwardly true, he must never make a compromise with untruth, otherwise we should see falsehood coming into our teaching by many and devious channels, especially method. Our teaching will only bear the stamp of truth if we are ourselves unfailingly intent on aspiring to truth.

“And then something easier said than done, but which is also a golden rule for the teacher's work: The teacher must not dry up and not become soured; he must have an un-withered, fresh disposition of the soul. He must not get dry, and he must not get sour. To the very contrary is what the teacher must aspire.

“And I know that if you have absorbed properly into your souls the vision of the task which we have elucidated this last fortnight from the most various angles, what lies apparently far beyond your grasp will come very near to you in your teaching by this detour through the world of feeling and will. I have not said anything in this last fortnight which cannot be of direct practical use to your teaching if you allow it to ripen in your souls. But the Waldorf School will be dependent on your real inner response to the things which we have studied here together and to their activity in your soul.

“Remember the many things which I have tried to explain so that the human being should be understood, particularly the growing being, from a psychological point of view, and if you are at a loss how to introduce this or that point into your lessons, or at what juncture, you will always find inspiration from what has come up for discussion here, if you have remembered it sufficiently. Naturally a great many things ought to be repeated much oftener, but I have no desire to turn you into teaching machines, but into free, independent, individual teachers. It is in this sense that I have addressed you this last fortnight. The time, of course, has been so short that I have had to appeal to your generous, sympathetic participation.

“But you must think ever and again over the suggestions which have been made towards understanding man, and in particular the growing child. In all questions of method they will be useful to you.

“You see, when you and I look back on our thoughts during this last fortnight, however different our impulses have been, our thoughts have met. I myself—I can assure you—shall often look back. This Waldorf School weighs very heavily to-day on the hearts of the people concerned in initiating and organizing it. This Waldorf School must succeed. Much will depend on its success. Its success will furnish, as it were, a proof of much that we represent in spiritual development.

“If I may now say a few personal words in conclusion. I should like to say this: For me personally this Waldorf School will be a true child of care. My thoughts and cares will be continually returning to this Waldorf School. But if we realize the full gravity of our position we shall be able to work really well together. Let us be particularly faithful to the thought that fills our hearts and minds: that with the spiritual movement of the present day there are also united the spiritual powers of the living universe. If we trust in these good spiritual powers they will pervade our life and inspire it, and we shall find ourselves able to teach.”

A question concerning the pictures used for sounds and letters—for example, the f in fish, mentioned in the first lecture of Practical Advice to Teachers, which was given in the morning.

RUDOLF STEINER: One must find such things, these pictures for example, for oneself. Don’t rely on what other people have already done. Put your own free, but controlled, imagination to work, and have faith in what you find for yourselves; you can do the same thing for letters that express motion, the letter s for example. Work it out for yourselves.

A question about the treatment of melancholic children.

RUDOLF STEINER: The teacher should view the melancholic child in this way: melancholic tendency arises when the soulspirit of the human being cannot fully control the metabolic system. The nerve-sense human is the least spiritual part of a human being—it is the most physical. The least physical part is the metabolic human. The spiritual human is most firmly rooted in the metabolic organism, but nevertheless, it has realized itself least of all within it. The metabolic organism must be worked on more than any other. Thus, when the metabolic presents too many hindrances, the inner striving toward spirit is revealed in a brooding temperament.

When we deal with a melancholic children, we should try to arouse an interest in what they see around them; we should act, as much as possible, as though we were sanguine, and characterize the world accordingly. With sanguine children, on the other hand, we must be serious, with all inner earnestness, giving them clear strong pictures of the external world, which will leave an impression and remain in their minds.

Spirit has entered most into human beings in the nerve-sense system;⁴ and spirit has entered least into the metabolic; spirit has the strongest tendency to penetrate into and to be absorbed by the nerve-sense system.

A question about school books.

RUDOLF STEINER: You will have to look at those commonly used. But the less we need to use books the better. We only need printed books when the children have to take public examinations. We have to be clear about how we want to reach our goal in education. Ideally we should have no examinations at all. The final exams are a compromise with the authorities. Prior to puberty, dread of examinations can become the driving impulse of the whole physiological and psychological constitution of the child. The best thing would be to get rid of all examinations. The children would then become much more quick-witted. The temperament gradually wears down its own corners; as the tenth year approaches the difference in temperaments will gradually be overcome. Boys and girls need not be separated; we only do this for the benefit of public opinion. Liaisons will be formed, which need not worry us, although we will be criticized for it. As long as the teacher has authority the teaching will not suffer.

Specialty teachers will be needed for the art subjects, which work on the will, and also for languages, which are taught apart from the Main Lesson. The subjects that the class teacher brings belong together as a whole, and the class teachers can base their work very largely on this unity. In all teaching they will work especially on the intellect and on the feelings.⁵ The arts, gymnastics, eurythmy, drawing, and painting, all work on the will. The teacher goes along in the school with the class. The teacher of the highest class (the eighth grade) then begins again with the lowest (the first grade).

• 4. 4. That is, as free spirit, not absorbed in physical processes. On this important distinction see The Foundations of Human Experience.
• 5. The German word is Gemüt, which has no exact English equivalent. It expresses “the feeling mind” in the medieval sense—the mind coming from the heart, permeated with feeling, as expressed in an old poem: God be in my head, And in my understanding; God be in mine eyes, And in my looking; God be in my mouth, And in my speaking; God be in my heart, And in my thinking God be at mine end, And at my departing. Anon. From a Sarum Primer of 1558.

A report was presented on the following questions: How is the sanguine temperament expressed in a child? How should it be treated?

RUDOLF STEINER: This is where our work of individuating begins. We have said that we can group children according to temperament. In the larger groups children can all take part in the general drawing lesson, but by dividing them into smaller groups we can personalize to some extent. How is this individuating to be done? Copying will play a very small part, but in drawing you will try to awaken an inner feeling for form so that you can individuate. You will be able to differentiate by your choice of forms by taking either forms with straight lines or those with more movement in them—by taking simpler, clearer forms, or those with more detail. The more complicated, detailed forms would be used with the child whose temperament is sanguine. From the various temperaments you can learn how to teach each individual child.

A report was given on the same theme.

RUDOLF STEINER: We must also be very clear that there is no need to make our methods rigidly uniform, because, of course, one teacher can do something that is very good in a particular case, and another teacher something else equally good. So we need not strive for pedantic uniformity, but on the other hand we must adhere to certain important principles, which must be thoroughly comprehended.

The question about whether a sanguine child is difficult or easy to handle is very important. You must form your own opinion about this and you must be very clear. For example, suppose you have to teach or explain something to a sanguine child. The child has taken it in, but after some time you notice that the child has lost interest—attention has turned to something else. In this way the child’s progress is hindered. What would you do if you noticed, when you were talking about a horse, for example, that after awhile the sanguine child was far away from the subject and was paying attention to something entirely different, so that everything you were saying passed unnoticed? What would you do with a child like this?

In such a case much depends on whether or not you can give individual treatment. In a large class many of your guiding principles will be difficult to carry out. But you will have the sanguine children together in a group, and then you must work on them by showing them the melancholic pattern. If there is something wrong in the sanguine group, turn to the melancholic group and then bring the melancholic temperament into play so that it acts as an antidote to the other. In teaching large numbers you must pay great attention to this. It’s important that you should not only be serious and restful in yourself, but that you should also allow the serious restfulness of the melancholic children to act on the sanguine children, and vice versa.

Let’s suppose you are talking about a horse, and you notice that a child in the sanguine group has not been paying attention for a long time. Now try to verify this by asking the child a question that will make the lack of attention apparent. Then try to verify that one of the children in the melancholic group is still thinking about some piece of furniture you were talking about quite awhile ago, even though you have been speaking about the horse during that time. Make this clear by saying to the sanguine child, “You see, you forgot the horse a long time ago, but your friend over there is still thinking about that piece of furniture!”

A real situation of this kind works very strongly. In this way children act correctively on each other. It is very effective when they come to see themselves through these means. The subconscious soul has a strong feeling that such lack of cooperation will prevent a continuation of social life. You must make good use of this unconscious element in the soul, because teaching large numbers of children can be an excellent way to progress if you let your pupils wear off each other’s corners. To bring out the contrast you must have a very light touch and humor, so that the children see you are never annoyed nor bear a grudge against them—that things are revealed simply through your method of handling them.

The phlegmatic child was spoken of.

RUDOLF STEINER: What would you do if a phlegmatic child simply did not come out of herself or himself at all and nearly drove you to despair?

Suggestions were presented for the treatment of temperaments from the musical perspective and by relating them to Bible history.

Phlegmatics: Harmonium and piano; Harmony; Choral singing; The Gospel of Matthew; (variety)
Sanguines: Wind instruments; Melody; Whole orchestra; The Gospel of Luke; (Inwardness of soul)
Cholerics: Percussion and drum; Rhythm; Solo instruments; The Gospel of St. Mark; (Force, strength) Melancholics: Stringed Instruments; Counterpoint; Solo singing; The Gospel of St. John; (Deepening of the spirit)

RUDOLF STEINER: Much of this is very correct, especially the choice of instruments and musical instruction. Equally good is the contrast of solo singing for the melancholic, the whole orchestra for the sanguine, and choral singing for the phlegmatic. All this is very good, and also the way you have related the temperaments to the four Evangelists. But it wouldn’t be as good to delegate the four arts according to temperaments; it is precisely because art is multifaceted that any single art can bring harmony to each temperament.¹ Within each art the principle is correct, but I would not distribute the arts themselves in this way. For example, you could in some circumstances help a phlegmatic child very much through something that appeals to the child in dancing or painting. Thus the child would not be deprived of whatever might be useful in any of the various arts. In any single art it is possible to allocate the various branches and expressions of the art according to temperament. Whereas it is certainly necessary to prepare everything in the best way for individual children, it would not be good here to give too much consideration to the temperaments.

An account was given about the phlegmatic temperament and it was stated that the phlegmatic child sits with an open mouth.

RUDOLF STEINER: That is incorrect; the phlegmatic child will not sit with the mouth open but with a closed mouth and drooping lips. Through this kind of hint we can sometimes hit the nail on the head. It was very good that you touched on this, but as a rule it is not true that a phlegmatic child will sit with an open mouth, but just the opposite. This leads us back to the question of what to do with the phlegmatic child who is nearly driving us to despair. The ideal remedy would be to ask the mother to wake the child every day at least an hour earlier than the child prefers, and during this time (which you really take from the child’s sleep) keep the child busy with all kinds of things. This will not hurt the child, who usually sleeps much longer than necessary anyway. Provide things to do from the time of waking up until the usual waking hour. That would be an ideal cure. In this way, you can overcome much of the child’s phlegmatic qualities. It will not be possible very often to get parents to cooperate in this way, but much could be accomplished by carrying out such a plan.

You can however do the following, which is only a substitute but can help greatly. When your group of phlegmatics sit there (not with open mouths), and you go past their desks as you often do, you could do something like this: [Dr. Steiner jangled a bunch of keys]. This will jar them and wake them up. Their closed mouths would then open, and exactly at this moment when you have surprised them, you must try to occupy them for five minutes! You must rouse them, shake them out of their lethargy by some external means. By working on the unconscious you must combat this irregular connection between the etheric and physical bodies. You must continually find fresh ways to jolt the phlegmatics, thus changing their drooping lips to open mouths, and that means that you will be making them do just what they do not like doing. This is the answer when the phlegmatics drive you to despair, and if you keep trying patiently to shake up the phlegmatic group in this way, again and again, you will accomplish much.

Question: Wouldn’t it be possible to have the phlegmatic children come to school an hour earlier?

RUDOLF STEINER: Yes, if you could do that, and also see that the children are wakened with some kind of noise, that would naturally be very good; it would be good to include the phlegmatic children among those who come earliest to school.² The important thing with the phlegmatic children is to engage their attention as soon as you have changed their soul mood.

The subject of food in relation to the different temperaments was introduced.

RUDOLF STEINER: On the whole, the main time for digestion should not be during school hours, but smaller meals would be insignificant; on the contrary, if the children have had their breakfast they can be more attentive than when they come to school on empty stomachs. If they eat too much—and this applies especially to phlegmatic children—you cannot teach them anything. Sanguine children should not be given too much meat, nor phlegmatic too many eggs. The melancholic children, on the other hand, can have a good mixed diet, but not too many roots or too much cabbage. For melancholic children diet is very individual, and you have to watch that. With sanguine and phlegmatic children it is possible to generalize.

The melancholic temperament was spoken of.

RUDOLF STEINER: That was very good. When you teach you will also have to realize that melancholic children get left behind easily; they do not keep up easily with others. I ask you to remember this also.

The same theme was continued.

RUDOLF STEINER: It was excellent that you stressed the importance of the teacher’s attitude toward the melancholic children. Moreover, they are slow in the birth of the etheric body, which otherwise becomes free during the change of teeth. Therefore, these children have a greater aptitude for imitation; if they have become fond of you, everything you do in front of them will make a lasting impression on them. You must use the fact that they retain the principle of imitation longer than others.

A further report on the melancholic temperament.

RUDOLF STEINER: You will find it very difficult to treat the melancholic temperament if you fail to consider one thing that is almost always present: the melancholic lives in a strange condition of self-deception. Melancholics have the opinion that their experiences are peculiar to themselves. The moment you can bring home to them that others also have these or similar experiences, they will to some degree be cured, because they then perceive they are not the singularly interesting people they thought themselves to be. They are prepossessed by the illusion that they are very exceptional as they are.

When you can impress a melancholic child by saying, “Come on now, you’re not so extraordinary after all; there are plenty of people like you, who have had similar experiences,” then this will act as a very strong corrective to the impulses that lead to melancholy. Because of this it is good to make a point of presenting them with the biographies of great persons; they will be more interested in these individuals than in external nature. Such biographies should be used especially to help these children over their melancholy.

Two teachers spoke about the choleric temperament. Rudolf Steiner then drew the following figures on the board:

What do we see in these figures? They depict another characterization of the four temperaments. The melancholic children are as a rule tall and slender; the sanguine are the most normal; those with more protruding shoulders are the phlegmatic children; and those with a short stout build so that the head almost sinks down into the body are choleric.

Both Michelangelo and Beethoven have a combination of melancholic and choleric temperaments. Please remember particularly that when we are dealing with the temperament of a child, as teachers we should not assume that a certain temperament is a fault to be overcome. We must recognize the temperament and ask ourselves the following question: How should we treat it so that the child may reach the desired goal in life—so that the very best may be drawn out of the temperament and with the help of their own temperaments, children can reach their goals.

Particularly in the case of the choleric temperament, we would help very little by trying to drive it out and replacing it with something else. Indeed, much arises from the life and passion of choleric people—especially when we look at history and find that many things would have happened differently had there been no cholerics. So we must make it our task to bring the child, regardless of the temperament, to the goal in life belonging to that child’s nature.

For the choleric you should use as much as possible fictional situations, describing situations you have made up for the occasion, and that you bring to the child’s attention. If, for example, you have a child with a temper, describe such situations to the child and deal with them yourself, treating them in a choleric way. For example, I would tell a choleric child about a wild fellow whom I had met, whom I would then graphically describe to the child. I would get roused and excited about him, describing how I treated him, and what I thought of him, so that the child sees temper in someone else, in a fictitious way the child sees it in action. In this way you will bring together the inner forces of such a child, whose general power of understanding is thus increased.

The teachers asked Rudolf Steiner to relate the scene between Napoleon and his secretary.

Rudolf Steiner: For this you would first have to get permission from the Ministry of Housing! Through describing such a scene the choleric element would have to be brought out. But a scene such as I just mentioned must be described by the teacher so that the choleric element is apparent. This will always arouse the forces of a choleric child, with whom you can then continue to work. It would be ideal to describe such a situation to the choleric group in order to arouse their forces, the effect of which would then last a few days. During that few days the children will have no difficulty taking in what you want to teach them. Otherwise they fume inwardly against things that they should be getting through their understanding.

Now I would like you to try something: we should have a record of what we have been saying about the treatment of temperaments, and so I should like to ask Miss B. to write a comprehensive survey (approximately six pages) of the characteristics of the different temperaments and how to treat them, based on everything I have spoken about here. Also, I will ask Mrs. E. to imagine she has two groups of children in front of her, sanguine and melancholic and then, in a kind of drawing lesson, to use simple designs, varied according to sanguine and melancholic children. I will ask Mr. T. to do the same thing with drawings for phlegmatic and choleric children; and please bring these tomorrow when you have prepared them.

Then I will ask, let us say, Miss A., Miss D., and Mr. R. to deal with a problem: Imagine that you have to tell the same fairy tale twice—not twice in the same way, but clothed in different sentences, and so on. The first time pay more attention to the sanguine and the second time to the melancholic children, so that both get something from it.

Then I ask that perhaps Mr. M. and Mr. L. work at the difficult task of giving two separate descriptions of an animal or animal species, first for the cholerics and then for the phlegmatics. And I will ask Mr. O., Mr. N., and perhaps with the help of Mr. U. to solve the problem of how to consider the four temperaments in arithmetic.

When you consider something like the temperaments in working out your lessons, you must remember above all that the human being is constantly becoming, always changing and developing. This is something that we as teachers must have always in our consciousness—that the human being is constantly becoming, that in the course of life human beings are subject to metamorphosis. And just as we should give serious consideration to the temperamental dispositions of individual children, so we must also reflect on the element of growth, this becoming, so that we come to see that all children are primarily sanguine, even if they are also phlegmatic or choleric in certain things. All adolescents, boys and girls, are really cholerics, and if this is not so at this time of life it shows an unhealthy development. In mature life a person is melancholic and in old age phlegmatic.

This again sheds some light on the question of temperaments, because here you have something particularly necessary to remember at the present time. In our day we love to make fixed, sharply defined concepts. In reality, however, everything is interwoven so that, even while you are saying that a person is made up of head, breast, and limb organizations, you must be clear that these three really interpenetrate one another. Thus a choleric child is only mostly choleric, a sanguine mostly sanguine, and so on. Only at the age of adolescence can one become completely choleric. Some people remain adolescents till they die, because they preserve this age of adolescence within themselves throughout life. Nero and Napoleon never outgrew the age of youth. This shows us how qualities that follow each other during growth can still—through further change—permeate each other again.

What is the poet’s productivity actually based on—or indeed any spiritually creative power? How does it happen that a man, for example, can become a poet? It is because he has preserved throughout his whole life certain qualities that belonged to early manhood and childhood. The more such a man remains “young,” the more aptitude he has for the art of poetry. In a certain sense it is a misfortune for such a man if he cannot keep some of the qualities of youth, something of a sanguine nature, his whole life through. It is very important that teachers can become sanguine out of their own resolve. And it is moreover tremendously important for teachers to remember this so they may cherish this happy disposition of the child as something of particular value.

All creative qualities in life—everything that fosters the spiritual and cultural side of the social organism—all of this depends on the youthful qualities in a human being. These things will be accomplished by those who have preserved the temperament of youth. All economic life, on the other hand, depends on the qualities of old age finding their way into people, even when they are young. This is because all economic judgment depends on experience. Experience is best gained when certain qualities of old age enter into people, and the old person is indeed a phlegmatic. Those business people prosper most whose other attributes and qualities have an added touch of the phlegmatic, which really already bears the stamp of old age. That is the secret of very many business people—that in addition to their other good qualities as business people, they also have something of old age about them, especially in the way they manage their businesses. In the business world, a person who only developed the sanguine temperament would only get as far as the projects of youth, which are never finished. A choleric who remains at the stage of youth might spoil what was done earlier in life through policies adopted later. The melancholic cannot be a business person anyway, because a harmonious development in business life is connected with a quality of old age. A harmonious temperament, along with some of the phlegmatic’s unexcitability is the best combination for business life.

You see, if you are thinking of the future of humankind you must really notice such things and consider them. A person of thirty who is a poet or painter is also something more than “a person of thirty,” because that individual at the same time has the qualities of childhood and youth within, which have found their way into the person’s being. When people are creative you can see how another being lives in them, in which they have remained more or less childlike, in which the essence of childhood still dwells. Everything I have exemplified must become the subject of a new kind of psychology.

• 1. The teacher who presented the above suggestions had also allocated particular arts to the various temperaments.
• 2. This refers to the need for having school in shifts.

Someone told the story of “Mary’s Child,” first for melancholic and then for sanguine children.

RUDOLF STEINER: I think in the future you will have to pay more attention to your articulation. The two versions, as you gave them, were too much alike. The difference must also lie in the articulation. If you bring out these details more emphatically you will not fail to impress the melancholic children. For the sanguines I would introduce more pauses into the story, especially at the beginning, so that the children are compelled to listen to you again each time their attention wanders. But now I would like to ask how you would apply these stories when you are actually teaching? Imagine yourselves standing in front of the class; what would you do? I would advise you to tell the story in the melancholic version and then have it retold by a sanguine child and vice versa.

A person comments: First, I think it would be advisable to seat the sanguine children directly in front of the teacher so they may be constantly within view, whereas melancholic children should be sitting where they like as much as possible.

RUDOLF STEINER: An excellent suggestion.

The individual who commented then related the story of “The Long-tailed Monkey,” first in a style for the sanguine and then for the melancholic children, adding the remark that melancholic children do not want to hear too many sad stories.

RUDOLF STEINER: You should also remember that, but the contrasting styles were good. Now I think we can go on to how we should make further use of these things later. I would not decide which child is to tell the story, but after a day or two I would say (in a lively way): “Now listen! You can choose for yourselves which part of the story you would like to retell. Then the next day or the day after that any child who wants to can come out and tell a portion of the story to the class.

Someone else told another story in two versions.

RUDOLF STEINER: You all have the feeling, don’t you, that something like this can be done in various ways. Now it is really very important, particularly for those who want to work as teachers, to get rid of the habit of unnecessary criticism. As a teacher you should develop a strong feeling for this; you should definitely be conscious that it is not a question of always trying to improve on what has already been done. A thing can be good in a variety of ways. And so I think it will be good to view what has been presented as something that can certainly be done as you have proposed.

But there is one thing I would like to add. In all three stories I think I noticed that the first rendering, both in style and purpose, was the better of the two. Which did you work out first in your mind, Miss A? Which did you feel you could do better? [It was determined that the version worked out first was for the melancholic temperament, and this was the better of the two]. I would now like to recommend that all three of you work out a version for the phlegmatic child. This version is very important from the perspective of style. But if possible please try to work this out tentatively today, then sleep on it and come to your final decision about the style tomorrow. It has been found by experience that when you have something like this to do, you can only discover its new form in a different spirit when, after the preparation, you allow it to pass through a period of sleep. On Monday bring us a version for the phlegmatics, but prepare it first and then later work out its final form. Having the Sunday in between will make this possible.

Someone showed a drawing, a design in blue and yellow for a melancholic child. Dr. Steiner drew the same design in green and red for a sanguine child.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now you can say to the children: This blue and yellow one can be seen best when it is getting dark; you take it into sleep with you, because that is the color with which you can appear before God. This one, the green and red one, can meet your eyes when you awake. You can gaze at it when you wake up in the morning and enjoy it for the rest of the day!

A drawing for a sanguine child was then displayed, red on a white ground. Dr. Steiner drew the same design for a melancholic child, long and thin on a black ground. Dr. Steiner called the impudent form sticking out a “little kicker.”¹

RUDOLF STEINER: In the design for the melancholics this little creature withdraws into the form. Here you see the contrast, a kind of contrast where you would primarily use the colors in order to work on one child or another, and you should certainly show the same thing twice. What would you say to the children?

I would ask them which one they liked best.

RUDOLF STEINER: You would then make your own discoveries! You would recognize the sanguine children from their joy in this contrast of colors. You should not miss the opportunity to use simple forms like these for the children.

Someone recommended forms pointed outward for the choleric:

to be changed to an enclosed form

or to be changed to:

For the phlegmatic he recommended the opposite way, to start from the circle and have figures drawn inside it or to break up a circle in some way:

RUDOLF STEINER: For the phlegmatic child I would add the following in this method. I should say:

“Look, here is a circle. You like that don’t you?

“But now I’ll draw something else for you:

“And if I simply take away the circle, then you have the form as it should be. You must get into the habit of not muddling things up together.”

By drawing things and rubbing them out again the phlegmatic child can be torn out of his phlegma. Now I will also ask you, Frau E., to work out the same design for other temperaments again, making use of the method of sleeping over what you have done.

A description of a gorilla was given in two versions.

RUDOLF STEINER: Of course nothing can be said against your inventing things without depending on any particular naturalists, although you may very well get suggestions from them. I would ask you, however, to awaken a closer contact with your students when you tell them a story of this kind. It would also be possible to use a long story and to make an impression with that. You must, however, not be absorbed in your own thoughts, but maintain closer contact with your students. If you are too absorbed in yourself you could easily lose contact with the children.

A horse was described for phlegmatic and choleric children.

RUDOLF STEINER: In giving descriptions of animals it is especially important that, in every detail, we should remain clear in our minds that a human being is really the whole animal kingdom. The animal kingdom in its entirety is humankind. You cannot, of course, present ideas of this kind to the children theoretically, and you certainly should not do so.

Let’s suppose, however, that someone has to work out in detail the subject Mr. L. introduced, and also distinguish between the phlegmatic and choleric groups. The phlegmatics are not as easily interested and they are not likely to remember much of what you tell them about an ordinary animal, such as a horse. They have seen horses often enough that they have very little interest in them.² But it is important to focus their attention, so I should say to the phlegmatic children, “Well now, what is the real difference between you and a horse? Let’s take some minor differences. You all have a foot like this, don’t you? Here are the toes, here is the heel and here is the instep.

“Now look at a horse’s foot. This is the hind foot of a horse. Where are the toes? Where is the heel? And where is the ankle? With you the knee is farther up. Where is the knee of a horse? Now look, here are the toes, the heel is right up there and the knee farther up still. It is very different. Just imagine how different a horse’s foot looks from yours.” You will now find that this will surprise the phlegmatic child into alertness, and what you have said will not be forgotten.

For the choleric children I would tell a story about how a child meets a horse out in the woods somewhere. The horse is running; and far behind, running after it, there is a man from whom it has bolted, and the child has to catch the horse by the bridle. If I know I have a choleric child before me I can try to show how the child should do this, how to get hold of the bridle. To get the child’s fantasy working to discover how the horse should be caught is a very good thing. Even a choleric child feels a little nervous about such a procedure, but you are meeting the need of the choleric temperament when you expect the child to do it. Such a child will become a little disconcerted and less arrogant. Something is expected of the child that can only be expected of a choleric child.

I would also like to say that, especially at first, you should make all such stories very short. So I will ask Mr. M. in this case to tell his story for sanguine and melancholic children, but let both stories be exceedingly short. Mr. L., you could do the same but choose particular incidents that will be remembered and serve to arouse the children’s eager interest.

We must realize that we should use the subject matter of our teaching primarily to capture the child’s powers of will, feeling, and thought; it is not so important to us that the children remember what they are told, but that they develop their soul faculties.

Someone spoke of how to consider the four temperaments in arithmetic, but explained that he had not really managed to work this out properly.

RUDOLF STEINER: I had foreseen that, because this problem is very difficult. You will have to sleep on it very thoroughly.

But please take the following as a fresh problem. Imagine to yourself a class in which there are children of eight and nine years old. In the teaching of the future it will, of course, be important that we develop as many social instincts as possible, that we educate the social will. Now imagine three children of whom one is a pronounced phlegmatic, another a pronounced choleric, and the third a pronounced melancholic. I will say nothing about their other qualities. Let’s suppose that in the third or fourth week after school had begun these children come to you and say, “None of the other children can stand me!” Immediately it would be obvious that these are the “Cinderellas” of the class, and all the other children are inclined to avoid them. By Monday I would like you to think over how the teacher can best try to remedy this evil. Please give your whole mind to thinking this through, and view it as a very important educational problem.

• 1. Kickerling = indicating a small football player.
• 2. This statement may not apply to the children of today, as it did in 1919.

RUDOLF STEINER: We will now continue the work we have set out to do, and we will pass on to what will be said about how to deal with arithmetic from the perspective of the temperaments. We must primarily consider what procedure we should follow in teaching arithmetic.

Someone showed how to explain a fraction by breaking a piece of chalk.

RUDOLF STEINER: First, I have just one thing to say: I would not use chalk, because it is a great pity to break chalk. I would choose something less valuable. A bit of wood or something like that would do, wouldn’t it? It is not good to accustom young children to destroy useful things.

Question: Does a child who slouches and lacks a proper vertical position find it more difficult to understand spatial and geometrical forms because of such a problem?

RUDOLF STEINER: Not to any perceptible degree. Things of this kind depend more on the tendencies found in the construction of the human organism rather than on the build of an individual. This was once brought very forcibly to my attention after a lecture in Munich. I had explained in the lecture that it has a certain significance for the whole structure of the human being that the backbone is in line with the diameter of the Earth, while the line of the animal’s back is at a right angle to it. Afterward a learned doctor from Karlsruhe came and asserted that when a person is asleep the spine is in a horizontal position! I replied, “It’s not a question of whether a person can move the backbone into various positions, but that the whole human structure is arranged architecturally so that the backbone is ordinarily vertical, although it can be placed at a slant or any other position.”

If you did not consider this you could never understand how certain potentials found in the intellect appear, even when the senses themselves are not active—for example, in someone born blind. The human being is constructed so that the intellect has certain tendencies in the direction of the eyes, and thus, even in the case of those born blind, it is still possible to evoke mental images that are connected with the eyes, such as in the case of someone like the blind Helen Keller. What is important is the tendency, the general dispositions of the human organism, rather than what may be the result of a chance situation here or there. I would now like to add the following to what was said. It is not so much a question of criticizing these things, because that can always be done. What matters is that things of this kind are brought up and that we try to understand them.

Let’s start with addition, and first see what our view of addition should be. Let’s suppose I have some beans or a heap of elderberries. For our present task I will assume that the children can count, which indeed they must learn to do first. A child counts them and finds there are 27. “Yes,” I say. “27—that is the sum.” We proceed from the sum, not from the addenda. You can follow the psychological significance of this in my theory of knowledge.¹ We must now divide the whole into the addenda, into parts or into little heaps. We will have one heap of, let’s say, 12 elderberries, another heap of 7, still another of say 3, and one more, let’s say 5; this will represent the whole number of our elderberries: 27 = 12 + 7 + 3 + 5.

We work out our arithmetical process from the sum total 27. I would allow this process to be done by several children with a pronounced phlegmatic temperament. You will gradually come to realize that this kind of addition is particularly suited to the phlegmatics. Then, since the process can be reversed, I would call on some choleric children, and gather the elderberries together again, this time arranging them so that 5 + 3 + 7 + 12 = 27. In this way the choleric children do the reverse process. But addition in itself is the arithmetical rule particularly suited to phlegmatic children.

Now I choose one of the melancholic children and say, “Here is a little pile of elderberries. Count them for me.” The child discovers that there are, let’s say, 8. Now, I say, “I don’t want 8, I only want 3. How many elderberries must you take away to leave me only 3?” The child will discover that 5 must be removed. Subtraction in this form is the one of the four rules especially suited to melancholic children.

Then I call on a sanguine child to do the reverse process. I ask what has been taken away, and I have this child tell me that if I take 5 from 8, I’ll have 3 left. Thus, the sanguine child does the reverse arithmetical process. I would only like to add that the melancholic children generally have a special connection with subtraction when done as I have described.

Now I take a child from the sanguine group. Again I put down a pile of elderberries, but I must be sure the numbers fit. I must arrange it beforehand, otherwise we find ourselves involved in fractions. I have the child count out 56 elderberries. “Now look; here I have 8 elderberries, so now tell me how many times you find 8 elderberries contained in 56.” So you see that multiplication leads to a dividing up. The child finds that the answer is 7. Now I let the sum be done in reverse by a melancholic child and say, “This time I do not want to know how often 8 is contained in 56, but what number is contained 7 times in 56." I always allow the reverse process to be done by the opposite temperament.

Next I introduce the choleric to division, from the smaller number to the greater, by saying, “Look, here you have a little pile of 8; I want you to tell me what number contains 8 seven times.” Now the child must find the answer: 56, in a pile of 56. Then I have the phlegmatic children work out the opposite process: ordinary division. The former is the way I use division for the choleric child, because the rule of arithmetic for the choleric children is mainly in this form division.

By continuing in this way I find it possible to use the four rules of arithmetic to arouse interest among the four temperaments. Adding is related to the phlegmatic temperament, subtracting to the melancholic, multiplying to the sanguine, and dividing—working back to the dividend—to the choleric. I ask you to consider this, following what N. has been telling us.

It is very important not to continue working in a singular way, doing nothing but addition for six months, then subtraction, and so on; but whenever possible, take all four arithmetical rules fairly quickly, one after another, and then practice them all—but at first only up to around the number 40. So we shall not teach arithmetic as it is done in an ordinary curriculum. By practicing these four rules, however, they can be assimilated almost simultaneously. You will find that this saves a great deal of time, and in this way the children can work one rule in with another. Division is connected with subtraction, and multiplication is really only a repetition of addition, so you can even change things around and give subtraction, for example, to the choleric child.

It was suggested that one begin with solid geometry.

RUDOLF STEINER: With adults it is possible to begin with solids, but why should you want to go from solids to plane surfaces with a child? You see, three-dimensional space is never easy to picture, least of all for a child. You cannot impart anything to a child but a vague idea of space. Indeed, the child’s imagination will suffer if expected to imagine solid bodies.

You are assuming that the solid is the actual thing and the line abstract; but this is not so. A triangle is in itself something very concrete; it exists in space. Children see things mainly in surfaces. It is an act of violence to force a child into the third dimension, the idea of depth. If children are to apply their imagination to a solid, then they must first have the necessary elements within to build up this imaginative picture. For example, children must really have a clear picture of a line and a triangle before a tetrahedron can be understood. It is better for them to first have a real mental picture of a triangle; the triangle is an actuality, not merely an abstraction taken from the solid.

I would recommend that you teach geometry, not as solid geometry first, but as plane geometry, giving figures with plane surfaces between them; this is preferable, because children like to use their powers of understanding for such things; beginning with plane geometry will support them. You can add further to the effect by connecting it with drawing lessons. Children can draw a triangle relatively early, and you should not wait too long before having them copy what they see.

The figure shown yesterday was repeated, this time for a choleric child and for a phlegmatic child.

RUDOLF STEINER: That is a very good design for the choleric child. For the phlegmatic child I would prefer to make it speckled, I would rather have it checkered. It would be possible to use your design, but it would not arouse the phlegmatic child’s attention enough.

The drawings for the melancholic and the sanguine child were presented.

RUDOLF STEINER: In using this method you will find that the needs of the sanguine and melancholic child can be met in the following ways. For the sanguine you should constantly make use of varied repetition. You might have the child draw a design like this:

And then three more like it:

and then one more, so that the emphasis is on repetition:

For the melancholic child it would be good to give a design in which careful thought plays some part.

Suppose you have a melancholic child first draw a form like this (figure a), and then the counter-form (figure b), so that they complement one another. This will arouse the child’s imagination. I will shade the original form like this (a) and the opposite form like this (b) and you will see that what is shaded in one form would be left blank in the other. If you think of the blank part as filled in, you would get the first form again. In this way the outer forms in the second drawing are the opposite of the inner, and this design is the opposite of those based on repetition. Choose something requiring thought and connected with observation for the melancholic children, and something in which repetition plays a part (creepers, tendrils, and so on) for the sanguine children.

The story of “Mary’s Child” was told in the style for phlegmatic children.

RUDOLF STEINER: It is important to cultivate well-articulated speech and then help the children to get out of their dialect.² Frau Dr. Steiner will demonstrate.

Someone told the story of “The Long-Tailed Monkey” for phlegmatic children.

RUDOLF STEINER: For a story of this kind there are certain aids to storytelling that I would suggest you use. Just for the phlegmatics it would be good to pause occasionally mid-sentence, look at the children, and use the pause to let the imagination work. You can arouse their curiosity at critical points so that they can think on in advance a little and complete the picture for themselves. “The king’s daughter ... was ... very beautiful ... but ... she was not equally ... good.” This use of pauses in narration works strongest with phlegmatic children.

A fairy story was told for phlegmatic children.

RUDOLF STEINER: You must make use of a moment of surprise and curiosity.

Someone told an animal story for sanguine children about a horse, a donkey, and a camel. “Which do you like best, the horse or the donkey?”

RUDOLF STEINER: Some melancholics will prefer the donkey. With these descriptions of animals I would ask you to remember that, as far as possible, they should lead the child to observe animals, for descriptions of this kind can contain true natural history.

Someone else told the story of a monkey who escaped into the rafters—first for sanguines and then for melancholics.

RUDOLF STEINER: Yes, in certain cases that would make a very good impression on the melancholic children, but here also it is my opinion that you could develop it a little further in order to encourage animal observation as such.

I would like to remind you that consideration of the child’s temperament should not be neglected, but you can safely use the first three to five weeks to observe the temperaments of your pupils and then divide them into groups as spoken of here.

It would also be good to consider the extremes of the various temperaments. Goethe’s world view led him to express the beautiful idea that one can understand the normal by studying the abnormal. Goethe views an abnormal plant—a misshapen plant—and from the nature of the malformation he learns to understand the normal plant. In the same way you can find the connections between the absolutely normal and the malformations of the body-soul nature, and you yourselves can find the way from the temperaments to what is abnormal in the soul life.

If the melancholic temperament becomes abnormal and does not remain within the boundaries of the soul, but rather encroaches on the body, then insanity arises. Insanity is the abnormal development of a predominantly melancholic temperament. The abnormal development of the phlegmatic temperament is mental deficiency. The abnormal development of the sanguine is foolishness, or stupidity. The abnormal development of the choleric is rage. When a person is in an emotional state you will sometimes see these attacks of insanity, mental deficiency, foolishness, or rage arising from otherwise normal soul conditions. It is indeed necessary that you focus your attention and observation on the entire soul life.

Now we will move on to the solution of our other problem. I said: Suppose that you, my friends, had children of eight or nine years old in your class. What would you do if, three or four weeks after the beginning of term, you noticed that a phlegmatic, a choleric, and a melancholic child were, to some extent, becoming the three “Cinderellas” of the class, so that all the others pushed them around and no one wanted to play with them and so on? If this had happened, what would you as teachers do about it?

Various teachers expressed opinions.

RUDOLF STEINER: You should never allow the children to inform against each other; you must find other ways of discovering what has caused them to be “Cinderellas.” As teachers, you see, you will often find that you have to help raise the children. If they get into all sorts of naughty ways, their fathers and mothers will come and say, for example, “My child tells lies.” You would seldom go wrong to give this advice: say to the parents, “Imagine a case, a story, in which an untruthful child is placed in a ridiculous position—where the child, because of lying, is led into a situation that appears absurd even to the child. If you tell the child a story of this kind, and then another, and still another like it, you will as a rule cure your child of the tendency to lie.”

Similarly, you will find it helpful to insert into a story everything that has been said about the three “Cinderellas,” everything you can hear and discover about these children, and then you can tell this story to the whole class. The effect of this will be that the three “Cinderellas” will be somewhat comforted and the others somewhat ashamed. If you do this you will certainly find that, even at the first attempt, and even more after the second, you will succeed in restoring a friendly, social atmosphere, a mutual sympathy among the children. You should continue with a similar story throughout the term.

Tomorrow we will take another case that also happens sometimes, which certainly cannot be treated by telling a story that comforts some of the children and shames the others. Suppose you had children of eight or nine years old in your class, and one of these small fries had discovered a particularly mischievous trick. These things do happen. It had been learned outside the school and succeeded in infecting all the others so that the whole class was at it during recess.

An ordinary schoolmaster would go to the extreme of punishing the whole class, but I hope that by tomorrow you will think of a more rational—that is a more effective—method, because this old way of punishing places the teacher in the wrong relationship with the children, and this will not fail to have an effect. The aftereffect is not good.

I have a special case in mind that really happened, where a certain teacher did not act very wisely. One little rascal had conceived the idea of spitting on the ceiling and had actually succeeded. It was a long time before the teacher discovered the culprit. He could not pick out any one child, because they had all done it; the whole classroom was damaged.

Please think over this case of moral delinquency by tomorrow. All you really know is that the whole class had been infected. You cannot begin with the assumption that you know who the ringleader was. You will have to consider whether it wouldn’t be better to give up all thought of discovering the culprit by getting the children to tell on each other. How would you act in this case?

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, Goethe’s World View, and The Science of Knowing: Outline of an Epistemology Implicit in the Goethean World View, both Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1992 and 1988.
• 2. This does not imply that Rudolf Steiner was unaware of the importance of dialect in its right place.

RUDOLF STEINER: It is most important that, along with all our other work, we should cultivate clear articulation. This has a kind of influence, a certain effect. I have here some sentences that I formulated for another occasion; they have no especially profound meaning, but are constructed so that the speech organs are activated in every kind of movement, organically. I would like you to pass these sentences around and repeat them in turn without embarrassment so that by constant practice they may make our speech organs flexible; we can have these organs do gymnastics, so to speak. Mrs. Steiner will say the sentences first as it should be done artistically, and I will ask each one of you to repeat them after her. These sentences are not composed according to sense and meaning, but in order to “do gymnastics” with the speech organs.¹

Dart may these boats through darkening gloaming
Name neat Norman on nimble moody mules

The N is constantly repeated, but in different combinations of letters, and so the speech organ can do the right gymnastic exercises. At one point two Ns come together; you must stop longer over the first N in “on nimble.”

Rattle me more and more rattles now rightly

In this way you can activate the speech organs with the right gymnastics.

I would recommend that you take particular care to find your way into the very forms of the sounds and the forms of the syllables; see that you really grow into these forms, so that you consciously speak each sound, that you lift each sound into consciousness. It is a common weakness in speech that people just glide over the sounds, whereas speech is there to be understood. It would even be better to first bring an element of caricature into your speech by emphasizing syllables that should not be emphasized at all. Actors, for example, practice saying friendly instead of friendly! You must pronounce each letter consciously. It would even be good for you to do something like Demosthenes did, though perhaps not regularly. You know that, when he could not make any progress with his speaking, he put pebbles on his tongue and through practice strengthened his voice to the degree that it could be heard over a rushing river; this he did to acquire a delivery that the Athenians could hear.

I will now ask Miss B. to introduce the question of temperaments. Since the individual child must be our primary consideration in teaching, it is proper that we study the basis of the temperaments with the maximum care. Naturally when we have a class it is not possible to treat each child individually. But you can give much individual treatment by having on one side, let’s say, the phlegmatics and melancholics, and the sanguine and choleric children on the other side; you can have them take part in a lively interchange, turning now to the group of one temperament, and then calling on another group for answers, saying this to one group and that to another. In this way individualization happens on its own in the class.

A comprehensive picture was presented of the temperaments and their treatment.

RUDOLF STEINER: You have given a good account of what was spoken of in our conversations together on this subject. But you may be going too far when you assert, with regard to the melancholic temperament, that it has a decided inclination toward piety. There is only one little word lacking: “often.” It is also just possible that the melancholic disposition in children is rooted in pronounced egoism, and in no way has a religious tendency. With adults you can leave out the little word “often,” but in young children the melancholic element often masks a pronounced egoism. Melancholic children are often dependent on atmospheric conditions; the weather often effects the melancholic temperament. The sanguine children are also dependent on atmospheric conditions, but more in their moods, in the soul, whereas the melancholic children are affected more unconsciously by the weather in the physical body.

If I were to go into this question in detail from the standpoint of spiritual science, I would have to show you how the childish temperament is actually connected with karma, how in the child’s temperament something really appears that could be described as the consequence of experiences in previous lives on Earth. Let’s take the concrete example of a man who is obliged in one life to be very interested in himself. He is lonely and is thus forced to be interested in himself. Because he is frequently absorbed in himself, the force of circumstances causes him to be inclined to unite his soul very closely with the structure of his physical body, and in the next incarnation he brings with him a bodily nature keenly alive to the conditions of the outer world. He becomes a sanguine individual. Thus, it can happen that when someone has been compelled to live alone in one incarnation, which would have retarded the person’s progress, this is adjusted in the next life through becoming a sanguine, with the ability to notice everything in the surroundings. We must not view karma from a moral but from a causal perspective. When a child is properly educated, it may be of great benefit to the child’s life to be a sanguine, capable of observing the outer world. Temperament is connected, to a remarkable degree, with the whole life and soul of a person’s previous incarnation.

Dr. Steiner was asked to explain the changes of temperaments that can occur during life, from youth to maturity.

RUDOLF STEINER: If you remember a course of lectures that I once gave in Cassel about the Gospel of St. John, you will recall the remarks I made concerning the relationship of a child to his or her parents.² It was stated there that the father-principle works very strongly in the physical body and the I, and that the mother-principle predominates in the etheric and astral bodies. Goethe divined this truth when he wrote the beautiful words:

From my father I have my stature [connected with the physical body] and the serious conduct of life [connected with the I], from my dear mother my happy nature [connected with the etheric body] and joy in creative fantasy [connected with the astral body].

There is extraordinary wisdom in these words. What lives in the human being is mixed and mingled in a remarkable way. Humankind is an extremely complicated being. A definite relationship exists in human beings between the I and the physical body, and again a relationship between the etheric body and the astral body. Thus, the predominance of one can pass over into the predominance of another during the course of life. For example, in the melancholic temperament the predominance of the I passes into the predominance of the physical body, and in a choleric person it even cuts across inheritance and passes from the mother element to the father element, because the preponderance of the astral passes over into a preponderance of the I.

In the melancholic temperament the I predominates in the child, the physical body in the adult. In the sanguine temperament the etheric body predominates in the child and the astral body in the adult. In the phlegmatic temperament the physical body predominates in the child and the etheric body in the adult. In the choleric temperament the astral body predominates in the child, the I in the adult. But you can only arrive at a true view of such things when you strictly remember that you cannot arrange them in a tabulated form, and the higher you come into spiritual regions, the less this will be possible.

The observation was expressed that a similar change can be found in the sequence of names of the characters in The Guardian of the Threshold and The Souls’ Awakening.³

RUDOLF STEINER: There is a change there that is definitely in accordance with the facts; these Mystery Plays must be taken theoretically as little as possible. I cannot say anything if the question is put theoretically, because I have always had these characters before me just as they are, purely objectively. They have all been taken from real life. Recently, on another occasion, I said here that Felix Balde⁴ was a real person living in Trumau, and the old shoemaker who had known the archetype of Felix is called Scharinger, from Münchendorf. Felix still lives in the tradition of the village there. In the same way all these characters whom you find in my Mystery Plays are actual individual personalities.

Question: In speaking of a folk temperament can you also speak of someone as belonging to the temperament of one’s nation? And a further question: Is the folk temperament expressed in the language?

RUDOLF STEINER: What you said first is right, but your second suggestion is not quite correct. It is possible to speak of a folk temperament in a real sense. Nations really have their own temperaments, but the individual can very well rise above the national temperament; one is not necessarily predisposed to it. You must be careful not to identify the individuality of the particular person with the temperament of his whole nation. For example, it would be wrong to identify the individual Russian of today with the temperament of the Russian nation. The latter would be melancholic while the individual Russian of today is inclined to be sanguine.

The quality of the national temperament is expressed in the various languages, so one could certainly say that the language of one nation is like this, and the language of another nation is like that. It is true to say that the English language is thoroughly phlegmatic and Greek exceptionally sanguine. Such things can be said as indications of real facts. The German language, being two-sided in nature, has very strongly melancholic and also very strongly sanguine characteristics. You can see this when the German language appears in its original form, particularly in the language of philosophy. Let me remind you of the wonderful quality of Fichte’s philosophical language or of some passages in Hegel’s Aesthetics, where you find the fundamental character of German language expressed with unusual clarity. The Italian folk-spirit has a special relationship to air, the French a special connection with fluids, the English and American, especially the English, with the solid earth, the American even with the sub-earthly—that is, with earth magnetism and earth electricity. Then we have the Russian who is connected with the light—that is, with earth’s light that rays back from plants. The German folk-spirit is connected with warmth, and you see at once that this has a double character—inner and outer, warmth of the blood and warmth of the atmosphere. Here again you find a polaric character even in the distribution of these elementary conditions. You see this polarity at once—this cleavage in the German nature, which can be found there in everything.

Question: Should the children know anything about this classification according to temperament?

RUDOLF STEINER: This is something that must be kept from the children. Much depends on whether the teacher has the right and tactful feeling about what should be kept hidden. The purpose of all these things we have spoken of here is to give the teacher authority. The teacher who doesn’t use discretion in what to say cannot be successful.

Students should not be seated according to their attainments, and you will find it advantageous to refuse requests from children to sit together.

Question: Is there a connection between the temperaments and the choice of foreign languages for the different temperaments of the children?

RUDOLF STEINER: Theoretically that would be correct, but it would not be advisable to consider it given current conditions. It will never be possible to be guided only by what is right according to the child’s disposition; we have to remember also that children must make their way in the world, and we have to give them what they need to do that. If in the near future, for example, it appeared as if a great many German children had no aptitude for learning English, it would not be good to give in to this weakness. Just those who show a weakness of this kind may be the first to need to know English.

There was a discussion on the task given the previous day: to consider the case of a whole class that, incited by one child, was guilty of very bad behavior; for example, they had been spitting on the ceiling. Some views were expressed on this matter.

RUDOLF STEINER interjected various remarks: It is a very practical method to wait for something like this to wear out, so that the children stop doing it on their own. You should always be able to distinguish whether something is done out of malice or high spirits.

One thing I would like to say: Even the best teacher will have naughtiness in the class, but if a whole class takes part it is usually the teacher’s fault. If it isn’t the teacher’s fault, you will always find that a group of children are on the teacher’s side and will be a support. Only when the teacher has failed will the whole class take part in insubordination.

If there has been any damage, then of course it is proper that it should be corrected, and the children themselves must do this—not by paying for it, but with their own hands. You could use a Sunday, or even two or three Sundays to repair any damage. And remember, humor is also a good method of reducing things to an absurdity, especially minor faults.

I gave you this problem to think on to help you see how to tackle something that occurs when one child incites the others. To demonstrate where the crux of the matter lies, I will tell you a story of something that actually occurred. In a class where things of this kind often happened, and where the teachers could not cope with them, one of the boys between ten and twelve years old went up to the front during the interval between two lessons and said, “Ladies and gentlemen! Aren’t you ashamed of always doing things like this, you good-fornothings? Just remember, you would all remain completely stupid if the teachers didn’t teach you anything.” This had the most wonderful effect.

We can learn something from this episode: When a large proportion of the class does something like this because of the instigation of one or more of the children, it may very well happen that, also through the influence of a few, order may be restored. If a few children have been instigators there will be others, two or three perhaps, who express disapproval. There are almost always leaders among the children, so the teacher should pick out two or three considered suitable and arrange a conversation with them. The teacher would have to make it clear that behavior of this kind makes teaching impossible, and that they should recognize this and make their influence felt in the class. These children will then have just as much influence as the instigators, and they can make things clear to their classmates. In any situation like this you must consider how the children affect one another.

The most important thing here is that you should evoke feelings that will lead them away from naughtiness. A harsh punishment on the part of the teacher would only cause fear and so on. It would never inspire the children to do better. The teacher must remain as calm as possible and adopt an objective attitude. That does not mean lessening the teacher’s own authority. The teacher could certainly be the one to say, “Without your teachers you would learn nothing and remain stupid.” But the teacher should allow the correction be carried out by the other children, leaving it to them to make their schoolmates feel ashamed.

We thus appeal to feelings rather than to judgment. But when the whole class is repeatedly against the teacher, then the fault must be looked for in the teacher. Most naughtiness arises because the children are bored and lack a relationship with their teacher.

When a fault is not too serious it can certainly be very good for the teacher to do just what the pupils are doing—to say, for example, when the pupils are grumbling, “Well I can certainly grumble too!” In this way the matter is treated homeopathically, as it were. Homeopathic treatment is excellent for moral education. It’s also a good way to divert the children’s attention to something else (although I would never appeal to their ambition). In general, however, we seldom have to complain of such misdemeanors. Whenever you allow mischievousness of this kind to be corrected by other children in the class, you work on the feelings to reestablish weakened authority. When another pupil stresses that gratitude must be felt toward the teacher, then the respect for authority will be restored again. It is important to choose the right children; you must know your class and pick those suited to the task.

If I taught a class I could venture to do this. I would try to find the ringleader, whom I would compel to denounce, as much as possible, such conduct, to say as many bad things about it as possible, and I would ignore the fact that it was this student who had done it. I would then bring the matter quickly to a close so that a sense of uncertainty would be left in the minds of the children, and you will come to see that much can be gained from this element of uncertainty. And to make one of the rascals involved describe the incident correctly and objectively will not in any way lead to hypocrisy. I would consider any actual punishment superfluous, even harmful. The essential thing is to arouse a feeling for the objective damage that has been caused and the necessity of correcting it. If teaching time has been lost in dealing with this matter, then it must be made good after school hours, not as a punishment but simply to make up the time lost.

I will now present a problem of a more psychological nature: if you have some rather unhealthy “goody-goodies” in the class—children who try to curry favor in various ways, who have a habit of continually coming to the teacher about this, that, and the other, how would you treat them? Of course you can treat the matter extremely simply. You could say: I am simply not going to bother with them. But then this peculiarity will be turned into other channels: these “good” children will gradually become a harmful element in the class.

• 1. Elsewhere, Steiner stated: “In giving artistic shape and form to speech, healthy cooperation and harmonization of body, soul, and spirit manifests. The body shows whether it can incorporate the spirit correctly; the soul reveals whether the spirit truly lives in it; and the spirit is vividly present, working directly into the physical.” Creative Speech, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1978, p. 33. The original German speech exercises may be found in the appendix.
• 2. The Gospel of St. John: And Its Relation to the Other Gospels, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1982.
• 3. See Rudolf Steiner, The Four Mystery Plays: The Portal of Initiation, The Soul’s Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold, and The Souls’ Awakening, trans. Adam Bittleston, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1983. The four plays will be published individually; see The Souls’ Awakening: Soul and Spiritual Events in Dramatic Scenes, trans. Ruth and Hans Pusch, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995 (the other plays will follow).
• 4. Felix Balde is a character in the Mystery Plays.

Repetition of yesterday’s speech exercises.

New speech exercises:

Rateless ration
roosted roomily
reason wretched
ruined Roland
royalty roster

Proxy prized bather broomstick
polka pushing
beady basket
prudent pertness
bearskin bristled

One of Lessing’s fables was read.

RUDOLF STEINER: You have to remember that prose can be read in varying tone according to the reader’s personality. Also, the title of a fable of this kind is not very important and should not be emphasized particularly.

The Nightingale and the Peacock

A friendly nightingale found among the singers of the wood enviers galore, but no friend. “Perhaps I shall find one among a different species,” she thought, and flew down trustfully to the peacock. “Beautiful Peacock, I admire you very much.” “I you, too, dear Nightingale.” “Then let us be friends,” the nightingale continued, “we ought not to be envious of each other. You are as pleasing to the eye as I am to the ear.” The nightingale and the peacock became friends.

Kneller and Pope were better friends than were Pope and Addison.¹

RUDOLF STEINER: Now there is an educational matter I would like to talk over with you. I want to point out that you should never spoil the contents of a “passage” by first reading it aloud yourself, or reading it through with your students, and then pedantically explaining it, because this will destroy the powers of feeling and perception in the children. A teacher with insight will not work this way, but will feel that hearing a bit of prose or poetry should produce a sense of contentment in the soul—a satisfaction should arise from hearing a passage of prose or poetry read. The children will then fully understand every shade of meaning. Within their feelings, in any case, they will instinctively understand what the poem contains. It is unnecessary to go into subtleties or to make learned comments about a poem or prose passage, but through your teaching the children should rise to a complete understanding of it through feelings. Hence you should always try to leave the actual reading of a piece until last, first dealing with everything you can give the children to help them understand it. If you prepare for the reading as well as you can ahead of time, then you will not work like a pedant, but help make the whole piece clear and understandable, and thus enhance the children’s enjoyment and satisfaction.

I would therefore take something like the following with the children (but you would have to work it out in greater detail). I would say: “Now look, boys and girls, you have certainly seen some dogs at some time or other in your life. If any of you have never seen a dog then you must have been hiding in some dark corner! And you must have noticed that not all dogs are alike. They are very, very different from one another. There are tiny little dogs, small dogs, larger dogs, and great, big dogs. You have probably always been afraid of the very large dogs; but you have not been afraid of the tiny little dogs—or maybe you have, because sometimes they bite people’s calves.

“Now today we will look at some of these dogs. You have probably often seen a meat cart in the streets pulled by a butcher’s dog. If you have looked carefully, you have probably noticed that the rest of the time this dog sits in front of the butcher’s stall and makes sure no one steals the meat. If anyone comes who isn’t allowed and takes the meat, the dog must bite that person, or at least bark. Now, you see a butcher’s dog cannot be a tiny little animal; no, he must be a big dog. You will also notice that small dogs are never harnessed to a butcher’s cart, nor do they watch a butcher’s stall.

“You can compare a butcher’s dog with a person who has to guard something. You can often compare animals with people. Animals have to do things through instinct, and people must often do the same things because it is their duty. People and animals have to do similar things and therefore they can be compared.

“Suppose a man has to guard something just like a butcher’s dog does at the meat stall; the man will form a certain habit. If someone comes and tries to steal something, he will take hold of him by the hair. Yes, when someone is doing something wrong—you take hold of such a person ‘by the comb.’ But a person has hair, not a real comb. You pull the hair, and that hurts, so the person doesn’t try to get away; that is why you do it. You don’t say this kind of thing point blank. If you said straight out, ‘I will pull your hair,’ it wouldn’t be as much fun. There must always be a little fun in life, so you say that you take someone ‘by the comb.’ A person has hair, and is sometimes insolent; a rooster is almost always insolent, and has a comb; that’s why you say, ‘I’ll take you by the comb.’ You can imagine that if, for example, another insolent creature came along, wanting to take a piece of meat out of the stall, the butcher’s dog might say, ‘I’ll take you by the comb!’ Then you would have made a very good comparison between a person and a dog.

“Now you know, children, there are also other dogs, small dogs, who are mostly lazy creatures; they are miserably lazy. They lie on cushions or sometimes even on laps. Basically, they are idle fellows. They are ‘cushion-dogs,’ those ‘lapdogs.’ They are not as useful as the butcher’s dog. The butcher’s dog is of some service; the lapdogs, they only play; they are basically useless. But if anyone does anything wrong, the butcher’s dog will take that person by the comb—the dog will seize that person and give a thorough shaking. This is of some use, because the other creature will not be able to steal the meat.

“The lapdog doesn’t do anything useful like that, but only yaps, yaps at everybody; and especially when big dogs come along, the little lapdog rushes out and yaps and yaps and yaps. But their bark is worse than their bite; that is what the proverb says and that is what the large dogs think as they pass by. You can also see how large dogs go by very calmly; they let the little yappers yap, and think to themselves: Yapping dogs don’t bite, they are not brave, they are cowardly. But a butcher’s dog must always have courage. The lapdogs run after the big dog and yap, but if the butcher’s dog turns round and looks at them, they immediately run away. So you see these little dogs are certainly lazy; they only do what is unnecessary and they are good for nothing. They are like certain people whom we should not listen to, even though they very often yap at us.

“These lapdogs are very small, the butcher’s dog is large. But there are other dogs in between—not as big as the butcher’s dog, but larger than the lapdog. Among the medium-sized dogs is the sheep-dog. The sheep-dog has to guard the sheep. In many districts it is a more difficult job than here. In many places—in Russia, for example—there are wolves, and the dog has to keep the wolves or any other animals away from the sheep; and so the sheepdog has gotten into the habit of continually running round the flock. In our country too it is good to have dogs who run round the flock all the time, because the shepherd is often asleep, and any evil-minded creature could come and steal some of the flock. So the sheepdog runs round and guards the flock. Even when there are no wolves, it is good for the sheepdog to run round and guard the flock; and sometimes the sheepdog guards the shepherd, as well, who is then awakened. It might even happen that a shepherd could be stolen while asleep!

“Thus the shepherd’s dog, the sheepdog, is of service; the sheepdog is a useful animal and can be compared with people who have found their proper work in life, people who are not useless like the idlers, the lapdogs. Yes, in human life too there is this difference between those who are like sheepdogs and those who are like butcher’s dogs. They are both useful, although the latter, like the butcher’s dog, are at times rather rough. Sometimes they say exactly the right thing in a few words and straight to the point, to guard something, to ward off an enemy. You can make a comparison with the sheepdogs also; they are like people who work quietly, waiting calmly until difficulties are upon them. The sheepdog runs round and round for a long time; he has nothing to do, but he must always be prepared for action, so that when the wolf or another enemy appears the sheepdog will be strong and courageous and well prepared to attack at the right moment. There are also people who have the duty to watch and wait until they are called on to fulfil some task. They must not allow themselves to be harassed by petty things in life, but always have to be ready for the moment when they must act, and act correctly.”

This is how I would speak to children, choosing some particular example from the animal world and leading their thoughts to analogies between animals and people. After speaking somewhat in this way you can read aloud the following passage, and when you have read it explanations will be unnecessary. If you were to give the children this little story first without any explanation they would not be fully prepared, because their perceptions and feelings would not be directed to what it contains. If on the other hand you do not explain until afterward, you would pedantically pull the passage apart, and so they would not be able to read it properly either.

The Sheepdog

One evening an old sheepdog who was a faithful keeper of the master’s sheep was on the way home. As he went down the street, some little lapdogs yapped at him. He trotted on without looking around. When he came to the meat stall, a butcher’s dog asked him how he could stand such constant barking and why he didn’t take one of them by the scruff of the neck. “I won’t,” said the herdsman’s dog, “none of them are worrying me or biting me; I must save my teeth for the wolves.”

You do not need to say another word to the children. The preparation must come first so that they understand what is read.

Another time you can say to the children, “My dear children! You have often gone for a walk; you have certainly gone for a walk in a meadow, in the fields, also in woods, and sometimes on the edge of the woods where the trees and meadow meet. While you walk in the wood you are right in the shade, but when you are on the edge of the woods the Sun can still shine very brightly on one side. When you find a meadow that borders the woods, you should stand quietly and watch, and see how the flowers grow. It’s always good when during your walks you look especially for the places where the trees meet the meadow, because then you can always be looking for something, sometimes in the woods, and sometimes in the meadow; you can continually notice afresh how the grass grows, and how the plants and the flowers grow in the grass.

“But you know, it is especially beautiful and lovely—a real delight—when you can go, not just through woods and fields, but somewhere where the meadows lie among mountains and valleys. Here you’ll find much more interesting things than in the meadows, which often get too much sun. Valley meadows that are protected by the mountains have very beautiful flowers, which we can often find among the moss growing in great abundance in these valley meadows. Violets especially are always found with moss growing near them.”

Then you can continue talking to the children about moss and violets, perhaps calling on a child to describe a violet and another to talk about moss. And when it is the right season you might even bring some violets and moss to school with you, because they can be gathered at the same time of year.

Then you could continue, “But look, dear children, if you have a valley of this kind near your home, maybe you could go there one day and only see moss. Then a week later you could go there again. What would you see this time? Violets growing in the moss! Yes, they have just appeared; when you were there before, they were hidden in the moss. Remember this, and next year when you go there you can have even greater pleasure, because now you think to yourselves: Last spring there weren’t any violets showing here yet, we didn’t see one. And then you try to separate the moss with your fingers. Ah! A violet! There it is!

“In nature, my dear children, it is often just as it is with people. There, too, much is often hidden that is good, much that is beautiful. Many people are not noticed because the good in them is concealed, it has not yet been found. You must try to awaken the feeling that will enable you to find the good people in the crowd.

“Yes, dear children, and there is still another way that you can compare human life with nature. Think of a really good person whom you know, and you will always find that person’s words to be honest and good. Now some people are modest and others are proud and arrogant. Modest people don’t attract much attention, but the pushy ones always like to be noticed.

“Now a violet is certainly very beautiful, but when you look at this violet and see how it stretches up its lovely little petals, you cannot fail to see that the violet wants to be noticed, it wants to be looked at. So I could not compare the violet with a modest little child who keeps in the corner out of the way. You could only compare it with a child who is really very anxious to be seen. You will say: That may be, but it doesn’t show itself when it’s hidden in the moss, does it? Yes, but look; when you see how the violet comes out among its leaves and then again how the whole plant creeps out of the moss, it is just as though the violet not only wanted people to see it and smell it, but to search for it as well. ‘Yes, yes! Here I am, here I am but you have to look for me!’ And so the violet is like a person who is certainly not modest but rather a sly rascal.”

It is good to discuss comparisons of this kind with the children, and to show them analogies between nature and human beings so that everything around them becomes alive.

You should have these talks with the children ahead of time, so they can enjoy the reading when it comes. After the reading no more explanations of any kind should be given. You will agree it would not make sense if I were now to begin giving you a lecture in Chinese. You would say, “That is senseless, because we never learned Chinese.” But if you all knew Chinese when I gave my lecture, you would find it extremely dull if afterwards I wanted to explain it all to you. You should have the same feeling about a piece of reading and do everything you can to make it enjoyable.

Talks such as these about modesty and conceit in people—and affectation, as well—can be developed in greater detail than we have done today, and you must let the children take a lively share. Then you can read them the following poem:

What’s gleaming in the sunshine though fast asleep? Oh, those are tiny violets that bloom in valley deep. Bloom quite hidden in moss-covered ground, So that we children no violets have found.

And what’s this little head that stretches silent there? What whispers in the moss so still and quiet here? “Search and you will find me, search for me still!” “Wait, violet, wait, and find you we will!”

—Hofmann von Fallersleben

When you teach children a poem in this way, they can enter its every nuance, and it will be unnecessary to spoil the impression with commentary and pedantry afterward. This is the method I want to recommend to you with regard to your treatment of selections for reading, because it will give you the opportunity to talk over many things that belong in your teaching, and further, the children will have a real feeling of satisfaction when such passages are read. This then is what I wish to lay upon your hearts about reading.

We will now continue our discussion on the treatment of individual children. Yesterday I asked you to think over how to treat “virtuous,” “good” children (the goody-goodies), who assert themselves but are not helpful to the rest of the class.

Various contributions were presented.

RUDOLF STEINER: I have presented this particular problem because it is difficult to discriminate between the harmful, selfrighteous children and those who can play a useful role. You must notice whether you are dealing with those who really have a contribution to make later. That is their nature. They are “useful” goody-goodies, but a bit of a nuisance!

In such a case you could relate the story of how the donkey got big ears. You can even use stronger measures with some of these goody-goody children, but you should not expose them to the class and thus reflect shame on them. That would be going too far. But you can give such a forward child exceptionally difficult tasks, with rod exercises for example, and let the facts speak for themselves; in this way, such children see that they cannot perform, and they have to tell the teacher so. From this it can become apparent whether their boasting was justified.

Other teachers made further remarks.

RUDOLF STEINER: The essentials of the problem have been presented in this discussion. First you must very carefully ascertain the worthiness of the self-assertiveness of the pupils who are more gifted and therefore more capable. You must not allow their greater talent to develop into ambitious egoism, but help them to use their gifts to help the other children. You can get the smart children like this to do something with their special powers that will help the others, so that they do not work just for themselves, but for the other children as well. If they are better at arithmetic, have them do the problem first, and let the others learn from them. Their greater ability is channeled properly when they hear from the teacher the consequence of a line of thought that could be expressed in this way: John is a good boy. Look how much he can do. Such people are a great help to others, and I’m very pleased with all of you that you learned so much from John.”

So you begin by praising one child and end by praising them all! When you have outstanding talent of this kind and have singled out these very self-possessed children (of whom there are always some), you will almost always find that you can deal most effectively with them by combining two methods. First, you must speak to them, not in front of the class, but in private so that they will realize that you see through them. You must very emphatically say, “You are doing this or doing that,” and then you characterize their qualities. In such a case you must then strike a personal note: “All right, you can go on doing it, you can do it over and over again. But do you think I like it? Do you think that you are pleasing me? No, I don’t like it at all; I find it very disagreeable.” This is how you should speak to them—as I say, not in front of the class, but in private. That is the first thing. You must make it very clear that you see through the student.

The second thing is this: you should give such children tasks beyond their powers and try to make it clear to them why they have to solve these problems that are too difficult for them; it is because they want to assert themselves. It is harder for such children to battle this propensity than to solve problems that are beyond them. But it is more disagreeable for them to do these tasks, so they will try to become less conceited, and we must tell them that they have been given these tasks because of their assertiveness. But if they can overcome their desire to be noticed, then they will not get anything different from the rest of the class.

But you can do both of these things together in the case of such pupils, whether boys or girls, you can combine the two methods—letting them know that you see through them and telling them why they get especially difficult tasks. By using these two methods together you will accomplish much. After some time, if you apply these methods, you will see that you have cured your students.

We still have many more difficult problems to solve in these discussions. But for tomorrow I would like to give you a similar problem connected with the last one, and yet a bit different; and in our treatment of this, eurythmy will be considered. Forgive me for placing this before you, but it belongs to the area of teaching. What should you do when, among your students, a foolish kind of adoration arises for the teacher. Does everyone know what I mean by “adoration?” It is when a boy idolizes a female teacher or the other way round, when a girl idolizes a male teacher, or when a girl adores a female teacher or a boy a male teacher. All these different varieties exist. Any real manifestation of this foolish adoration can be very disturbing to the pursuit of your work; please think about how it should be treated.

It must of course take such a serious form that your lessons are actually disturbed by it. Of course I do not mean genuine respect and sincere regard, neither do I mean proper affection and love for a female or male teacher, but just a kind of unhealthy adoration that disturbs your teaching, which is frequently found in classes.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner jokingly added an alternate example: France and Italy are better friends than Italy and England. Thus you see that the fable can be applied in the most varying ways.

Today we will try an exercise in which we have to hold the breath somewhat longer. Speech exercise:

Fulfilling goes
through hoping
goes through longing
through willing
willing flows
in wavering wails in quavering
waves veiling
waving breathing
in freedom
freedom winning
kindling

You can only achieve what is intended by dividing the lines properly. Then you will bring the proper rhythm to your breath. The object of this exercise is to do gymnastics with the voice in order to regulate the breath.

In words like fulfilling and willing, both “l’s” must be pronounced. You shouldn’t put an “h” into the first “l”, but the two “l’s” must be sounded one after the other.

You must also try to avoid speaking with a rasping voice, and develop instead tone in your voice, bringing it up from deeper in your chest, to give full value to the vowels. (All Austrians have tinny voices!)

Before each of the above lines the breath should be consciously brought into order. The words that appear together also belong together when you read.

You know that we usually do the following speech exercises also:

Barbara sass stracks am Abhang
or: Barbara sass nah am abhang
or: Abraham a Sancta Clara kam an¹

The Steed and the Bull.

An impudent boy came flying along on a fiery steed. A wild bull called out to the horse, “Shame on you! I would not be governed by a lad!” “But I would,” replied the horse, “for what kind of honor would it bring me to throw the boy off?”

They all read the fable aloud.

RUDOLF STEINER: After hearing this fable so often you will certainly sense that it is written in the particular style of fables and many other writings of the eighteenth century. You get the feeling that they didn’t quite finish, just as other things were not fully completed then.

Rudolf Steiner read the fable aloud again.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now, in the twentieth century the fable would be continued something like this: “That may be the honor of bulls! And if I were to seek honor by stubbornly standing still, that would not be a horse’s honor but a mule’s honor!” That is how it would be written in these days. Then the children would notice immediately that there are three kinds of honor; the honor of a bull, the honor of a horse, and the honor of a mule. The bull throws the boy, the horse carries him quietly along because that is chivalrous, the mule stubbornly stands still because that is the mule’s idea of honor.

Today I would like to give you some material for tomorrow’s discussion on the subject of your lessons, since we will then consider particularly the seven-to-fourteen-year-old children.²

So we will now speak of certain things that can guide you, and after I have presented this introduction, you will only need an ordinary reference book to amplify the various facts we have spoken of in our discussions. Today we will consider not so much how to acquire the actual subject matter of our work, but rather how to cherish and cultivate within ourselves the spirit of an education that contains the future within it. You will see that what we discuss today focuses on the work in the oldest classes.³

I would therefore like to discuss what relates to the history of European civilization from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. You must always remember that teaching history to children should always contain a subjective element, and this is also true, more or less, when you work with adults. It is easy enough to say that people should not bring opinions and subjective ideas into history. You might make this a rule, but it cannot be adhered to. Take aspect of history in any country of the world; you will either have to arrange the facts in groups for yourself, or you will find them already thus assembled by others in the case of less recent history.

If, for example, you want to describe the spirit of the old Germanic peoples, you will turn to the Germania of Tacitus. But Tacitus was a person of very subjective thought; the facts he presents were clearly arranged in groups. You can only hope to succeed in your task by marshalling the facts in your own personal way, or else by using what others have done in a similar way before you. You can find examples, from literature for example, to substantiate what I have said.

Treitschke wrote German History of the Nineteenth Century in several volumes; it delighted Herman Grimm, who was also a competent judge, but it horrified many adherents of the entente. But when you read Treitschke you will feel immediately that his excellence is due to the very subjective coloring of his grouping of facts. In history the important thing is the ability to form a judgment of the underlying forces and powers at work. But you must realize that the judgment of one is more mature, that of another less so, and the latter should not pass any judgment at all because nothing has been understood about the underlying forces. The former, just because an independent judgment has been formed, will very well describe the actual course of history.

Herman Grimm portrayed Frederick the Great, and Macaulay also portrayed him, but Macaulay’s picture is completely different. Grimm even composed his article as a kind of critique of Macaulay’s article, and speaking from his perspective he said, “Macaulay’s picture of Frederick the Great is the grotesque face of an English lord with snuff on his nose!” The only difference is that Grimm is a nineteenth-century German and Macaulay a nineteenth-century Englishman. And any third person passing judgment on both would really be very narrow-minded if one were found to be true and the other false.

You might as well choose examples even more drastic. Many of you know the description of Martin Luther in the ordinary history books. If one day you try the experiment of reading it in the Catholic history books, you will get to know a Martin Luther whom you never knew before! But when you have read it you will find it difficult to say that the difference is anything but different viewpoints. Now it is just such points of view arising from nation or creed that must be overcome by future teachers. Because of this we must earnestly work so that teachers are broad-minded, so that the point will be reached of having a broad-minded philosophy of life. Such a mental attitude gives you a free and wide view of historical facts, and a skillfull arranging of these facts will enable you to convey to your pupils the secrets of human evolution.

Now, when you want to give the children some idea of cultural history from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, you would first have to describe what led up to the Crusades. You would describe the course of the first, second, and third crusades, and how they gradually stagnated, failing to achieve what they should have. You would describe the spirit of asceticism that spread through much of Europe at the time—how everywhere, through the secularization of the church (or in any case in connection with this secularization), there arose individuals such as Bernard of Clairvaux, natures full of inner piety, such piety that it gave the impression to others that they were miracle-workers. From reference books you could try to become acquainted with biographies of people of this kind and then bring them to life for your pupils; you could try to conjure before them the living spirit that inspired those great expeditions to the East—because they were powerful in the views of the time. You would have to describe how these expeditions came to be through Peter of Amiens and Walter the Penniless, followed by the expedition of Godfrey of Bouillon and others.

Then you could relate how these Crusades set out toward the East and how enormous numbers of people perished, often before they reached their destination. You can certainly describe to boys and girls of thirteen to fifteen how these expeditions were composed, how they set out without any organization and made their way toward the East, and how many perished because of unfavorable conditions, and having to force their way through foreign countries and peoples.

You will then have to describe how those who reached the East had a certain degree of success at first. You can speak of what Godfrey of Bouillon accomplished, but you will also have to show the contrast that arose between the Crusaders of the later Crusades and Greek policy—how the Greeks became jealous of what the Crusaders were doing, feeling that the Crusaders’ goals were contrary to what the Greeks themselves were planning to do in the East; how fundamentally the Greeks, as much as the Crusaders, wanted to absorb the interests of the East into their own sphere of interests. Paint a graphic picture of how the goals of the Crusaders roused the Greeks’ opposition.

Then I suggest that you describe how the crusading armies in the East, instead of taking up arms against the Eastern peoples in western Asia, began to fight among themselves; and how the European peoples themselves, especially the Franks and their neighbors, began to quarrel about their claims to conquests and even took up arms against each other. The Crusades originated in fiery enthusiasm, but the spirit of inner discord seized those who took part in them; furthermore, antagonism arose between the Crusaders and the Greeks.

In addition to all this, at the very time of the Crusades we find opposition between church and state, and this became more and more evident. It may also be necessary to acquaint the children with something that is true, although in all its essential points it is veiled by the bias of historical writers. Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first Crusade, really intended to conquer Jerusalem in order to balance the influence of Rome. He and his companions did not say this openly to the others, but in their hearts they carried the battle cry, “Jerusalem versus Rome!” They said among themselves, “Let us exalt Jerusalem so that it may become the center of Christianity, so that Rome no longer holds that position.” This, the underlying motive of the first Crusaders, can be conveyed to the children tactfully, and it is important to do so.

Those were great tasks that the Crusaders undertook, and great too were the tasks that gradually arose from the circumstances themselves. Little by little it came to be that the Crusaders were not great enough to bear the burden of such tasks without harm to themselves. And so it happened that, at the time of the fiercest battles, licentiousness and immorality gradually broke out among the Crusaders.

You can find these facts in any history book, and they serve to illustrate the general course of events. You will notice that in my arrangement of facts today, I am actually describing them without bias, and I will try also to describe in a purely historical way what took place in Europe from the eleventh to the seventeenth century.

It is often possible to make history clear through hypothesis, so let’s suppose that the Franks had conquered Syria and had established a Frankish dominion there—that they had reached an understanding with the Greeks, had left room for them, and had relinquished to them the rule of the more western portion of Asia Minor. Then the ancient traditions of the Greeks would have been fulfilled and North Africa would have become Greek. A counterbalance to subsequent events would have thus been established. The Greeks would have held sway in North Africa, the Franks in Syria. Then they wouldn’t have quarrelled with each other, and thus they wouldn’t have forfeited their dominions, and the invasions of the worst Eastern peoples—the Mongols, the Mamelukes, and Turkish Ottoman—would have been prevented. Because of the immorality of the Crusaders, and inevitably their inability to rise to their tasks, the Mongols, Mamelukes, and Ottomans overran the very regions that the Crusaders were attempting to “Europeanize.” And so we see how the reaction toward the great enthusiasm that led to the Crusades, spread over vast regions, is counterattacked from the other side. We see the Moslem-Mongolian advance, which set up military tyrants, and which for a long time remained the terror of Europe and cast a dark shadow over the history of the Crusades.

You see, by describing such things and acquiring the necessary pictorial descriptions from reference books, you can awaken in the children themselves pictures of the progress of civilization—pictures that will live on in them. And that is the important thing—that the children be given these pictures. They will initially be conjured in their minds through your graphic descriptions. If you can then show them some works of art, notable paintings from this period, you will find this supports what you say.

Thus, you will make it clear to the children what happened during the Crusades, and enable them to make their own mental pictures of these events. You have shown them the dark side of the picture, the terror caused by the Mongolians and Moslems, and now it will be well to add the other side, the good things that developed.

Describe vividly to the children how the pilgrims who had migrated east, came to understand many new things there. Agriculture, for example, was at that time very backward in Europe. In the East it was possible for these Western pilgrims to learn a much better way of farming their land. The pilgrims who reached the East and afterward returned to Europe (and many did return), brought with them a skilled knowledge of agricultural methods, which raised the standard of agricultural production considerably. The Europeans owed this to the experience that the pilgrims brought back with them.

You must describe this to the children so graphically that they actually see it there before them—how the wheat and other cereals flourished less before the Crusades, how they were smaller, more sparse, the ears less full, and how after the Crusades they were much fuller. Describe all this in pictures! Then you can also tell how the pilgrims really came to understand industries found in the East at the time, and still unknown in Europe. The West was in many ways more backward than the East. What grew and flourished in such a fine way in the industrial activity of the Italian towns and other places further north, was all due to the Crusades; we also have to thank them for a new artistic impulse. Thus you can call on pictures of the cultural and spiritual progress of that time.

There is something else you can describe to the children: you can say to them, “You see, children, that was when the Europeans came to know the Greeks; they had fallen away from Rome in the first thousand years after Christ, but had remained Christians. All over the West people believed that no one could be a Christian without viewing the Pope as the head of the church.” Now explain to the children how the Crusaders, to their astonishment and edification, learned that there were other Christians who did not acknowledge the Roman Pope. This freeing of the spiritual side of Christianity from the temporal church organization was something very new at the time. This is something you can explain to the children.

Then you can tell them that even among the Moslems, who could scarcely have been called very pleasant denizens of the world, there were also noble, generous, and brave people. And so the pilgrims came to know people who could be brave and generous without being Christians; thus a person could even be good and brave without being a Christian. For the Europeans of that time this was a great lesson that the Crusaders brought with them when they returned to Europe. During their stay in the East they gained many things that they brought back to Europe to further its spiritual progress.

You can then continue, “Just imagine, children, there was a time when the Europeans had no cotton cloth, they did not even have a word for it; they had no muslin—that too is an Eastern word; they could not lie down or laze about on a sofa, for sofas and the word for them were brought back by the Crusaders. They had no mattresses either. Mattress is also an Asian word. The bazaar also belongs to the East, and this suggests immediately an entirely new view of the public display of goods, and it initiated large scale exhibitions of goods. Bazaars (of an Eastern kind) were very common in the East, but there was nothing of the kind in Europe before the Europeans went on their Crusades. Even the word magazine [the word for “storeroom” in German] bound up though it now is with our trade life, was not originally European; the use of great warehouses to meet the growth of trade is something that the Europeans learned from the Asians.

“Just imagine,” you can say to the children, “how restricted life was in Europe; they hadn’t even any warehouses. The word arsenal too has the same origin. But now look; there is something else that the Europeans learned from the East and that is expressed in the word tariff. Until the thirteenth century the European peoples knew very little about tax-paying. But payment of taxes according to a tariff, the payment of all kinds of duties, was not introduced into Europe until the Crusaders learned about it from the Asians.

“Thus you see that a great number of things were changed in Europe due to the Crusades. Not much of what the Crusaders intended to do was realized, but other things were brought about, and transformations of all kinds occurred in Europe as a result of what was learned in the East. And further, this was all connected with what they observed of the Eastern political life. Political life—the state as such—developed much earlier in the East than in Europe. Before the Crusades the forms of government in Europe were much freer than they were afterward. Because of the Crusades it also happened that wide areas were grouped together as political units.”

Always assuming that the children are of the age I indicated, you can now say to them, “You have already learned in your history lessons that in former times the Romans became rulers over many lands. When they were extending their dominions, at the beginning of the Christian era, Europe was very poor and becoming even poorer. What was the cause of this increasing poverty? The people had to hand over their money to others. Central Europe will become poor again today because it must also hand over its money to others. At that time the Europeans had to give up their money to the Asiatics; the bulk of their money went to the borders of the Roman Empire. Due to this, barter became more and more the custom, and this is something that might happen again, sad though it would be, unless people rouse themselves to seek the spirit. Nevertheless, amid this poverty the ascetic, devotional spirit of the Crusades evolved.

“Through the Crusades, therefore, in faraway Asia, Europeans learned to know all kinds of things—industrial production, agriculture, and so on. In this way, they could again produce things that the Asians could buy from them. Money traveled back again. Europe became increasingly rich during the Crusades. This growth of wealth in Europe occurred through the increase in its own productions; that is a further result of the Crusades. The Crusades are indeed migrations of peoples to Asia, and when the Crusaders returned to Europe they brought with them a certain ability. It was due only to this ability and skill that Florence, Italy arose and became what it did, and also due to this, such figures as Dante and others emerged.”

You see how necessary it is to allow impulses of this kind to permeate your history lessons. When it is said today that more should be taught about the history of civilizations, people think they should give dry descriptions of how one thing arises from another. But even in these lower classes, history should be described by a teacher who really lives in the subject, so that through the pictures created for the children, this period of history will live again before them. You can conjure the picture of a poverty-stricken Europe, with acres of poor and sparsely sown crops, where there were no towns—only meager farms in poor condition. Nevertheless, an enthusiasm for the Crusades arises out of this same poor Europe. But then you will have to tell them how the people found this task beyond their powers and they began to quarrel and fall into evil ways, and even when they were back in Europe discord and dissension arose again. The real purpose of the Crusades was not achieved; on the contrary, the ground was prepared for the Moslems. But the Europeans learned many things in the East: how towns—flourishing towns—arise, and in the towns a rich spiritual life and culture; agriculture improved and the fields became more fertile, the industries flourished, and a spiritual life and culture arose.

You will try to present all this to the children in graphic pictures and explain to them that, before the Crusades, people did not lounge on sofas! There was no bourgeois life at that time with sofas in the best parlors and all the rest of it. Try to make all these historical pictures live for the children, and then you will give them a truer kind of history. Show how Europe became so poor that people had to resort to bartering goods, and then it became rich again because of what people learned in the East. This will bring life into your history lessons!

One is often asked these days what history books to read—which historian is best? The reply can only be that, in the end, each one is the best and the worst; it really makes no difference which historical author you choose. Do not read what is written in the lines, but read between the lines. Try to allow yourselves to be inspired so that, through your own intuitive sense, you can learn to know the true course of events. Try to acquire a feeling for how a true history should be written. You will recognize from the style and manner of writing which historian has found the truth and which has not.

You can find many things in Ranke.⁴ But what we are trying to cultivate here is the spirit of truth and reality, and when you read Ranke in the light of this spirit of truth, you find that he is very painstaking but that his descriptions of characters reduce them to mere shadows; you feel as though you could pass through them, because they have no substance—they are not flesh and blood, and you might well say that you don’t want history to be a series of mere phantasms.

One of the teachers recommended Lamprecht.⁵

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, but in him you have the feeling that he does not describe people, but figures of colored cardboard—except that he paints them with the most vivid colors possible. They are not human beings, but merely colored cardboard.

Now Treitschke on the other hand is admittedly biased, but his personalities do really stand on their two feet!⁶ He places people on their feet, and they are flesh and blood—not cardboard figures like those of Lamprecht, nor are they mere shadowy pictures as with Ranke. Unfortunately Treitschke’s history only covers the nineteenth century.

But, to get a feeling for truly good historical writing, you should read Tacitus.⁷ When you read Tacitus, everything is absolutely alive. When you study the way Tacitus portrays a certain epoch of history—describing the people as individuals or in groups—and allow all of this to affect your own sense of reality, it exists for you as real as life itself! Beginning with Tacitus, try to discover how to describe other periods as well.

Of course you can’t read what is out of date, otherwise the fiery Rotteck would always be very good.⁸ But he is dated, not merely because of the facts, but in his whole outlook; he considers as gospel the political constitution of the Baden of his time, as well as liberalism. He even applies them to Persian, Egyptian, and Greek life, but he always writes with such fire that one cannot help wishing there were many historians like Rotteck today.

If, however, you study the current books on history (with a sharp eye for what is often left out), you will gain the capacity to give children living pictures of the process of human progress from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. And, for your part, you can omit much that is said in these histories about Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Coeur de Leon, or Frederick II. Much of this is interesting but not particularly significant for real knowledge of history. It is far more important to communicate to the children the great impulses at work in history.

We can continue now to the question of how to treat a class where several boys and girls have developed a foolish kind of adoration for the male or female teacher.

Idolization of this kind is not really unhealthy until the age of twelve to fourteen, when the problem becomes more serious. Before fourteen it is especially important not to take these things too seriously and to remember that they often disappear again very quickly.

RUDOLF STEINER: I would consider that exposing the children to ridicule in front of the class is very much a two-edged sword, because the effect lasts too long, and the child will lose a connection with the class. If you ridicule children it is very difficult for them to regain the proper relationship with the rest of the class. The result is usually that the children succeed in being removed from the school.

Prayer was mentioned, along with other possible ways of helping these children.

RUDOLF STEINER: You are quite right!

It was suggested that one might speak to the child and attempt to divert such affection.

RUDOLF STEINER: The principle of diverting the devotion and capacity for enthusiasm into other channels is proper—except that you will not gain much by talking with such children, because that is exactly what they want. Precisely because this foolish adoration arises much more from feelings—and even passions—than from thinking, it would be extremely difficult to work against it effectively by being with the child frequently. It is certainly true that unhealthy feelings of this kind are due to the qualities of enthusiasm and devotion having taken the wrong path—enthusiasm in the gifted children and devotion in the less gifted. The whole thing is not very important in itself, but it will have repercussions in the way the children participate in the lessons, and this is the more serious aspect. When all of the children are affected by this foolish adoration, it is not so serious and will not last long; it will soon disappear. The class gets ideas that do not materialize; this leads to disappointment, and then the thing dies naturally. In this case it could be very good to tell a humorous story to the whole class. It only becomes detrimental when groups of children yield to this unwholesome idolization.

It became necessary to think this matter over thoroughly, because it can play a role in the entire life of the school. Affectionate attachment is not so bad in itself, but it weakens the children when it becomes unhealthy. The children become listless and lethargic. In some cases it can lead to serious conditions of weakness in the children. It is a very subtle and delicate matter, because the treatment could result in turning the children’s feelings toward the exact opposite—into hatred. In some cases it could be very good to say, “You look too warm. Perhaps you should go outside for five minutes.

In any case, this problem should be handled individually and each child treated individually. You should try anything that common sense tells you may help. There is one thing however that you should be extremely careful about—that such children do not get the idea that you notice their adoration. You really have to acquire the art of making them think you are unaware of it. Even when you take steps to cure them, the children should think you are merely acting normal.

Let’s suppose that several children have this foolish feeling for a man who has four, five, maybe six children of his own. In this case he has the simplest remedy; he can invite the “adoring” children to go for a walk with him and bring his own children along. This would be a very good remedy. But the children should not know why they were invited. You should use concrete things like this.

In a situation like this, it’s most important that you yourself act correctly, not treating those children who idolize you any differently than the others. When you remain unaffected by such foolish behavior, it disappears after awhile. It becomes serious, however, when a certain antipathy replaces adoration. This can be minimized by ignoring it. Don’t let the children know you have noticed anything, because if you call them on it or ridicule them in front of the class, the hatred will be that much greater. If you tell a story it must appear as though you would have told it anyway, otherwise certain antipathy will certainly arise afterward as a result; that can’t be avoided. But when you work with the same class for several years you will be able to restore a normal sympathy over time.

You cannot prevent another consequence, either, because when this foolish adoration assumes a serious form, the children will be somewhat weakened by it. When it is finished, you must help them to get over this weakness. This will indeed be the best therapy that you can apply. You can make use of all the other remedies—sending the children out for five minutes, taking them for walks, and so on, but your attitude must always be to ignore the whole matter in a healthy way. The child will be somewhat weakened, and afterward the teacher will be able to help the child through love and affection. If the matter were to become very serious, the teacher, because of being the object of adoration, could not do much; such a teacher would then have to seek the advice and help of others.

Tomorrow’s subject has to do with actual teaching rather than educational principles as such. Will each of you imagine that several children in your class are not doing very well in one subject or another—for example, arithmetic, languages, natural history, gymnastics, or eurythmy. How, through special treatment of the children’s human capacities, would you try to meet a misfortune of this kind during the early school years? How could you use the other subjects to help you?

• 1. The entire verse: “Barbara sass nah am Abhang, / Sprach gar sangbar—zaghaft langsam; / Mannhaft kam alsdann am Waldrand / Abraham a Sancta Clara!” is from material given by Julius Hey in Die Kunst der Sprache, Mainz-Leipzig, 1914. Rudolf Steiner found that these sound-sequences could be used and also mentioned the exercise of Hey’s for E (eh). While Hey’s exercises have a certain meaning, the exercises given by Steiner come purely from the element of sound.
• 2. Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 8.
• 3. The Waldorf School began with grades 1–8 only. The oldest children in the school were thus fourteen to fifteen years of age.
• 4. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), German historian and founder of the modern school of history. He championed so-called “objective” writing based on source material instead of legend and tradition.
• 5. Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915) wrote a German history in nineteen volumes.
• 6. Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), German historian and publicist. Considered the successor to Ranke as Prussian historian, he advocated authoritarian “power politics” (i.e., German unity through force), favored colonial expansion, and promoted anti-British sentiment in Germany.
• 7. Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 56–120; not to be confused with Tacitus, the Roman emperor from A.D. 275 to 276), Roman orator, politician, and historian. His main work was Historiae.
• 8. Karl von Rotteck (1775–1840) wrote numerous volumes on national and world history.

Speech Exercise:

In the vast unmeasured world-wide spaces,
In the endless stream of time,
In the depths of human soul-life,
In the world’s great revelations:
Seek the unfolding of life’s great mystery.

RUDOLF STEINER: The first four sentences have a ring of expectation, and the last line is a complete fulfillment of the first four. Now let’s return to the other speech exercise:

Proxy prized
bather broomstick
polka pushing
beady basket
prudent pertness
bearskin bristled

RUDOLF STEINER: You can learn a great deal from this. And now we will repeat the sentence:

Dart may these boats through darkening gloaming

RUDOLF STEINER: Also there is a similar exercise I would like to point out that has more feeling in it. It consists of four lines, which I will dictate to you later. The touch of feeling should be expressed more in the first line:

Lulling leader limply
liplessly laughing
loppety lumpety
lackety lout

RUDOLF STEINER: You must imagine that you have a green frog in front of you, and it is looking at you with lips apart, with its mouth wide open, and you speak to the frog in the words of the last three lines. In the first line, however, you tell it to lisp the lovely lyrics “Lulling leader limply.” This line must be spoken with humorous feeling; you really expect this of the frog.

And now I will read you a piece of prose, one of Lessing’s fables.¹

The Oak

One stormy night the raging north wind pitted its strength against a magnificent oak, which now lay on the ground. A number of low bushes lay shattered beneath it. A fox, whose lair was not far away, saw it next morning. “What a tree!” he cried, “I never would have thought it had been so big!”

RUDOLF STEINER: What is the moral of this fable?

Someone suggested: That it is not until someone is dead that we see how great that person was. Another suggested: That, until the great are overthrown, the small do not recognize what they were.

Rudolf Steiner: But why then choose the fox, who is so cunning?

Because the cunning of the fox cannot compare with the magnificence of the tree.

RUDOLF STEINER: In which sentence would you find the moral of the fable in relation to the cunning of the fox? “I never would have thought it was so big!” The point is, he had never even looked up; he had run round the bottom of the trunk, which was the only part of the tree he had noticed, and here the tree had only taken up a small space. Despite cunning, the fox had only seen what is visible around the foot of the tree.

Please notice that fables—which by their very nature are enacted in their own special world—can be read realistically, but poems never.

Now the problem I placed before you yesterday brings us something of tremendous importance, because now we must consider what measures to take when we notice that one group of children is less capable than another in one or another subject or lesson. I will ask you to choose from any part of the period between six and fourteen, and to think especially of, let’s say, a group of children who cannot learn to read and write properly, or those who cannot learn natural history or arithmetic, or geometry or singing. Consider what course you will pursue in the class, or in your general treatment of the children, both now and later on, so that you can correct such shortcomings as much as possible.

Several teachers contributed detailed suggestions.

RUDOLF STEINER: The examples you mention might arise partially from general incompetence. On the other hand, it could also be a question of a particular lack of talent. You could have children who are perhaps extraordinarily good at reading and writing, but as soon as they come to arithmetic they do not demonstrate any gift at all for it. Then there are those who are not so bad at arithmetic, but the moment you begin to call on their power of judgment, such as in natural science, their powers are at an end. Then again there are children who have no desire to learn history. It is important to notice these specific difficulties.

Perhaps you can find a remedy in this way: When you notice that a child, right from the beginning, has little talent for reading and writing, you would do well, anyway, to get in touch with the parents and ask them immediately to keep the child off eggs, puddings, and pastry as much as possible. The rest of the diet can remain more or less as it was. When the parents agree to try to provide the child with a really good wholesome diet, however—omitting the items of food mentioned above—they might even cut down on the meat for awhile and give the child plenty of vegetables and nourishing salads. You will then notice that, through a diet like this, the child will make considerable gains in ability. You must take advantage of this improvement, and keep the child very busy when the diet is first changed.

But if you notice that a mere change of diet doesn’t help much, then, after you have talked it over with the parents, try for a short while, perhaps a week, to keep the child entirely without food for the whole morning, or at least the first part of the morning when the child should be learning to read and write—to allow learning on an empty stomach—or maybe give the child the minimum of food. (You should not continue too long with this method; you must alternate it with normal eating.) You must make good use of this time, however, when the capacities will most certainly be revealed, and the child will show greater ability and be more receptive to what you are teaching. If you repeat a cure of this kind several times over the year, you will see that the powers of a fairly young child undergo a change. This applies to the first years of school life. I ask you to consider this very seriously.

Generally speaking, you should be very aware that the foolish ways many parents feed their young children contributes greatly to the lessening of their faculties, especially with phlegmatic and sanguine children. Perpetually overfeeding children—and this is somewhat different at the present time,² but you should know these things—stuffing them with eggs, puddings, and starchy foods is one of the things that makes children unwilling to learn and incapable of doing so during the early years of their school life.

A teacher asked about cocoa.

RUDOLF STEINER: Why should children drink cocoa at all? It is not the least bit necessary except to regulate digestion. Things like this are needed sometimes for this purpose, and cocoa is better than other remedies for children whose digestion works too quickly, but it should not be included otherwise in children’s diet. These days children are given many things that are unsuitable for them.

You can experience some very strange things in regard to this. When I was a teacher in the eighties, there was a young child in the house; I did not actually teach him, since I had only the older children; he was a little cousin. He was really a nice lovable child with bright ideas. He could have become a gifted pupil. I saw him a good deal and could observe for myself how witty and gifted the child was. One day at table this little fellow—although he was scarcely two years old—had two little dumplings, and when someone said to him, “Look Hans, now you already have two dumplings,” he was clever enough to answer, “And the third will follow in a minute.” That’s what the little tyke said!

Then another thing: he was very fond of calling people bad names. This did not seem very important to me in a child of that age—he would soon grow out of it. He had gotten into the habit of being particularly abusive to me. One day as I was coming in the door (he was a little older by this time) he stood there and blocked the way. He couldn’t think of any name bad enough for me, so he said: “Here come two donkeys!” That was really very smart of him, wasn’t it?

But the boy was pale; he had very little appetite and was rather thin. So, on the advice of an otherwise excellent doctor, this child was given a small glass of red wine with every meal. I was not responsible for him and had no influence in this extraordinary way of treating a child’s health, but I was very concerned about it. Then in his thirty-second or thirty-third year I saw this individual again; he was a terribly nervous man. When he was not present I enquired what he had been like as a schoolboy. This restless man, although only in his thirties, had become very nervous, and demonstrated the lamentable results of that little glass of red wine given to him with his meals as a boy. He was a gifted child, for a child who says “Here come two donkeys” really shows talent.

Frau Steiner interjected, “What an impudent boy!”

RUDOLF STEINER: We needn’t bother with impudence, but how does this really come about? It’s amazing. He can find no word bad enough, and so he makes use of number to help him. That shows extraordinary talent. But he became a poor scholar and never wanted to learn properly. Thus, because of this method of treatment—giving him wine as a young child—he was completely ruined by the time he was seven years old.

This is what I want to impress upon you at the beginning of our talk today—that, in relation to a child’s gifts and abilities, it is not the least unimportant to consider how to regulate the diet. I would especially ask you, however, to see that the child’s digestion does not suffer. So when it strikes you that there is something wrong with a child’s capacities, you must in some tactful way find out from the parents whether or not the child’s digestion is working properly, and if not you should try to put it in order.

Someone spoke about the children who are not good at arithmetic.

Rudolf Steiner: When you discover a special weakness in arithmetic, it would be good to do this: generally, the other children will have two gymnastics lessons during the week, or one eurythmy lesson and one gymnastics lesson; you can take a group of the children who are not good at arithmetic, and allow them an extra hour or half-hour of eurythmy or gymnastics. This doesn’t have to mean a lot of extra work for you: you can take them with others who are doing the same kind of exercises, but you must try to improve these children’s capacities through gymnastics and eurythmy. First give them rod exercises. Say to them, “Hold the rod in your hand, first in front counting 1, 2, 3, and then behind 1, 2, 3, 4." Each time the child must change the position of the rod, moving it from front to back. A great effort will be made in some way to get the rod around behind at the count of 3. Then add walking: say, 3 steps forward, 5 steps back; 3 steps forward, 4 steps back; 5 steps forward, 3 steps back, and so on. In gymnastics, and also perhaps in eurythmy, try to combine numbers with the children’s movements, so they are required to count while moving. You will find this effective. I have frequently done this with pupils.

But now tell me, why does it have an effect? From what you have already learned, you should be able to form some ideas on this subject.

A teacher commented: Eurythmy movements must be a great help in teaching geometry.

RUDOLF STEINER: But I did not mean geometry. What I said applied to arithmetic, because at the root of arithmetic is consciously willed movement, the sense of movement. When you activate the sense of movement in this way, you quicken a child’s arithmetical powers. You bring something up out of the subconscious that, in such a child, is unwilling to be brought up. Generally speaking, when a child is bad both at arithmetic and geometry, this should be remedied by movement exercises. You can do a great deal for a child’s progress in geometry with varied and inventive eurythmy exercises, and also through rod exercises.

Comment: Where difficulties exist in pronunciation, the connection between speech and music should be considered.

RUDOLF STEINER: Most cases of poor pronunciation are due to defective hearing.

Comment: Sanguine students do not follow geography lessons very well because their ideas are vague. I recommend taking small portions of a map as subjects for drawing.

RUDOLF STEINER: When you make your geography lessons truly graphic, when you describe the countries clearly and show the distribution of vegetation, and describe the products of the earth in the different countries, making your lessons thoroughly alive in this way, you are not likely to find your students dull in this subject. And when you further enliven the geography lessons by first describing a country, then drawing it—allowing the children, to draw it on the board and sketch in the rivers, mountains, distribution of vegetation, forest, and meadow land, and then read travel books with your pupils—when you do all this you find that you usually have very few dull scholars; and what’s more, you can use your geography lessons to arouse the enthusiasm of your pupils and to stir up new capacities within them. If you can make geography itself interesting you will indeed notice that other capacities are aroused also in your pupils.

Comment: I have been thinking about this problem in relation to the first three grades. I would be strict with lazy children and try to awaken their ambition. In certain cases children must be told that they might have to go through the year’s work a second time. Emulation and ambition must be aroused.

RUDOLF STEINER: I wouldn’t recommend you to give much credit to ambition, which cannot generally be aroused in children. In the earliest school years you can make good use of the methods you suggest, but without overemphasizing ambition, because you would then later have to help the child to get rid of it again. But you must primarily consider food and diet, and I need to say this again and again.

Perhaps the friends who speak next will consider the fact that there are many children who in later life have no power of perceiving or remembering natural objects properly. A teacher may despair over some pupils who can never remember which among a number of minerals is a malachite or a hornblende, or even an emerald—who really have no idea of how to comprehend natural objects and recognize them again. The same is true also in relation to plants and animals. Please keep this in mind also.

Comment: I have noticed that with the youngest children you often find some who are backward in arithmetic. I like best to illustrate everything to them with the fingers, or pieces of paper, balls, or buttons. One can also divide the class without the children knowing anything about it; they are divided into two groups, the gifted ones and the weaker ones. We then take the weaker ones alone so that the gifted children are not kept back.

RUDOLF STEINER: In that case, Newton, Helmholtz, and Julius Robert Mayer would have been among the backward ones!

That doesn’t matter.

RUDOLF STEINER: You are right. It doesn’t matter at all. Even Schiller would have been among the weaker ones. And according to Robert Hamerling’s teaching certificate, he passed well in practically everything except German composition; his marks for that subject were below average!³

We have heard how eurythmy can help, and now Miss F. will tell us how she thinks eurythmy can be developed for the obstinate children, for they too must learn eurythmy.

RUDOLF STEINER: These suggestions are all very good. With regard to the children who resist doing eurythmy, there is still another way to get them to take pleasure in it. Besides allowing them to watch eurythmy frequently, try to take photographs of various eurythmy positions. These must be simplified so that the child will get visual images of the human being doing eurythmy forms. Pictures of this kind will make an impression on the children and kindle their abilities in eurythmy. That was why I asked Miss W. to take pictures of this kind (I don’t mean mere reproductions of eurythmy positions, but transformed into simple patterns of movement that have an artistic effect). These could be combined to show children the beauty of line. You would then discover an exceptionally interesting psychological fact—that children could perceive the beauty of line that they produced themselves in eurythmy, without becoming vain and coy. Although children are likely to become vain if their attention is drawn to what they have themselves done, this is not the case in eurythmy. In eurythmy, therefore, you can also cultivate a perception of line that can be used to enhance the feeling of self without awakening vanity and coquettishness.

Someone spoke of how he would explain the electric generator to children. He would try to emphasize in every possible way what would show the fundamental phenomenon most clearly.

RUDOLF STEINER: That is a very important principle, and it is also applicable to other subjects. It is a good principle for teaching, but to a certain extent it applies to all children in the physics lessons. It has no direct connection with the question of dealing with backward pupils. In physics the backward ones, especially the girls, are certain to put up a certain amount of opposition, even when you show them a process of this kind.

Question: Since food plays such a very important role, would Dr. Steiner tell us more about the effect of different foods on the body.

RUDOLF STEINER: I have already spoken of this, and you can also find many references in my lectures. It would perhaps lead us too far afield today to go into all the details of this subject, but most of all one should avoid giving children such things as tea and coffee.

The effect of tea on our thoughts is that they do not want to cohere; they flee from one another. For this reason tea is very good for diplomats, whose job in life is just to keep talking, with no desire to develop one thought logically out of another. You should avoid sending children’s thoughts into flight by allowing them to indulge in tea.

Neither is coffee good for children, because it disposes them to become too pedantic. Coffee is a well-known expedient for journalists, because with its help they can squeeze one thought out of another, as it were. This would not be the right thing for children, because their thoughts should arise naturally, one from another. Coffee and tea are among the things to be avoided. The green parts of a plant and also milk may be considered especially important food for children, and they should have white meat only, as far as possible.

Comment: When a child has difficulty in understanding, the teacher should offer a great deal of individual help, and should also inquire about how the child does in other subjects; but if too much time is spent with the duller children, the difficulty would arise that the others are left unoccupied.

RUDOLF STEINER: Please do not overestimate what the other children lose because of your work with the less gifted ones. As a rule, not much is lost provided that, while you present a subject properly for the duller children, you also succeed in getting the brighter ones to pay attention to it also. There is really then no serious loss for the more talented children. When you have a right feeling for the way in which a subject should be introduced for the weaker ones, then in one way or another the others will profit by it.

Comment: Whenever there is lack of interest, I would always have recourse to artistic impressions. I know of one child who cannot remember the forms of different minerals—in fact he finds it difficult to form a mental image of any type of formation. Such children cannot remember melodies either.

RUDOLF STEINER: You have discovered the particular difficulty found in children who have no perception of forms and no power of retaining them in memory. But you must distinguish between forms related to the organic world and those connected with minerals, which in fact run parallel to the forms of melodies. The important thing is that here we touch on a very, very radical defect, a great defect in the development of the child, and you must consider seriously how this defect can be fundamentally healed. There is an excellent way of helping these children to remember organic forms in nature—the forms of plants and animals; draw caricatures for them that emphasize the characteristics of a particular animal or plant. These drawings must not be ugly or in bad taste, but artistic and striking; now have the children try to remember these caricatures so that, in this roundabout way through caricature, they begin to find it easier to remember the actual forms. You could, for example, draw a mouse for them like this. Give it teeth and whiskers too if you like!

Then there is also another way of possibly helping children to grasp forms: have them understand from inside what they cannot grasp from outside. Let’s suppose, for example, that a child cannot understand a parallelepiped from outside.⁴ The child cannot remember this form. You say to the child: imagine you are a tiny little elf, and that you could stand inside of this form as if it were a room. You allow the child to grasp from inside what cannot be understood from outside. This the child can do. But you must repeat this again and again.

With forms of this kind, which also appear in minerals, this is relatively easy to do, but it is not as easy when it comes to perceiving color or any other quality of the mineral. In that case you can help the child to understand merely by letting the imagination see that a small thing is very large indeed. Have the child repeatedly try to picture some little yellow crystal as a gigantic crystallized form.

When you are dealing with the element of time, however—in music, for example—it is not such an easy matter. Let us for the moment suppose that you have not yet made any progress in improving the children’s grasp of spatial forms. Now, however, if you want to use caricature in musical form, you will only succeed when you introduce an arithmetical process, making the intervals infinitely larger and drawing out each sound for a very long time; thus by greatly increasing the time between each sound, you can produce the melody on a much larger scale, which will have an astonishing effect on the children. In this way you will achieve something, but otherwise you will not be able to effect much improvement.

Questions for tomorrow:

1. How can I treat the higher plants from a natural-scientific viewpoint in the same spirit shown yesterday for the animals, for cuttlefish, mouse, and human beings?⁵

2. How can I introduce mushrooms, mosses, and lichens into these lessons?

These two questions can perhaps be answered together. It is a case of applying the same methods for the plants as those I spoke of yesterday. It is not a question of object lessons, but of the proper teaching after the ninth year, when natural history is introduced into the curriculum.

• 1. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), German dramatist, poet, critic, editor, and translator.
• 2. Due to the food shortages in Germany in 1919.
• 3. Robert Hamerling (1830–1889) was a distinguished German poet and a personal friend of Rudolf Steiner.
• 4. A parallelepiped is a solid with six sides, all of which are parallelograms.
• 5. See Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 7.