298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the end of the second school year
11 Jun 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Similarly, if you did not pay attention, you will understand nothing of life, and then your whole life will be like a sun with a big cloud in front of it that covers the whole world with hailstones. |
You can be certain, ladies and gentlemen, that when you as parents strive toward this agreement and express it in the right way, harmoniously and with fellowfeeling, as you did just now, our teachers then feel that they have solid ground under their feet, regardless of whatever opposition and enmity they may encounter from other directions. |
With the best forces you have rooted in you, you try to understand the souls of growing human beings and to work on these souls, not in the sense of a school promoting a single philosophy, but in the sense of permeating an entire system of education with a thoroughly spiritualized attitude. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the end of the second school year
11 Jun 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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My dear children!1 I must speak to you first of all. You have now put a year of school behind you. When you entered the classes you are in now, you were one year younger, and now you have grown one year older. This can remind you of how you are always growing older, and this in turn will bring you to the thought that someday you will have grown from being children to being adults, big people who will have to be good and capable so that they can work and really carry out what the world and other people ask of them. Now recall how you were once very small. Remember how you all used to be very little babies who could not speak. You learned to speak and you learned many other things, and when you had already learned a lot, you came here to us to go to school. Your parents sent you here to go to school with us. Think about your parents and about how they thought about you. When you were babies, when you were very small children, your parents were concerned: “What will become of my boy? What will become of my girl? Will they grow up to be good and capable people someday, so that when I am old I will be able to have confidence in my children?” That is what your fathers and mothers said. And you know, dear children, that your parents brought you here, you who are nearest and dearest to them, so that you would grow up to be people like that. Your parents were concerned that you grow up to be good, capable people, and they brought you here to this Waldorf School because they believe that the teachers here can teach you to grow up to be good and capable people. Remember that you must learn! Your parents brought you here and entrusted you to your dear teachers, and you must bring home a present to your parents at the end of each day and especially at the end of the year—a present that they will like a lot and that will make them say (if it is a good present), “My boy, or my girl, has learned something real.” You must realize that it is something really nice for them when you can go home at the end of the school year and say, “Father and Mother, I really tried hard to learn something good.” If you can do this, dear children, you give your parents great pleasure and take away one of their greatest worries. This is something we especially want to think about today. Let us think about being here in this school to fulfill what our parents intended when they brought us here. After that, let us think about growing older each year, and about being grown-up people someday. Life is coming, with its pain, its destiny, and its joy, and with its work, too. Life, my dear children, will ask a lot of you. It will have very specific requirements for you. Now, dear children, there is one thing that always will give you strength, always be a sun for you, and that is being able to remember being here in school and gradually coming to love your teachers more and more. You do love your teachers very much, dont you? [“Yes!” answer the children.] Later, if you can think back to how you once learned something, to a nice day when your teacher spoke to you with love and it was a real joy for you to be in school, then you will really have a sun that shines into our life. Someday when you are really old and have gray hair, you can think back and remember learning something nice. And if you remember being in school in the right way, you will see that this gives you strength, and that something of it will last until the day you die. There is something that makes remembering unpleasant, something that clouds our memory, and that is if we have to think, “Oh, I was such a lazy character!” It is not good later on in life if we have to think of how lazy we were. It has a very bad effect on our life if we have to remember that we did not love our teachers and that we had no love for the subject or for what was on the blackboard or for what was being said or read out loud. It is always lovely later on if we can remember working hard and loving the teacher, but it is painful when we have to say to ourselves, “I was a lazy kid. If I hadnt been so lazy, I would be a skillful person now.” Maybe it was fun to be lazy, but later on you will regret it bitterly. Similarly, if you did not pay attention, you will understand nothing of life, and then your whole life will be like a sun with a big cloud in front of it that covers the whole world with hailstones. That is what it will be like if you have to remember not loving your teachers or not loving what you were taught. Keep this in mind, and your thoughts will be good when you think about working hard and paying attention and loving. That is why you are here. You are here to grow up to be good, strong, capable people in life, and that can happen only if you can remember your childhood as a time when you tried hard to pay attention and to love your subjects and your teachers. That is what you should feel in every lesson. When you come to school in the morning and say your morning verse, you should remember that you are here to become a good and capable person. When you go home from school, you should be thinking about how every minute in which you are not hard-working, attentive and loving is a minute wasted because you are making your parents worry. You bring the best thing home to your parents if they say when they see you coming, “I can tell by looking at my children that they are bringing something good home from school today.” Think about coming home to your parents after school. They should be able to say to themselves, “My children will grow up to be good, capable people.” I want to tell you this, dear children, because we grow a little older each school year, and we remember how we are growing older. Now that I have talked to the children, I would like to speak over their heads and say a few words to their parents. What unites this school’s faculty is the recognition that a divine spiritual element pervades all human activity, and that people can devote themselves to this divine spiritual element. They must do so especially when they have tasks such as those that teachers have. Our teachers always must be aware that their task consists in calling the spirit of the world down into the school, and they must live in this awareness. This awareness, ladies and gentlemen, is best established among our faculty through the relationship we need to have to the parents of the school children. This relationship should be such that we really think together with the parents, that our feelings are in harmony with theirs, and that what we try to do in the school is the same as what the parents are trying to do with their dear children in realizing their ideals. Our teachers’ philosophy hammers this into their hearts and souls every morning. By looking at the souls of the children, our teachers learn the value of the human soul and know the value of what you have given them by bringing your children here. You have given them the gift of being able to guide the spirit into human souls. It is with this deep feeling of gratitude and of good intentions that our teachers receive what is nearest and dearest to you, the children you bring to this schoolhouse. This is the source of our teachers’ efforts to give something back to you, in love and gratitude and to the best of their abilities, in the souls you then see when your children come home from school or when they leave school to make their way in life. Our teachers receive a gift from you in the form of faith in human development; they would like to give a gift in return by educating your children to be good human beings. To be able to do this, they need to be in full agreement with you. You can be certain, ladies and gentlemen, that when you as parents strive toward this agreement and express it in the right way, harmoniously and with fellowfeeling, as you did just now, our teachers then feel that they have solid ground under their feet, regardless of whatever opposition and enmity they may encounter from other directions. May our teachers seek the impulse for their activity in this harmony with our parents. There is still a third thing I would like to say to you, my dear teachers. You are united with the spirit of a spiritual worldview. With the best forces you have rooted in you, you try to understand the souls of growing human beings and to work on these souls, not in the sense of a school promoting a single philosophy, but in the sense of permeating an entire system of education with a thoroughly spiritualized attitude. This is the best way to learn two things, my dear friends. The first is what wells up in freedom from creative strength, from within the human being. We gradually come to recognize that we must constantly learn what is good for the children from the children themselves. We learn to recognize that only what we create in freedom, the best in us that arises from our interactions with the children, can work into the children’s souls. Our creative strength educates us, in the best sense of the word, to be able to do this, and we regard this as the best thing we can do in all of our work. The other point is that because of our world-view we have developed a deeper connection to the idea of destiny. We work in an artistic manner on the souls of the children, but what we are working on is not like an outer work of art made of marble or wood; it is something that unites with us through destiny. When we stand in front of our children each day, trying to embody, ensoul, and enspirit them with the right insight that is present in the background, we unite with these souls for eternity as a matter of destiny. In the realm of eternity we will be met by what we have shaped during these different transformations, and by how we have done so. In a world-view such as the one we have, the teacher’s true responsibility flows out of a feeling for freedom and destiny. It is out of the spirit of this responsibility that you, my friends, spoke earlier, both to the children and over their heads to their parents. I merely wanted to sum up your words. Once again, let us say to you, children, “Come back to school next year with the same joy in paying attention; learn to love your teachers even more than you have until now; think of how your teachers’ minds are focused day and night on having you grow up to be good, capable people. Your teachers show their love for you in their efforts to educate your souls, your spirits, and your bodies so that you will grow up to be good, capable people.” Let us impress this deeply upon ourselves as we conclude this school year, and let us begin the next school year with the appropriate strength. Resolve to work hard and pay attention, to love your subjects and your teachers. Then things will go even better than they went this year.
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298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the first official members’ meeting of the Independent Waldorf School Association
17 Jun 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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In addition, the faculty first had to come to a common understanding of what our task would have to become as we got into the details of pedagogical and methodological activity. |
But we need to be sensitive to the fact that a lesson requires presence of mind and should therefore under no circumstances be subjected to visitation unless there is some urgent need. I believe, therefore, that it is also the view of the other members of the college that the most we can allow is for you to see the classrooms, and even this would be burdensome at the moment. |
Because of a ruling on the laws governing primary schools, the Waldorf School had to reapply for approval in the fall of 1920. This was granted under the proviso that starting in the 1922/23 school year it, like other private schools, was not to admit a new first grade and would have to decrease the number of students in the first four grades. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the first official members’ meeting of the Independent Waldorf School Association
17 Jun 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Ladies and gentlemen!1 I call this first official meeting of members of the Independent Waldorf School Association to order. Before I go into the agenda, please allow me to welcome you most heartily in the name of the Board. Of course only a small number of the Association’s members are here today; we welcome all the more heartily those of you who are able to be here. We have 1,400 members, and not nearly that many are here, but it is a pleasure to see that a considerable number have come. To begin with, ladies and gentlemen, there are some things that need to be said with regard to the development of the Waldorf School up to this point. We now have two school years behind us. From various publications that have already appeared, you probably know that in this Waldorf School which Emil Molt founded, we aspired to something that could really bring about something new in various directions as a result of new pedagogical and methodological viewpoints and as a result of a universal humanitarian way of thinking. We aspired to release new forces that are needed in the field of education in order to counter the forces of decline that are so apparent in our times. Understandably enough, something important must be done now in the realm of the educational system. Our task was not an easy one; in choosing the teachers, we needed to make sure that the spirit of a much-needed new pedagogical and methodological way of thinking, as we may call it, was alive and active in them. In addition, the faculty first had to come to a common understanding of what our task would have to become as we got into the details of pedagogical and methodological activity. For this purpose, a pedagogical and methodological course was given prior to the opening of the school for the college of teachers as it was initially constituted. Instruction was then begun, attempting to take this course as a basis. In addition to this first somewhat longer pedagogical course, a shorter supplementary course was given before the start of the second school year, and a second supplementary course is taking place now before the third school year begins.2 On the various occasions when I as the educational director was able to visit the school in the course of these two years, it became evident—and I say this after a conscientious investigation—that in spite of all the difficulties that some individual teachers had to overcome in themselves—difficulties due in part to outer circumstances and in part to the difficulty of the task itself—it has become possible for the spirit that prevails in our school to take hold of the college of teachers ever more strongly. We have been involved in an ascending development, and the way in which this spirit of the Waldorf School has settled down among us to an ever greater extent leads us to hope that we will also be able to note an ascending development in the Waldorf School spirit in the school year to come. It has become evident that the new teachers who joined the old ones as the expansion of the school made it necessary have found their way into the spirit of the Waldorf School with astounding rapidity. In this connection, we can say that this spirit of the Waldorf School is becoming something more and more alive, something you discover and are touched by as soon as you come into the school. In this connection, after properly assessing the situation, we have only good things to note; we can hope that by developing the spirit we aspire to we will gradually get to the point at which we can offer clear evidence that the Waldorf School will be able to achieve its goal. This is what there is to report about the spirit that prevails in the school and in the teachers’ conferences, about the spirit that was evident to me, as the one who had to verify it, in the attitude and way of thinking that prevails within the college of teachers. The college of teachers consists of its founder Herr Emil Molt and his wife in the role of patrons, so to speak, and of the people you know. By the very nature of the thing, the educational directorship has fallen to me, and I may say that in the teachers’ conferences that have been held in my presence and in the classes in which I participated, which happened quite often in the course of these two years, what I have just described has certainly been evident. This is all that needs to be noted in brief about this side of things; however, there is something that needs to be presented from the other side. This is something that I believed to be fully justified in saying in all kinds of talks before the opening of the school and at the opening itself, namely that the Waldorf School will only really fulfill its mission if other such schools are founded very soon. With a single school, of course, we can provide nothing more than a model and a pedagogical and methodological example. I believe I am justified in telling you this. Of course we will be able to produce a model and an example of this sort, but in our times this can only be a beginning. What is needed now is to carry the spirit of which we have spoken into the entire educational system in the sense of the threefold social organism. This threefolding requires a truly free cultural life with regard to education. The spirit of which we have spoken can be achieved only through the broadest possible dissemination of the idea of the Waldorf School. The Waldorf School must have successors, and this depends of course on interest in the school developing in the widest possible circles. It may be said that the active cooperation of the members of the Waldorf School Association, and also of the parents, demonstrates an admirable degree of interest. Unfortunately, however, the idea of the Waldorf School has not excited interest in wider circles; interest there remains extraordinarily low. Apart from the single small-scale and very gratifying attempt that has been made within Central Europe, the Waldorf School has not found any successors, and there are very few movements afoot to get such successors started. We can also say that the interest has not been as great as expected from another point of view, namely that it takes money for even one model school to thrive. We have had to set things up in a way that involves adding one grade a year. When the school was founded, it had eight grades; last year we added the ninth grade, and with the beginning of the third school year, which takes place tomorrow, the tenth grade will be added. In this way, we will expand the school upward each year so that eventually our graduating students will be able take the Abitur and go straight on to various colleges and universities. There is still time for all this, but this is how we imagine the school’s expansion to take place. Of course this requires constant additions to our physical space. In addition, our original idea, which was to found this school primarily for the children of associates of the Waldorf-Astoria factory, has broadened considerably. We have been getting more and more applications from all over the place; in this respect there is no lack of interest. Interest in increasing the size of the school, in expanding this one school, and in the spirit of the school is certainly already present. This is evident from the fact that we have students applying on all sides, and that most grade levels have several parallel classes. The Board of Directors” report will mention the difficulties with regard to expanding the school.3 We can see from all this that it is necessary to arouse interest in the school in a financial context. We really cannot say that the school has met with this interest in a financial sense. We encounter new financial worries each time an expansion becomes necessary. Already today the Board will present some of its concerns in its report to this official members’ meeting. While on the one hand we can report considerable satisfaction with the school’s spiritual progress, this must be balanced by reporting our concerns, which will increase greatly in the next few weeks. Naturally, the college of teachers cannot deal with these concerns; it already has a great deal to do in keeping up with the school’s spiritual progress. This is something that must be taken to the broader public in the right way in the near future. We simply must awaken interest in financially supporting the Waldorf School, or else even the model that a single school provides will not be able to develop in the appropriate way. It is to be hoped that if we succeed in raising the interest of the broader public in the spirit of the Waldorf School and its results, we will be able to meet our other need, namely to broaden the concept of the Waldorf School by founding other such schools as successors to this one. If this does not happen, establishing a model and an example is all that will be possible. This would certainly not do justice to the ideas and ideals of the Waldorf School movement. This is what I wanted to present to you in my role as chairman of the Waldorf School Association. From the discussionE. Molt: I could not wish for a nicer task than to have to present Dr. Steiner with our heart-felt thanks for his loving leadership of the school. We know that we have him to thank for the successful growth of the school Dr. Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to thank Herr Molt for his kind words, and all of you for agreeing with them. I believe I may also express these thanks in the name of the entire college of teachers of our Waldorf School. There can be no doubt that to the extent to which this college of teachers has been successful in building up the Waldorf School, this has only been possible because the entire college of teachers is deeply imbued with the need for the idea of the Waldorf School, because each individual member of this college of teachers is enthusiastically involved with the idea of the Waldorf School. From this enthusiasm comes the strength to work at something essentially new. We can rest assured that in spite of many difficulties, this enthusiasm will endure, and as a consequence the strength needed by those of us who must provide for the Waldorf School and its spiritual progress will also endure. And in this sense, since you may be able to believe that we in this school are working out of pure enthusiasm for the idea of the Waldorf School, you will also be able to accept the promise I would like to make, in my name and in the name of my dear friends in the college of teachers, to you who have taken such a deep interest in the Waldorf School. Please accept our promise that we will in future continue to work in the way that you have seen and in a way that will satisfy you. Someone expresses the wish to have a chance to see the Waldorf School. Dr. Steiner: I believe you would not get much out of seeing the Waldorf School itself, and that the faculty would not be able to conduct a tour tomorrow morning. If it is possible for you to modify your wish, perhaps you could take part in the opening assembly here in the Stadigartensaal at 9:30 tomorrow, if there are not too many of you. Would it be possible for you to do this instead? I am sure the teachers will have no objections. And if you should wish to take a walk tomorrow evening after six o’clock, the members of the college will be glad to show you the building when school is not in session. A member: Perhaps people can be allowed to visit the school on a certain day? The eurythmy lessons, for instance? Dr. Steiner: Eurythmy belongs to our lessons, so the same objections would apply to it as to other classes. I would like to comment that the most that would be possible would be that we might decide to show visitors the empty school when the children and teachers are not there. There can be no question of visiting while school is in session. That is, such a visit could only take place after weighing it up carefully in consultation with those who hope to learn something by visiting the school—for instance, with people who want to see something of this school because they are trying to found a similar school elsewhere, because they themselves are doing something relevant to spread the idea of the Waldorf School. Seeing the school in operation would only come into question in infrequent cases of this sort. Of course we have already had many requests along these lines, but for purely pedagogical and methodological reasons it would not be possible to have it happen on a more general basis. Even a legitimate visit during a lesson is a cause of disturbance, a disturbance that is not justifiable in pedagogical terms. Anyone coming into the classroom disturbs the lesson. Sometimes there is a higher goal that justifies the disturbance, and we have to accept reasons of this sort. But we need to be sensitive to the fact that a lesson requires presence of mind and should therefore under no circumstances be subjected to visitation unless there is some urgent need. I believe, therefore, that it is also the view of the other members of the college that the most we can allow is for you to see the classrooms, and even this would be burdensome at the moment. I can assure you that the classrooms will be well worth seeing once we are receiving a lot of financial support. But with regard to equipment that comes from endowments, people are probably much more likely to feel that they are getting their money’s worth if they go and look at other schools. We, on the other hand, would only be subjecting ourselves to the danger of having them tell us that they didn't see anything, that the instructional materials are anything but ample, and that they want their money back! With regard to eurythmy, let me remind you again that we have done everything possible to demonstrate what eurythmy is like. We have organized events where people could see what the Waldorf children do in eurythmy, and I hope that these events will continue. These are opportunities for you to convince yourselves of what the Waldorf children can accomplish in eurythmy. For pedagogical reasons, it does not seem possible to me for us to make exceptions in the case of eurythmy to what applies to the rest of the lessons. So far we have accommodated to the greatest possible extent any legitimate wish people might have to inform themselves of what is going on in the Waldorf School, and people have taken advantage of the possibility to see the school to an equally great and not always desirable extent. In this regard, nothing healthy can come of it if visitation and our interaction with the outer world are governed by any directives other than those the directorship and teachers™ college of the Waldorf School see fit to issue. It does not seem possible to me for the school’s leadership to receive any such directives from an Association. The issue here is that only a proper decision of the teachers’ college can come into consideration in a matter like this, so it does not seem necessary to me to vote in the context of the Waldorf School Association on whether or not this should be permitted. How this matter is handled depends absolutely on the college of teachers. There has also been no motion to do otherwise. ... It does not work to have what I described in the first part, the spirit of the Waldorf School, on display for visitors. It has to be developed in the lessons, and this can be done only in the way in which it has been attempted so far. The only way in which the spirit of the Waldorf School can be presented to the public is through public testimonials of people who have children here, who are becoming familiar with our educational ideals; that is, through parents and others related to the school. There is no possibility of drawing attention to the spirit of the Waldorf School in any other way. I can assure you that I know that this suggestion was made with good intentions, but in the past two years we have been accommodating on all sides. We must guard carefully against having people come who are merely curious. However, we will also continue to not turn away anyone who has legitimate grounds for getting to know the school. Now that we have come to the end of our gathering, allow me to still express on behalf of the Board our hearty thanks to you for being willing to attend this first gathering. I hope the experiences you will be able to have will satisfy the interest you have demonstrated by being present here today. In this sense, I thank you in the name of the Board of the Waldorf School Association for being here today. Let me now call this first official members’ meeting to a close.
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298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the beginning of the third school year
18 Jun 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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That is when other spiritual beings are awake. This is something you cannot understand yet. (That is why you have to go to school—to learn to understand things that you do not understand now.) |
In the Waldorf School you are meant to become devout children, children who know that people also have something inside them that we cannot see. And as I said, even though you may not have understood very much of this now, that is why you are coming to the Waldorf School, where you will learn to understand it. |
In acting in this way, we understand what we must do so that humanity can progress from this age of great misery to different age. We understand what can come of wanting to have our young people led with understanding. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the beginning of the third school year
18 Jun 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear children! Today I will speak first to those of you who are here with us today for the first time and who will be getting together with your nice teachers over in the Waldorf School in the next few days. My dear children! Until now, your time has been spent at home in your parents” house, and your good parents have taken care of you, taken care of you lovingly. You need only to do a little bit of thinking—you can already think enough to do that—to know how your parents began each morning by taking care of you. They made sure that your bodily needs were met, that you got the breakfast and lunch that you need so badly in order to live, and they also made sure that you could enjoy life, that you had a chance to enjoy flowers and plants and all the beautiful things there are in the world. Dear children, you can also already think about how glad your hearts were when your dear parents said something nice to you. Perhaps it did not always occur to you to be heartily thankful for what they do for you, but now that you are starting school, which is something very important for you, I would like to tell you this today: The more grateful you are for all the love your parents give you—and they are always trying to do more—and the more gratitude you show in receiving this love, the better children you are. During all this time, your parents were realizing that their children would grow up to be big people, just like they are themselves. Once upon a time they had to realize that there was something they needed to learn in order to be able to provide for their children. They had to learn to work. And you see, if you want to work, you also have to think. They had to learn to think! And then your parents thought about where they would send their children to become good, capable people who would be able to handle their work and get on in life. Then the thought occurred to them to send you here to us in the Waldorf School, because they thought that you could learn something here about becoming good, capable people. I want you to think about how your parents sent you here so that you will be able to work someday. You cannot work without thinking. So that you will know that, I want you to promise to work in the Waldorf School. In the Waldorf School we have made sure that you will be able to learn something, and we have also made sure that you will be able to find things you really like. From time to time you received something from your parents, a gift or a kind word, and then you said or thought or felt, “That’s really nice!” And you see, if you really understand what is going on when you go to the Waldorf School in the next few days, you may also be able to say, “That’s really nice! Going to the Waldorf School is a nice gift our parents have given us.” You will often feel that this is a nice gift. You see, we have to take care of the Waldorf School, and the teachers are people who care a lot. They made sure that the children will be able to say, “That’s really nice!” It will be easy for you to say it's nice in the Waldorf School because we have made sure that the men and women who are going to be your teachers are really nice. You will meet good teachers who really like you. And actually, you will learn the most if you really love your teachers. This is what you have to watch out for, that you really, really love your teachers. If you do, then you will also learn well. This is why I am telling you especially to notice the nice things your teachers will tell you. If you really love them, then you will do what they want, and then you will really learn a lot. I think you will often be able to say to yourselves, “How nice that our parents sent us to the Waldorf School!” And when you come into our school and sit in class, you will also always be able to feel that your teachers love you a whole lot. You know that you are often tired in the evening. Often you were tired, and then you had to go to sleep, and in the morning you woke up again. While you are sleeping, you do not see anything or hear anything, but you are getting strong before morning comes. That is when other spiritual beings are awake. This is something you cannot understand yet. (That is why you have to go to school—to learn to understand things that you do not understand now.) Other spiritual beings are awake, and people must be able to give themselves up to these spiritual beings. They must learn to love and respect what they do not see. That is what the Waldorf School wants to give you, so that you will be good, thinking, hard-working children, and devout children, too. In the Waldorf School you are meant to become devout children, children who know that people also have something inside them that we cannot see. And as I said, even though you may not have understood very much of this now, that is why you are coming to the Waldorf School, where you will learn to understand it. This is something you must understand, or you will not get anywhere in life. Now I am going to turn to your parents who have sent you here, and I am especially going to thank them for the confidence they show in the Waldorf School by sending us what is nearest and dearest to them. I would like to assure these parents that we who are trying to represent and implement the spirit of the Waldorf School are aware of the infinitely great responsibility we take on when you parents bring what is dearest to you here to become good and capable in life. Now that you have made the important and significant decision to send your children to the Waldorf School, we hope that your confidence in the school will be able to grow as you see Waldorf faculty striving to accomplish what you expect of us in educating your children in spirit, body, and soul. What has developed in the Waldorf School over the past two years gives us good reason to hope that what we do will merit your confidence. What we do, what our Waldorf faculty does, is what will confirm the confidence you now show in the school by entrusting to us what is dearest to you. Although what I have said may not be fully comprehensible to our dear children, they will find that they are able to pick it up again later. Now that I have said this to our youngest children who are just beginning their school careers, I would like to turn to the older children who have already spent part of their time in school with us, and say a few words to them. And the first thing I would like to say to them is something I have come to love doing each time I come here, because it always gets a clear and unmistakable answer. Now that I have asked the youngest children to make sure that they start to love their teachers, I would like to ask you older children, who have been here before, whether you love your teachers. [The children answer, “Yes!”] You love your teachers because that is the way things should be. The way your teachers behave toward you will make you love them. To the older children, I would like to say this: In your new grades, you will meet the same teachers that you had last year. You will continue with what you learned in the earlier grades. However, you should still think about what it means to move up a grade. Think about how moving up can remind us that in life we are always getting older and older. Especially today, when you are entering a new grade, you should look back a bit on the time when you were younger. You should think about all the things you now know because of what was taught to you in school, and now that you are moving up a grade you should think about needing to look into the future. The future, my dear children, is what we often try to hold in front of us in life. It is what you should hold in front of yourselves. When you go out in the street, you see the older people around you. You see them leaving home to go to work and then coming home from work; you see them going out to do all kinds of things that need to be taken care of in life. When you go out in the street, you also see younger people who have just gotten out of school and who now have to apply what they learned in school for the first time. You see people who are older than you are and who have already learned something from life itself, who have experienced joy and sorrow in life. And if these older people speak to you, then they will tell you that they learned a lot about life through having learned real things in school. They will tell you that school prepared them to be working people and to be really human. If people take life seriously, you will almost always find that when they think back on their school days, they think, “What would I be now if I had not been nurtured by loving teachers during my school days, if I had not learned all the things that you can learn when you are young, the things that help you on in life and are a real support for you in life?” You find people walking around with gray hair, people on whom life has already left its mark, people who have matured. Most of them, when they reach the twilight of their life, think back on their own childhood whenever they see children. Now they think back to when they were sitting at their desks in school, and only now do they understand what they were able to take with them from that time. Only now do they really feel what it meant for their whole life. Let me tell you today that if you love your teachers, if you work hard while you are sitting at your desks in school, then having been able to be in school in this way will be the greatest possible joy for you when you have grown old. The Waldorf School wants to make sure that you have something that will last you a lifetime when you think back on the school, when you apply what came to you in the Waldorf School to your life. The Waldorf School does not want to simply uplift you; it wants to let the difficulties of work, which do have to be there, alternate with joy and with what can bring you pleasure in life. The Waldorf School wants to give this to all of you. You will see that you can take great pleasure in having done hard work, in having learned something difficult. You must not believe it when people say that school should turn everything into a pleasure. As a teacher, you cannot always arrange things so that the students learn everything as if they were playing a game. You will not find that we always turn learning into a game. There will also be times when it is hard for you, but when you see that your teachers are concerned that there also be a place for the hard things, you will be able to take pleasure in overcoming the difficulties. Then you will also be able to be glad that you are in the Waldorf School and that you can learn what you need to learn for life in this way. And those of you who have been here longer will have noticed that we are really trying with all our might to help you become people with a feeling for true human devotion, people who can look up to a spiritual, supersensible world. You will learn to understand the words “spirit” and “supersensible world” better and better as you move up from one grade to the next. Today, then, try to think about growing older. Moving up through the grades in school shows you that people grow older. It reminds you that you need to be in school to make sure, both for your own sake and out of love for your teachers, that you pay attention and work good and hard so that you learn what you need to know for life. Every hour of the day and night, your teachers are concerned about how to best introduce you to what you need for life. With strong will and with all the thoughts they can possibly have, they are looking for what you need. Of course this will be difficult for you, but they will make it as easy as possible. If they tried to teach it to you in the form of a game, you would not become good, capable people in life. Some things in life are difficult, but you will overcome them if you learn to overcome difficulties when you are still children. You will go into the new school year in the right way. You will learn many new things, and some of what comes to you will bring you new joys. Some of it will show you the greatness and glory and breadth of the things in the world into which we human beings come. You will learn that what shines down from the moon and stars, what expresses itself and reveals itself in this world that speaks to us when the plants grow green and come up out of the earth in spring, what reveals itself in deep valleys and in the shapes of mountains and in minerals—that all this challenges us to lend a hand and bring forth the best that we can. It challenges us to learn to understand something about the world so that we can work in it. What is presented to you in your new grade will help you learn to better understand the greatness and glory of this world, of the divine deeds of lofty beings. You will learn that it is inherent in the nature of human beings to take their place in this divine world as workers who are able to do something because of what they have learned. The moment will come when you look out at the world and at the hard-working people who do so much, and if you yourself are not capable and have not learned anything worthwhile, you will be forced to ask yourself, “Now that I have grown old, what am I, since I made myself useless as a child?” This moment will come. As you grow old, think about how you can avoid this moment. You certainly can avoid it. The less you reject what your teachers ask of you out of love, the bigger and stronger you will be as you take your place in life. Think about this. Think about it each morning when you go to school. Think about that moment, and by being attentive in school you will become good, capable people who have no reason to reproach themselves in life. My dear children, today in this serious moment there is something else I need to remind you. By now you will have seen how, once people have gotten gray hair and grown tired and old, they are carried out and their bodies are buried; the end of their life has come. That is only an outer ending. When this moment comes, a person’s immortal soul rises up to the spirit of whom we all know. Just as you are now in a body, one day you will be spirit. Although people must prepare themselves for serious work in the world, they also must prepare themselves to enter the world in which they will live as spirit, just as we now live in bodies in this physical, sense-perceptible world. The body gets sick if it is damaged by the outer world or harmed by the weather, or the damage can come from inside. It is a hard destiny for some people when their bodies do not grow right, but it is a much worse destiny if people do not let their souls grow right. While you are in school, getting ready to do good and capable work, you are being guided so that you can also grow in your souls, in the spirit of humanity, so that you will become good and capable people not only in the eyes of other human beings and in the eyes of the world, but also in the eyes of God and the spiritual world. You will already have experienced this spirit in the Waldorf School. Remain in this spirit and become more and more conscious of it, the older you get. As you advance from the beginning of the year to the end, your work and your worries increase. So think of a moment like this as something especially important, something that reminds you of how we human beings are standing in the midst of the divine world; of how you need to become strong and capable in body, soul and spirit; of how you think of your spirit, your soul and your body in your diligent striving for growth and health. This thought will help you. You will reach the point where it gives you strength each morning, so that you can prepare your deeds and your goals in the right way. Then you will be able to think about it with satisfaction in the evening. If you can say to yourselves, “I did my duty in school,” you will be able to pass over into God’s spiritual world when you sleep. Through what you experience in the Waldorf School, you must increasingly learn the meaning of the word “duty,” and how duty plays into love for your work. This is something you must learn in the Waldorf School, and through all of this you will become good and capable people. I am saying this to those who are already in the upper grades, who are entering a more mature age, who are already closer to the life in which they will have to work independently. You more mature children must think about how what I have just said applies to you. You who are now moving up into the higher grades are allowed to do so because of a special destiny that gives you the opportunity to know more than some others can. You have seen others who are already called upon to go to work out there in the world at a young age. They were your classmates; continue to love them. Think of them and consider them your friends. Thinking about them in the right way will make life move forward. Learn not only your subjects, not only what grows and thrives in you directly, but learn to love others too. Get to know each other and learn to really love your classmates. Learn that people are there for each other, that the Spirit Creator of the world endeavors most of all to work through the love that human beings bring toward each other. It is the worst thing for a school when the students do not love each other. Try to discover something lovable in each of your fellow students; there is something lovable in every human being. Learn to carry into each of your classes the warmth that expresses itself in love. If you learn to do that, what you have acquired in this way will give you much to carry out into life. Now I would also like to address a few words to the parents whose children have been in the Waldorf School before. You will have done some thinking about our way of working in this school. Perhaps you have already been able to see that how we work here requires a sensitivity to the great needs of civilization at the present time. The people who brought the idea of the Waldorf School into the world are burdened by the knowledge that things have come so far that we had to experience the great suffering of the beginning of the twentieth century, the great killing and the distress it brought with it. Those who observe all this with an unprejudiced view, ladies and gentlemen, know that attitudes and ways of thinking, things that live in human thoughts and human hearts, are the origin of these outer events. They know that we must work on the soul and spirit of humanity so that it can be guided out of the forces of world decline into forces of ascent. The idea of the Waldorf School was born out of the great thoughts of our times, and this responsibility stands over us as we work. We in the Waldorf School would like to imbue ourselves through and through with the idea of what it means to lay seeds in the hearts of children, seeds that must begin to grow in the next few decades for the salvation of the world. At this point I always like to invoke the feeling of responsibility that lies in nurturing humanity’s near future. Ladies and gentlemen, it is easy to speak of great ideals in an abstract sense. It is easy to proclaim that humanity must strive for the true, the beautiful and the good. But salvation and happiness in human evolution do not come from speaking great words about utopias and distant ideals for the future, or from nice words about things that are still undefined and unclear and hovering in the misty distance. They do not come from what we say to make ourselves feel good inside. Working for salvation and happiness and a livable society lies in grasping the details of the tasks life presents us with. If we can think about ideals and ideas in the right way, then ideas become something holy for all of us. If we talk about ideals as if they were undefined, nebulous things, we are speaking in hollow and empty words, but if we do not do that, if in all our dealing with ideals we are aware that we are involved in real concrete work on them, then we contribute much more to the progress and evolution of humanity than we do through beautiful-sounding talk. The men and women who are Waldorf teachers really want to kindle their feeling of responsibility, really want to dwell in a right understanding of the world, in this attentive listening to what the world demands. May there grow from this spirit the forces that are needed to always do the right thing at any given moment. These forces only arise when we are able to look at the whole. We live our lives with no backbone, no spiritual backbone, if we are not in a position to think and work on behalf of real ideals in this way, if we speak in indeterminate words and foggy ideals. Therefore, I would like to say a few concrete words about the forces that are present in the hearts and souls of our teachers, the forces they will use to justify the confidence you parents place in them, the forces they will use to prove that it is no blind confidence that leads you to send your children to the Waldorf School and that our efforts to nurture the next generation for the sake of the salvation and happiness of humanity are based on understanding. In thinking like this and in acting on this thought, we are fulfilling not only some pet idea or feeling, but a mission of our times. In acting in this way, we understand what we must do so that humanity can progress from this age of great misery to different age. We understand what can come of wanting to have our young people led with understanding. We know that sensitivity in guiding these young people will carry over into a near and difficult future. It is in this spirit that I would like to turn to my dear friends the teachers. We have worked together, made an effort together, to bring this spirit into the Waldorf School. After careful selfexamination, we can say today that in some respects we have succeeded in what we set out to do. We succeeded in developing this in a certain way so that our intentions of two years ago have become our practice of today. This will become ever more the case. As the faculty, carried by this spirit, finds its way to its tasks, the outer practice of Waldorf teaching, our outer way of acting, will be imbued more and more by this spirit. Through the fact that our faculty makes a daily effort to learn the art of bringing what is present in the Waldorf School spirit into outer life, this spirit will become ever more a reality, more fit for outer existence; it will grow and perhaps pull others along through its growing. The important thing is for this Waldorf School spirit to be an example for people to follow. We can do but little in comparison to what humanity needs. However, it can work as a model if you make an effort to do more and more of what has met with understanding on the part of the parents. Then it will be possible to bring the Waldorf School spirit out of the Waldorf School and into the entire life of our civilization. This is why I am thanking all of you in this moment when you, dear teachers, must set new tasks for yourselves. I thank you because I have been present to see how you have worked on yourselves and thus taken part in the progress of the good spirit here in the Waldorf School. In this feeling of gratitude we will continue to work together, and we will attempt to understand each other more and more, so that the body of teachers becomes a unity. A school is only something whole when it is an organism out of which a unitary spirit-soul arises. This is what we promise the parents today, these are the intentions we undertake for the future, in the hope that they will become deeds in the same way that some of our earlier intentions have become deeds. Now that I have turned to you with these words, I would like to sum it up in a few words that may perhaps be said here, in the context of the spirit of the Waldorf School. It would of course be presumptuous to speak these words if they were intended to characterize what has happened through the Waldorf School. However, they are of significance if we speak them, not as a command or as a point we want to hammer in, but as something we say to ourselves so that the forces can become even greater, as we tried to make it happen in the two previous years. Knowing that each individual field of activity expresses in miniature what is intended to happen in the world, we say to ourselves as children, parents, and teachers trying to unite and work together so that the Waldorf School may prosper, not presumptuously, but to our own hearts—“Onward, in the true spirit of the Waldorf School ideal!” This is the call I wanted to utter to the spirits and souls of all of you, and especially from my heart to yours, today when we are leading our students into a new school year. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the foundation-stone laying of the Waldorf School’s new building
16 Dec 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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That Emil Molt was able to conceive this idea out of his feeling for these great issues of our times will never be forgotten and will always be given due recognition wherever people have any understanding of such needs of humanity and of the great impulses of human evolution in general. In order to inscribe it on your hearts, dear children, dear students, I must also recall the people who have decided to form this school’s first faculty. |
The foundation stone containing the verse was well protected under the main entry. The original building, which had been acquired and remodeled by Emil Molt, was not damaged. |
This Association was to awaken a feeling for independent spiritual life in the broadest possible circles and to create as quickly as possible the means for establishing schools independent of the state, wherever this was still possible under national laws. When people later set out to make the Association a reality, Rudolf Steiner said that the time in which an independent spiritual life could have been initiated was over. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the foundation-stone laying of the Waldorf School’s new building
16 Dec 1921, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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To you, my dear friend Emil Molt,1who first conceived the idea of this school, founded it, and have been involved with it ever since its founding; to you, dear Herr Weippert, who have placed your architectural skills in the service of this building; to you, my dear friends on the faculty, who decided at the very beginning to devote yourselves to working here in this school; to all of you from the Waldorf School Association and the Board of Directors of the Kommenden Tag2 who have pledged your care, collaboration and guidance to this place which is dedicated to the salvation of humanity; to you members of the Bund fiir Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus [Association for Social Threefolding] who have accepted the task of protecting the seed of a free spiritual life here in this school; and to you, my dear children, pupils of this school, who have been privileged to enjoy its first lessons and its education toward humanity, so to speak; to all of you I turn in this moment when, with hearts that are grateful to destiny, we gather to lay the foundation stone for this school building that has come about, through the concern of all involved, for our children and the student body. In laying this foundation stone, we send with it these words, which according to age-old custom are inscribed on the document that will be buried in it:
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298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address and discussion at a parents' evening
09 May 1922, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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At an earlier parents’ meeting I was able to attend, I pointed out that simply because we are striving for an independent school system, we are dependent on being met with understanding, profound understanding, on the part of the parents. If we have this understanding, we will be able to work properly, and perhaps we will also be able after all to show the true value of what is intended with the Waldorf School. |
Just think of how different your situation is from other people’s with regard to understanding the Waldorf system of education. Other people have to make an effort to understand when we tell them we want to do things in a certain way because we believe it is the only right way. |
Some people may have the feeling that I have been too radical in my choice of some of the things I have pointed out today, but I hope to have been understood on some of these points. I especially hope that I have not been understood merely on details. I would like to be understood on the farreaching issue of our need to be in cordial harmony with the parent body if we are to function effectively in the Waldorf School. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address and discussion at a parents' evening
09 May 1922, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Ladies and gentlemen! What I would like to do on this occasion is not actually to give a lecture, but rather to encourage as widespread an understanding as possible between those who are involved in the leadership and work of the Waldorf School and the parent body. The reason for this is that I really believe that this understanding, this working together of the parents with the teachers and others involved in the leadership of the school is something extraordinarily necessary and significant. Allow me to begin by describing an experience I had not long ago, an experience that will illustrate the importance of the issue I have just pointed out. Several weeks ago it was my task to take part in the festival in Stratford-on-Avon in England, a festival organized to celebrate the birthday of Shakespeare.1 This Shakespeare festival was one that took place wholly under the influence of education issues. It was organized by people who are deeply interested in the education of children and adults. It can also be said that during this entire festival the world of Shakespearean art merely provided a background, since the actual issues that were being dealt with were contemporary issues in education. On this occasion one of the small effects, or perhaps even one of the large effects, of the pedagogical course that I held at Christmas at our Goetheanum in Dornach became evident.2 Some of the people involved in this Shakespeare festival had taken part in this course. Now, not far from London there is a boarding school which is not very large yet, but which is headed by a person who was present at the Dornach course and who took from there the impulse to introduce what we can now call Waldorf pedagogy, the Waldorf system of education, into this boarding school and perhaps also to apply it in expanding the school.3 We were invited to see this educational establishment, and in the course of the visit various questions were raised regarding how the school is being run at present and what could be done to transplant the spirit of the system of education that is fostered here in the Waldorf School to their situation. One question in particular came up for discussion. The people in charge said that they were doing well with the children; each year they accept as many children as the small size of the establishment permits. The most difficult thing for them, however, was working together with the parents, and the reason for the difficulty—and this is certainly an international concern—was that nowadays the older generation everywhere has certain very specific views on how education is supposed to proceed. There are many reasons why parents send their children to one boarding school rather than another. But when there actually is a slight deviation from what they are accustomed to, it is very easy for disagreements to arise between the school and the parents. And this is something that really cannot be tolerated in an independent system of education. The boarding school in question was experiencing especially great difficulties in this regard. What I am attempting to do now is neither to criticize nor to make recommendations, but simply to state the facts. In this school, in spite of the fact that it is a residential facility, there are no domestic employees at all. All the work of maintaining the school is done by the children and teachers. Cleaning the hallways, washing the dishes, planting the vegetables, taking care of the chickens so that they provide eggs—the list could go on and on. The children are involved in all kinds of work, and you certainly get the impression that things are run very differently there than in most other boarding schools. The children also have to cook and do everything else, and this goes on from first thing in the morning until late in the evening. It is also evident that the teachers and residential staff put a lot of energy into doing these things with the children. As I said, my intention is neither to criticize nor to advocate what they are doing; I only want to present it to you. Now it can happen that when the children go home on vacation and tell their parents about everything they have to do, the parents realize that they had not imagined it like that, and they cannot understand it. That is why it is so difficult to sustain harmony with the parents in this case. I describe this case only in order to point out how necessary we feel it to be, if we take a system of education seriously, to work together in complete harmony with the children’s parents. Now of course our situation in the Waldorf School is different. We have no residential facility, we simply have a school where we naturally have to keep the principles of child-rearing in mind while providing academic instruction. Nevertheless, you can rest assured that working together with the parent body is a fundamental element in what we in the Waldorf School regard as our task. In running the school, an infinite number of questions constantly arise with regard to the weal and woe of the children, their progress, their physical and mental health—questions that can be solved only in partnership with the parents. This is why it will actually become more and more necessary for these parents’ evenings to evolve—and all the circumstances will have to be taken into account—and to become a more frequent event in the running of our school. Our Waldorf School is meant to be a truly independent school, not only in name but in its very essence, and simply because it is meant to be an independent school of this sort, we are dependent on help from the parent body to an extraordinary extent. It is my conviction that if we have the desire to work together with the parents, this will call forth nothing but the deepest satisfaction on the part of all the parents. The Waldorf School is an independent school. You see, ladies and gentlemen, what it actually means to be an independent school must be stated over and over again, and it cannot be stated strongly enough for the simple reason that in broader circles today it is scarcely possible to realize the extent of our need for independent schools of this sort. The prejudice of thousands of years is working against us, and this is how it works. We do not need to look back very far in humanity’s evolution to find a school system, especially a primary school system, that was independent to a very great extent. But at that time independence caused a lot of illiteracy because few people sought out formal education. Then, in the course of humanity’s evolution in civilized areas, the desire began to grow in people to promote a certain educational basis for our interactions in society. At this point I cannot go into how this desire arose, but it came about at a time when people had renounced their allegiance to the old gods and now expected to receive all the blessings of humanity’s evolution and everything needed to advance it from a new god, the god of the State. Central Europe in particular was an area where people were especially intent on seeing the god of the State as a universal remedy, especially in the education of children. In those times, the principle that was applied as a matter of course was that parliaments and large advisory bodies and so on were gatherings in which geniality could flourish, even if the individuals involved in these representative gatherings were not impressive in their degree of enlightenment. The opinion prevailed that by gathering together, people would become smart and would then be able to determine the right thing to do in all circumstances. However, some individuals with a very good and profound understanding of these matters, such as the poet Rosegger,4 for example, were of a different opinion. Rosegger coined the expression—forgive me for mentioning it—"“One person is a human being; several are people; many are beasts.” Although this puts it a bit radically, it does contradict the opinion that has developed in the last few centuries, namely that all things state-related will enable us to determine what is right with regard to educating children. And so our school system simply continued to develop in the belief that there was no alternative to having everything spelled out for the school system by the political community. Now, an independent school is one that makes it possible for the teachers to introduce into the educational system what they consider essential on the immediate basis of their knowledge of the human being and of the world and of their love for children. A non-independent school is one in which the teacher has to ask, “What is prescribed for the first grade? What is prescribed for the second grade? How must the lesson be organized according to law?” A free school is one in which the teachers’ actions are underlain by a very specific knowledge of how children grow up, of which forces of body and soul are present in them and of which ones must be developed. It is a school in which the teachers can organize what they have to do each day and in each lesson on the basis of this knowledge and of their love for children. People do not have a very strong feeling for how fundamentally different a non-independent school is from an independent school. The real educational abilities of the teachers can develop only in an independent school. That people actually do not have any real feeling for these things at present is the reason why it is so difficult to continue to make progress with an independent school system. We must not succumb to any illusions in this regard. Just a few hours before leaving to come here, I received a letter informing me that after a long time had been spent working to open a school similar to the Waldorf School in another German city, the request for permission had been turned down. This is a clear sign that the further evolution of our times will not favor an independent school system. This is something I want to ask the parents of our dear schoolchildren to take to heart especially: We must lavish care and attention on this Waldorf School we have fought for, this school in which the independent strength of the faculty will really make the children grow up to be allaround capable and healthy human beings. We must be aware that, given the contemporary prejudices we confront, it will not be easy to get something like a second Waldorf School. At the same time, it should be pointed out that this Waldorf School, which has not yet been in existence for three years, is something that is presently being talked about all over the civilized world. You see that it is nonetheless of significance—think about what I said about the school near London—that a group of people have gotten together to bring a Waldorf School into existence there. We can also look at this issue from the much broader perspective of the need to do something to restore the position of the essential German character in the world. You can be sure, however, that the significance of this German essence will be recognized only when its spiritual content, above all else, is given its due in the world. This is what people will ask for if they meet the world in the right way. They will become aware of needing it. For this to happen, we really need to penetrate fully into the depths of this German essence and to become creative on the basis of it. This is evident from something such as the vehement, sometimes tumultuous educational movement that could be experienced at the Shakespeare festival, which showed that there is a need all over the world for new impulses to be made available to the educational system. The impossibility of continuing with the old forms is a concern for all of civilized humanity. The fact of the matter is, the things that are being fostered in the Waldorf School give us something to say about educational issues that are being brought up all over the world. But we also have almost all of the world’s prejudices against us, and we are increasingly faced with the prospect of having our independence taken away, at least with regard to the lower primary school classes. It is extraordinarily difficult to combat these prejudices, and the Waldorf School can do so only by making its children grow up to be what they can beonly as a result of the independent strength of the faculty. For this, however, we need an intimate and harmonious collaboration with the parent body. At an earlier parents’ meeting I was able to attend, I pointed out that simply because we are striving for an independent school system, we are dependent on being met with understanding, profound understanding, on the part of the parents. If we have this understanding, we will be able to work properly, and perhaps we will also be able after all to show the true value of what is intended with the Waldorf School. At that time I emphasized that we must strive to really derive our educational content from an understanding of the being of the child and the child’s bodily nature. Since to observe the child is to observe the human being, it is possible to observe children in this way only if we are striving for an understanding of the human being as a whole, as anthroposophy does. We must say again and again that it is not our intention to introduce anthroposophy into the school. The parents will have no grounds for complaining that we are trying to introduce anthroposophy as a world-view. But although we are avoiding introducing anthroposophy into the school as a world-view, we are striving to apply the pedagogical skill that can come only from anthroposophical training as to how we handle the lessons and treat the children. We have placed the Catholic children at the disposal of the Catholic priest and the Protestant children at the disposal of the Protestant pastor. We have independent religious instruction only for those whose parents are looking for that, and it too is completely voluntary; it is set up only for those children who would otherwise probably not take part in any religious instruction at all. So you see this is not something we stress heavily. Whatever we have to say with respect to our world-view is strictly for adults. But I would like to say that what anthroposophy can make of people, right down to the skill in their fingertips, applies especially to teachers and educators. In dealing with children and with instructional content, what we should strive for is to have the children find their way quite naturally into everything that is presented to them in school, as a matter of course. We should assess carefully in each instance what is right at a particular stage of childhood. You know that we do not introduce learning to read and write in the same way that is often used today. When the children begin to learn to write, we develop the shapes of the letters, which are otherwise something foreign to them, out of something the children turn to with inner contentment as a result of some form of artistic activity, of their artistic sense of form. The reason why our children learn to write and read somewhat later is that if we take the nature of the child into account, reading must come after writing. Those who are accustomed to the old ways of looking at things will object to this, saying that the children here learn to read and write much later than in other schools. But why do children in other schools learn to read and write earlier? Because people do not know what age is good for learning to read and write. We should first ask ourselves whether it is altogether justified to require children to read and write with any degree of fluency by the age of eight. If we expand on these ways of looking at things, more comprehensive views develop, as we can experience in a strange way: Anyone who knows a lot about Goethe knows that if we had approached him with what is demanded academically of twelve-year-olds today, he would not have been able to do it at that age. He would not have been able to do it even at age sixteen, and yet he still grew up to be the Goethe we know of. Austria had an important poet, Robert Hamerling.5 As a young man, he did not set out to become a poet—that was something his genius did for him. He wanted to be a high school teacher, and he took the teacher certification exam. It is written in his certificate that he demonstrated an extremely good knowledge of Latin and Greek, but that he was not capable of handling the German language well and was thus only fit to teach the lowest class. But he went on to become the most important modern poet of Austria. And he wrote in the German language, not in Slovakian. Our educational impulses must take their standard from actual life. The essential thing about our method of education is that we keep the child’s whole life in mind; we know that if we present the child with something at age seven or eight, this must be done in such a way that it will grow with the child, so that it will still stay with the person in question at age thirty or forty, and even for the rest of his or her life. You see, the fact of the matter is that the children who can read and write perfectly at age eight are stunted with regard to certain inner emotional impulses that lead to health. They really are stunted. It is a great good fortune for a child to not yet be able to read and write as well at age eight as is expected today. It is a blessing for that child’s bodily and emotional health. What we need to foster must be derived from the needs of human nature. We must have a subtle understanding of this, and not merely know the right answer. It is easy to stand in front of a class of children and to figure out that this one said something right, but that one said something wrong, and then to correct the wrong thing and make it right. However, there is no real educational activity being practiced in that. There is nothing essential to the human development of a child in having the child do compositions and assignments and then correcting them so the child is convinced that he or she has made mistakes. What is essential is to develop a fine sense for the mistakes the children make. Children make mistakes in hundreds of different ways. Each child makes different mistakes, and if we have a fine sense of how different the children are with regard to the mistakes they make, then we will discover what to do to help them make progress. Isn't it true that our perspectives on life are all different? A doctor does not have the same perspectives on an illness that a patient has. We cannot ask a patient to fall in love with a particular illness, and yet we can say that a doctor is a good doctor if he or she loves the illness. In our case, it is a question of falling in love, in a certain respect, with the interesting mistakes the children make. We get to know human nature through these mistakes. Excuse me for expressing myself radically, but these radical statements are really necessary. For a teacher, keeping track of mistakes is more interesting than keeping track of what the children do right. Teachers learn a lot from the children’s mistakes. But what do we need in addition to all this? We also need a strong and active inner love for human beings, for children. This is indispensable for teachers. At this point innumerable questions arise. We are concerned about a particular child’s health of body and soul. We see this child for a few hours a day; for the rest of the time we must have confidence, complete confidence, in the child’s parents. This is why the teachers and educators of our Waldorf School always appeal to this confidence, and why they are so eager to work in harmony with the parents for the well-being of the children. As a rule, this is not something that is aspired to in a non-independent school to anywhere near the same extent; there people stick to observing the rules. That is why the very idea of independence in education often meets with very little understanding today. In some countries, if you talk about independent schools, people will tell you that while things may be like that in Germany, they do not need to found independent schools because their teachers are already free. Teachers themselves will tell you that. It is astonishing that they respond like that, because we can tell that the people who are answering no longer have any idea that they could feel unfree. They do what they are ordered to do. It does not occur to them that it could happen differently, so they do not even feel that things could be different. Just think of how different your situation is from other people’s with regard to understanding the Waldorf system of education. Other people have to make an effort to understand when we tell them we want to do things in a certain way because we believe it is the only right way. I believe that as parents of Waldorf School children you can see directly, in the beings that are dear to you, what is being done in the Waldorf School and how the relationship of the entire school to the child is conceived. It would be nice if there would come a time when it would be enough for parents simply to be content with what is being accomplished in an independent system of education. Today, however, all of you, who can see results in your own flesh and blood of how this Waldorf School is trying to work, must become strong and active defenders and promoters of the Waldorf system of education. We have many other difficulties in addition to this. You see, if we really could live up to our ideals, we would be able to say that according to our insight, we should do this particular thing when the children are six, seven and eight, and this other thing when they are nine, ten, eleven and twelve, and so on. The results would be the best if we were able to do that, but we cannot; in some respects we must accept a compromise, because we cannot deny these children, these human beings who are growing up, the possibility to take their place in life. So we have decided to educate the children from the time when they first enter primary school up to age nine in a way that is free of outer constraints, but while we are doing what human nature requires, at the same time we will support the children in a way that will enable them to transfer to another school [at the end of that time]. The same applies to age twelve and to age fourteen or fifteen. And if we have the good fortune to be able to continue adding grades, we must also make it possible for the young ladies and gentlemen who complete these grades to enter universities and technical colleges. We must make sure that the children will be able to enter these institutions of higher learning. I think it will be a long time before we are given the possibility of granting graduate or undergraduate degrees. We would accomplish much more if we were able to do that, but for the time being all we can do is to enable first the children and then the young men and women to learn what is required in public life in a way that does not inflict great damage upon them. We find ourselves in very serious difficulties in this regard. You see, if you assess the situation according to human nature, according to what is good for human beings, then you would say that it is simply terrible for young men and women to be in modern college-preparatory and vocational high schools at the age of fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. It estranges them from all of life. We must do what is necessary, whatever we can do, to make sure at least that the body also achieves a degree of skill that makes it fit for life. I often mention that you meet grown men nowadays who are incapable of sewing on a button for themselves if one gets torn off. I say this only by way of example. There are other similar things that people also cannot do, and above all they do not understand anything about the world. Individuals need to stand there in the world with their eyes open so that their hands are free to do whatever is needed. You see, this is why at a certain age we need to introduce the elementary aspects of things like spinning and weaving. Now, however, when students graduate from ordinary schools, they are not tested in weaving and spinning or in other arts that are useful in life, and so we must do these things in addition to all kinds of things that are required for the exam. This means that we must arrange our lessons as economically as possible. There is a special art to this in teaching. Perhaps I may be permitted to introduce an example that happened to me personally. It was a long time ago. A family had entrusted their children to me for tutoring, and among them was an eleven-year-old boy who had been given up on as far as education was concerned. He was eleven years old, and for my information they showed me a sketchbook in which he had demonstrated his drawing ability. This sketchbook had a gigantic hole in the middle of the first page. He had done nothing but erase; that was all he could do. He had also once taken the test for entry into the first grade, and could do nothing at all. With regard to his other behavior, he often did not eat at the table but went into the kitchen and ate the potato peels, and there were difficulties in many other respects as well. It was a question of accomplishing as much as possible in the shortest possible time. I often had to work for three hours to get the materials together for what I would present to the boy in fifteen minutes. After two years he had progressed to the point where he could enter the Gymnasium. He was a hydrocephalic, with a huge head that steadily became smaller. I mention this case because it shows what I mean by economy of instruction. Economy of instruction means never spending more time on something with the children than is necessary according to the requirements of physical and mental health. Nowadays it is especially important to practice this economy of instruction because life demands so much. Our Latin and Greek teachers, for example, are in a difficult situation because we have much less time to spend on these things, and yet they still have to be fostered in a way that meets the legitimate demands of cultural life. In all subjects, we must seek the art of never overburdening the children. And I must say that in all these things, we need to be met with understanding on the part of the parents; we need to work together in harmony with the parent body. Really, the genuine successes that are of the greatest significance for life do not lie in accomplishing something amazing on behalf of one or the other gifted student. Genuine successes lie in strength for life. Thus it is always deeply satisfying to me when it happens that someone says that a certain child should be moved from one class to another so that this or that can be accomplished. The teacher fights for each and every child from time to time. These are real successes that take place within the loving interaction between the faculty and the children. Something can come of this, and things on which such great value is placed, such as whether the children are a little ahead or a little behind, fade into the background in comparison. We are already being confronted with the fact—again, I would like to put it radically—that we cannot possibly be praised by those who hold the usual opinions about today’s school system, who are coming from these opinions. There is always something wrong in believing that something would be accomplished if people who think like this were to praise us. If that was how things were, if we were praised by today’s school authorities or by people who believe that these authorities are doing the right thing, then we would not have needed to start the Waldorf School at all. Thus it is a matter of course for us to depend on the parents being in harmony with us and giving their time and attention to a method of education that derives from what is purely human. This is what we need today, and in a social sense, too. Social issues are not resolved in the way we often imagine today. They are resolved by putting the right people into public life, and this will happen only if people are able to grow up really healthy in body and soul. We can do very little to influence what is specific to an individual, what an individual is capable of learning on the basis of his or her particular abilities, because in order to be of service at all in educating a person to become the best he or she can be—if we had to teach a Goethe, for example—we as teachers would have to be at least the equal of the person we are teaching. We can do nothing about what an individual becomes through his or her own nature; there are other factors determining that. What we can do is to remove obstacles so that individuals find the strength within themselves to live up to their potentials. This is what we can do if we become real educators and if we are supported by our contemporaries. First and foremost, we can be supported by the parent body. We have found an understanding body of parents. Certainly, what I have to say tonight is filled with a feeling of gratitude. That so many of you have appeared tonight gives me great satisfaction. I hope we will be able to talk about details in the discussion period to follow; our teachers are prepared to answer any questions you may ask. Before that, however, I would still like to point out certain characteristic traits. Recently the Waldorf faculty and I held a college-level course in Holland.6 The afternoon session in which pedagogical issues were discussed was led by Fraulein von Heydebrandt of the Waldorf School.7 This was one of the most interesting afternoons because we saw that today’s educational questions are of concern all over the world. Of course we know that we have no right to harp on how wonderful it is that we have come so far; we are not trying to emphasize our accomplishments. The way things are today, many people recognize the impulse behind our school. What is still lacking, however, is for them to stand energetically behind us so that this cause can win additional support and become more widespread. Of course we realize that the first concern of parents is to have the best for their children. But with things as they are today, the parents should also help us. Going through with this is difficult for us. We need help in every respect; we need the support of an ever growing circle so that we can overcome the prejudice against our method of education. I say the following with a certain reserve; I certainly want to remain convinced that those who are sitting here have done everything they can financially. I am speaking under this assumption so that none of you will think that I want to step on your toes. Nonetheless, the fact remains that if we want to go forward, we need money. Yes, we need money! Now people are saying, “Where is the idealism in that? What are you anthroposophists doing, telling us you need money and pretending to be idealists?” Ladies and gentlemen! Idealism does not stand on firm ground if it makes grandiose statements but says, “I am an idealist, and since I am an idealist, I despise my wallet. I do not want to get my fingers dirty; I am much too great an idealist for that!” It will scarcely be possible to make ideals into reality if people are such great idealists that they are unwilling to get their fingers dirty when it comes to making financial sacrifices. We must also learn to strike the right note in public in suggesting to people that they give us some support in this matter, which is still a great and terrible cause of concern for us. After all, the Waldorf School is big for a single school; it has enough students. It is almost not possible to maintain an overview any more. This is a concern that has to be taken very seriously. We certainly do not want the school to grow larger in its present circumstances; we are going to give in to the need for physical expansion. But then the number of students will increase, as will the number of teachers. And since teachers cannot live on air, this requires the means to support them. I am assuming, ladies and gentlemen, that each of you has already done whatever you can. It is now a question of spreading the idea further in order to find the idealists out there. There must be a decision on the part of the parent body to help the Waldorf School with regard to its material basis, or I am afraid that in the near future, if we want to continue to take care of things properly, our worries will become so great that they prevent us from sleeping, and I am not sure that the teachers in the school will be the kind you want to have there if they are no longer able to sleep at night! Some people may have the feeling that I have been too radical in my choice of some of the things I have pointed out today, but I hope to have been understood on some of these points. I especially hope that I have not been understood merely on details. I would like to be understood on the farreaching issue of our need to be in cordial harmony with the parent body if we are to function effectively in the Waldorf School. T particularly wanted to point out the need for this because it actually already exists to such a great extent, and we will be best able to find possibilities for progress in this area if the groundwork has already been laid. Out of the details of our aspirations, which can be addressed in the discussion to follow, out of all the details that come up in these parents’ meetings, let us take with us the impulse for cordial harmony among teachers and educators and the parent body. You parents certainly have a profound vested interest in this harmony because you have entrusted the most precious thing you have to the faculty. Out of this awareness, out of our awareness of the faculty’s responsibility toward what is most precious to the parents who are associated with us, out of this collaboration may the spirit which has showed itself in the Waldorf School to such a satisfying degree continue to flourish. The more this unity thrives, the more this spirit will also grow and thrive. And the more this is the case, the more we will also achieve that other thing, that best of all possible human goals: to educate the young people entrusted to the Waldorf School for their life in human society. These people will need to stand up to the storms of life. If they are capable of finding the right ways of working together with other people, then it will be possible to resolve the individual human and social issues. From the discussionA question Is asked about the Abitur: Dr. Steiner: I myself have only this to say: On the whole, the principle I have already presented applies. Through economy of instruction, we must get to the point where what we can achieve for the children at the most important stages in life will enable them to fit into what is demanded today. We cannot set these standards or decide whether or not we think they are right; we must submit to them. We are not being asked the question of whether or not what the Abiturrequires is justified. This will have to be accomplished through economy, and as of now we are not yet in a position to do this, but I fully believe that it will be possible to achieve this goal, even though it does not yet look like it in the case of the people in question. Our principle, however, is to make the children able to take the exam at the appropriate age. But there are also external difficulties to be overcome; the school must be approached without bias. Naturally, I know that it would be possible for someone to flunk boys or girls even though we had brought them to the point of being able to take the exam. I gave you the example of how it would be easy for me to flunk the commissioners themselves. We are striving to have our students be able to take the exam, regardless of what we think of it. We want our teaching to be in line with real life and not with some eccentric idea. As much as possible, we must try to introduce our students to life in the right way. Something along these lines is still possible in Central Europe, while in Russia that is no longer the case. We must be glad for what we have. If we introduce it to the children now, more will be possible in the next generation. I am emphasizing explicitly that we are not crazy characters who say that our children are only allowed to do this thing or that. We will go along with what is asked for in the exams, even if we are not always in agreement with it. Meanwhile, we are still taking everything into account that we deem necessary for the sake of humanity’s salvation. Question: Would it not be possible to have school only in the mornings? Dr. Steiner: There is always more than one viewpoint to consider in questions like this, isn't there? It has been said that instruction should take place between seven o'clock and one o'clock. Now let me point out some of the principles involved. In the question-and-answer sessions during my course of lectures at Christmas, the question of fatigue was raised, and I mentioned that the intent of our educational method was to refrain from fragmenting and dissipating the children’s attention by having an hour of religion followed by an hour of zoology and so on. The point is to teach in such a way that the children’s attentiveness can be concentrated. That is why a particular subject is taught for a longer part of the school day and over several weeks on end. This view is derived from specific knowledge of the nature of the child. It was asked if the children do not get tired. I must draw your attention to the fact that in principle in our way of teaching we do not count on head work at all when dealing with children between seven and twelve years of age. That would be wrong. Instead, we count on the involvement of the rhythmic system and of the emotions connected to the rhythmical system of breathing and circulation. If you think about it, you will realize that people get tired, not through their rhythmic system, but through their head and limb systems. If the heart and lungs were to get tired, they would not be able to be active throughout an entire lifetime. The other systems are the ones that get tired. By counting on the rhythmic system during these years, we do not make the children as tired as they would get otherwise. Thus, when experimental psychology investigates fatigue and states as a result of its experiments that children are so tired after three quarters of an hour that they need a change, this only proves that the teaching was done in the wrong way, tiring the children unjustifiably. Otherwise, the time limit arrived at would be different. The point is to conduct the lesson in such an artistic way that this kind of fatigue does not set in. We can achieve this only slowly and gradually, because new educational practices along these lines can be developed only gradually. You see, ladies and gentlemen, it is possible to prevent the children from tiring to a very great extent by teaching in the right way. This is not the case with the teachers, however, because they have to work with their heads. And if we want to do the pedagogically correct thing and keep the instruction in the hands of one person, I would like to know what the teacher would look like who is supposed to teach from seven o'clock in the morning straight through until one in the afternoon. This is the main thing we have to consider. These teachers would be exhausted by ten o’clock if they had been teaching since seven, and it is not a matter of indifference whether or not we would continue to wear them out. That is not desirable, regardless of how much I might wish that the children from out of town would not have to make a two hour trip for one lesson in school. But that is the exception; it is exaggerated. Secondly, there are some things that must simply be accepted for the sake of achieving anything at all. Of course we cannot arrange the lessons for all the children in the way that would be desirable for the ones who live so far out of town. Of course that cannot happen. In such things, therefore, we have to deal with the actual circumstances. In any case, we have arranged things so that the lessons that address the children in spirit and soul are given in the morning, to the extent that this is feasible. The afternoon is for eurythmy and artistic lessons. Instruction has been integrated into the times of day in a way that corresponds to the children’s age and nature. It would be a mistake to hold school from seven o’clock in the early morning until one in the afternoon, and this mistake would arouse a great deal of discontentment. It would require a complicated and completely different system [of scheduling]. Then, too, I would like to see what would happen if we had the children in the Waldorf School from seven to one and they were left to their own devices for the rest of the day. I would like to see what kind of notes and complaints would come from home because the children were coming back from their afternoons with all kinds of bad behavior. We would have to deal with both sleepiness and bad manners on the part of the children. Add that to the sleepiness of the teachers, and those notes would be full of bad things. There are several points of view to be considered. I appeal to you to consider as a matter of course that since we could not avoid having school in session in the afternoon, the reasons we took into account took precedence. A father asks that the students taking the Abitur be tested by a committee of Waldorf teachers. Dr. Steiner: This is actually not an issue of education, and our work is with educational impulses. The point for us is doing what I mentioned—taking into account what is in accordance with the nature of the human being and making sure that the children are not forcibly excluded from actual life. Given the way things are, there may be certain possibilities for us in the first years. But I ask you to consider that we are exposed to certain risks in assessing whether or not a child will be able to pass the exam. What do you think would happen if we were to guarantee that no boy or girl who graduates from this school would flunk the exam? In some cases, the parents have anticipated that the child would have difficulties with the exam and sent him or her to us for that very reason. As teachers attempting what I have indicated, we will continue to make progress toward the possibility of the children passing the exam. Those who do not wish us well, however, would be able to prove systematically that this is not the case. It is not up to us to make sure that an officially certified commissioner is present at the exam. If the parents want the exam to be administered by Waldorf teachers, then the parents would have to take the initiative to bring this about. It is not something that is inherent in Waldorf education. This is an issue of opportunity that would also have to be resolved as the opportunity presents itself, and perhaps by the parents. It is not that we want to be excluded from issuing valid diplomas, it is only that we will have to look at the matter from the educational point of view. I would like someone to prove to me that it makes sense from an educational point of view to subject the students to a school-leaving exam when you have been together with them for years. I would like someone to prove that it makes sense. We know what we have to say about each of our students when they have reached school-leaving age. If this needs to be officially documented for other reasons, then that can happen, but it is not actually an educational issue. Those who have experience in this field know that we can tell what a student is fit for better without exams than with them. We have no reason to work toward the goal of being allowed to administer the exams because this does not follow naturally from what underlies our educational methods. A question is asked about discipline and the attitude of respect toward the teachers. Dr. Steiner: If you ask whether respect exists wherever Waldorf pedagogy is notbeing applied... It is extremely important to have devotion or respect or love for the teachers come about in a natural way. Otherwise it is worth nothing. Enforced respect, respect that is laid down in the school’s regulations, so to speak, is of no value in the development of an individual. It is our experience that when children are brought up in a way that allows their own being to set the standards, they are most likely to respect their teachers. This is no grounds for complaint. Of course it cannot be denied that some individual instances do not exactly give evidence of respect. It all depends on how much the respect that grows out of love is worth, and how much more the other kind is worth if it is only demonstrated to the teachers’ face and not so much when they turn their backs. You must not imagine this as a situation in which each child does what he or she wants. It is a case of the children developing ever greater confidence in the faculty. The progress in this particular respect is quite extraordinary. Anyone who is in a position to make the comparison will find that our progress with regard to discipline has been extraordinarily great in the past two years. The fact of the matter is that when we first got the children here, we had to think about how we would maintain discipline and so on. Now we have arrived at quite a different standpoint, actually. We have accomplished the most by having the relationship between teacher and child be a natural one. There is a great difference between how discipline is maintained at present and the situation a year and a half ago. These things cannot be judged from a point of view that is brought in from outside; you must consider the Waldorf School itself. Respect cannot be beaten into someone—by which I do not mean to say that anything else can be. Respect must be won in a different way. In this regard, your apprehensions are understandable, but it is also necessary to break the habit of apprehension and look more closely at the results that are becoming evident in the Waldorf School. If our school is still in existence after another couple of years, we will talk again about whether we have reached the point where our graduates can take the exams. Let us discuss it then. We are convinced that in principle this should be possible. By then we will also be convinced that there was no reason to fear that our method of education would bring about what is so very evident in the schools where compulsion is strongest, where I have seen in both the lowest and highest grades that things are in a bad way when it comes to respect. I do not think that we can take it as gospel that respect only thrives where there is compulsion in education, and that meanwhile our children are thumbing their noses behind their teachers” backs. If you deal with a child in the right way with a friendly warning, that is better than a box on the ear.
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298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the beginning of the fourth school year
20 Jun 1922, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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You are meant to feel your way into what is really there in a human being. You must learn to understand that people have to learn by working, because if they do not, they cannot be real human beings. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the beginning of the fourth school year
20 Jun 1922, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear children, dear boys and girls of the Waldorf School! I am going to speak to the very little ones first. Dear children, you have not been to school at all yet, and for you things will be different now than they were before. If you look back a bit, you know that you used to get up in the morning and rub your eyes, and then you got washed and dressed and had something for breakfast. Then many of you saw how your father had to leave very early for work, and how your mother worked busily all day long. Perhaps you spent the morning playing; you could do what you wanted until lunch time. You went out in the street or in the yard or somewhere else; you could do whatever you liked. Then you had your lunch. You had already gotten hungry and tired. Your father and mother gave you your lunch, and then they had to go back to work. After that you could play again or do something else. You did not need to work yet. That is the way things went until suppertime. You had your supper, and then you went to sleep again. The next day was the same. Now you have grown bigger, and your parents knew that it was time for you to go to school. Some of you were glad and looked forward to it. All of you will be glad to be in school, but things will be different for you. Now you cannot always run around or sit down wherever you like. Or if you are sitting with your friends, you cannot pull their ears or their hair. Now you have to come into the classroom where the desks are. It is crowded, and you have to learn something. Write that on your hearts, write it really well: You have to learn something. You have to sit at those crowded desks, and you cannot pull your friends” hair. You have to pay attention to what the teacher is saying. You have to begin to be well-behaved, to be good. But I hope you will like being good. Why do I hope that? Your parents had to work, and they had worries. You had no worries yet. Your parents had to work to make sure that you could live. If your parents hadn't worked, you would have had nothing to eat. You would have had to go hungry. Each of you has more than just a head, you also have a heart—in here. There is something living in your heart that you don't know about yet. There is a soul living in your heart. It is something very different from your head. There is a soul living in each one of you. If your parents had not talked to this soul, but only to your ears, you would not have learned to speak. But you can speak, and speaking is something you do out of your soul. Your parents made sure that you became a human being. You will need to learn a lot more than you have already learned, and that will make you a real human being. Now you are just a bit human. You will become real human beings only by learning something—you can become a human being only if you learn how to work. Your good teachers will teach you all this, and you should like your teachers. You can learn only if you love them. When you go into your classroom every day, think about the best way to love your teachers. If something hurts you or you are unhappy about something, then go to your teachers; think about how you love them, about how they will help you. Learn to love your teachers just as you learned to love your parents. Think about how your parents sent you to the Waldorf School. They wanted to do the very best thing for you. So do the best you can, too, by really paying attention to what your teachers are doing. That will show your parents that you love them, and they sent you to this school. So, dear children, if you really come into your classroom in the morning with this feeling, and imagine that you need to grow up to be proper human beings, then everything will be fine, and you really will grow up to be proper human beings. Now I would like to talk to the children who have already been in school, who have already learned how you begin to find more and more in your soul, in your inner person, and how you learn to really love your teachers more and more. This is what we have to promise ourselves again and again—to really love our teachers. Then we will be able to accomplish our very best. Your teachers are always thinking about what they can do to teach you to grow up to be proper human beings. More and more, you must learn how to be children who work hard and pay attention, to be children who love their school. Your school is trying to teach you things that will make you good, capable human beings and good, capable workers for all the work humanity needs to have done. Here in this school, we are thinking more and more about what we need to bring to you, the students, so that you will be able to go through life in the best way. You have learned things that were all intended to teach you to be good, proper, capable human beings. If you work so hard and pay attention so well and love your teachers, your life will be different than if you are lazy and never learn to love your teachers. By taking in all that you can take in in school, you will become able to work for your fellow human beings, to be something of value to them. The worst thing in life is for a person to lead a life that has no value for his or her fellow human beings. Then people don't want to have anything to do with you because there is no work you can do for them. What school gives us is finding a place in life that makes us able to do something for our fellow human beings, able to work for them, able to give them something of value so that they can love us for doing something for them. People doing things for other people—that, my dear children, is what life is all about. We are constantly trying to get to the bottom of this here in the Waldorf School—how to guide children into life in the best way so that they will be able to do something for their fellow human beings, so that there can be joy in their lives and not just sorrow. Those of you who are still in the middle grades can rely fully on your teachers. You can look up to your teachers. They are already fully involved in life. They have become people you can love, people from whom you can learn a lot. The best way to make progress is to tell yourself that you want to become like your teacher. If I may still say a few words to those in the highest grades, I would like to say that you are now beginning to hear something that comes from a different direction. You do not yet know exactly what it is that you are hearing, but we will call it “the seriousness of life.” When you get to be fourteen or fifteen, something of what we can call the seriousness of life is already coming toward you. It already resounds in your soul from time to time. In school you are presented with what you are supposed to learn, but when you have left school, there you stand in life. That is when your real life is supposed to begin. What you should inscribe on your souls, especially this year, is to commit yourself to school, now more than ever. This school knows how to deal with the seriousness of life; it knows what to bring to children so that they can find their way into life’s seriousness as they grow up. When we experience suffering, we must have the strength to bear it. We are meant to acquire this strength from what we gain in school. We must have the strength to bear life’s suffering. But life also brings joys, and they are sometimes more dangerous because they make us thoughtless and dull our feelings. Here, too, school helps you learn to keep to the middle, to make your way between the joy and suffering in life. Life today has become very complicated. Young people cannot always judge what they need in life or what will be useful to them. Your teachers are busy day and night trying to find out what life will be like ten or twenty years from now. You will need to love people in order to take your place in life in the right way. You know, my dear children, that I will never tell you at the beginning of the school year that you can learn here by playing. That is not true; it cannot be. There must be real seriousness here, so that you learn to take life seriously when it is hard to take. This seriousness will allow you enough time for human feelings. Here with us, this is supposed to go all the way up into the highest grades. You are meant to feel your way into what is really there in a human being. You must learn to understand that people have to learn by working, because if they do not, they cannot be real human beings. It is now my pleasure to warmly welcome the teachers who have been here with you, who have already given you their love, as well as those who are working here for the first time this year. If every student knew what effort it takes on the part of the faculty, then love for your teachers would be a matter of course; it would be in the very air you breath here in the Waldorf School. We are also trying to bring human beings into the right connection to the spiritual worlds. Our teachers have sought this connection to the spiritual world for themselves, and thus they will be able to be prophets and missionaries for you, transmitting what can only be brought into this world from the spiritual world. It is necessary for people to take this up and incorporate it into the earth as a spiritual force. Otherwise our earth would become barren. Here, through our loving and energetic work with each other, what makes a person a true human being is meant to awaken. Now I would like to call to mind for all of you, especially the students in the upper grades, what we find out there in life. Our time in life is filled up with work, but now and then we stop working and celebrate certain festivals. At these festivals we remember what their value is for us: They give us enthusiasm. We must acquire enthusiasm in order to see beyond what each day brings. What is happening here today is meant to be a festival for you. When you enter a new school year, you who are in school and growing up should experience it as a festival that is incisive for your souls. You should tell yourselves to feel especially aware of the need to work hard and pay attention in school and to be connected to your teachers through love. You should experience something like a religious service in this and know that its forces are what illuminate and shape all of life. You should feel this to be something that is human in the highest sense of the word, as a special festival for your hearts, your souls, and your spirit. Let us sense today what we have from being able to be in school to become real human beings. We will now begin working in school as proper, faithful human beings who love our teachers. This work is work for life. Today, with all our strength and out of the love that has been given to us, let us recall that human beings come into the world from the spirit, and let us promise to celebrate the festival of working in school, of a work that is carried by love. If we have this awareness, we will work seriously; we will work out of love for our teachers; we will work in a way that allows what approaches us to enter our hearts. By being good students we will grow up to be good, capable people who will be the salvation of the other people in the world. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the second official members’ meeting of the Independent Waldorf School Association
20 Jun 1922, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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It is a remarkable fact that this year’s Shakespeare festival in Stratford actually took place under the auspices of educational issues. You know that I myself had to give lectures at this festival, and that the event stood fully under the sign of educational issues. |
I have often stated that I am convinced that if twelve people or some other number of people would get together to undertake to establish an agenda for educating children in the best way, something extremely clever would come out of it. |
Something must first be done to shape public opinion so that more extensive work can be undertaken. Then it will be possible to do many things. But as long as what is growing on our grounds remains the secret of the members, we will not be able to move on. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the second official members’ meeting of the Independent Waldorf School Association
20 Jun 1922, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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After the points of business, Rudolf Steiner took the floor: On the whole, it can be said that many of the outcomes of our goals actually constitute a single phenomenon within a larger framework of facts. Please allow me to make a few comments on this, and especially on the experience we have gathered since founding the Waldorf School. As you know, we founded the Waldorf School as one part of the effects that were intended to proceed from a spiritual movement that is over two decades old. The Waldorf School would be inconceivable without this spiritual movement. In its particulars, the plan to found the school came from our dear friend Emil Molt at a time when there was a certain interest in great humanitarian questions because it was a time of such great need. Counting on this interest, we began to work in many different directions to try to influence aspects of public life from anthroposophical points of view. We may well say that since that time we have been able to acquire very extensive experience along certain lines. To begin with, we encountered a certain interest that promised to encompass broader circles. In 1919 humanity had a great interest in working in one or the other direction to enable forces of ascent to replace the forces of decline that were so evident. And today we still see a universal interest in educational issues, not only in Central Europe but all over the world. It is a remarkable fact that this year’s Shakespeare festival in Stratford actually took place under the auspices of educational issues. You know that I myself had to give lectures at this festival, and that the event stood fully under the sign of educational issues. In fact, a committee on new ideals in education organized this event. This summer we will have another opportunity to have a conference, this time at Oxford, where nine out of twelve lectures will deal with educational issues in a narrower sense.1 This shows that at any rate an interest in educational issues is still present today. This interest is to be found everywhere. In the widest possible circles today, we definitely find that educational issues are thought to be the most important issues of all. We find numerous people who believe, and rightly so, that any talk of social issues does not rest on firm ground if it does not take educational issues as its starting point. We have come to realize that the chaos that humanity has fallen into and will continue to fall into has essentially been brought about by our failure to place the right value on the spiritual issues of humankind’s evolution. However, this interest is “thought interest,” if I may put it like that. The way in which this interest manifests clearly shows that we are dealing with some kind of thought interest. People organize conferences on education just as they organize other conferences today. They get together and talk about educational issues, and it cannot be denied that extraordinarily clever things are talked about at these gatherings. People nowadays talk with extraordinary cleverness. A large portion of humanity today is smart, and it is also the case that the majority of these very smart people like to hear themselves talk. This creates the best circumstances imaginable for holding conferences to discuss how to find ways out of these chaotic conditions. If it depended only on conferences of this sort, we would be well on the way. Ladies and gentlemen, this is something we should consider very carefully. I have often stated that I am convinced that if twelve people or some other number of people would get together to undertake to establish an agenda for educating children in the best way, something extremely clever would come out of it. I say this in complete seriousness. When it comes to establishing an agenda for assembling the best pedagogical principles for dealing with children, the literature available today is excellent. What people are saying today in these conferences is literature. However, it all depends on accomplishing the work that is to be done on the basis of real life. People who establish agendas are never dealing with real life. In real life you deal with a certain number of students and a certain number of teachers; you deal with people. These people will do what needs doing; they will do whatever they can do. However, in order to actually accomplish what is theoretically possible, we depend on having our hands free to do our work on a humanitarian basis. This brings us to the fact that nowadays the presence of a “thought interest” in great existential issues is much less important than the presence of the will to actually bring about the conditions that make a system of education such as this one possible. The remarkable thing about this is that while there is the broadest possible interest in the thought or the feeling that such and such ought to be, this is not accompanied by any real will interest. That no real will interest accompanies it is the reason why I call what it is our conferences deal with, “literature.” Literature is what it actually is; it is not something that will be transformed into action. One of the most important facts about the background of the Waldorf School is that we were in a position to make the anthroposophical movement a relatively large movement. The anthroposophical movement has become a large one. This is evident from the fact that difficult anthroposophical books go through many editions.”2 Interest springs up everywhere. This is a “thought interest,” or even goes beyond thought interest to the extent that the people who come together in the anthroposophical movement also have a feeling interest in it, an interest of the heart. In all of our modern movements people are coming together with a mere “thought interest” that is transformed into a talking interest in those who are somewhat active. The anthroposophical movement gathers together those people who have an intense human need, a soul need, to make headway with regard to the essence of the human being. This is what things look like when we consider an interest in knowledge, a feeling interest, more theoretically. There are very many people today who realize that there is something here that can satisfy their spiritual interests. That is how it stands today, and I hope that its growth is guaranteed in spite of the scandalous opposition to it. But what we are lacking are people who are not merely interested in the anthroposophical movement becoming as large as possible and bringing forth as much spiritual content as possible, but who are also interested in making this anthroposophical movement happen, in being co-workers in its coming about. There are extraordinarily few of them. We have many people who listen, many who want something for themselves, but we have extraordinarily few people who are co-workers in the fullest sense of the word. You know, when our conference in Vienna was being organized, which was not a conference in the same sense as other conferences—the point of our conferences is for people to get together to receive something they can take home, while in other conferences everyone wants to get rid of what they bring from home—in any case, when this conference was being organized, there had to be workers there to get ready for it and bring it about, and there had to be speakers there. There are always a small number of friends who nearly have to run their legs off, work their fingers to the bone writing letters, and empty out their wallets. There are only a small number of them, the Waldorf teachers and a small number of others, and they are thoroughly overworked almost every month of the year because of their involvement. Actually, they are always terribly overworked. But at the end of a conference such as this, even if it is as successful as the one in Vienna, we experience once again that although all the conditions are in place for our Waldorf system of education to expand, or something of that sort, the way these conditions come about means that the small number of active people get in over their heads. Again and again we have to be on the lookout for new coworkers. Perhaps not all of you will agree with me, but I would like to state my experience quite openly. As things stand today, I believe there would be a possibility of gaining plenty of members. I got the impression in Vienna that it would be possible to attract enough people who would become coworkers in the best sense of the word. But—and here our general concern coincides with our concern for the Waldorf School—at this point we bump up against the fact that it is not possible to expand our circle of coworkers for the simple reason that we have no money. People everywhere have the means of supporting their coworkers, but this is only possible for us to a very inadequate extent. The main question is always how to offer people the means to exist when we disconnect them from their previous means. That is the fact of the matter. Today, if we want to move forward, we need a large number of coworkers. Those we have are simply not enough. Thus, what needs to be taken care of can be done only by exhausting the strength of the forces we have, and what can be done in this way is at most a tenth of what could be accomplished under conditions at present if we could count on a full complement of coworkers. After the Vienna conference in particular, we could watch the experience I have just described welling up. Naturally this is not a question of an ordinary appeal to the wallets of those who are already members. That is not the issue. The issue, to put it very strongly for once, is that in recent times whenever we have appealed to the will, the matter in question failed. In the end, the Waldorf School movement is connected to the threefold movement. The Waldorf School movement is conceivable only within a free spiritual life. The “thought interest” we met with at first has not led to a will interest. When the attempt was made to accomplish the deed of founding the World School Association as our only means of expanding beyond Central Europe, this attempt failed.3 It was to have encompassed the entire civilized world. The attempt to rouse whatever belief people had that the educational system must change, which was what was being attempted in the World School Association, was a miserable fiasco. There is such a terrible feeling of being rebuffed when you appeal to the will. I do not say that I am appealing for money in this case. We are lacking in money, but we are lacking in will to a much greater extent. The interest that exists does not go very deep, otherwise it would extend to the right areas. We were able to found the Waldorf School. Herr Stockmeyer4 read the ruling,5 the gist of which was that as of Easter of 1925 we will lose our first grade, and eventually the four lowest classes. We would hardly have been able to open the school at all anywhere else. In founding the Waldorf School, we took advantage of the right moment in which it was possible to do such a thing. Whenever the educational system is at the mercy of universal schematization, we can point to strongly working forces of decline. We encounter them everywhere. We can point them out wherever what is laid down in the regulations for primary schools is taken to the last stage. In Lunatsharsky’s school system in Soviet Russia, it has been carried through to its conclusion. People there are thinking the way we will think here when this is carried through to its conclusion and the full consequences have been felt. The current misery in Eastern Europe is what comes of it when this way of thinking about non-independent schools finds its way into practice. I am trying to speak today in a way that awakens enthusiasm, so that people feel the spiritual blood trickling in their souls and a large number of people who realize this will commit themselves, so that public opinion is aroused. Actually, I must say that at any point in the last twenty years when I tried to speak a language that appealed to people’s hearts not only in a theoretical sense, but to the heart as an organ of will, what I felt, first in the Anthroposophical Society and later in other groups, always made me wonder, “Dont people have ears?” It seemed that people could not hear things that were supposed to move from words to action. The experience of the fiasco of the World School Association was enough to drive one to despair. How do we think when we hear something such as this ruling that was read aloud? We think that perhaps ways and means will be found to push through the lower classes for a few years, after all. Even in more intimate circles, not much more comes of it than thinking, “Well, maybe the possibility will be there for a few more years.” The point, however, is for all of us to stand behind it now. Education must evolve independently, as has been emphasized ever since 1919. There is no other way for this to become a reality than through general acceptance of what is offered by the members of our various associations, who are in full agreement that something like this should exist, and through them being joined by more and more people who will become active members. The will has to develop first! I would like to tell you how my calculation goes: If numbers speak, we can say that we have no money. Having said that, we then collect money and fill the gap by the skin of our teeth. However, we will also not get very far by this means. We will get further only by the means I intended in speaking of the World School Association. We must have an active faith that what is being done will really become a factor in public opinion. In order to maintain the Waldorf School and establish additional schools, we need a growing public conviction that continuing in the sense of the old school system will lead only to forces of decline within humanity. This conviction is what we need. We will move forward only when instead of merely establishing schools here and there for the sake of practicing some kind of educational quackery, we can make the breakthrough to deciding to take our educational principles to the public in a way that will make them a matter of inner conviction for parents and non-parents alike. Please excuse me, but in a certain respect I really cannot avoid saying that I know many people will recognize the truth in what I have just said, but you only really acknowledge the truth of something by doing something about it! By doing something about it! This is why, above all, we must make sure that we do not found schools simply to an extent that lies within our existing means, which come from our branches and from wallets that are already empty. We must try to work for ideas and ideals so that an ever growing number of people is imbued with them. In this respect our actual experience is just the opposite. The current issue of the newspaper for threefolding has just announced that in future it will be a magazine for anthroposophy. Why? Because the promising beginnings in understanding threefolding have petered out. Because, fundamentally, we must go back to the style we had prior to the threefolding movement. In spite of the fact that a lot has been said about threefolding, this is another case of being driven to despair when you talk with people. We need something to come of this; we need it to enter public opinion. That is what we need above all else if we want to make progress with the Waldorf School. I must admit that I have been saying this for a long time. But just about anything else strikes a chord more readily than what I have said today. I would like to say that if I see what lives in people’s will as mere faith—well, no one believes that mere faith, the mere faith that humanity can only be helped by having an independent system of education, will accomplish anything. But it would lead people who are still able to do so to support us financially, so that we would not continually be left empty-handed in comparison to other movements. The anthroposophical movement is the basis of the Waldorf School movement. Even if it is set back by scandalous things such as are happening now,6 it has within it the necessary prerequisites for life. A lot of associations are founded that have adequate monetary means but no inherent prerequisites for life. Associations are constantly being founded, and people have money for them, and yet they fail. If all the money that people spend today on unnecessary associations could be directed into our channels, then the reports would look different. Herr Leinhas7 would have to report that our reserve fund is so large that we will have to try to invest it fruitfully. I do not believe at all that the main thing for us today is our lack of money. What we are lacking is the will to assert ourselves in real life, to insist that the portion of spiritual life that we acknowledge as true be given its due in the world. What use would it be if I had claimed that our effectiveness in the past year was satisfactory in some way? But here, in a members’ meeting, it is necessary to speak from this point of view. I am fully convinced that our Waldorf School can get as good as it can, but if we do not find the possibility of imbuing public opinion with our educational impulses, then all of our fancy arithmetic will not help us at all. The will to convince everyone must be present in an everincreasing number of people. In addition, the conviction must become widespread that for the salvation of humanity, it is necessary for something such as is present in embryonic form in the Waldorf School to keep on growing. That is what I wanted to have said to that percentage of hearts in which the impulse of will is present. We can get very far if we only think about what it depends on: It depends on us using our will to really get public opinion to where it ought to be. That is what I needed to say. From the discussionI must add that a great number of parents have expressed the request that something be done by the Waldorf School to manage the relationship of the faculty to the parent body—what can the parents themselves do for the children? I would like to say that we will very soon be giving careful thought to how we can work in this direction. At parents’ evenings, I myself will try to offer something along the lines indicated by these many signatures.7 We will try to do everything possible along these lines in the very near future. Expanding our circle of coworkers can be achieved only if the circumstances of which I spoke become a reality. Something must first be done to shape public opinion so that more extensive work can be undertaken. Then it will be possible to do many things. But as long as what is growing on our grounds remains the secret of the members, we will not be able to move on. A question is asked, among others, regarding the official ruling mentioned in the speech. Dr. Steiner: It would not help us to file a complaint with the authorities. As many people as possible must be won over to the idea that such a school should exist. The authorities are doing the right thing if that is the law. It is a question of opinjons gaining a foothold, becoming an effective force. There is something much deeper at stake. We must decide to interpret things ambitiously, to realize that what we think to be right must become the opinion of the public. The point is to get this idea into as many heads as possible. That must be accomplished so that as many people as possible change their view. Dr. Steiner (in response to a suggestion). That does not come into question at all. Influencing public opinion is the only possible means of bringing the other methods up for discussion. To win over public opinion is the only practical way for us to go. We have not done so because there are far too few of us who believe in such a thing. I imagined that the World School Association would be promulgated in a certain way. If the monthly contribution could be one franc per member, we would be able to achieve what would have to be achieved by such an association. It would only be a question of individuals working in such a way that enthusiasm is present in their will. Without doing that, we will get no further; we will simply manage to use up our last reserves. Even if we still find a lot of well-meaning members, it would be impractical to carry out. Even if something like that were to become a reality, we would only use up our last reserves. Our experience has shown most recently that it is necessary to attract the circles that are interested in what we are doing but are being kept away by the fact that the majority of the current membership feels the urge to keep the membership small. May I still say that although we have established a certain level of contribution for membership, it is very good not to exclude anyone who is simply not in a position to pay the whole amount. Alongside the paragraph in the bylaws, let us remember among ourselves that people can also pay less.
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298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the monthly assembly after the burning of the Goetheanum!
01 Mar 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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You would have walked right by those pictures without understanding them at all. My dear friend, we must so often think back to how school gave us what makes life pleasurable and valuable.” |
And while they were lying there driving their tiredness away, one of them grew very uplifted and happy inside, and said, “Oh, Nature is so beautiful; there is so much to find in Nature. But you know, we can understand Nature better and better all the time. If we learned to imitate Nature in the poems we say, for instance.” |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the monthly assembly after the burning of the Goetheanum!
01 Mar 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear children,1dear boys and girls of the Waldorf School! At the beginning of this assembly, we saw some of your schoolmates give a very good performance in eurythmy. But when they performed this moving poem about fiery flames ascending to heaven, your dear teachers and I had reason to be very sad. You see, when eurythmy reveals something from the heart, we feel the content of the revelation more strongly. And now something like this always reminds us of the sorrow, the pain and the suffering that your teachers and I experienced together because of the terrible flames that destroyed the Goetheanum, our dear Goetheanum. Your teachers had often told you about this Goetheanum, and you had heard what a great pleasure, what an inspiration, what a refreshment for your teachers’ hearts each visit to the Goetheanum was. But then, my dear children, dear boys and girls, your teachers’ hearts and souls are deeply comforted again; they can say from the very depths of their souls that when something as beautiful as today’s assembly can happen here in school, it is a certain comfort to them. It is a comfort for them to see what they have been able to plant in the hearts and souls of their dear students, for this is something that belongs to them spiritually, and even though it demands great sacrifice and devotion, hard work and attentiveness on the part of your teachers, it is something that lasts. With these spiritual belongings it is possible to conquer any raging flame that reaches out to destroy the human heart. And in painful moments and in the nights they spend working, it is not only the Waldorf School itself, it is also what lives in you, dear boys and girls, that is the greatest comfort for those who guide you. And you can make this comfort grow by doing what you have to do with hard work and attentiveness and with love for your teachers. Once upon a time there were two people who went for a long walk one Sunday. They walked over the fields in the glorious sunshine, and finally they went into the woods, where they rested in a beautiful place in the shade of the trees and talked to each other. They were very tired and had to rest for a long time, and while they rested, they talked. And it happened quite naturally—for these people were already old—that they came to talk about the joys and work and sorrow and pain in life. And it happened that one of them said, “Oh, life does have its pleasures, too. It gives us so much beauty. I was once in a gallery, for instance, where I saw pictures by many painters, and my heart was glad. It was so beautiful and grand, my soul opened up.” And the other one said, “We must remember the things like that. But just think, my friend, what it would be like if you had not learned to enjoy pictures when you were in school. You would have walked right by those pictures without understanding them at all. My dear friend, we must so often think back to how school gave us what makes life pleasurable and valuable.” And the other said, “But you know, we don't need to go back that far. On this nice walk we took today, when we saw the birds flying in the air, our hearts opened up and we had to sing songs of joy. Would we have been able to do that if we hadn't been able to prepare our hearts for singing when we were in school?” And a thought occurred to the other one: “We could have learned that later. But when you learn something later, it doesn't come so fresh from your heart.” And while they were lying there driving their tiredness away, one of them grew very uplifted and happy inside, and said, “Oh, Nature is so beautiful; there is so much to find in Nature. But you know, we can understand Nature better and better all the time. If we learned to imitate Nature in the poems we say, for instance.” And since he was in a mood to have fun, he recited a poem for his friend that ended in “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” And they were glad, not only because they could hear the cock crow, but because they were able to be so full of life and feel all this, having learned to identify with what was out in Nature. When you are sad, it is a comfort to think back on your time in school. You cannot help but realize that here in the Waldorf School your teachers are making an effort to shape your lives so that later, in times of joy and sorrow, your many vivid recollections of the Waldorf School will be a great comfort to you. And then you will have serious times. You will realize that you would not be able to live if you could not work. And we would not be able to work if we had not learned anything sensible. And now think about how your teachers are working so that you will be able to work and live in the right way later on in life. The men and women who are your teachers are thinking ahead to your later years. I want you to inscribe that deeply on your heart. When we have a beautiful festive assembly like the one today, we are sure in our hearts that all of you can learn for life’s sake. And if you can say to yourselves while you are in school, “Now, we will try to learn not only what is pleasant for us, but also what is unpleasant,” then even what is unpleasant will become a pleasure and a joy for you. Later on in life, the pleasure for which you once had to work so hard will come to you. These are all things we always have in mind. Here in this school, we are meant to prepare a good later life for you. Our oldest students have felt this, and it was a beautiful feeling, dear students in the upper grades, to hear you express how you feel in this Waldorf School, to hear you say that you want to stay here as long as you can possibly go on learning, that you want to be taught here in same the way in which you have been taught until now, right up to the point when you step out into life. There are great difficulties involved in this, many obstacles to overcome. We will have to experience these huge obstacles personally. We will try to overcome many different obstacles in order to achieve what ought to be achieved. This may already have inspired hearts that will strike you down for your ideals. The background for this was Emil Molts founding of this school. Now, my dear children, dear boys and girls, here is something that I have always said to you: If you love your teachers,—and they have real love for you!—then your love for them will be the power that allows their best guidance to enter your hearts and souls. This is why I am not going to finish what I have to say. I want you to finish it. I want to ask you especially whether you will try to apply hard work and attentiveness to what you want, to your life’s goals, while you are here. If, from the bottom of your hearts, you do want to apply these things, then finish the words that I have spoken to your hearts; then say to me. .. [the children shout to Dr. Steiner that they will do it.].
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298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the beginning of the fifth school year
24 Apr 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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I want you to inscribe that in your understanding and your feeling, and also in your conscience. Just think of how deepseated that will be later on in life if it is inscribed in your understanding, your heart, and your conscience. |
But the last few days reminded you of humanity’s greatest benefactor, of the One who underwent suffering and death nearly two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, who gave the spirit to humanity through His resurrection. |
It will be the greatest possible satisfaction for us if those who look at what we are doing with understanding are satisfied that we are striving to turn children of God into citizens of earth. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at the assembly at the beginning of the fifth school year
24 Apr 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear children, dear boys and girls! [Dr. Steiner turns to the first graders and says:] Many teachers have spoken this morning. I am sure you know what a teacher is. A teacher is a good person. But we need to know why a teacher is a good person. You have already learned from your parents what a good person is. Good people have many qualities, but there is one quality they have in particular: Good people love children. Your parents are such good people because they have loved you so much. And because they love you, they are sending you to school here, where you will have teachers who love you. What should you do if you know that a teacher is a person who loves children? What should you do then? The ones who have already been here can tell you that, so ask the boys and girls whether they love their teachers. [The children loudly shout, “Yes!”] You see, they love their teachers. Your teacher will be your second benefactor. Just think, you will learn what that means. Just like your parents, who have been and still are your benefactors, your teacher will also be your benefactor. The older children have already noticed something of how the teachers love them. And the further you go into the upper grades, the more certain you will become that you can grow up to be a good and capable person only if you learn something real and if you learn how to behave in life. Dear children, many of you will not know what it means to be really good, and some of you think being bad is better than being good. Even while they are still in school, the older students are noticing that they are getting closer and closer to “real life,” as we call it, to having to find their way in life. They have a special reason to think about how you can never actually be a real proper person in life if you did not really love your teachers for being your great benefactors. I want you to inscribe that in your understanding and your feeling, and also in your conscience. Just think of how deepseated that will be later on in life if it is inscribed in your understanding, your heart, and your conscience. You will really be able to think about what school made of you if you can inscribe it on your souls in this way. Now, you are all coming here after a time in which each of you had to remember that there are benefactors among human beings, and that ultimately Nature is also our benefactor. But the last few days reminded you of humanity’s greatest benefactor, of the One who underwent suffering and death nearly two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, who gave the spirit to humanity through His resurrection. It was a time when you could remember this great benefactor of the earth and of humanity, the Christ. We are now entering the spring of Christ, of humanity’s greatest benefactor. But by looking up to Him, by feeling what the Christ is, we learn what other benefactors can be. And you see, the reason why your teachers will be such good teachers for you is that they have tried hard to get to know the Christ; they have tried hard to turn their feelings toward the Christ in the right way at Easter, in the spring. But that is what you should have in mind right from the very beginning—that your teachers are filled with the strength that comes from this greatest of all humanity’s benefactors. Dear teachers, I know that I do not need to say this in any demanding way, but only as a fact: How you raise and instruct these children will really make them feel throughout their lives that the strength that enters your hearts through the Mystery of Golgotha makes it possible for you to be their benefactors. Last of all I would like to turn to you parents, and to put it to you in a few words that you bring your children to the Waldorf School because you see something special in the being of the Waldorf School. This special character of the Waldorf School is not something to talk about now; we will do that another time. But I would like to briefly characterize the star we have chosen to guide our work, so to speak, as what is meant to flow into education and child-rearing as a result of observing the human being. This is meant to deepen the feeling of responsibility of all of those who work here in the Waldorf School. That is why, dear parents, it should be especially emphasized today, as if we were taking a vow, that we are aware that the holiest of things has been brought here to us. We have nothing to offer in return except our deep feeling of responsibility. On one side we have what the teachers see in the parents’ decision to entrust their children to this faculty; on the teachers’ side is their intention to work devotedly, full of the responsibility and strength that is needed to make the children grow up to become what they should become in school. When we see this decision on one side and on the other the feeling of responsibility of a clear-sighted heart, we feel what this means; we see that the children who have come here are God’s gift to the earth and that they must grow up to be proper human citizens of the earth. It is the purpose of any school to turn the children of God into citizens of earth. This will be a conscious matter for us and we will do it in the best way it can be done, out of our feeling of responsibility. I especially want to have said this to the parents. This is the spirit we are trying to work out of, the spirit that you, my dear teachers, are trying to work out of. I would like to ask you parents to look into our school in this spirit and find out whether we are really in a position to do what you expect of us. It will be the greatest possible satisfaction for us if those who look at what we are doing with understanding are satisfied that we are striving to turn children of God into citizens of earth. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at a monthly assembly
03 May 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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And the calf and the bee were talking together. The bee said, “Calf, you don't understand anything about plants, but I know all about them. I know which plants are sweet, and those are the ones I suck the honey out of. |
And then the child with the bouquet of sweet flowers understood that there was something he had to learn. The other child had already learned the right thing from her dream. The child with the sweet flowers now understood that sweet flowers cannot be the only ones, that there have to be all different kinds of flowers that work together, and so now he learned to love the bouquet with all the different plants in it. |
298. Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Address at a monthly assembly
03 May 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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My dear children, boys and girls! It is always a pleasure for me when it is time to come see you here in school. As I was on my way here today, something strange came to me:
Now, dear children, how do you think the story goes on? What happened was this: The child with the bouquet with the grain and the thistles had a story to tell the other one. Listen to what that child had to tell:
Now, dear children, when you go to school, it is like taking a walk on a beautiful Sunday, and you are meant to get the very best that you can out of school to take with you into life. And if you can take along a bouquet of everything your dear teachers have taught you, this bouquet will give you great pleasure. But all the different flowers must be in it, not just the sweet ones! You must learn that you sometimes have to take in things that are not exactly sweet. If you work hard and learn seriously, you will notice that the bouquet you are able to take with you into your later life has not only sweet flowers in it, but all the things that are full of life, all the things your life depends on. Think about that, my dear children, and obey your teachers lovingly each time they ask you to do something difficult. Then when you leave school you will have the most beautiful bouquet to take with you into life, and you will like it best if it has all of life’s different plants in it. Each memory of your time in school will give you the strength you need in life, because when human beings grow up, they gain the most beautiful forces for their life if they take a bouquet of that sort with them when they leave school. These are life forces that last until death and even beyond. And now let me turn to the parents. I would like to assure you, as I try to do at every such opportunity, that I am fully aware of the confidence you place in us. We will also truly try to equip your children’s bouquets with all the plants that are suitable and necessary for a healthy, hard-working and satisfying life on earth. And to you, my dear teachers, I am heartily grateful for trying so hard to put together the bouquets for our children’s later life in the right way. This is why I expect you, dear children, to come to meet your teachers with everything they deserve for putting in so much effort on your behalf, and for working so zealously for you. By that I mean your gratitude and love. I would like to say one more thing to you. They have told me that in addition to working hard, you can still make noise. I remember that I myself have sometimes heard you make noise. And now I want you to make noise; I want you to yell so loudly that this whole room echoes with your words, “We love our teachers!” [All the children shout enthusiastically, as loudly as they can, “Yes, we love our teachers!”] |