The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A teacher: I tried to schedule all the language classes for the same time. However, it was not possible because there are not enough language teachers. I then tried to do that at least for groups of classes. There were also other things that were not possible.

Dr. Steiner: Have you discussed the schedule? It would be desirable not to change teachers for the individual classes. We need to see if we really need Tittmann here as a new teacher. That would be reasonable if we want to unburden the present faculty.

(Dr. Steiner looks at the completed schedule.) The first thing is that the schedule must be correct. Miss D. gave English in class 3b, and Mr. N. gave French. If N. were to take French here, would that be a problem here? This schedule is not comprehensible the way it is, you can’t find your way in it. You get dizzy. If only people knew what they were doing. We need some room to write notes. It would be best if language class directly followed main lesson. The main thing is that in general, language instruction should be given from 10:00 until 12:00.

On Monday, language class for the first through fifth grades from 10:00 until 11:00. It would not be good to assign the classes to different teachers. Changing teachers would not now be possible. So, now we have languages on Monday from 10:00 until 11:00. That would be every day, Monday through Saturday from 10:00 until 11:00. That can stay as it is. What you need to realize is how it will be now. Mr. N. also has the 7a class. How much French and English do we have in 7a? One hour each on Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 until 12:00. We need a class schedule for the present situation. That would work. We need to take the present situation into account. What I’m asking is, is there a list of what is now happening? (Dr. Steiner takes a piece of paper and writes the names of all the teachers on it.) Now I want you to write down where you are teaching. It is hard to believe we are holding a meeting about the best class schedule. A teacher makes some other suggestions.

Dr. Steiner: I just said it is not desirable to change the teachers for the classes.

A teacher: We also talked about arranging the language classes so that we can move the children around.

Dr. Steiner: We could do that later. For now, I only want to see if it is at all possible to hold the language classes in the morning and, when possible, directly after main lesson. We will be able to see that after we put everything together. I see no reason why a division into groups would not be possible if we do it right after main lesson. I do not know why that would not be possible. Dr. Steiner then takes the list of teachers and goes through the language classes in detail, class for class, in order to see whether languages can all be taught at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: We should divide them into groups. We need to begin somewhere. In general, the result will be that, with the exception of Latin and in some of the higher grades, the division into groups would be according to class. The majority of the students will remain with their class. We can achieve our goal by making the group the class. There can be only a small number of children who would need to move from one group to another.

A teacher: It will be difficult to find a plan that is not somewhat arbitrary.

Dr. Steiner: I am clear that I do not know what is happening.

A teacher: Perhaps we could ask you to give some guidelines.

Dr. Steiner: First, foreign languages should be taught immediately after main lesson when possible. Second, the language teachers should, in general, remain with their present groups. Third, after we have accomplished that for the foreign languages, the subjects we previously discussed should be taught in the morning, also. We would not need anything more than a division of things. Now, it makes no difference whatsoever whether it is classes or groups. We can use groups if we can do that. The lower grades have the least need for other groups. Of course, we have a problem when the Protestant and Catholic ministers cannot come at another time. We have fourteen teachers for English and French. There are nineteen classes, so each teacher would have seven periods. I am against overburdening the teachers and in favor of getting an additional language teacher. However, aside from that, it would be inefficient to divide the language classes into so many groups. That all came about because there was a desire to divide the languages by class. Pedagogically, there is no reason to hold to that principle past the third grade. Until that time, I admit that the main lesson teacher should also have the students for foreign languages. But there is no need to strictly follow that later.

A teacher: Partly, the question concerned grouping students according to their knowledge.

Dr. Steiner: We have too many class groups for modern languages. We do not need to have so many.

A teacher: The students in the eleventh grade want a middle certificate, and for that reason need complete instruction in English and French. Only three or four students would remain in Greek if they had to give up French and English.

Dr. Steiner: That is a radical change from when the students want to pass the humanistic examinations.

A teacher: Most of them do not want to give up modern languages.

There is a discussion about the different kinds of final examinations. There must be some clarity about which ones the students want.

Dr. Steiner: That was not the original perspective of the Waldorf School. The ancient languages were included to the extent necessary for inner reasons. Now the situation has changed, since the students want to take final examinations. We have tried to take that perspective into account in Greek and Latin by preparing the students for their final examination. We spoke about dividing things and that those taking Greek and Latin also want French, and that those taking English and French could also take Latin. That was our perspective.

A teacher: We need to know only whether the student wants to take the humanistic or the business final examination. Both would be possible through a division in our curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: I would go still further. I would say that for those students who want to take the humanistic examination, we can certainly have Latin and Greek in the morning. We could have it as part of main lesson, and we could give the classes in natural science at a later time.

A teacher: There is not much interest in Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The parents would have to decide whether the students are to take the humanistic examination.

A teacher: If there are only four or five students, should we still give Greek for them?

Dr. Steiner: Occasionally, there is the situation when a teacher works only for a few students.

A teacher: There seems to be a desire for the Middle School examination. Would it be responsible of us to allow them to leave school without English, like it is at the college prep high schools?

Dr. Steiner: We could take that responsibility if we had students who wanted to take the final examinations.

A number of teachers talk about the difficulties of dividing the students. Some students want to learn Greek, but they do not intend to take the humanistic examinations.

Dr. Steiner: We could have saved ourselves this whole discussion. We began with the assumption that we could not continue Greek and Latin in the present way simply because it is not possible to prepare the students for their final examinations. Today, though, the discussion is that there is no need at all to prepare them for that examination. We began with the assumption that we needed this terrible Greek and Latin in our curriculum so that some students who have sufficient talent might eventually be able to pass their final examinations. As I said, I thought that would be possible. Then you said it is not possible without undertaking some changes. Now, it seems that its not at all necessary to offer Latin and Greek for the examination.

What we need here is some sort of compromise. Until now, the opinion was that it was absolutely necessary to provide what a number of students would need to pass their humanities examinations in spite of the fact that for their age, they are insufficiently prepared. From that standpoint, we wanted to include Greek and Latin in the best possible way.

A teacher: The students do not want to give up English.

Dr. Steiner: Those who want to take the humanities examination will have to drop English. If they do not want to drop English, they will not be able to take the humanities examination.

Are there really only four or five who want to take the humanities examination? If we want to continue Greek, we must arrange things so that those four or five can take their examinations.

Two things are interwoven here: the requirements for the examination and whether we want to provide an opportunity for the children to learn Greek. Latin is not so important to me. We could arrange the division so that the children begin Latin and Greek together in the sixth grade and continue into the seventh, but that in the eighth grade and afterward, we have a division so that those who decide later would no longer have Greek. They would have had it, however, in the sixth and seventh grades. What is important is that what we provide is pedagogically sound. Until the end of the seventh grade, we would try to provide so much Greek as we believe is pedagogically necessary. A split would then occur in the eighth grade, and they could choose. Those who choose the humanistic direction would no longer have English, and those who decide to go in the Middle School direction would no longer have Greek.

A number of teachers raise objections to dividing the class too early.

Dr. Steiner: Then we could do it this way. Greek until the end of the eighth grade and Latin and Greek together would be required in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. But some students might drop these subjects if their parents find them unimportant. Our general goal was to teach what people think is necessary. No one would think that students must decide at the age of ten whether they should have one subject or not. We would divide the ninth grade into either Greek or English, and at that time we would separate the Latin and Greek class. I think we would come back to the basic Waldorf School principle of giving Greek and Latin in the fifth through eighth grades, along with modern languages, and that there would be a division only in the last grades. And then the children would not be prepared for final examinations!

If we use that principle, we need to say firmly that if you want English, you can’t have Greek, but you will have Latin. Greek can conflict with English, all kinds of conflicts could arise.

There is nothing else to do other than move away from having the eleventh-grade main lesson in the first two hours of the day. We will have to have the main lesson at a later time.

There is no school that completely takes into account both the eminently important pedagogical principle of having these two periods one after another, and also preparation for the examination. That is something I have seen in English schools. Everywhere, subjects arbitrarily follow one after the other. Sometimes it is really grotesque.

We need to schedule modern languages so that we can group the children. That will be possible only if you were to—in London, when they had the election there, people had a similar line of thought. On election day the students at Oxford got together and publicized that a Mr. Bohok had been elected with twelve million votes. That was published everywhere. The city council gathered to congratulate him, but there was no such man. It is just like your class schedule—Tittmann does not exist. They even made a mannequin there. There was quite an uproar about it in England.

We said we wanted to have voice and eurythmy lessons in the morning, but we did not want to be pedantic about that. In that case, of course, we can form groups, and in the event we can form a group only at the cost of having some voice lessons in the afternoon, that is what we will do. (Speaking to a Latin and Greek teacher) How many hours do you have?

A teacher: Seventeen.

Dr. Steiner: You have one too many. You should not have more than sixteen hours in Greek and Latin. For the more scientific subjects in the higher grades, where experiments are done, you could have twenty hours. That is not possible in subjects that require real concentration.

A teacher: Perhaps we need to have some of the shop classes in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have a mess in our class schedule again. It would certainly be desirable if we could have a different perspective. That is what is so difficult, you always bring this schematic bureaucratic perspective to the fore, and put the really important things on the back burner. This kind of thinking really has no content. I would need to have both the teaching plan and the meeting plan in front of me. They should have been here today. The problem is that we moved the division of the classes up to the ninth grade.

I once considered work on a class schedule as the opposite of pedantic. If we had it, we could see which class had which subject at what time. We would know where all the classes are, and that each class had such a schedule. From those two things, we could see where we are. We would have nineteen sheets from which we could see that one class has this and from a different sheet we could see that at the same time, one or another class is doing something else. If you have to do something like this occasionally, you can accept that you might have a light fainting spell. But when you have to spend a whole evening on it, you become dizzy. Imagine how simple it would be if I had one schedule for each class and a timetable from which I could see that this or that class is here from two until four.

The problem is that we are not doing what would actually be right, namely that we do not consider the elementary school alone, but recognize that the language teachers move throughout the different grades. If we were to make a radical change, which is not the case, and some teachers would only work in the upper grades, and those who worked there would not work in the lower grades, it would be easier. The whole problem has become quite difficult since we have lost a language teacher because he took over a class. It is really a problem that we are missing one language teacher.

Is there a student here by the name of D.L.? Is there some problem with him? Why did you write a letter?

A teacher: He caused an explosion in the physics room. We gave him a warning and wrote his mother.

Dr. Steiner: There shouldn’t be anything in the physics room that could cause an explosion. It is, in any event, troubling that something like that could occur. I once knew of a student in an upper grade who poisoned himself because the chemistry teacher was not paying attention to things. In any event, you should have left it at giving the student a warning. You should not have written anything. You never think how difficult it is when I have to fight against these things, and that people say, “That’s quite some leadership when a ten-year-old is allowed to create an explosion.” Do you think you can still do that, considering the situation we are now in? It is horrible how people think only about how they can protect themselves, but never about what the school looks like publicly. This is really astonishing. His mother is really a nice woman, but you need only imagine what kind of an impression it would make upon her to learn her boy caused an explosion. Everyone she tells this to would say, “Don’t send you child to the Waldorf School.” That is obvious. We cannot have many such occurrences.

Always feel responsible. Didn’t you think about how it would affect the school? If you provide the material for an explosion, then any boy would cause problems. I do not want to ask who was responsible for this, but someone must have left the material there. It was in the physics and laboratory rooms. The doors need to be locked.

A teacher: No one should be in the physics room when a teacher is not there.

Dr. Steiner: Thus, the room was not locked up?

A teacher: The error was that the student had permission to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand why the laboratory is not locked. This is a really beautiful situation. Explosives and poisons are kept in the laboratory, but it is not locked so the students have easy access to them. It is quite apparent that it is not sufficient to agree that students should not be in there. It is also clear that no laboratory teacher was there when the boy was. These kinds of things are always happening.

A teacher: It was my fault. I allowed him to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: But we must have principles in such things! Then we could say that a teacher was there, and the boy did it during that time. That would show that the teacher would have to be fired. When such things happen, we have a fear that something more will happen.

(Replying to an objection) It is horrible that that word could be used here. Who cares what happens in Buxtehude? It’s still worse that it could be said here. That is no position to take. Such things simply must not occur here.

The gymnastics teacher talks about holding class outdoors. Problems could arise for the school because the students catch cold.

Dr. Steiner: If there are such complaints, we can do nothing more than wait until we have a gymnasium.

A teacher asks whether they should yield to the parents.

Dr. Steiner: The parents want their children to be here with us. In individual cases, we will have to give in to the desire of the parents. There is nothing more we can do than wait until the gymnasium is complete. It is disgruntling that it is always being put off. In the first grade, there is a boy in the first row in the corner, R.R. He needs some curative eurythmy exercises. He needs to consciously do the movements he now does for a longer period and at a much slower speed. Have him walk and pay attention to how fast he moves, and then have him do it half as fast. If he takes twenty paces in five seconds, then have him take twenty paces in ten seconds. He needs to consciously hold back. He needs to do some curative eurythmy, then these exercises, then curative eurythmy again.

You also have that boy in the yellow jacket, E.T. That is a medical problem. He could certainly do the “A, E, I exercise.” Also, he should eat some eggs that are not completely cooked. He needs to develop protein strength. In many cases, it is possible to know what we need to do to heal something. People cannot say something untrue about us if what we say needs to be done cannot be done. We need to take up a collection so the boy can have two eggs a day, at least four times in a week. He would need eight eggs. The Cologne News costs twenty-five marks, but it does not have the same nutritional value.

The school doctor asks a question concerning medicine. He needs to see quite a number of students.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to speak about the principles. That is hardly possible before Christmas. Our English visitors will come on the eighth or ninth of January and be here for a week. If only we could at least have gymnastics then! Perhaps I could speak about medical questions in that connection. Now, we have to speak about individual students. In the future, I would like to handle that in principle. In every class, there are undernourished children. The children in the first grade were born in 1915. The health of the children born in 1914 has suffered some. That was a shock. Now we have those who are undernourished. People should have seen this coming in 1916. The war went on too long. I would like to give a basic overview of this topic, the basis of school health.

A teacher: A mother is complaining that her children do not sleep enough.

Dr. Steiner: You need to ask when the children go to bed. She should try having them go to bed a half-hour later. Concerning K.P. in the 4b class.

Dr. Steiner: He is anemic. The boy does not have enough metabolic residues. Due to the tea, he has used more of himself inwardly, and now he needs a strengthening diet. Before, he looked bad because of the bad food, and that is having an effect now. Try to get him some bread every day. If you give him malt for fourteen days, he would get used to it, and then it would be difficult to feed him normally. It would be better to give him a good piece of bread. It is quite clear that he is undernourished. In curative eurythmy, he could do the bright vowels, A, E, and I. A comment about E.V.M. in the 3b class who has headaches.

Dr. Steiner: We can easily help that through the diet. Give her some cooked cranberries every day for three weeks.

An eighth-grade teacher: Twenty-five children will be leaving at Easter, but they have not really reached the goals of elementary school. Perhaps we should take them aside and teach them the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: I would agree with that. Do it. It would also be nice if Graf Bothmer could help you.

A teacher asks about W.S. in the tenth grade. Her thyroid glands are not functioning properly.

Dr. Steiner: I once said something about this. She was in a eurythmy performance and looked as though she would not be able to complete it. The way she seems now, I think that we need to give her a preparation: 0.5% agaric (extract of amanita muscaria), then 5% berberis vulgaris, the juice of the fruit, and a little hyoscyamus niger (henbane). Thus, this berberis vulgaris 5%, 0.5% agaric, a homeopathic amount of hyoscyamus niger, 5X. There is a danger that her glands might degenerate because there is something wrong toward the back of her head.

A teacher asks about two students in the seventh grade who are misbehaving.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to do anything because the problem can be traced back to an abnormal growth of the meninges. It is difficult to do anything. It is too bad that our physicians do not pay more attention to such special cases. There is hardly anything more we can do other than have one of the doctors from the Therapeutic Institute come up here every week and really undertake some systematic exercises. Otherwise, we would have to put them into an institution. These are problems with the meninges. You could try to get them more interested in school.

A teacher: I cannot teach the seventh grade properly. I have too much to do for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to be patient until we have an additional person. I do not think you should allow your courage to wane. Things went quite well recently, particularly in that subject. The children were really interested in the perspective that you presented. I would not want you to get depressed.

A teacher asks about some particularly weak children.

Dr. Steiner: Try to include them more during class. Call upon them more often so that they remain attentive.

A teacher asks about a performance by the children in Holland.

Dr. Steiner: I only meant that you should agree upon the age of the students. We cannot drag ten-year-old children to The Hague. The very young children cannot go, only those children about whom we can say it would be responsible. Otherwise, there is nothing to say against it.

A teacher presents a request for a seminar.

Dr. Steiner: If we were to hold such a course, it would be much more reasonable if you formulated your questions and uncertainties during your meetings. Perhaps you could find two dozen pedagogical questions that would provide the basic content and theme. You already know what needs to be said. You have not studied the seminar sufficiently. It is not reflected in the way school is being held. Occasionally, one thing or another occurs, but in general, it is not visible. I would like to give such a course, but you must have specific questions. The course would include a number of things I have already addressed.

A teacher asks about the Oberufer Christmas play and whether Dr. Steiner could help.

Dr. Steiner: I cannot help you since I have not been at the rehearsals. My wife told me about it. The story is this: We were sent something from Brietkopf and Härtel that X. had printed. It states that the rights of performance are reserved. X., who knew the plays here, published the things he stole from us. People are used to such things from social parasites. He may have gone secretly to Schröer’s heirs. The Malatitsch family in Oberufer has the performance rights. Schröer bought the printing rights in 1858. I always assumed we would present it publicly before it was stolen from us. People have often asked me to publish it, but I did not think it would be responsible today. Today, the text would have to be completely revised from beginning to end. I would not have taken the responsibility of publishing something like that without a careful revision. I think it is silly to perform Brietkopf’s text. Most of the things I corrected during the rehearsals in Dornach. I made a number of important corrections, but people are like that.

A teacher asks about parents who pay no tuition.

Dr. Steiner: Why don’t you send somebody to them. We need to do this kind of work efficiently. There would be an impossible amount of work if the school association had three thousand members. We should send the secretary of the school association.

A teacher asks whether children whose parents do not want to pay should remain at the school.

Dr. Steiner: It may be that their parents do not know how to write. The school association has a secretary, and he certainly does not have much to do. Nothing is being done to increase membership.

I wish there was as much enthusiasm for the school as there is for the performance. People’s attention is diverted from the teaching. If the children were to perform something, it would not be so dangerous. I think it would be best to let it go, otherwise, you will get even deeper into the problem.

I have not really said anything against the performance. I actually believe that the better the performance is, the worse it will be for the school. I think you are as enthusiastic about it as a roly poly is about standing up.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to hear everything about the class schedule.

The new class schedule is described. All of the foreign language classes are in the morning. There were no changes in personnel. Once, a language class had to be moved from 12:00 until 1:00. An attempt was made to group the students. A few times Latin and Greek had to be put after eurythmy, but otherwise the language class immediately followed main lesson.

Dr. Steiner: You will have to do it that way if nothing else is possible.

A teacher: I would prefer having the 4a language class in the afternoon instead of from 12:00 until 1:00.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will do it in the afternoon.

A teacher: Is that true otherwise?

Dr. Steiner: When the respective teachers demand it. It is important that the teachers agree.

The religious instruction is described. Voice instruction is always in the morning. Eurythmy, mostly. All the handwork and shop classes are in the afternoon as well as gymnastics, but Wednesday afternoon had to be used also. If Wednesday afternoons are to be held free, then gymnastics and some of the shop classes would have to be in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against having some things at the end of the morning under certain circumstances. It is, of course, not good when the children move from the practical into the completely theoretical. We should try to keep a Wednesday free. Gymnastics should also not be done before the theoretical periods. It was badly scheduled on Wednesday only because the gymnastics teacher was excluded from the meeting.

A teacher: The parents have arranged a number of things under the assumption that Wednesday is free.

Dr. Steiner: Surely we can get the parents to choose another day. The teachers need to be able to come to the faculty meetings. That is important. The teachers could meet on Saturday. There is too much to do. Let us try to keep Wednesday afternoon. I think it is best if we do gymnastics in the afternoon.

A teacher: We carried out the division between the humanistic and business courses of study.

Dr. Steiner: Then this class schedule is possible, and we will see if it is satisfactory.

A teacher: I would like to teach foreign languages in my first-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, that is possible. That is how it should have been from the beginning.

The fourth-grade teacher would like a fourth period of foreign language.

Dr. Steiner: We carefully considered the number of hours, but we should allow you to decide. It needs to be something that is not required.

I think, if everyone is satisfied with it, we could actually begin with the class schedule. It would be nice if you could start on Thursday, December 7. Then, on Saturday, when I can look at things again, everything will be under way.

They present the individual class schedules.

Dr. Steiner: The first grade only has class once in the afternoon. 2a and 2b, as well. 3a is only on Monday afternoon. 3b, only Tuesday afternoon. The same is true of the 4a and 4b classes. 5a has class on three afternoons, two of which are the Catholic religion class. 5b also has handwork and eurythmy on two afternoons. 6a, three afternoon classes. That is not too much. For the time being, only the teachers are carrying too much.

Dr. Steiner goes through the list with the teachers, determines how many hours each teaches, and how many hours beyond a reasonable limit each is teaching. He assumes that each teacher should teach sixteen to seventeen hours per week. Thus, for example, N., who teaches twenty hours, is teaching three to four hours too many.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have determined that. In normal life, the teachers would demand extra pay for these hours. However, I think we should try to get an additional language teacher. I would also like an additional gymnastics teacher.

A teacher asks whether the provisional plan for decreasing the teaching load should be tried.

Dr. Steiner: Y. already has too many hours. We could do that only if we could find some trade. If, for example, you, Miss Z., would take over one of the religion classes, then Y. could trade. Make the change with whoever appears most burdened. Mrs. W. has the greatest tendency to give up time. We will wait until Tittmann comes to answer the question of V.

V. defends himself.

Dr. Steiner: There are also inner reasons. You should be happy we expect more of you. You are more robust. I think you are quite strong. You certainly must admit that you are more robust than Mrs. W. We will see that we get Tittmann here as soon as possible.

A teacher: The class teachers have asked if they could teach gymnastics to their own classes.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against that if it does not become a burden. I certainly see no reason why two classes cannot have gymnastics with their teachers in the same room. That would, in fact, be quite good, if it is possible, because we would then achieve a pedagogical goal. We need to remove nervousness from our teaching. If we cannot do that, it would be a sign of nervousness. Actually, we should see it as an ideal that we could teach mathematics in one corner, French in another, astronomy and eurythmy in the others, so that the children have to pay more attention to their own work.

A teacher: That is also relevant for eurythmy?

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy if you could do it, because it is pedagogically valuable. teachers would, of course, need to be able to get along with each other.

A teacher: The religion teachers would like to keep the room they have had for the Sunday services. It should be used only for that.

Dr. Steiner: I agree. What is important in these Sunday services is the attitude among those present. We can best achieve that by maintaining that arrangement.

A teacher: Should Miss R. and Mr. W. hold the services?

Dr. Steiner: They should both celebrate the sacraments. That is an obvious condition for the independent religious instruction. I would like to say something more. Experience has shown that the Independent Religious Instruction consists not only in what we teach during religion class, not only what we teach through feeling, but that a certain relationship needs to develop between the religion teacher and the student. You can develop that through the celebration of a sacrament. If someone else does the service, then, for the student who receives the sacrament from someone else, a large part of the intangibles necessary for teaching religion are missing between the students and the religion teacher. The reverse is also true. If someone gives the sacrament without teaching religion, that person falls into a difficult position that can hardly be justified. It is easier to justify teaching religion without leading a service than it is to justify leading a service without teaching religion. Through the service, we bring religious instruction out of empty theory. It is based upon a relationship between the religion teacher and the students. As I have said in connection with the sacrament, you should decide.

A teacher: I did not understand that.

Dr. Steiner: Now that we have completed things, in selecting a teacher for religion my first question is if he or she can lead the Sunday service. You might have the wrong impression. If the question is which one of you here do I think is appropriate, then I could reply, “Only those who I think are appropriate to give the service.” Many people could teach religion, but the giving of the sacraments can hardly be done by anyone other than the two whom I mentioned. You should not be angry that I am speaking quite straightforwardly in this connection, but each of you should know what I think of your capabilities, at least for now. That may change, though.

The children need to become mature enough. This nonsense with a special confirmation class needs to stop. They should attend the Youth Service when they have reached a certain level of maturity, but that maturity cannot be taught. They will simply reach it, and for that reason, we should not have any special confirmation class. Only the person giving religious instruction should hold the Youth Service.

A teacher asks about the decorations in the service room.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to think about that. I think it would be nice to have a harmonium. We want to be careful about how we develop the service. There is not much to say about the text except that the Gospels are still missing. There is still much we can do in connection with music and also paintings. In contrast, though, there is something else we need to consider, namely, the participation of the faculty.

There are two sides to the question. There is the very real question of whether things are moving too rapidly here. The services permeated by a religious renewal have the possibility of becoming something quite great. On the other hand, I hear in town among those who are working on this religious renewal that a religious community of a hundred members consists only of anthroposophists who are forming a sect. You see, there is a danger connected with all this. It is already present. I also hear that, “Those members who have not yet joined are being pressured.” The religious renewal was intended for those outside the Society. You need to be clear that such things have two sides, and that the primary thing is that our anthroposophical friends, both inside the school and outside, need to see that their mission is to straighten out people who are falling into an erroneous path. Those things connected with the most noble intent also have the greatest dangers. This is something that must be taken seriously. Before this religious renewal has withstood the test whether it is true and proper, we can certainly not say that we should respect someone who does not attend less than someone who does.

It would be best if we create a service for the children that has a great deal of warmth and heart, if we did everything possible to create an attitude that is serious without being oppressive, but on the other hand, to keep it as simple as possible.

A teacher: We have thought about some questions we would like to ask you. The question arose in connection with teaching foreign language about the musical/language and the sculptural/ painting streams. They were often mentioned in the course.

Dr. Steiner: There are also a number of references to that in that short cycle of four lectures on pedagogy that I gave in September of 1920.

You will forgive me if I mention that, but I believe it contains everything you need to come to more concrete actions.

Concerning teaching modern languages—if you use the same methods, the effects upon the child will compensate each other, since the child’s head dies through French to the same extent as the child’s metabolism is enlivened through English. The difficulty arises, and this is something that just occurred to me, when you remove English for some of the children. Socially, that is unnatural. It should not happen, but there is nothing more we can do. We cannot have both English and the ancient languages. But, particularly during the present stages of their development, these two languages compensate one another unbelievably well. Take, for example, Mr. B’s French class today. He developed something extremely important for the more quiet listeners. The French language is in a process of eliminating all the “S’s”. It would not be proper to say Aisne (An). You can hear the “s”. But, during the Battle of the Marne, it was referred to only as “An”. In English, many suffixes are moving toward removing an “s.” When you use the same methods, these are completely compensating, particularly during the ages of nine and ten. Otherwise, it is best to do as little French grammar as possible. In contrast, it is good you emphasize the grammatical aspect of English around the age of eleven or twelve. I will discuss that in more detail later, but for now I wanted only to make a preliminary mention of it in order to hear from you how things are going.

A question is asked about the stages of language teaching.

Dr. Steiner: There are stages. It would be interesting to look at this question in connection with other things. I intend to write an essay about Deinhardt’s book about the basic elements of aesthetic principles in instruction. Of course, these things are overemphasized by Deinhardt as well as Schiller, but it is easy to discuss them. It would be good to mention the publisher at the same time. Perhaps one of the faculty members could write a critique of the book in relation to Schiller. You are not familiar with the book? It is difficult to read. Steffen was asked to write an introduction to this book, but he found it terribly boring. That is only because of his long sentences. An Austrian can understand having such long sentences in a book. Sometimes you have to stand on your head in order to understand such sentences, but Steffen does not like that.

A teacher: We assumed such things would result in a textbook.

Dr. Steiner: That would be a good idea.

A teacher asks about how to ask questions using the Socratic method.

Dr. Steiner: There is something about that in my lecture cycles.

A teacher asks about having English as an elective in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: That would be possible.

A teacher asks a question about mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to explain that if you would try to use such things in a non-pedantic way. You should remember that such rules are always flexible, so they must never become pedantic. Particularly concerning spatial questions, it is always bad when things become too rigid.

Dr. Steiner: You need to understand the small bones within the ear, the hammer, stirrup, the oval window, the anvil, as small limbs, as arms or legs that touch the eardrum. A sense of touch enters the understanding of tone. The spiral, which is filled with liquid, is a metamorphosed intestine of the ear. A feeling for tone lives in it. What you carry within you as an understanding of language is active within the eustachian tubes that support the will to understand. Tone is primarily held in the three semicircular canals. They act as a memory for tone. Each sense is actually an entire human being.

I often say such things as a paradigm in order to animate people like Baumann and Schwebsch to get to work and write a book about all their experiences. They said such things this morning. You only need to be more specific and things will seem plausible to them. Dr. Steiner is asked to open the new school building after Christmas.

Dr. Steiner: That is difficult, since not all the classes will be moving in. Quite a number will remain in the temporary buildings, so if we make this a particular celebration, those children staying in the temporary buildings will feel they are not as good as those moving into the new building. We need to consider the effects of a special ceremony upon those children remaining in the temporary buildings. It would be a different question if we were to open a new hall, such as a gymnasium. However, if we were to do this, it would fill the whole building with an inner disturbance.

I want to characterize Leisegang as a philosopher, a caricature of a philosopher. He is just a windbag. What he is as a philosopher is complete nonsense. You can do this in a pedantic way: What are the characteristics of a philosopher? A philosopher needs a firm foundation under his feet, but all his assumptions are incorrect. You could actually prove that he, in fact, has no real foundation.

If you proceed that way in philosophy, that is what happens. I do not know of any profession where such a person would belong. He certainly could not make jokes in the newspaper because he doesn’t have enough of a sense of humor.

Dr. Steiner: I think that first I need to hear what has happened with the class schedule during the short period it has been implemented. I would like to know whether you see it as a possible solution.

A teacher: A father wrote a letter indicating things have gotten worse.

Dr. Steiner: We should include those opinions in a practical evaluation. We need to ask ourselves how it is that a boy in the fourth grade has class until ten minutes to 7:00 in the evening.

A teacher: We had to put one of the language classes into the afternoon, and then handwork follows it.

Another teacher: In general, the situation is not worse.

Dr. Steiner: That is the way it should be. We have not increased the number of hours, but actually reduced them, and the instruction is more concentrated.

A teacher says something about the free periods.

Dr. Steiner: If we had more teachers, such free periods would not occur. What do the students do during that time?

A teacher: They are put together in one room, and we keep an eye on them. The older children work alone.

Dr. Steiner: We should answer such a letter by pointing out the advantages. There must certainly be some advantages.

A teacher: In the eighth grade, there do not seem to be any advantages.

Dr. Steiner: We have to recognize that as unavoidable. Is it really so obvious? Certainly, the number of classroom hours has not increased.

A teacher: It is only a temporary disadvantage and will exist only as long as we have shop in the afternoon.

Dr. Steiner: This situation can last only for the darkest months of winter. Instruction begins relatively late, at 8:30 a.m. I always assumed that was for reasons of economy. We could also say that if the parents paid for the additional lighting, we would begin at 8:00. We could ask the parents whether they want it or not, and then decide according to the majority. We could begin a half hour earlier and use electric light.

We could survey the parents after we explain the basic issues of the class schedule. The main complaint of the person who wrote that letter is that he does not see his children. He is quite sorry his son does not arrive home until 7:30 in the evening. We need to take a survey. We could ask him whether he would be willing to pay more in order to have school begin a half hour earlier. The gymnastics teacher: The children have asked whether we could have gymnastics from 7:30 until 8:30 in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: The children would then come to main lesson tired. They would be just as tired as if they had a regular period before main lesson.

We need to speak with the students about their dissatisfaction, and we should send a questionnaire to the parents. For the students, our task is that they have the same perspective as you, the teachers. Where would we be if the students’ viewpoint was different from that of the teachers? It is absolutely necessary that the students support the teachers’ perspective. We should try to achieve better harmony between the students and teachers, so that the students would go through fire for the teachers. Each time that does not happen, it is painful for me.

A teacher: Things would improve if we could have shop in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: If that is possible, go ahead.

It is curious that the students criticize the class schedule. Why is that?

A teacher: The children criticize a great deal.

Dr. Steiner: That should not be. In general, you should not lose contact with the children. I think every class schedule would have advantages and disadvantages. If you had good contact with the students, the class schedule would not be a problem. I would like to hear from the teachers what you think the practical results have been. We could send out a questionnaire to the parents, but student criticism is unacceptable. What I said at the beginning referred to the perspective of the teachers.

A number of teachers report.

A handwork teacher: Can we allow the boys in the upper grades to have handwork as an elective? The girls have asked if we could leave out the boys. The boys who have grown with the classes like to participate, but the new ones do not.

Dr. Steiner: How could we do that? We have included those things in our curriculum that are appropriate in handwork; that leaves no room for variation. We cannot allow handwork to become an elective. How would you do that? Your guiding rule would then be that the children go only to what they want.

You can vary things within the class. There are a number of good possible variations. You can give the children many kinds of activities. Things to not need to be the same everywhere. As far as I am concerned, you can give the boys and girls different activities beginning in the eighth or ninth grade, but if it becomes an elective, we will destroy our plan.

A teacher: I would like stenography to be an elective. The children do no homework.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad. When does that class begin? Oh, in the tenth grade. I do not understand why they do not want to learn it.

We are so close to some things that we often forget that we have a different method and a different curriculum than in other schools. You see, now that I’ve been in the classes more often, I can say we are achieving results with what we might call the Waldorf School method; the results are apparent. A comparison with other schools, in fact, shows that, to the extent we are using the Waldorf School pedagogy, we are achieving results. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are unconsciously not using the Waldorf method where we have not achieved results.

I do not want to be too hard. Things do not always need to end in a storm about how the Waldorf School method is not being used everywhere. Sometimes you fall back into the usual school humdrum. You get results when you use the methods. Even though the results in foreign languages are uneven, there are, nevertheless, quite good results. We are also achieving good results in the lower grades with what is normally called penmanship. In arithmetic I have the feeling that the Waldorf School method is not often used.

I think we need to continually ask ourselves how we need to work in these different conditions. Of course, it is easier to flunk a third of the class at the end of the school year than to continue bringing them along. That would result in different conditions. If we continue to use the same guidelines and think in the same way, we will not move forward. We would then have to allow the students to fail. You cannot have one without the other.

On the other hand, we also need to consider that the work done at home needs to be done happily. The children must feel a need to do it. If you teach at one of the public schools with compulsory attendance, where you have no interest and can operate like a slave owner, you are in a different situation. If the children do not bring their homework, you simply punish them. The children would simply run away. If we were like other schools, they would simply run from us. We need to get the children to want to do their homework. But, their work is well done, isn’t it?

I work so hard to unburden the teachers because I must admit to feeling that you do not always have the necessary enthusiasm to really put something into your teaching. We need more fire, more enthusiasm in our teaching. So much depends upon that. If, for example, a boy does not want to participate in handwork, you need to give some thought to giving him something he finds interesting. I know stenography can be learned in nothing flat, without much homework. I have, unfortunately, not been able to see what you do there. How do you explain stenography to the children?

A teacher: I gave an introductory lecture on the history of stenography, then taught them the vowels.

Dr. Steiner: You can generate much more excitement if you also teach abbreviations when you teach them the vowels,. All that relates to what we must overcome. What is that supposed to mean, “The children don’t want to”?

A teacher: One girl told me she does not need stenography. She is interested only in art.

Dr. Steiner: One thing must support the other. The students do not need to consider the question, “Why do I need to learn this?” We must direct our education toward being able to say to the student, “Look here, if you want to be an artist, there are a number of things that you need. You should not imagine you can simply become an artist. There are all kinds of things you need to learn that are not directly connected with art. As an artist, you may well need stenography. There was once a poet, Hamerling, who once said he could not have become what he was without stenography.” We must learn to teach so that as soon as the teacher says something, the children become interested. That should simply happen. We begin teaching stenography in the tenth grade. By now, the children should be so far that they understand they should not question their need to learn what we teach.

A teacher: The children asked before we even began. Some of them had already learned the Stolze-Schrey method.

Dr. Steiner: That is a real problem. If there were enough children, it might lead to needing a special course for those who want to learn the Stolze-Schrey method.

A teacher asks about the visit of someone from England.

Dr. Steiner: Concerning this visitor, it is important that we develop a kind of “visitor attitude” so that we appear to be accustomed to having visitors. Don’t you agree that we do not really do that when we have German visitors? Englishmen will be terribly disappointed if you receive them the way you normally receive visitors in the Waldorf School. I do not want to suggest that you take up “Emily Post” in your free time, but there is something you might call a kind of “natural manners.” It is different when you have a visitor than when you speak in the faculty meeting. The main thing is that you are gracious to visitors. I mean that not only in connection with your external demeanor, but also inwardly. You need to want to allow the visitors to see what is special about our instruction. Otherwise, they will go away with no impression at all. The impression our visitors receive depends upon how we act with them. That is the first thing. The other thing is that we need to make the visit as efficient as possible. It will not do to have thirty visitors in a class on the same day, but only as many as we can handle. We should not allow them simply to watch us.

When the Theosophical Society had a conference in London some time ago, they had a “Smiling Committee.” When we had our meeting in 1907 in Munich, there was a great deal to see. There were the celebrities of the Theosophical Society. I thought it was really horrible that these famous people left with the opinion that people are right, Germans are impolite. I once suggested to someone that he should say a few words to a well-known person. He replied, “With them?” He thought it was a terrible imposition that I thought he should be polite. He thought he should simply ignore someone he did not like. These things happen. They should not happen here. Otherwise, we would have to not allow the visit, and that is something we cannot easily do.

A teacher: We thought we would serve tea in one of the classes. We’ve also prepared a display table.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly good, but I am referring more to your attitude. You could certainly say we should not allow these people to come, but that is not easily avoided. You need to show them what is special about our teaching methods, and you need an opportunity for doing that.

Sometimes when you say something, it feels like you are taking the morning dew from the flower. It is all so easy to say in a lecture, but with concrete questions, you seem so dry and barren. Then, it is like taking away the dew. Everything depends upon how you do it, whether it seems you want to help someone or not. What I want to say is—I can say this today because it will not seem as though I wanted to praise Dr. B.—when I come into his class he seems to think it is important and correct to point out certain things to me. The same is also true of Dr. S., but I also do not want to praise you. I do not think it would disturb your teaching if you were to point out what you are doing. Perhaps it is not so necessary with me, but I am convinced it is more important that you make sure visitors see what you are doing instead of simply having them stand there noticing nothing at all. Englishmen with their lack of concepts will understand nothing if you do not point out the basis of it. If you only give the class and let them watch, they won’t have the faintest idea of what happened. You need to forcefully point out what is special about the instruction.

An earlier visitor left without the faintest idea of what the Waldorf School is. He left and went home with only a proof that the methods he used in his English school are good. The only impression he had was that we are doing the same things he does. You shouldn’t believe people notice things by themselves. Many of you have not yet noticed it, so many things continue on in their normal trot, even with our own teachers. That is what I meant. Not much more can be done.

We should give a very impressive 5:00 o’clock tea at the branch office on Landhausstraße. Otherwise, the Englishmen will leave Stuttgart saying they have seen nothing of the Society, all we wanted was to lecture. In England, everybody introduces themselves, and they consider lectures as something to do on the side. They just put their hands in their pockets. Most of their lectures are simply long sentences. Germans say something in a lecture, something special about life, and they should notice that here. If you can show them that, they will slowly gain some respect. No Englishman can understand the German nature. They do not understand it, they have no concept why we see something in a lecture that we associate with conviction. For them, it is only a longer speech within a conversation, but they do have a good sense of ceremony for formal occasions. You can certainly see that in everything they do. We do not need to imitate English culture, we do not need to imitate English nature, but we do need to give these people the impression that we simply do not stand around, but are truly active. That is what we need to do. We do not need to do much more, and there is not much more we can do during a twoweek visit than to try to get people to respect our Waldorf School methods. Nevertheless, we do need to gain their respect. You need to remember that there is no way of expressing the word “philistine” in the English language. An Englishman cannot properly express the peculiarities of a philistine. People’s most prominent characteristics cannot be expressed in their own language. Nowadays, Germans have taken on so many characteristics of the English that they are almost incapable of saying the word “philistine” with the proper feeling. We should eliminate everything that is philistine from the Waldorf School.

A teacher: Should we tell the children about this now?

Dr. Steiner: I would not do that. What I have said should remain within our four walls. Outside our circle we will have to arrange things so that the children consider the visit as a matter of course. Don’t tell them. Don’t do things as though they were something outside our normal life. The visitors should not notice anything. They should not believe we made any special preparations. They should think their visit does not bother us at all. There can be no talk of taking their visit into account. Do that as little as possible.

A teacher: Won’t the children bring some resistance from home?

Dr. Steiner: I visited the school of a man who will be coming. I went through all of Mr. Gladstone’s classes. The children, of course, knew I was a German just as the children here will know that the visitors are from England, but it was natural that I was treated as a guest.

A teacher: I would always ask an English visitor to tell something.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer to tell it myself. You should understand that all other classes will be of interest, but the English class will interest them only a little. I would try to make them understand, in a polite way, of course, that it is unimportant to me if they find the class not well done. If they say something, you could reply that you would probably say the same thing in their German class. You are probably right. That is what is important. Don’t give the impression they are important for you, but treat them as guests. It is important that people feel they have been treated as guests. It is important that they believe the things that happen while they are here are what occurs normally, not that they believe we prepared something for them. They should not believe that. When we give a 5 o’clock tea at the branch house, they should think that that is the custom here. We are moving a little too strongly in the direction of becoming bureaucrats rather than people of the world, but we need to become people of the world, not bureaucrats. It is bad for the school if bureaucracy arises here. All German schools are bureaucracies, but that is something that should not happen at the Waldorf School. Basically, we do not need to show the people anything other than what happens here. Everything else lies in the way we do that.

I will be here on the eighth and ninth of January, perhaps also on the tenth, and then at the end of the visit. I was thinking it might be possible in that connection to give a short pedagogical course that would deal primarily with the aesthetics and pedagogy of music.

A teacher asks about Parzival in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: In teaching religion and history, what is important is how you present things. What is important is how things are treated in one case and then in another. In teaching religion, three stages need to be emphasized. In Parzival, for instance, you should first emphasize a certain kind of human guiltlessness when people live in a type of dullness. Then we have the second stage, that of doubt in the heart, “if the heart is doubting, then the soul must follow.” That is the second stage. The third stage is the inner certainty he finally achieves.

That is what we need to especially emphasize in teaching religion. The whole story needs to be directed toward that. You need to show that during the period in which Wolfram wrote Parzival, a certain segment of the population held a completely permeating, pious perspective, and that people at that time had these three stages in their own souls. You need to show that this was seen as the proper form, and that this was how people should think about the development of the human soul. You could speak about the parallels between the almost identical times of Wolfram’s and Dante’s existence, although Dante was something different. When you go into these things, you need to give each of the three stages a religious coloring.

In teaching literature and history, you need to draw the children’s attention to how one stage arises from an earlier one and then continues on to a later stage. You could show how it was proper that common people in the ninth and tenth centuries followed the priests in complete dullness. You can also show them how the Parzival problem arises because the common people then wanted to participate in what the priests gave them. In other words, show them that people existed in a state like Parzival’s and grew out of that state just as Parzival grew out of it. Show them how common people actually experienced the priests, just as Wolfram von Eschenbach did. He could not write, but he had an intense participation in the inner life of the soul.

Historically, Wolfram is an interesting person. He was part of the whole human transition in that he could not write and in that the whole structure of education was not yet accepted by common people. But it was accepted that all the experiences of the soul did exist. There is also some historical significance to the fact that it is a cleric who is the scribe, that is, who actually does the writing. The attitude in Faust, “I am more clever than all the fancy people, doctors, the judges, writers, and priests,” persists into the sixteenth century. Those who could write were from the clergy, who also controlled external education. That changed only through the ability to print books. In the culture of Parzival, we find the predecessor of the culture of printed books.

You could also attempt to go into the language. You should recall that it is quite apparent from Parzival that such expressions as “dullness,” “to live in the half-light of dullness,” were still quite visual at the time when people still perceived things that way. With Goethe, that was no longer the case. When Goethe speaks of a dog wagging its tail, he refers to it as a kind of doubting, whereas in Faust, it means nothing more than that the dog wags its tail. You see, this doubting is connected with dividing the dog into two parts: the dog’s tail goes to the left and the right and in that way divides the dog. This is something that is no longer felt later. The soul became completely abstract, whereas Goethe still felt it in a concrete way. This is also connected with the fact that Goethe once again takes up the Parzival problem in his unfinished Mysteries. That is exactly the same problem, and you can, in fact, use it to show how such things change. They return in an inner way.

Take, for example—well, why shouldn’t we speak about Goethe’s Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily? You have probably already done this, that would be just like you. Why should we not take into account that the story of the kings is pictorially the same in Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, where you also have pictures of the kings? If you go back to that, you will see the natural connection to the Arthurian tales and the Grail story. You would have the whole esoteric Grail story. You would inwardly comprehend the Arthurian tales and the particular cultural work as the Knights of the Round Table, who set themselves the task of destroying the lack of consciousness, the dull superstition of the common people, while the Grail Castle’s task is to comprehend external life in a more spiritual way. Here you have the possibility for an inner deepening of Parzival, but at the same time you can place him in his own time. I have mentioned this in some of my lecture cycles, as well as Poor Heinrich, which can also be treated historically as a theme of the willingness to sacrifice. A moral understanding of the world coincided with the physical understanding of the world, something that was lost in the next cultural period. Something like Poor Heinrich could not have been written in the fifteenth century.

I have also made a comparison between Parzival and von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicius. In Christoffel von Grimmelshausen’s time, people were already so advanced that they could treat the Parzival problem only in a humorous manner. You can still find an echo of it in Simplizism. This is something you can do in literary history.

When you continue on to the present, things become very hidden, but you nevertheless should uncover them. It is also good to uncover much of what has been hidden. Take, for example, the training of Parzival by Gurnemanz. The question could arise whether a Gurnemanz existed in the nineteenth century. The answer is, yes, but you must understand the situation. It was Trast in Sudermann’s Honor. There you will find Trast and the inexperienced Robert. There you have a real Gurnemanz figure. You will find all the characteristics translated into silliness. But, you will again have an opportunity of showing that Robert is a kind of Faust, but made silly, and Trast a kind of Mephistopheles. Sudermann is a silly fellow and translated everything into silliness. Here you have an opportunity to show the tremendous superficiality that lies in the transition from the Middle Ages into the most modern times.

A teacher asks why there is talk of twelve religions in The Mysteries.

Dr. Steiner: For the same reason that I spoke about twelve world views in a lecture in Berlin. Goethe was not interested in discovering these twelve religions. He knew that the twelve religions were connected with the twelve pictures of the zodiac, and for that reason he spoke about twelve religions. It was not that he imagined a priori that there were twelve possible religions. I prefer to keep to Goethe’s attitude. As soon as you construct something of that sort, it becomes dry. The number is enough, and then you can give examples. Such things need not be particularly clear empirically.

There are also only twelve consonants, the others are variations. That is something that occurs in no other language except Finnish, where there are only twelve consonants. That is how you can treat such questions, and you need only fill in the holes.

A teacher: How should we handle the Klingsor problem? That is such a difficult theme for the children.

Dr. Steiner: Avoid it. But, there is one important thing you can mention. You could discuss Wagner’s Parsifal with the children, but avoid bringing up questionable things. The result of your teaching will be that these things will be taken in with a much greater amount of inner purity later than they are today.

A teacher: I wanted to ask you to say something about methodology.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t understand your question. Isn’t that something that comes from the material itself? You have told the children a number of things, and the methodology lies in the things themselves. You have behaved in a way so that the children slowly came to behave in the same way. And the result is that the faculty could have sat on the school benches, and the children could have become the teachers. Everything is connected with that, with theory. You need to teach things much more naturally. There is no value in, for instance, saying that we need to ask the children if we want to know what it is that we should do. You should not repeat such things.

A teacher: When teaching the Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade, I had the feeling I was right on the edge because I do not understand the language.

Dr. Steiner: You see how difficult it is to speak in terms of general principles. The details are what is important. I think that if properly handled, the language is always interesting to the students. Things that can be learned from the inner structure of the language itself would always interest the students. I also think that the teachers working together would bring a great deal of good. For example, Mr. Boy presented a number of very interesting things, things that really interested the students in spite of the fact that a number of philologists would not consider them. Although they are rules, such things are interesting. Everything connected with language is interesting. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generalize. What I have had to say in that regard, I said in my language course, but I connected it with specific things. It is not possible to generalize. We could achieve a great deal if those who know certain things would tell the others who do not know them. This is a possibility for real collaboration. It is a shame that there is so much knowledge here and the others do not learn it. In the faculty, there could be a really great cooperation.

A teacher: I do not understand Middle High German.

Dr. Steiner: I’m not sure that is so important. I once knew a professor who lectured about Greek philosophy, but who could never read Aristotle without a translation. What is important is that you come into the feeling of the language. Who is there who really understands Middle High German well? There is much that the other teachers could tell you.

A teacher: I cannot pronounce it well. You read it then.

Dr. Steiner: Not everyone reads it the same. It is colored by various dialects. We all speak High German differently. In some cases, it is important that you don’t speak High German like an Austrian.

A teacher: Then you mean we should give only some examples from the original text.

Dr. Steiner: The original version of Parzival is really boring for students, and now one of them is translating it. One of you might write to Paris to order a book that you could get much more quickly if you simply ask Mr. B. to loan it to you.

A teacher: We could also make a connection with etymology.

Dr. Steiner: Regarding languages, my main desire is that the aesthetic or moral, the spiritual, and the content is emphasized more than the grammar. That is true for all languages and is what we should emphasize here. A word like “saelde” is really very interesting, “zwifel,” too. There is much that could be said about that, as well as about “saelde” that relates to the entire soul.

A teacher: Could you say something about the spiritual scientific perspective?

Dr. Steiner: All you have to do is look it up in How to Know Higher Worlds. Recently, there have been a number of lectures in Dornach about literary problems that Steffen found very interesting.

A teacher asks about periodicity in teaching art at various levels: I will be going to the ninth grade on Monday. I have already spoken about the themes in Albrecht Dürer’s black-and-white art.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that. Do you really believe that the many things in Melancholia are attributes of Dürer? I think the difference between Dürer and Rembrandt is that Rembrandt treats the question of light and dark simply as a question of light and dark per se, whereas Dürer attempts to show light and dark through as many objects as possible. The many things contained in the Melancholia should not be seen as attributes, but more as his desire to place all possible objects into it. For me, the problem with Dürer is more how light behaves when reflected from all kinds of objects. With Rembrandt, the problem is more the interactions between light and dark. That is what I think. Rembrandt would not have seen the problem of Melancholia in the same way. He would have done it much more abstractly, where Dürer is more concrete. I think that is how you can draw a very fine line.

A teacher: I wanted to include the problem of north-south, and then that of east-west.

Dr. Steiner: You could contrast Rembrandt’s light and dark with the southern painting style. In that way, you can bring such things together. Of course, when you describe that, you can also mention that Rembrandt treats the question of light and dark only qualitatively. Space is only an opportunity to solve the problem through painting. If you show how a sculpture is entirely a question of space, you can then go on into sculpture. Of course, it is probably best if you make a connection with French sculpture of the late classical period. In the rococo—of course, you need to leave out the good side of the rococo—you find in sculpture an extreme contrast to Rembrandt. You can show how the question of light and dark is treated in the rococo quite differently than by Rembrandt. You always need to mention the thought that the rococo, even though it is often not valued artistically as highly as the baroque, is actually a higher development in art.

A teacher: Should I then develop a kind of art-historical stages?

Dr. Steiner: I would show how these stages in their various forms are expressed in various regions. It is interesting how, during the time when Dürer was active, there existed in Holland something different from what Rembrandt was doing. Different times for different places.

I would arrange things so that I begin in the ninth grade only by concentrating upon the class and then develop the stages more strongly as I progress. Thus, by the eleventh grade, a review would awaken a strong picture of the various stages.

A teacher: Our proposal in teaching languages was to begin with the verb with the lowest beginners. From the fourth grade onward, we would develop grammar, and beginning with the ninth grade, we would do more of a review and literature.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly quite right to begin with the verb. Prepositions are very lively. It would be incorrect to begin with nouns. I would like to explain that further, but this is a question I want to discuss when everyone who gives a language class is here, and N. is not here today. He did something today that is directly connected with how the verb and noun should be treated in class. We also need to answer the question of what is removed from the verb when it becomes a noun. When a noun is formed from a verb, a vowel is removed, and it thus becomes more consonant, it becomes more external. In English, every sound can become a verb. I know a woman who makes a verb out of everything that she hears. For instance, if someone says “Ah” she then says that he “ahed.”

We want to turn our attention to this as soon as possible.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to begin the meeting with a short speech.

Dr. Steiner asks about gymnastics class.

A gymnastics teacher: We tried teaching at the same time in the same room. We could just do it with the third grade, but it was completely impossible with the sixth grade. Because of the size of the gymnasium, we were unable to keep the two classes under control. We do not think there is any advantage in continuing in this way. In addition, we also need the gymnasium for teaching eurythmy some of the time.

A teacher: We do not yet have an instrument for the new small eurythmy room.

Dr. Steiner: That is only temporary.

A eurythmy teacher: The new eurythmy room is too small for some of the classes, which is why we have to use the gymnasium.

Dr. Steiner: The so-called “little eurythmy room” is large enough. It is not a little room, it is a large hall. Anything larger would be too large for eurythmy. It is not very fruitful to teach eurythmy in an enormous room. That would certainly not be fruitful.

The fact is that you need the gymnasium so much that eurythmy cannot be taught there. It was conceived as a gymnasium and thus should be used to hold gymnastics class. Where else could you teach it?

Concerning the first two grades, there is not much we can do for now. In the future, though, gymnastics is actually too much for the first two grades. Instead, they should have some supervised play. We should begin with such supervised games as soon as we have a little breathing room, so that in the third grade a transition can be made from games to actual gymnastics. The children need real movement.

The gymnastics teacher: Without increasing the number of hours, we could include the first and second grades by giving them only one hour of instruction.

Dr. Steiner: The third grade has two hours.

How are things with eurythmy in the various grades?

A eurythmy teacher: The first through fifth grades have one hour each; the sixth through eleventh grades, two.

The gymnastics teacher: Due to the large number of classes in the tenth and eleventh grades, we had to move one of the gymnastics classes into the time allocated for shop.

Dr. Steiner: Gymnastics loses less than shop if one hour is dropped. We could talk about it if the question was how to give a complete education without any manual training. That seems preferable to me since the children have a quiet form of gymnastics in their shop class. We have arranged the schedule so that the gymnastics does not adversely affect the periods following, haven’t we?

A teacher: We could arrange to have a games period.

Dr. Steiner: We have no one to teach it, so we can hardly consider that now. It will not be possible to decrease the teaching load until the end of this school year.

The gymnastics teacher: We are certainly not concerned with an overburdening.

Dr. Steiner: Fifteen hours are enough. If you teach fifteen hours, then you need to give two or three hours per day, and that is a lot for gymnastics.

The gymnastics teacher: We want to find a way.

Dr. Steiner: That is true. Nevertheless, you must take the following into consideration. In a school such as ours, we need to develop gymnastics class in a certain way, but that can happen only over time. Next year we may well be able to focus on developing gymnastics for the twelfth grade. At present, we treat it as only a stepchild. We will need to work together on that.

I think teaching gymnastics will present a number of difficulties for you as our Waldorf School develops. The main thing is that, beginning with a particular grade, the purpose of gymnastics will be conscious exercise for strengthening the human organism, a kind of hygienic whole-body massage of the human organism. I think you need to orient yourself more toward the upper grades.

In the lower grades, I am considering having the women work on the games. The authority of the gymnastics teachers should not suffer by first having them play with the children. They should represent what actually occurs in gymnastics. The children should not feel that their games teacher is now teaching gymnastics to them. I am, of course, not belittling games. A female games teacher in the first and second grades would not go on to gymnastics. The children would get a distorted feeling if we don’t make such a change. What I mean with games is movement.

What is important now is to find a replacement for Mrs. Baumann during her illness. Mrs. Fels should take over half the eurythmy classes and Mrs. Husemann, the other half. Mrs. X. would have the more mature students because she is older and more mature herself.

Marie Steiner: Mrs. X. first had quite a shock.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want Mrs. Y. to give the entire instruction, because I want the older children to have a more mature person.

A teacher: Tittmann will be free only after the first of April.

Dr. Steiner: Then there is nothing we can do other than wait. I am really sorry that this situation must continue. I thought it was very difficult that you had to do the French class immediately after art.

A teacher: There is nothing we can do about that.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult, but there is nothing we can do. Twentyfive hours is too much, but we have to wait.

A teacher: We will lose eight teaching days due to the earlier close of school.

Dr. Steiner: We don’t need to cling to our schedule as though it were a great treasure. The exact amount of material per week is not so important.

A teacher: Should we do a longer book in tenth-grade French?

Dr. Steiner: You could use a different book. They should complete at least one book, even if they do not read a lot. Have you thought of something? I think you could choose something shorter that could be completed in the remaining two and a half months. In a class like that, it might be best to read a biography. There is a nice little book called La Vie de Molière.

Marie Steiner: Enfant célèbre.

Dr. Steiner: I would particularly recommend a biography.

A teacher: We read Livius in Latin. Next we will do Somnium Scipionis. I also included Horace, and we will read two or three odes and learn them from memory.

Dr. Steiner: You will certainly take up Cicero?

A teacher: In tenth-grade English, we completed The Tempest, and now we are doing excerpts from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer that, instead of excerpts, you read the whole book. Making a selection for English is not easy. As soon as you move past Shakespeare, things become difficult.

It may be good to read Macaulay in the tenth grade, but that depends upon how you treat it. This is the age of life where children should learn to characterize in a broad and comfortable way. Biographies, for example Luther’s, are very useful for children at the age of fifteen. They are not very appropriate later, as the children will find them boring. In contrast, I think it would be good to read Carlyle and Emerson in the eleventh and twelfth grades. You might recommend Walter Scott for reading by themselves, but Emerson and Carlyle would be books for the class. Emerson has such short sentences.

A teacher asks about a newly enrolled child.

Dr. Steiner: She could go into the ninth grade. In foreign languages, she would be at the very bottom, but that is not so bad. You should, however, make her acceptance dependent upon her having some place to live, but you will need to do that with some tact. You might even consider trying to find good living quarters for her yourself.

We now have two children of workers at Dornach in the eighth grade, and the tuition has to be paid out of the funds for the building. They will have to find their own living quarters, but they will have to be places where we know that the adults pay some attention to such children. The workers at the building are quite connected to these things.

A teacher: If I were a man and had an apartment I would take some children myself.

Dr. Steiner: Now you tell me you are almost a man.

A class teacher: T.M. and O.Nr. need to be separated in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: With such children, much depends upon what they are accustomed to. It will not make much difference in the first half-year, but afterward for sure. They should be separated. (Speaking to the teacher of the parallel class) T.M. would go to you. He is easier to handle. I think it would be best if you took him.

A religion teacher asks if it would be all right if he were to go on a lecture tour.

Dr. Steiner: If you arrange it with the others, there should be no difficulty.

A teacher: We are striving to awaken a religious mood, but there are some problems with many of the children. X. often ruins the class. He does not like such moods.

Dr. Steiner: He certainly does not like moods, but there is nothing to be done. Even worse could occur. You could use his lack of participation to highlight the seriousness of the material.

A teacher asks about a service for the older children.

Dr. Steiner: I will soon arrange for an offering at the Sunday service.

A religion teacher asks another question.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with this question, we need to return to something we have already discussed. It is important that the youth of our Waldorf School talk less about questions of world perspective. The situation is that we need to create a mood, namely, that the teacher has something to say that the children should neither judge nor discuss. That is necessary, otherwise it will become trivial. An actual discussion lowers the content. Things should remain with simply asking questions. The children even in the tenth and eleventh grades should know that they can ask everything and receive an answer. For questions of religion and worldview, we need to maintain that longer. The religion teacher needs to retain a position of authority even after puberty. That is something I mentioned before in connection with the “discussion meetings.” They need to be avoided. If the children put forth questions of conscience, and you answer them, then there is nothing to say against that.

We also need a second thing. The older students often mentioned that we emphasize that the Waldorf School is not to be an anthroposophical school. That is one of the questions we need to handle very seriously. You need to make the children aware that they are receiving the objective truth, and if this occasionally appears anthroposophical, it is not anthroposophy that is at fault. Things are that way because anthroposophy has something to say about objective truth. It is the material that causes what is said to be anthroposophical. We certainly may not go to the other extreme, where people would say that anthroposophy may not be brought into the school. Anthroposophy will be in the school when it is objectively justified, that is, when it is called for by the material itself.

In things such as Parzival, it is already there, so that you will need to direct attention away from symbols rather than toward them. Wagner’s followers in Bayreuth have gone into much more nonsense about symbols than occurs here. We do not do that here. Parzival has to be taught as a man of the world, not a monk. I think this is something I needed to say today. For the children, of course, much is quite difficult.

It would be best if you discussed symbolism as little as possible. Stay with the facts, the historical background, without becoming trivial. Remain with the facts, not symbols.

A teacher asks about the English teachers who had visited the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Only women came, and they were quite satisfied. I certainly thought we would have to deal with much harsher judgments.

Discipline is much easier in England. When you go into a boys’ school there, you find only well-behaved boys. You might not find that so nice, but if you love discipline, you will find it wonderful. Modern Englishmen, at least in regard to their external behavior, are close to being insolent. Everybody assures you that they get better by the age of fourteen. That is certainly true in Gladstone’s school. I have observed how they go into the dining hall. It’s something that lies in the temperament of the people. The children are quieter there than here.

A teacher: N.G. is here.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to have anything to do with that family, even indirectly. Besides N.G., I feel sorry for the children.

I am very sorry to have disturbed the harmonious mood. So much occurred that I referred to as the “Stuttgart attitude” following that terrible misfortune. I could not let things pass by without naming names, because things were really catastrophic. I have to say that was the way things had to be. Due to the nature of the problem, I repeatedly needed to put these things in the proper light. I also would have thought, considering the situation, that no one would have thought of doing something like this. It is quite strange how things that outside, in normal life, would not occur at all, blossom so well in this anthroposophical foundation, the foundation of the Waldorf School that should be kept pure. It would be hard to imagine a normal faculty meeting where someone asks the school principal to say something nice. If we have no self-discipline, we cannot move forward. It is very painful for me that things are as they are. Aside from the fact that I have been unable to determine the actual content of the problem, everything is simply swimming around. If only something would move in a particular direction, but everything is simply floating about. I do not know what people are thinking. The mood here is so tense. We need to give some thought to all this. Certainly one task of the Waldorf School faculty is to cease all of this inner comfort. The fact that things are done in the way they are is a part of these nonmethods. It is really too bad for today’s meeting, since a disharmony has now come into it.

In the interest of the Anthroposophical Society, I had to see that the methods that have arisen here since 1919 do not go any further. Something must happen in the near future in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. This is an important question, but people will have to think about it. It would be best not to do things in that way, and better if you helped to improve the situation. You can certainly not say that working together does not make sense, and that everyone should work individually. If that principle had been in effect in 1901, there would be no room for us. People worked together until the end of the war. This kind of separation from one another arose only since 1919 when individuals went off to the great tasks that were begun then. That is the reason for what has unfortunately occurred in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that the Society has divided into a number of cliques. Before, there was some balance that inhibited the formation of such cliques. Now, there are big and little cliques everywhere, and everything is falling apart.

We cannot say everyone should live like a hermit. A harmonious cooperation should arise from the admonitions of our opponents that became so clear through the catastrophe at Dornach. Learn from our opponents! Our opponents know things very exactly, and they know, at least from their perspective, how to take them seriously, more seriously than is done by the Anthroposophical Society. There is a continual demand for something new, as has happened in Dornach. The Society as such needs to become a genuine reality, not simply a bureaucratic list of so-and-so-manythousand people who barely want to know anything about one another. The Society must become a reality, and there is much we can achieve through the Waldorf School if the faculty would stand as an example of harmonious cooperation. Everyone needs to really give something of themselves, and that is where individual activity comes in, namely, that everyone takes interest in each other’s work. It is simply narrow-minded to always seek the error in someone else. If we fall prey to that error, we will cease to be an anthroposophical society. There is certainly no other real example of anthroposophical activity if it is not here in the faculty. If you do not want to become enthusiastic about anthroposophy, then I do not know how it will be possible to save anthroposophy itself. That is really necessary. The catastrophe in Dornach is the culmination of our opponents’ activity. The Waldorf School faculty needs to take on the leadership of anthroposophical behavior. That is what is necessary.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to give you information. What I said recently about the incorrect methods relates to how anthroposophical matters are treated, not to the teaching methods here. What I have to say about that, I have already said. As of this morning, I cannot say that anything special has resulted. I was satisfied with the little I saw this morning. I thought things would come to a good conclusion. It was clearly noticeable, for example, that there is a greater level of seriousness in the higher grades. There is a much better tone in the higher grades. I see nothing to talk about there. I spoke about incorrect methods in connection with the extent of faculty participation in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society.

(Speaking to a teacher) It would be good if you were careful to leave out the inner school methodology in your considerations until tomorrow.

We will overcome the problems in the school methodology. The Waldorf School has proven what lies in its basic impulse. Individual problems have arisen, but as a whole, the Waldorf School has proven what lies at its basis. We will overcome the problems. Most certainly, we will move forward with the inner methodology. There is something else that comes into question aside from the general anthroposophical aspect. In connection with methodology, we could try to lift everything from the Earth and move it to the moon where we could perfect it. But, that is something we cannot do with anthroposophical activity. We will overcome the problems at the school because that is an isolated area and can remain so.

Everything was present in the discussions with the leaders of the Movement for Religious Renewal. In the lecture I had to give in Dornach on December 30, I directed everything toward anthroposophists, not toward those working for a renewal of religion. 4 That was clear from ten paces away, but it lead to an argument between the anthroposophists and those of the Religious Renewal. There is now a tense mood and a heavy atmosphere. If we leave these things the way they are, the Anthroposophical Society will be destroyed, and other institutions along with it. It is sad that this all occurred directly following the events in Dornach. We should have guarded against that. We need to do something to relieve it. Those anthroposophists who are not involved with the renewal of religion said nothing, but the anthroposophical perspective should have been maintained, but without rancor. You cannot expect the Movement for Religious Renewal to make things easy for anthroposophists. They are taking the cream and leaving the rest, but the Anthroposophical Society needs to stand firm. That is something of concern to everyone. The school should not shine because the faculty has no concern about the Anthroposophical Society. You need to have a strong interest in it.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to share some of my thoughts about my visit to the school, specifically, about the walls. Now that everything here is so new, it is more apparent than before that it is not good for a school to merely have a somewhat lost and not particularly good picture hanging here and there. It is significant that our school does not make a particularly impressive artistic impression.

Of course, we cannot completely fulfill the ideal at this stage, but it seems to me that it would be good to at least have that ideal before us so that we could move toward it, at least in our thoughts, and that in the end we would do something in that direction. I would ask you not to understand what I have to say the way many things have been understood. For instance, when I said that this or that is a difference between eating meat or vegetables and people immediately began to promote vegetarianism as a result.

Accept it as an ideal. Out of our pedagogy itself, what should be the artistic form in our classrooms? We could perhaps extend this from what we find in the schoolrooms to what we find near the schoolrooms on the walls.

There is no doubt that we need some pictures to decorate the schoolrooms. I say this not because I think we need to do this tomorrow morning, but because our guiding principle needs to be what is needed by our pedagogy.

First, we have the lower grades. There, we need a more physical presentation of what we give the children pictorially. That can gradually move into the more artistic, on the one hand, and to more practical activities in life, on the other. Today, I only want to mention some of the main things that we can deepen in the course of time. It is important that where the subjects themselves play the main role in artistic decoration, we have no mechanically created or barren illustrations, but that things be artistically formed. These artistic creations should not be such that they emphasize special opinions or special styles, but more in the direction of what seems to genuinely human.

If we look at the first grade, the main thing would be to decorate the walls with pictures from fairy tales, and when possible, to have them in color. I need to emphasize that if it is not possible to do everything in color, we will need to use some black-and-white reproductions. It is better to have a technically good reproduction than to have some poorly done copy of something. In the first grade we need to have pictures of fairy tales, and in the second, of legends. That is something we need to strictly maintain.

You can imagine the continuous and proper effect that will have upon the children’s feelings. The only thing is that we cannot just take the pictures from picture books. They should be artistically done. It would be beneficial to set this as a task, not in some one-sided painting style, but such that everything has a general human feeling to it.

When we come to the third grade, we must take into account the state of the soul. What we hang on the walls should be what is normally called “still life” pictures of plants and of flowers. Of course, these should not be normal still lifes, but genuine representations of what is living, but not yet feeling. If we bring the children so far that they live into them with their souls, that will be good. We should save representations of the feeling of animals for the next grade because then the child’s soul begins to relate to a portrayal of feeling. Only from that time on do children have a sense that they have feeling in themselves, even though that feeling may be quite dull. Pictures of animals that the children saw earlier in children’s books have an effect such that the child cannot differentiate whether it is a picture of a real cow or a cow made of wood. Before about the age of nine or ten, children cannot differentiate in an inner living way between the picture of a real cow and a cow made of wood. However, at about that age, this capacity to differentiate begins.

In the fifth grade, when the children are ten or eleven years old, what is important is to choose pictures that show groups of people of differing ages, for instance, dancing groups, or, say, a street where people meet one another, so that you can say something to the children about it. You need groups of people so you can talk with the children about what occurs between those people.

We now come to the sixth grade. There, we should have individual human beings. You could have pictures of heads or of the whole person, for example, a person standing in nature, where nature comes to that person’s aid. You could then draw the children’s attention to what a sunny landscape is, or to one in the rain, but there should be a person in it such that the individual person is important. Perhaps a picture of a small lake where someone is rowing.

We have now come to the point where the material itself is less important and where the pictures should move more into the artistic. Here, we need to begin with the most artistic things. We must, of course, recall that if you cannot obtain good copies, then we should have black-and-white pictures. For the age of the children in the seventh grade, it would be good to have Raphael and Leonardo, things that can also remain in the eighth grade. You could divide these between the classes in both grades. What is important is that the children have these pictures in front of them. You should not believe that the proper thing to do is to choose the pictures so that they go in parallel to what is being taught. It is actually quite important that the children have the pictures before they are spoken of in art class. You should speak occasionally about the pictures, but, in general, the child’s eyes should simply be occupied with the artistic aspect of the pictures. Children should first receive only a pure sense impression and know that we consider these pictures particularly beautiful. They have already been properly prepared since they knew that previously the pictures hanging on the walls were primarily important because of their content.

In the following classes, what is important is that you tactfully connect what is artistic with the practicalities of life, so that the children have both perspectives continually in front of themselves. Thus, in the ninth grade, you might have pictures from Giotto or similar things, and in the same class, pictures of other things, more technical, for instance, a meadow or a willow tree, a pine forest, and so forth, but not done artistically, rather, technically. Purely as examples, in the way that you might draw a plan. You could put those on one wall and hang other things on the back wall, for instance, paintings by Giotto. You could also have a star chart in the ninth grade where the various constellations are connected with some figure, with stylized figures of the heavens, as used to be done in star charts.

In the tenth grade, where you are dealing with fifteen and sixteen year olds, you should have pictures by Holbein and Dürer on the artistic side, and on the technical-scientific side, you could have—other things would be possible—a drawing of everything in the sea, all the animals, and so forth. That would have to be drawn appropriately so that it was intellectually instructive, but also had an artistic effect upon the children.

Holbein and Dürer would remain for the eleventh grade, with perhaps the addition of Rembrandt. That would also continue in the following grades. You might also include some older paintings. At that age instruction can go in parallel. Thus, for the eleventh and twelfth grades, Holbein, Rembrandt, and Dürer.

On the technical side in the eleventh grade, you should hang something like a cross-section of the Earth or geological cross-sections or perhaps elevation charts and similar things. Only in the twelfth grade would you have physiological pictures, anatomic charts in addition to Holbein, Dürer, Rembrandt.

That is what we need as an ideal. Things look terrible now, but if you have an ideal before you, at least under some circumstances, you can work in that direction, even if it takes a century. It is better to have a good woodcut than much of what is hanging now. This is what I wanted to say to you about pedagogy. It is certainly necessary that we attend to an exceptionally good treatment of art in our pedagogy, since that definitely belongs to the total picture of the anthroposophical treatment of human progress.

We can say that until the sixteenth century, there was not a sharp contrast between an intellectual and an artistic comprehension of the world. You should remember something that is no longer considered; the Scholastics created their books with a certain architectural art, very consciously, apart from the illuminations. Until the tenth century, there was absolutely no real difference between art and knowledge. Now, children in even the earliest grades are poisoned with purely intellectual material. There is an effect here in our school of something we cannot yet do differently: when teachers use reference books, not only by giving them to the children, but also for their own preparation, the intellectual tendency of such references enters the teacher. The teacher thus becomes a distorted picture of intellectualism.

You could ask, then, how should teachers prepare themselves? When the teacher wants to teach something to the children, he or she learns the material from modern presentations. When I see where teachers get their material for preparation, I would like to put another book alongside the one the teacher is using, a book that is perhaps a century older than the teacher’s. It is not possible to use only books that are centuries old, but it would certainly help in many areas to use books that are a hundred years old along with more modern books on the same subject. Now, if people are teachers, they know what someone like Goethe or some other exemplary person wrote about one work of art or another, or about something in nature. The problem is that no one looks at what people two or three generations ago, at Goethe’s time, wrote about art, but these, along with more modern works, are certainly important. Even today, when we have so many outstanding things, you can gain something by using books that are a century or so old that treat subjects similar to the subjects of more modern works. That is very important. I have often mentioned that, for example, editions of Greek and Latin from the first half of the nineteenth century are like gold in contrast to the brass printed today. The grammar texts that are thirty or forty years old are much better than the modern presentations.

I think we need to take into account that our pedagogy must everywhere counter with a thoroughly artistic activity the rule of intellectualism present throughout modern thinking. We should avoid allowing modern systematic books to affect our teaching. The systematic presentation in modern books is narrow-minded and inartistic. People are ashamed to speak of anything artistic. Modern academics are ashamed to develop their own artistic style or to artistically divide things into chapters. We need to take these things into account in our own preparations.

I would like to take this opportunity, which has arisen from a number of circumstances, to ask you all the following question. During a meeting last night, I again had the feeling that you think preparing is very difficult. Someone said that Waldorf teachers normally sleep only from 5:30 until 7:30 in the morning. Everyone needs to recognize that is much too little. People need to understand that a really enormous amount of time is used to prepare for school. From that, it seems that preparation is difficult. I would like to ask in that regard if it is true that for one reason or another you can go to sleep only at 5:30. I would also like to know if the difficulty lies in the preparation, if it is really so difficult and requires so much time. Of course, that is subjective; nevertheless, I would like to pose this question now, at the beginning of our discussions, and ask you to tell me about it so we can talk about this today or at our next meeting.

Some teachers report about it.

Dr. Steiner: Are there any specific questions about preparation?

A teacher: I usually need a long time. I used Carus for teaching about the skeleton.

Dr. Steiner: The bones of the human being have not changed. You used a book that is a hundred years old, but it is important that you use the easiest sources. This is a case where much help could have been given. The teacher of one class could help the teacher of the following class.

An upper-grades teacher: I do not actually prepare for a specific class. Instead, I read a book about the whole subject I will be teaching. Then, I read an anthroposophical book connected with it, for example, The Riddles of Philosophy, for background on the development of consciousness within the period. I read something that brings me into a mood of that time. For the specific class period, I look for something, perhaps even a small detail, from which I can form the instruction.

Dr. Steiner: That is a very good method, to begin with something you are strongly interested in yourself that brings your soul into movement, so that you make some small discovery. In that way, you will get an idea during the class. You will notice that while you are with the children, things come to you more easily than when you sit and brood by yourself. That will not happen in history and geography until you have taught for a few years. It is particularly important when you are beginning a new period that you really try to form a comprehensive picture of what occurs during the entire period, possibly only in broad outlines, so that you know what is important in that period.

The same teacher later gave Dr. Steiner some additional information when he was visiting the teacher’s class. Dr. Steiner told the teacher that while using that method he actually thought of too many things. He needed to be careful not to overload the students with what he was interested in at the moment.

A teacher: In Latin grammar, I have the feeling it could be organized according to thinking, feeling, and willing, but it falls apart when I do it.

Dr. Steiner: To orient yourself, it would be a good idea, when you have three weeks free, to simply take one author, for instance, Livius, and select some sentences, then study the sentence structure empirically. Someone should do that.

I would like you to pay more attention to developing a certain feeling regarding the Socratic method. I would like you to try to develop a feeling so that you differentiate between what the children can simply repeat and what you should ask them. It is more exciting for the children when you tell them something than when you ask them something they cannot answer. You should not believe you can get the children to say something they cannot know. You should not overdo the Socratic method because you will tire the children too much. You need to develop a feeling for what you can ask, and what you need to say. You need to develop a certain tactfulness. I would now like to hear questions about what is currently going on.

A teacher asks about the school administration. Many things within the administration need to be done by everyone.

Dr. Steiner: This is an awkward problem, but I have given it a great deal of thought. This is so difficult and we can accomplish our intentions only when we carry it out with the general support of the entire faculty, or at least the vast majority of the faculty. On the other hand, the way it is accepted necessarily affects the way it is organized.

First of all, I would ask you to consider what should be included in this new area of organization. There are a large number of operations the person in the school house needs to do. We need to exclude these things since they are connected with the person in the house. Concerning everything in the administration that represents the school to the outside, I would recommend that a small group of three or four people from the faculty take up that work in the future. This group can only work in an alternating fashion, so that they work one after another as individuals, and they should meet with one another only in those cases where a common decision is valuable. In order not to violate our republican constitution, it should be a group. I would ask you to speak your thoughts about this freely and openly, even though you might think what you have to say may contradict this in the broadest sense. I would still ask you to say what you think.

A teacher: There are some things we all know only Y. can do, and other things for which other people are better suited.

Dr. Steiner: I thought that such a small group would always represent the faculty since members would alternate, particularly for limited tasks. This group could do what you just said from case to case, namely, designate one person as capable of one task or another. Nevertheless, there will still be differences of opinion.

A teacher: I think regulating the situation would be a help. It could be very useful for the school.

Dr. Steiner: We could think still further. We would form such a group and the entire faculty would declare itself in agreement when the group decides some member of the faculty should be designated for a particular task. That is what should happen. Preparation for faculty meetings and setting the agenda could also be part of the duties of the head of the administration, but that would make the job rather difficult. It is possible that preparation for the faculty meeting could be one of the tasks of the committee member who has the task of administering the school at the time. It is important to do this in complete harmony with the whole faculty.

A committee of seven teachers had formed concerned with questions of the Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, I now need to ask what the faculty thinks of this committee that formed itself. It is important to find a way of reaching a final resolution of this problem. That committee seems very active, and we could make an assumption that through its efforts to reorganize the Anthroposophical Society, it wanted to prepare itself for administering the school. Of course, if that committee has the complete trust of the faculty, the question can be easily answered.

A teacher proposes expanding the committee.

Dr. Steiner: I only thought that if a group of people was already working with this question, it would be best if that group continued its work because it would save time.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: You are mixing up two questions. I only wanted to ask who is in that group because I know such a group exists. Apparently that group has worked with these questions and—I must emphasize from the outset that we must do the whole thing harmoniously—the first question I wanted to ask is whether that group has the complete trust of the faculty, so that it can make proposals for a final form. It would be difficult for us to begin from zero today. It would be better, since I will probably be here again soon, if we could answer the question of whether that or an extended group has the full trust of the faculty, so that the group could prepare a proposal for a final resolution of the question for the next meeting. That is the question we need to answer today. I would like to hear what you have to say about this question of trust.

A teacher: This makes an impression that there are first- and second- class Waldorf teachers, but perhaps that feeling is based upon a false assumption.

Dr. Steiner: The fact that a group has formed is their business. Since, however, it has worked with these questions, we could, in the event there is trust in that group, think we could trust them with working out such a proposal. It is more complicated to consider this question in the faculty as a whole than it would be to have a group that has the trust of the faculty consider it. Some teachers agree.

A teacher: I have an awkward feeling about the formation of that group. The people who formed the group are the same ones who are so distracting for the administration.

A teacher: I have noticed that certain groups get together, and when you go by, you hear parts of important conversations. I became uncomfortable with that, and I went to a colleague and said that it was creating cliques. I was quite fearful that the faculty was dividing into those who were more or less active.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly a problem. The Waldorf School can prosper only if the faculty is in harmony. It is not possible for everyone to find everyone else sympathetic, but that is a personal question and does not belong in the faculty. To the extent that the faculty represents the entire Waldorf School, the prosperity of this school depends upon the inner harmony of the faculty. There is a major difference in whether someone says to someone outside, “You are getting on my nerves,” and when that is said here in the faculty meeting. Here in our meetings and in the administration of the Waldorf School there are only teachers from the Waldorf School, and the difficulties arise due solely to the more democratic constitution of the school. Of course, difficulties do arise. I am certainly against using the terms “first- and second-class” here in the faculty. That would certainly be the beginning of very bad things if something like a first- and second-class of faculty and faculty cliques played a role in our discussions. These are things we must strictly keep out.

Basically, when such a group forms, we need to accept the fact that the group exists and not use it as an occasion to say bad things about it. If there were reason to do that, it would be the start of difficult times in the faculty. As long as the group has formed and exists as such, I would like to again ask to what extent we need to take that group into account. It is perhaps not at all necessary to say anything about that. The question has been posed because it has received an official duty and that group should work on proposals. Barring some misdeed, I do not see that it should have any significance whether it is that group or a completely different small group. The only thing that is important is the usefulness of the group, since the proposal will be presented to the whole faculty and discussed. The only question is one of trust, that is, whether you consider that group capable of making the proposals. When such remarks are made, it is difficult to see that there is even the slightest movement toward forming a faculty. That is something that must not happen. Here we must have only harmony.

A teacher: I have complete trust in the group, but I did want to bring out that there may be colleagues who do not.

Dr. Steiner: When I use the expression, “getting on my nerves,” I mean that one person makes another person nervous. The subject of the group’s work would be how to organize the administration. Thus, you would make them nervous.

A teacher: I do not distrust the group.

Another teacher: I do not feel there is a faculty within the faculty. I think all of my colleagues could agree to this group.

Dr. Steiner: Some things have been said that were not taken back, so we can assume we cannot do this in the way it was originally intended. I could just as well think that according to the impulses out of which the school and the faculty arose, I could create such a group. I am not doing this because suspicions have arisen. I would like to wait until things have become clearer. Some antagonisms are apparent.

The committee that works upon these questions needs to study such things in order to make proposals for the administration. I think six people would be enough.

Dr. Steiner has the faculty vote by secret ballot for a preparatory committee of six members.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to have the committee propose people who can do things.

A teacher asks about an educational conference in England.

Dr. Steiner: There is a possibility of another conference in England. I need to try to put these two things together. Perhaps we could agree to it in principle.

A teacher: The English people want to know if you would agree to inviting Waldorf teachers who can speak English.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, they can do that.

Dr. Steiner: I have a few things to add to what I recently said. The question concerns pictures in the music rooms. Clearly, we cannot decorate music rooms with paintings of figures. A music room is best decorated with sculpture or, if you have to use paintings, use ones with harmonious colors, paintings that are effective through pure colors. In other words, paintings in which pure colors are active.

Then, we also need to consider the pictures for the eurythmy room. I differentiate them from the music rooms, although there may be conflicts in our case. Under certain circumstances, we may teach music in the eurythmy room, but that would be only temporary. We should decorate the eurythmy room with themes that form the dynamic of the human being, including the dynamics of the soul. The pictures should present the expressive human being in an artistic way.

It is important that we carry that over into the gymnasium, but direct it more toward the world. For eurythmy, it is important to find an artistic way to express the dynamics of the soul, but in gymnastics we should connect more with the human being’s relationship to the world of balance and movement. You could, for example, have a picture of someone valiantly poised at the edge of a cliff, or such things. In the gymnasium, pictures should depict the relationship to the world.

For the handwork rooms, you should use pictures of interiors that particularly express feeling.

Now, that leaves only the shop. As much as possible, we should fill that with themes of practical life and possibly crafts, so that what hangs on the walls reflects what we do in the rooms.

I think we should decorate the faculty room in a way that is harmonious with the soul of the teacher. So, we would not have any particular rules for the faculty room, but would reflect our tastes in agreement with the teachers themselves. It should reflect the particularly intimate connections, but in an artistic way. In spinning, the same applies as for shop.

For music, it is better to leave the room quite plain than to add pictures that have no psychological connection with the essence of music.

The frames should fit the pictures. The color of the frames should be some color in the picture and the picture should also determine the form.

A teacher asks about the room for the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: I will give another service, and the pictures should be appropriate to that.

We should also decorate the remedial classroom, but we can discuss that at our next meeting.

We should place the eurythmy figures in a glass case in the eurythmy hall. In the hallways you should see to it that you place something similar to what is in the class to the left and right of the door. That is, something connected with the classroom.

A teacher asks about the physics and chemistry rooms.

Dr. Steiner: We have such major problems there that I cannot answer that today. Next time, we also want to begin discussing medical aspects, something we have long wanted to do.

Let’s turn our attention to creating an administrative committee.

A teacher: The committee we elected last meeting proposes three teachers. They would take over some of the administration previously done by the school administrator. They would be responsible for representing the school internally and to the outside world, with the exception of the custodial work, business, and finance.

In connection with school functions, they would do the following things:

1) Preparation and minute taking for the faculty meetings;
2) Naming specific faculty for specific areas, for example, the question of student boarding or decorations in the classrooms;
3) Prepare and oversee a yard duty schedule;
4) Assigning classrooms;
5) Supervise the use of school rooms for events from outside.

They would also take over the following things related to the outside:

1) Correspondence and communication with school officials, initialing all communications to the Department of Education;
2) Everything connected with enrollment (introductions and tests) and leaving school (school reports);
3) Yearly reports;
4) Visitors;
5) Public relations, in particular, working with the Union for Independent Cultural Life in the struggle against the Elementary School Law;
6) Gathering information about salaries and administering specific gifts.

Those are all the specific areas that we can remove from the present administrator and that a group can accomplish.

Dr. Steiner: First, we want to discuss this in principle. I would like you to say whether you are in agreement or not, or to speak in general about what has been presented.

The present administrator: It seemed to me that we should give this committee everything I did that should involve the entire faculty, and that all the economic and technical things would remain with me. We would thus rest secure that the work would be done to the satisfaction of the whole faculty. Those were my basic thoughts.

A teacher: I would like to propose Mr. L. as an additional member of the administrative committee.

Another teacher: We should use Mr. L. for more artistic work and not include him in the administration.

Dr. Steiner: The committee proposed three members, and now we have a proposal for a fourth.

A teacher: If he agrees that he would like to work with it, there should be no problem.

Mr. L.: I would be happy to do that if it would be useful.

Dr. Steiner: If I understand things correctly, we designated a preparatory committee. We cannot leave everything in the air. This committee proposed an administrative committee of three people. And now Mr. Y. is proposing that Mr. L. be included. The preparatory committee, though, proposed three people. Something official needs to move along with some precision. If you are proposing that Mr. L. join as a fourth member, what we have is that the recently elected preparatory committee proposed three and Mr. Y. makes a counterproposal to include a fourth person. Who wishes to say something further?

A teacher: I would like to give my support to that proposal.

Dr. Steiner: Does someone from the committee have something to say?

One of the three teachers proposed: I would like to say that we would be happy to work with Mr. L.

Dr. Steiner: The first question is the creation of the administrative committee. The proposal of the preparatory committee was three men. Then we have here from the faculty those three men and, in addition, Mr. L.

A teacher: I don’t see why we shouldn’t add an additional person to the committee.

Dr. Steiner: If we had only the proposal of the committee, we would need only to agree to or reject that proposal. Now we have two proposals, and we will have to have a debate about them. If there is another proposal, it should also be made. We created this preliminary committee with a great deal of pain. We believe it made its proposal only after mature consideration. Taking our trust in them into account, we now need to either verify or reject the proposal. The question is whether someone has something to say that is germane to the proposal. Is there perhaps a third proposal? Now the question is whether there is something to be added or whether a third proposal will be made.

A teacher supports the addition of Mr. L. because of his nature.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else have something to say?

A teacher: I would like to ask Mr. L. himself what he thinks about it.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you would accept the position.

Mr. L.: I would if people think it is appropriate.

Dr. Steiner: The situation is thus: The administrative body should arise from the faculty, taking into consideration what we recently discussed. Recently I said that I could, according the way we created the Waldorf School, name the members of the committee myself, but I do not want to do that because of past experiences. Rather, I want the administrative body to arise from the will of the faculty. We have given the responsibility of preparing a proposal to the committee because we assumed that a preparatory committee could make better proposals than those who simply speak off the top of their heads. We must learn to become accustomed to saying things with some responsibility. Recently, we elected the members of this committee, and we now need to assume that the committee made proposals only after due consideration and in recognition of their responsibility. That is the basis of this discussion. At present, there are two proposals.

This could be very depressing. It is important that we do not work with illusions. What is happening now is very depressing. We have agreed that a committee should present us with some proposals, and we certainly do not want to simply throw those out the window. We would do that if a counterproposal is made now and the faculty gives a vote of distrust. If Y.’s suggestion is accepted, that would be a vote of no confidence against the committee. I’m telling you that the acceptance of Y.’s counterproposal means a vote of no confidence. There have been some sharp words used about the administrative body in the last days. All of those expressions could be used against the faculty if you think a vote of no confidence regarding an elected committee has no significance.

I have asked for honesty in the discussion. I have repeatedly requested your comments and have delayed closing this discussion in order to enable a discussion of the counterproposal. I once again request that you say what you have to say about this question.

The following remarks were not recorded.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Y., do not interpret the words I have said in leading the discussion. I cannot say I am presenting a counterproposal at the same time I declare that I agree with the first proposal. I would request that you suppress nothing. If you do not agree with something, please admit that, but this system of hiding things cannot continue.

At present we have three proposals: The proposal from the committee, the proposal by Mr. Y., and a third proposal by B. and S. to skip Y.’s proposal and go on to the agenda. The proposal from B. and S. is more extreme, since it would skip Y.’s proposal and simply go on to the agenda.

Mr. Y.: I support the suggestion from B. and S.

Dr. Steiner: This is where understanding simply stops. Either you have a reason to make a counterproposal, or you do not. If the committee presents a proposal, and you suggest a counterproposal, then I cannot see any degree of seriousness in your proposal if you yourself are in favor of skipping the proposal and going on to the agenda. If we continue on in this way about important things.... Simply because we need to decide the matter....

Marie Steiner: Mr. Y. had suggested L. because of his good nature.

Dr. Steiner: But that can only mean complete distrust.

A teacher: I understood Y.’s proposal as the beginning of a debate.

Dr. Steiner: The work of the committee ends today. Of course, a counterproposal can be made, but distrust arises because of the desire to vote for the four by acclamation without further ado. It would, of course, show no distrust in the committee if the four were chosen. However, the way things are going now, it would be a vote of distrust if the committee’s proposal was simply thrown out without any further discussion. The distrust arises because we formed a committee with the assumption that they would check into everything and make a proposal in full awareness of their responsibility. Then, a counterproposal was made. Now, we are voting on all four people. What that means is that we take one of our own actions with very little seriousness. To be rid of the matter, we simply vote for all four, and that constitutes a distrust in the committee. To handle the matter so that we can create an illusion that we are harmonious and united constitutes a distrust in the committee.

We need to honestly speak our minds. It is important that everyone has their own well-founded opinion. The way the Waldorf School was founded, it was based upon the blood of our hearts, and now so much is moving toward this terrible system of not taking matters seriously. That is even coming into the faculty. It is significant whether the faculty is united in accepting a proposal or not. That is something that goes straight to our hearts. I would like to emphasize that we may not take such matters lightly. I have no illusions about the fact that there are things in the background here. When such proposals are made, then something is playing in the background. In the realm of anthroposophy, honesty, not intransigence, should rule. That is what I am asking you to do, at least here at the seat of the Waldorf School, to begin for once to seriously stand upright, so that we do not fall into an atmosphere where we shut our eyes to the disharmony, but, instead, honestly say what we have to say.

Is it so impossible that people say they have one thing or another against you, but that they nevertheless still like you and are still ready to work together? Why couldn’t you say the truth in private and, in spite of that, still respect and value one another? Difficult things need to be done when there is reason for doing them. Now that there are two proposals, we first have to vote on the third proposal, or we would have to handle the two proposals in parallel.

The fact is that you demanded to be included in the discussions with the committee. I found that to be a first vote of distrust.

A teacher: I would like to ask if Mr. Y. could give his reasons.

Dr. Steiner: I also think that when a counterproposal is made, there should be reasons given.

Y. attempts to give his reasons.

Dr. Steiner: I can assure you that I do not allow anything that goes through my hands to be in any way imprecise. I do not skip over a situation when one arises. We have before us the proposal of the committee, and separate from that, a proposal by Mr. Y. They represent two opinions. Now that we have these two opinions, and the committee has come here with the intention of proposing a threeman group, after they had already decided not to propose a fourman group, there is an even greater contradiction when Mr. Y. proposes that. It is not our problem that Mr. Y. did not hear the matter. There is, in any event, a precise fact before us that the committee did not think they should propose a four-man group. Mr. Y.’s proposal is significantly different from that of the committee.

The debate we now have concerns the proposal of B. and S. to skip Y.’s proposal and to go on to the agenda.

The motion has been made to skip Y.’s proposal and to go on to the agenda.

Who is in favor of concluding the debate…. The discussion is closed.... We now come to the proposal that three men are to form the administrative committee. We now come to a vote about that motion. Now that the motion is before us, I would like to ask you formally whether you desire to vote on the motion by acclamation or by secret ballot.

A teacher: I suggest by acclamation.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to speak to the motion to vote by acclamation? No one wishes to speak, so we can now vote on whether to accept the motion to decide by acclamation.... I request that those in favor of creating the administrative committee with these three men, raise their hands.

I have always attempted to maintain a friendly tone, and it may be that we can return to that again. However, these kinds of discrepancies that are not said aloud cannot remain. Aside from that, it is not bad if we occasionally use parliamentary procedures so that we gain some precision in our work. That is something we must have here.

We now come to the other proposals of the committee. The committee proposed that the administrative committee should take over certain areas of representing the school. The proposal was to leave certain tasks with Mr. Y. and remove others. What we are dealing with here is that the following things should be removed from the administrator: First, the preparation and minute taking of the faculty meetings. Second, requesting colleagues to take over certain areas of work, the yard-duty plan, the distribution of the classrooms, usage of schoolrooms by people outside the school. These are the things connected with the inner administration of the school.

I would ask you to say what you have to say regarding these points. Do you agree that the administrative committee take over these areas? Those in agreement, please raise your hands. It is accepted.

In regard to the external representation of the school, the committee would take over correspondence and communications with the authorities as proposed, and, aside from Mr. Y., the member of the committee who is active at the time would countersign. A teacher: Requiring a countersignature makes things more difficult than they were. It would cause delays.

Dr. Steiner: If a member of the committee assumes that it cannot always be done, then I would like to know why we have the committee in the first place. We must always be able to do this. There can be no question of a difficulty. A bureaucracy depends upon attitude, not upon authority. If you imagine you can fight bureaucracy by installing chaos in its place, you have an incorrect picture, and that, of course, cannot be done.

A teacher moves to close the debate.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone want to say something about the motion to close the debate? Then I ask those who are in favor of closing the debate… . The motion is accepted.

We now need to vote on whether the administrative committee should take on the activities of interaction with the officials, countersigning documents and so forth. I ask those who are in favor to raise their hands.

Dr. Steiner then asks for discussion about each of the various points concerning external representation of the school, and a vote is taken upon each point.

Dr. Steiner: You have all agreed to each of the specific points. I would now like to have a vote on the question as a whole with the exception of the public relations work and the relationship to the Waldorf School Association. I want you to vote on the question as a whole, that is, about all the areas we have discussed. Passed. Dr. Steiner now enumerates all the individual functions for which the present school administrator will continue to be responsible.

Dr. Steiner: Now that you have heard all these points, is there anything you would like to say?

A teacher asks about enrolling students.

Dr. Steiner: We have decided that that will be done by the administrative committee. If what we are doing is to have any meaning at all, then we cannot remove such an important matter from the administrative committee. We need to eliminate this bureaucratic way of thinking. If you think we should remove important discussions with parents from the administrative committee, then you are thinking bureaucratically. The administrative committee should participate from the very beginning, from the beginning of the enrollment of the student. The administrative committee should also be aware that it cannot let its duties slowly slide.

A teacher: I wanted to ask you to speak about the whole thing so that it will become clearer for us.

Dr. Steiner: The situation is that over time I have been made aware of things from many different people, that the faculty wanted such a group. From my perspective, I could answer such questions by saying that I thought it was necessary. I have a certain satisfaction in knowing it is now happening, but I also think it should happen with all seriousness. Is there still some argument about the matter?

I could ask, perhaps, that this committee include what we have voted upon as a kind of addition to our by-laws exactly how we will divide the agenda, then we can make a final decision about that at our next meeting. The activities we have now decided upon should be taken up as quickly as possible.

I would now like to ask for some discussion about how long the members of the committee should be in office, and about the rotation.

A teacher proposes a longer period of rotation, two to three months, otherwise the continuity would be continually disrupted.

Dr. Steiner: What you mentioned, that a person does not receive a reply, could also happen with a longer period of rotation. In any event, an orderly transfer of activities is necessary. I think a period of two months would be appropriate. We need to be careful that the work does not become a burden, and it seems to me that a period of two months would be appropriate.

A teacher: I would like to ask if the current executive would work alone or whether all three would work together.

Dr. Steiner: When not actually in the executive position, the activities of the others would be advisory. That is clear from the situation itself. However, the executive should ask the advice of the other committee members. What we are now deciding is something else. What we now need to decide is the relationship of the faculty to the administrative committee. I think two months would be the right amount of time. Would you like to have that extended or shortened? Is anyone against two months? Then we will do it that way. The administrative committee will begin tomorrow and the first period of rotation would be February and March, that is, two months. In what order should the members rotate?

A teacher: I would suggest alphabetical order.

Dr. Steiner: We can now go on to the question of public relations and our relationship to the Waldorf School Association.

Concerning public relations, you have made a connection with the Union for Independent Cultural Life, namely, a fight against the Elementary School Law. The way the situation is, I do not think it is a good idea if the Waldorf School as such takes a position for or against normal public questions, as they are generally trivial. We can move forward much better when we energetically work upon our own concerns and positively present what we are doing with Waldorf pedagogy. We should not involve ourselves with questions formulated from outside. I often had a bitter taste in my mouth when one of us gave a lecture about the Elementary School Law. We should be involved in the situation. The things we should present should represent our own concerns. In that way we can accomplish much more than when people who want to learn about the Elementary School Law ask us about our position. Of course, we are against it, but we should not be involved in discussions about mundane daily questions.

How do you envision working against the Elementary School Law? Certainly, we must handle these things practically—I usually say “real” instead of “practical.” The world should have the impression that people from the Waldorf School handle such questions practically.

If you look at the essays that have been published as weekly reports in Anthroposophy, they certainly look as though they were written without any understanding of the relationship between the parliament and the executive and the bureaucracy and so forth. The way they are written, those people active in everyday life will have a feeling that they are impractical, and then that opinion is hung around the neck of an Independent Spiritual Life or the Movement for Threefolding. By doing that, we increasingly foster the opinion that we are an impractical group of people. That is something that must cease. I am not speaking about our opponents, but about those insightful people who stand with us in the Threefold Social Movement.

If we include the Union for Independent Cultural Life in our work here at the Waldorf School, it is important that we do not fall prey to the same error the union itself does, namely, that we don’t fall into a kind of theorizing. What I mean is that it is important that any work we do in public relations stand upon a sound foundation. Certainly, we can work with the union, but when we do something, we should be aware that it must be practical, for instance, when we present the Waldorf School pedagogy as a contrast to the Elementary School Law. The more widespread the Waldorf School pedagogy becomes, the less possible such terrible laws will be. We don’t need to base our work upon the politics of the beer hall. All this is a question of tact. We should actually not participate. That is something we should never have done. That is the main problem with the Movement for Threefolding, we should never have become involved in mundane daily questions.

I have given special consideration to this area because I think it is particularly important that we take a higher position. For years I tried to form a World School Association that would not work toward handling pedagogical questions in some mundane manner, but would try to present them to the public from a higher position. That would be the difficult task of such a world school association.

A teacher: Couldn’t we have some evenings for discussing pedagogical questions to which we can invite some people, and also officials?

Another teacher: It is apparent that some leading school officials would like to know more, but are afraid to take the first step.

Still another teacher: Perhaps we could create something here at school so that we co

Dr. Steiner: That would make sense only if such meetings with people from outside were the result of public announcements in which we invited others to attend. It would make sense only if the Waldorf School started such things and then people came to us with their requests. Otherwise, all we would have would be the normal blather.

A teacher: I am thinking about the question of final examinations, that will certainly be important a year from this Easter.

Dr. Steiner: That is, of course, a task that does not actually belong in the school administration, but is more connected with the work of the Waldorf School. As soon as we would want to decide about such things, nothing would happen. That is a question that belongs among the general tasks of the Anthroposophical Society and is the task of everyone who is in any way concerned about the flourishing of the Waldorf School pedagogy. Actually, the answer should be apparent from the question itself. It is difficult to arrange anything in that regard because it needs to be handled individually so that we can take everything into account. We should take every opportunity to put the Waldorf School in the best light. On the other hand, we need to say that those who want to learn could also learn in England if they were there. So, it should really not be so difficult for someone who wants to learn about the Waldorf School to find out about it.

A teacher says something.

Dr. Steiner: What you just said is not serious. People are not happy about things, but as soon as you go beyond the general level of dissatisfaction and want to say something particular, they turn away. What ruins things is our participation, in any degree, in that turning away. We need to stand upright upon our foundation. We need to do everything that properly represents the Waldorf School pedagogy and not allow ourselves to make compromises. Such illusions are most detrimental to our goals. From what I have heard about these things, and such opinions come up all the time, we should have no illusions about them. We need to follow our own path and not treat these cases bureaucratically. If each of us recognizes our responsibility to do what we can, it may be better to teach these officials than to arrange things so that people could attend who would prefer to enter unseen through the back door. We went through all this when the union was formed in July 1919. There, we discussed pedagogical things. We held meetings where it was dark but nothing came out of it because people did not stay, not even the teachers. At the moment when things become serious—remember how people said they are dissatisfied, but that they have a wife and child. Do not misunderstand me. Work as uprightly as possible and use each individual connection, but do not believe that if you hold a meeting you can expect something from it.

We can best resolve the question of final examinations if we attempt to prepare the students as well as possible and then go to the examiners in question. The others will have forgotten it by then. In general, personal discussions are useful, but it depends upon how. We certainly cannot treat questions in the way you did today at the beginning, by deciding to allow the nicest person to take care of some particular problem. If that would work, then I would suggest that those people who are less gracious should take lessons from the others.

Marie Steiner: You prefer the Austrian form of charm.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to ask you to be personally involved. That is certainly something we need. I would certainly offer to fail every professor of botany in botany if that is what it took.

If you have some old connections and you could find out a little from those who have more experience, then your old connections would be more useful than if you brought others without such connections. The other thing is that you are a woman, and these are male examiners. If it is a female examiner, then see to it that you bring a man. Things need to be done individually. You should not believe that the impression you make will continue when you drag other people in.

The relationship to the Waldorf School Association does not seem to me to be resolvable except by a change in the statutes of the association. Of course, it should not be that the person who is the executive should not have a seat and a voice in the Waldorf School Association.

A teacher: Now, every teacher is a regular member of the Waldorf School Association.

Dr. Steiner: That does not fit with these regulations. This regulation requires that the faculty send a representative who will have that position for five years. We must clearly express that the person taking care of the administration here will also sit in the Waldorf School Association for two months. The by-laws have been changed so often that we can easily do that. That is something the Waldorf School Association must do. Is that all right with you? Thus, the current administrator would be our representative for two months and would sit in the council of the Waldorf School Association and have a vote. That person would not simply be one of the members, but would be on the council, and, in that way, the relationship would be self-regulating. So now we have taken care of this question. The necessary change in the by-laws should be made at the next meeting of the Waldorf School Association. Of course, for the time being, the representative of the faculty could be at the next meeting of the association. Are there any other remarks?

A teacher: Should we send a donation to the people in the Rhineland? It would be important for us if you could give us some information about the situation.

Dr. Steiner: It is not so easy to discuss the general situation now because the situation is as I described it quite clearly while I was giving the lectures about threefolding here, namely, that something needs to be done before it is too late. Today, it is too late to accomplish anything in the area of what people have called European politics. The only suggestion I made was to transform the old Threefold Association into the Union for Independent Cultural Life. I made that suggestion out of the recognition that we could do something for the future of Europe and for present Western civilization by supporting cultural life as such. That is where everything else must begin. The economic things that have been done by the present government as well as all political impulses are useless now. It is only possible to support spiritual life and hope that something will happen. What is important is to collect everything we are doing in that direction under one roof. At one time I quoted something Nietzsche said in one of his letters from 1871 about the fact that the German spirit has been exterminated in favor of the German empire. Today, it is important to achieve the opposite, namely, to restore the German spirit in spite of the decay of all political institutions. In that way, we can move forward, but we must stand firmly upon that basis. Everything else needs to be decided case by case.

The Rhineland occupation should be handled from the perspective that it is being done by a drowning man. A hysterical policy is being created from the drowning and thrashing. The tragedy is that the death throes are causing so much suffering. For that reason, I favor sending a donation if possible. It is a humanitarian deed. We can neglect all the nationalism and consider the question from a purely human perspective. I am in favor of all such things to the extent that they are purely human situations.

Today, we stand before the abyss of European culture, and we must prepare to jump over that abyss. I have long since stopped writing articles about it. I wrote the last one at the time of the Genoa conference, drawing attention once again to the whole situation. When I give lectures to the workers in Dornach, they no longer want to hear anything about politics. They are interested in things about science because they understand that all political talk today no longer has any sense to it.

If you think you could make a collection, you should probably be aware that it will not be much. It could be very little.

A teacher: I have divided the 8b class into two groups.

Dr. Steiner: I will have to agree to that until I can see it.

A teacher: The Latin class is a double period. I have the impression it is not very good.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to discuss such questions without having a meeting about purely pedagogical questions that could perhaps provide an ideal toward which we can work. Today, I have heard quite a bit about your class. Normally, I try to look at a number of things. Recently, I have been paying more attention to the question of the extent to which individual students have reached the learning goals and how many are falling behind. I cannot say I am convinced there are greater differences in the students you had today than in those in the geography class.

We will need to take care of this in the next meeting when we will be able to handle pedagogical questions more completely, because I noticed that the differences in ability and capability are quite large in that class.

(Speaking to another teacher) In contrast, I noticed when I taught the class myself that your class was much more homogenous. The differences are not so large. That is how the classes differ. We will discuss such questions and how to proceed at another time.

Dr. Steiner: Today, we want to have our agreed-upon discussion with Dr. Kolisko on health in the school. I will not go into the details of treating students because there are a number of principle things we need to present first. They will form the basis for further work that must also occur. We will proceed, then, by selecting some typical cases that could arise here. You will also have an opportunity to ask questions about specific cases.

I would first like to draw your attention to the fact that all of our Waldorf School pedagogy has a therapeutic character. The entire teaching method is itself oriented toward healing the child. If you create a pedagogy that does the proper thing during childhood, then educating children takes on a healing aspect. In particular, if we properly handle the child as an imitative being before the change of teeth, then use authority properly, and then appropriately prepare the child to form judgments, all of that will have a thoroughly health-giving effect upon the child’s organism.

It is fundamentally necessary that the direction of our behavior at school be hygienic. That is, that the teacher, in flesh and blood, has penetrated the three aspects of the human organism. The teacher should have an instinctive feeling for each child, that is, for whether one of the three aspects of the human organism, the nerve-sense system or the rhythmic system or the metabolic -limb system, predominates, and for whether we need to stimulate one of the other systems in order to balance a harmful lack of balance in the other systems.

For that reason, we will look at the threefold human being in a way particularly important for the teacher. We have the nervesense system. We can properly understand that only if we are aware that there is a regularity in the nerve-sense system that is not subject to the physical and chemical laws of earthly matter. We need to be aware that the human being rises above the laws of earthly matter through the nerve-sense system. The form of the nerve-sense system is completely the result of prenatal life. The human nerve-sense system is received by the human being in accordance with pre-earthly life. The nerve-sense system is thus capable of independently developing all activities related to the spirit-soul, because all material laws of the nerve-sense system are removed from earthly matter.

The case is exactly the opposite with the metabolic-limb system. Of the three human systems, the metabolic-limb system depends most upon external material processes. When people understand the earthly processes playing out in physics and chemistry, they also understand which processes continue within the human being, at least to the extent that human beings have a metabolic- limb system. However, they learn nothing about the laws of the nerve-sense system.

The rhythmic system lies between these two and, in a certain way, naturally balances the two extremes.

These things form quite individually within every human being. This is particularly true of children. The activity of one system always predominates over the others, and we need to do what is necessary to create a balance. For that, we must have a capacity to really listen to how children express themselves, so that expression can become a revelation of what we need to do with the child in order to help it achieve a completely harmonious health. It is important that we become clear about the fact that, for example, we can have a beneficial effect upon the nerve-sense system by adding the proper amount of salt to the foods the children eat. Thus, if we notice that a child tends to be inattentive, to be flighty and turn away from what you present, that the child is what we might call too sanguine or too phlegmatic, we will need to see to it that we strengthen the child’s pictorial forces so that he or she becomes better able to pay attention to the outer world. We can do that by providing the child with more salt. If you have, for instance, children who are inattentive or who tend to wander, then, if you look into the matter, you will find that the child’s organism does not properly process salt.

In more severe cases, it will often not be enough to simply suggest putting more salt into the child’s food. You will notice that because of some lack of knowledge, or perhaps inattentiveness, the parents salt the food too little. There, you can help with such suggestions. It is, on the other hand, also possible that the child’s organism refuses to accept salt. In such cases, you can help achieve the proper intake of salt by using a very dilute dosage of lead compounds. Lead is what, to a certain extent, enlivens the human organism to properly process salt. Of course, if you go beyond that boundary, the organism will become ill. What is important is to achieve the proper limit, which you may notice when a child has the first traces of a tendency for mental dysfunction. That is something many children have. You will then see that you will have to bring the whole healing process into line with what I have just described.

It is certainly a major deficiency that many educational systems pay no attention to such things as, for example, the external appearance of the children. You can stand in front of a school and see both large and small-headed children. We should treat those children with larger heads, in general, in the way I just presented. Those with small heads should not be treated that way, but in a way I will shortly describe. In those children with a physically oversized head, you will be able to find what I have just described as deficiencies, namely, lack of attention or a too-strongly developed phlegma. Now, however, we have all those children who have the contrasting tendency, that is, those whose limb-metabolic system is not sufficiently active throughout their being. Of course, such children feed their organic metabolism, but what the metabolism should be for the human organism does not sufficiently extend throughout their entire being. External observation of such children shows that they like to brood over things, but that they are also very strongly irritated by external impressions, that is, they react too strongly to external impressions. We can help such children improve throughout their entire organic system by taking care that they receive the proper amount of sugar.

You should also study the development of children in the following way. There are parents who overfeed their young children with all kinds of candy and so forth. When such children come to school, from the perspective of the soul and spirit, and thus also physically, they are concerned only with themselves. They sit and brood when they do not feel enough sugar in their organism. They become nervous and irritated when they have not had enough sugar. You need to pay attention, because when such children have too little sugar for a period of time, their organism slowly decays. The organism becomes fragile, the tissue becomes brittle, and they slowly lose the capacity to properly process even the sugar in their food. For that, you need to take care to properly add sugar to their food. Nevertheless, the organism may, in a sense, refuse to properly process sugars. In that case, you again need to assist the organism by giving a small dose of silver.

Now you see how, for the teacher, the spirit-soul life of the child can become a kind of symptomatology for the proper or improper functioning of the body. If a child shows little tendency for differing imaginations, if the child simply tosses everything together in a fantasy, if it cannot properly differentiate, then the nerve-sense system is not in order. In your attempts to teach the child to differentiate, you have at the same time a symptom indicating that the nerve-sense system is not in order, and you must, therefore, do what I just described.

If a child shows too little capacity for synthetic imagining, that is, for constructive imagining where the child cannot properly picture things, if he or she is a little barbarian in art, something common in today’s children, that is a symptom that the metabolic-limb system is not in order. You must, therefore, provide assistance in the other direction, in the area of sugar. From a hygienic therapy perspective, it is very important that you look at whether differentiating imagination or analytical imagination or artistic synthetic imagination is missing in the child.

There is now something else. Imagine you have a child whose analytical imagination is clearly missing. That could also be a sign that the child is directing his or her astral body and I too much away from the nerve-sense functions. You must, therefore, see to it that the child’s head is cooled in some way, for instance, that you give the child a cool wash in the morning.

You should not underestimate such things. They are extremely important. You should certainly not see it as a kind of deviation into materialism to advise the parents of a child who shows no capacity for painting or music to give the child a warm stomach wrap two or three times per week, so that the child has it on overnight.

People today have too little respect for material measures, and they overestimate abstract intellectual measures. We can attempt to correct that modern, but incorrect, perspective, by attempting to show that the divine powers have used their spirit for the Earth in order to fulfill everything materially. Godly powers allow it to be warm in summer and cold in winter. Those are spiritual activities accomplished by divine powers through material means. Were the gods to attempt to achieve through human education, through an intellectual or moral instruction, what they can achieve by having human beings sweat in the summer and freeze in the winter, then they would be incorrect. You should never underestimate the effects of material means upon children. You should always keep them in mind.

There is also another symptom for the same organic problem that arises when there is a deficiency in synthetic thinking, namely, children become pale. Children are often pale in school. We can handle that similarly to the condition of the astral body not being properly integrated into the metabolic-limb system. You can improve the paleness of children through the same means, because when you give a child, say, a warm stomach wrap, it sets the entire metabolic-limb system into motion so that the full metabolism develops greater activity throughout all systems of the organism.

If that system develops too strongly, so that you need to make only a small remark to a child and he or she immediately gets a red face and is terribly annoyed, treat that in exactly in the same way as when the astral body and the I are not properly integrated into the nerve-sense system. In that case, you need to give the child’s head a cool washing in the morning.

It is extremely important for the teacher to be able, in a sense, to foresee the child’s state of health and act preventively. Of course, there is much less thanks for that than when you heal when the illness already exists, but for children it is much more important.

Now, of course, things that have been used upon a child’s organism to direct a process in one direction or another may need to be subdued. If you treat a child for a time with lead in the way I described, you will need to stop the process at a later time. If you have, for instance, treated a child for a time with lead and have accomplished what you wanted, it would be good to treat that child with some copper compound for a short time, so that nothing remains of the lead process. If you found it necessary to treat a child with silver for a period, you should later treat him or her with iron, so that the inner process is arrested.

There is one more thing I want to say. If you notice a child is, in a sense, lost in its organism, that is, does not have the requisite inner firmness—for example, the child suffers a great deal from diarrhea or is clumsy when moving its limbs, so that it dangles its arms and legs when picking up things and then lets them fall again—such things are the first symptoms of what will develop into processes that strongly affect the person’s health later in life. You should never ignore it when a child often has diarrhea or urinates too much or picks things up so clumsily that they fall again or shows any kind of clumsiness in grasping objects. You should never simply ignore such things. A teacher should always keep a sharp eye open for such things as, for example, whether a child dexterously or clumsily holds a pencil or chalk when writing upon the board. In that way, you can act as a hygienic doctor. I mention these things because you cannot accomplish very much by simply reprimanding the child. Only someone who is always active in the class can affect anything. On the other hand, you can achieve a great deal through external therapeutic means. If you give the child in such a case a small dose of phosphorus, you will see that it will become relatively easy to reach the child with reprimands about clumsiness, even with organic weaknesses of the sort I just described. Give the child phosphorus, or if the problem is deeper, for example, when the child tends toward flatulence, use sulfur. If the problem is more visible outwardly, then phosphorus. In such cases, suggest to the parents that they should feed the child foods connected with colorfully flowering plant blossoms. Speaking in an extreme case, suppose a child often wets the bed. Then you can accomplish a great deal through a therapeutic treatment with phosphorus, but still more by working with the diet. Suggest adding some paprika or pepper to the food as long as the condition persists. You will need to determine that based upon the child’s further development.

In such questions, it is absolutely necessary that members of the faculty work together properly. We are in the fortunate situation of having Dr. Kolisko as the medical member of our faculty, and we should not undertake such therapies without speaking with him first, since a certain understanding of chemical and physiological things is necessary to arrive at the correct opinion. Nevertheless, every teacher needs to develop an eye for such things.

I once again need to take this opportunity of mentioning that in teaching it is of primary importance to take care to bring the nerve-sense system and the metabolic-limb system into a proper balance. When that is not done, it shows up as irregularities of the rhythmic system. If you notice the slightest inclination toward irregularity in breathing or in the circulation, then you should immediately pay attention to it. The rhythmic system is the organic barometer of improper interaction between the head and the limb-metabolic system. If you notice something, you should immediately ask what is not in order in the interaction of these two systems, and second, you should be clear that in teaching you need to alternate between an element that brings the child to his or her periphery, to the periphery of the child’s body, with another element that causes the child to withdraw within. Today, I cannot go into all the details of a hygienic schoolroom; that is something we can speak of next time.

A teacher who teaches for two hours without in some way causing the children to laugh is a poor teacher, because the children never have cause to go to the surface of their bodies. A teacher who can never move the children in such a way as to cause them to withdraw into themselves is also a poor teacher. There must be an alternation, grossly expressed, between a humorous mood when the children laugh, although they need not actually laugh, but they must have some inner humorous feeling, and the tragic, moving feeling when they cry, although they do not need burst into tears, but they must move into themselves. You must bring some life into teaching. That is a hygienic rule. You must be able to bring humor into the instruction.

If you bring your own heaviness into class, justified as it may be in your private life, you should actually not be a teacher. You really must be able to bring the children to experience the periphery of their body. If you can do it in no other way, you should try to at least tell some funny story at the end of the period. If you have caused them to work hard during the period on something serious, so that their faces are physically cramped from the strain on their brains, you should at least conclude with some funny story. That is very necessary.

There are, of course, all kinds of possibilities for error in this regard. You could, for example, seriously damage the children’s health if you have them work for an entire period upon what is normally called grammar. You might have children work only with the differences between subject, object, adjective, indicative, and subjunctive cases, and so forth, that is, with all kinds of things in which the child is only half-interested. You would then put the child in the position that, while determining whether something is in the indicative or the subjunctive case, the child’s breakfast cooks within the child, uninfluenced by his or her soul. You would, therefore, prepare for a time, perhaps fifteen or twenty years later, when genuine digestive disturbances or intestinal illnesses, and so forth, could occur. Intestinal illnesses are often caused by grammar instruction. That is something that is extremely important. Certainly, the whole mood the teacher brings into school transfers to the children through a tremendous number of very subtle connections.

A great deal has been said on various occasions during our earlier discussions on this topic. The inner enlivening of our Waldorf School teaching still requires considerable improvement in that direction. Even though I might say something positive, I would nevertheless emphasize that it is highly desirable, even though I am aware that we cannot always achieve ideals immediately, for Waldorf teachers to teach without preconceptions. teachers should really be so prepared that they can give their classes without preconceptions, that is, that the teacher does not need to resort to prepared notes during class. If the teacher needs to look at prepared notes to see what to do, the necessary contact with the students is interrupted. That should never occur. That is the ideal. I am not saying this just to complain, but to make you aware of something fundamental. All these things are hygienically important. The mood of the teacher lives on in the mood of the children, and for that reason, you need to have a very clear picture of what you want to present to the class. In that way, you can more easily help children who have metabolic difficulties than if you had the children sit in a classroom and taught them everything from a book.

It is a fact that in earlier periods of human development, teaching was generally understood as healing. At that time, people understood the human organism as tending to cause illness itself and knew that teaching brought a continual healing. It is extraordinarily good to become aware that, in a certain sense, every teacher is a doctor for the child.

In order to have healthy children in school, teachers must know how to overcome themselves. You should actually attempt to keep your private self out of the class. Instead, you should picture the material you want to present during a given class. In that way, you will become the material, and what you are as the material will have an extraordinarily enlivening effect upon the entire class. teachers should feel that when they are not feeling well, they should, at least when they are teaching, overcome their ill feeling as far as possible. That will have a very favorable effect upon the children. In such a situation, teachers should believe that teaching is health-giving for themselves. They should think to themselves that while teaching, they can move away from being morose and toward becoming lively.

Imagine for a moment you go into a classroom, and a child is sitting there. After school, the child goes home. At home—of course, I am referring to a different cause, I am not saying the teaching would cause this—the child needs to be given an emetic by the parents. Of course, that could not have been caused by the instruction given by Waldorf teachers, that would only occur in other schools. However, if you went into a class with the attitude that teaching enlivens me and brings me out of my morose state, you could spare the child the medicine. The child can digest better when you have the right attitude in the classroom. In general, a moral attitude of the teacher is significantly hygienic.

This is what I wanted to say to you today. We will continue to work on this later.

Is there anything in particular you would like to ask me now?

A teacher: I had wondered about how the three systems relate to the temperaments.

Dr. Steiner: Phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments are connected with the nerve-sense system; choleric and melancholic with the metabolic system.

A teacher: You spoke of flighty children having large heads. In my class, I have a very flighty child with a small head.

Dr. Steiner: A small head is connected with brooding and reflecting, whereas large-headed children are more flighty. If that is not the case, your judgment is incorrect. A small-headed child who is very flighty has not been evaluated from the proper perspective. You can orient yourself with these things. You first need to look at the nature of the child from the proper perspective. Show me the child some time. It is possible to mistake a child’s brooding for superficiality. It is possible that the brooding is hidden behind a kind of superficiality. That is easily possible with children. A teacher: Is this description valid for a specific age?

Dr. Steiner: It is valid until approximately the age of seventeen or eighteen.

A teacher asks about a girl in one of the upper grades who often wants to drink vinegar.

Dr. Steiner: You can understand that by seeing that the child has absolutely no tendency toward concentration. She lacks a capacity for concentration, but now and then she has to concentrate upon something, not because of outside demands, but from her own organism. She wants to rid herself of that requirement by drinking vinegar. She simply cannot concentrate, so the physical body demands it sometimes. She tries to overcome it by drinking vinegar, but you should not allow it.

A teacher: How can we work with children who absolutely cannot concentrate?

Dr. Steiner: With such children it might not be so bad if you tried to give them something moderately sweet, that is, to put them more on a sweet, rather than a salty, diet.

A teacher asks about a girl in the first grade.

Dr. Steiner: First try to get the parents to give her a warm stomach wrap, perhaps even a little damp, for a longer period, so that the astral body becomes more firmly seated in the limb-metabolic being. Silver would be the right remedy for her. For her, much depends upon getting the metabolic-limb system to take over the activities of the astral body. Give her silver and stomach wraps. She is a child who does not live in herself and is not in her metabolism at all. You need to have the entire picture when attempting to treat specific cases.

The school doctor: I thought we would arrange things later on so that I can see the children everyday.

Dr. Steiner: Today, I was speaking specifically about children’s organisms. Perhaps it would be good go through this again in relation to the physicians’ course, so we could be more specific.

We now have a report about the new administrative organization.

A teacher: I wrote the report about what we decided at the last meeting. It contains the results of the work of the preparatory committee. The other things we need to do are the concern of the administrative committee.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps it would be good if faculty members said something about any of the individual points they think we need to speak about.

Current committee administrator: I think it is important that we work toward a new attitude in our meetings. There should be no one here who thinks the meetings are not necessary. The indifference we now bring to our meetings must disappear. I think we could bring an attitude to the meetings that would give them some meaning. I think our meetings would then have something that was much stronger earlier, when the effects of the seminar were still active in us. This is not a new thought. We will try to leave the concerns of the administrative committee outside the meetings.

The parents have asked for a lecture.

Dr. Steiner: We first must work with the Anthroposophical Society so that it can continue to exist, so we will have to put that off. I feel like I have contracted lockjaw from the bad attitude toward the meetings.

A teacher: We should not present things to the full plenum that we can easily take care of in private discussions. Bad forces have taken over the meetings. I have given some thought to how we could form the meetings so that only good forces are present.

Dr. Steiner: As in all such things, those who are most dissatisfied with our gatherings could do the most toward making them better by personally trying to make them better. If the meetings appear ugly, couldn’t you try to make them as nice as possible? If you notice they are difficult for you, and that you need to rid yourself of something after the meeting, then the situation will be better if you behave so that others will feel good when they leave. At the next meeting, you will also feel better. We should not ask anything from the meetings, but rather believe we should give. It is not very fruitful to criticize such things; instead try to improve things in yourself.

Much of what you have said concerns the interactions of faculty members and really requires much more consideration than you give it. We can say that, aside from some individual things that need improvement, the teaching has been very satisfactory recently. It has greatly improved. In contrast, there is a certain coldness, a kind of frigidity, in the interactions between faculty members. The meetings can create a bad atmosphere only if that coldness becomes too great. We can counteract that by working with the interactions between teachers.

When you say you cannot meet one another at the meetings, that seems rather strange to me in a group that is together from morning to night and sees one another during every break. During every break you have an opportunity for smiling at one another, for speaking in a friendly way to each other, for exchanging warmth. There are so many opportunities for developing a certain kind of vivacity, that I cannot understand why you need to do that only in the meetings. In the meetings, we should each present our best side. The problem is that you simply pass by one another and do not smile enough at each other. We can certainly speak the truth bluntly to one another, as that aids digestion and hurts nothing when said at the proper time. On the other hand, though, our relationships must be such that each one knows that the others feel that way about me not only because I am sympathetic or unsympathetic, but also because I am a teacher in the Waldorf School. That is something that is generally necessary in anthroposophy here in Stuttgart. Here, people meet one another in the Anthroposophical Society in just the same way as they would anywhere else, but what is necessary is that they meet one another in a certain way because the other is also an anthroposophist. teachers should meet one another in the Waldorf School in just the same way. That gives a special tone in every expression made during the school breaks, whether smiling or making accusations. I see too many sour faces. We need to pay more attention to that.

That is why I got a kind of lockjaw when there was so much discussion about the bad atmosphere in the meetings, because it meant that there must be a bad attitude toward one another, or an attitude of indifference. I cannot understand why there isn’t an atmosphere of great happiness when all the Waldorf teachers sit around one table. The proper attitude would be to think to ourselves, we haven’t had a meeting for a week, but now I am so happy to be able to sit with everyone again. When I see that is not the case, I get a kind of cramp. There should be no Waldorf teachers who do not look on the others with good intent. We do not need to resolve questions of conscience here in the plenum. When we have such relationships between members of the faculty, we can certainly take care of those questions individually. I can easily imagine everything moving quite smoothly.

It would certainly be quite nice if the teachers met now and then for a picnic. Each of you should try to make the meetings as lively as possible for everyone, so there is no need to complain. If someone thought of complaining, they should change their thought into asking, “What should I do so that things are better next time?” Otherwise, they would be a kind of outcast, and they would be that only if they had a bad attitude toward the meetings. Are there any other malcontents?

A teacher: The problem of discipline is continually discussed without any positive conclusion.

Dr. Steiner: In general, there are a number of things we could object to regarding discipline in the lower grades, but in the upper grades there is not so much. I do not know how you could expect to have better behaved children. They are just average children. Aside from the fact that the children in the lower grades need to be more active, I can only say that, in a certain sense, I have seen classes that are really very good in regard to discipline. This question of discipline can be a cause of distress forever, and if it were, we would have to discuss it continually. We cannot have the attitude that we do not want to discuss the question of discipline in our meetings simply because it is unpleasant. That is exactly why we do need to discuss it. I would like to mention a concern about discipline that has a kind of legendary significance. This may be important only outside of the school, in the [Waldorf-Astoria] Company. Many of you may think this is not a question for our meetings, but I do not know which members of the faculty I would call together to discuss this problem. In this question, we do not need to point to one person or another.

There may be teachers in the Waldorf School who slap the children, and so forth. That is something I would like to take care of in private discussions. I have heard it said that the Waldorf teachers hit the children, and we have discussed that often. The fact is, you cannot improve discipline by hitting the children, that only worsens things. That is something you must take into account. Perhaps no one wants to say anything about this, but my question is whether that is simply a story that has been spread like so many other lies, or have children, in fact, been slapped in the Waldorf School? If that has occurred, it could ruin a great deal. We must hold the ideal of working without doing that; discipline will also be better if we can avoid it.

A teacher: I teach English to the eighth grade, and I found the discipline there terrible.

Dr. Steiner: What do you as the class teacher have to say? The teacher reports.

Dr. Steiner: It would be pedagogically incorrect if we did not take the personal relationship to the children into sufficient account. It is certainly difficult to create, but you must create it and you can create it in individual cases. You should, however, remember that our language instruction is extremely uneven. In spite of the fact that we have a Waldorf pedagogy, there is, for example, sometimes too much grammar in the classes, and the children cannot handle that. Sometimes I absolutely do not understand how you can keep the children quiet at all when you are talking, as sometimes happens, about adverbs and subjunctive cases and so forth. Those are things for which normal children have no interest whatsoever. In such instances, children remain disciplined only because they love the teacher. Given how grammar is taught in language class, there should be no cause for any complaints in that regard. We can really discuss the question only if all the language teachers in the Waldorf School meet in order to find some way of not always talking about things the children do not understand. That, however, is so difficult because there are so many things to do. What is important is that the children can express themselves in the language, not that they know what an adverb or a conjunction is. They learn that, of course, but the way such things are done in many of the classes I have seen, it is not yet Waldorf pedagogy. That is, however, something we need to discuss here in the meetings. There are so many language teachers here and each goes their own way and pays no attention to what the others do, but there are many possibilities for helping one another. I can easily imagine that the children become restless because they do not know what you expect of them. We have handled language class in a haphazard way for too long.

A teacher: We language teachers have already begun.

Dr. Steiner: Recently, I was in a class and the instruction had to do with the present and imperfect tenses. What do you expect the children to do with that when it is not taught in Latin class? How should they understand these expressions? You need to feel that there is so much that is not natural to human beings, particularly in grammar. It is clear that in schools where discipline is maintained through external means, discipline is easier to maintain than where the children are held together through the value of the instruction. I am not saying that such expressions as present and indicative should be done away with, but that you should work with them in such a way that the children can do something with them. What I noticed was that the children did not know what to do with such expressions.

A teacher: There is examination fever in the highest grade. The middle grades are missing the basics.

Dr. Steiner: That is not what they are missing. Look for what they are missing in another area. That is not what they are missing! It is very difficult to say anything when I am not speaking about a class in a specific language, since I find them better than the grammar instruction. Most of our teachers teach foreign languages better than they teach grammar. I think the main problem is that the teachers do not know grammar very well; the teachers do not carry a living grammar within them. Please excuse me that I am upset that you now want to use our meeting to learn grammar. I have to admit that I find the way you use grammar terms horrible. If I were a student, I certainly would not pay attention. I would be noisy because I would not know why people are forcing all of these things into my head. The problem is that you do not use time well, and the teachers do not learn how to acquire a reasonable ability in grammar. That, then, affects the students. The instruction in grammar is shocking, literally. It is purely superficial, so that it is one of the worst things done at school. All the stuff in the grammar books should actually be destroyed in a big bonfire. Life needs to come into it. Then, the problem is that the students do not get a feeling for what the present or past tense is when they really should have a lively feeling for them. The genius of language must live in the teacher. That is also true for teaching German. You torture the children with so much terminology. Do not be angry with me, but it is really so. If you used mathematical terminology the same way you do grammatical terminology, you would soon see how horrible it is. All your horrible habits do not allow you to see how terrible the grammar classes are. This is caused by the culture that has used language to mistreat Europe for such a terribly long time, it has used a language that was not livingly integrated, namely, Latin. That is why we have such a superficial connection to language. That is how things are. The little amount of spirit that comes into grammar comes through Grimm, and that is certainly something we need to admire. Nevertheless, it is only a little spirit. As it is taught today, grammar is the most spiritless thing there is, and that gives a certain color to teaching. I must say there is much more to it than what we do. It is just horrible. We cannot always have everything perfect, which is why I do not always want to criticize and complain. You need a much better inner relationship to language, and then your teaching of language will become better.

It is not always the children’s fault when they do not pay attention in the language classes. Why should they be interested in what an adverb is? That is just a barbaric word. Things only become better when you continually bring in relationships, when you repeatedly come back to the connections between words. If you simply make a child memorize and yourself have no interest in what you had them memorize, the children will no longer learn anything by heart. They will do that only if you return to the subject again in a different connection so that they see there is some sense in learning.

You should not so terribly misunderstand some things, Mr. X. I got a kind of cramp when I saw how you presented The Chymical Wedding today. I said you could do that if you wanted to learn about spiritual activity for yourself, but then you did it in class. After you have done the conclusion, you will see how impossible it is to do The Chymical Wedding in school. It could be very useful if you know something about it yourself, as then you can handle other things appropriately. Now, however, you can do nothing more than present the question of the kings in The Chymical Wedding as pictorially as possible so that the children become aware of how one theme makes a transition into another.

A teacher: How should I do that?

Dr. Steiner: The theme of the three kings goes throughout it. You can find it in The Chymical Wedding and again in Goethe’s Tales. You could show how the same idea was active over centuries, and then tell stories about other themes that lived for centuries. There are a large number of such themes. If you recall, I once mentioned to you how you can see Faust and Mephistopheles as Robert and Trast in Sudermann’s Ehre.

A teacher: In the tenth-grade art class I showed how Schiller developed the word into a musical effect in The Bride of Messina and how Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony moved toward the word through human voice. In the end, Beethoven met Schiller in the “Ode to Joy.” Richard Wagner felt this quite strongly.

Dr. Steiner: It may be quite important to emphasize this relationship of Schiller to Beethoven. That is something the children will feel quite deeply at their age. You can best carry out what you wanted to say about Parzival if you also put the choir in Schiller’s Bride of Messina at the center.

Dr. Steiner: We have received a request from Dr. Karutz regarding the next parent evening; it requires a thorough discussion in the faculty before any public discussion of it. We need to discuss this proposal and, at least within the faculty, we need to arrive at a common perspective. For that reason, I have asked Dr. Karutz to spend the first hour of our meeting with us, so he can give us more information on what he wrote in his letter, and so that we can clearly understanding his request. (The letter is read aloud.)

Now that we have all heard the letter, we can see this is a question we must discuss in regard to basic principles. It would certainly be difficult to carry on a considered and objective discussion during the parent evening, and, since I cannot attend, I would like to discuss the question here. I would like to ask you to say what you would like to say first.

Dr. Karutz says his proposal has a cultural, not a political, intention. His objective is that the parents make a unanimous decision that the French language should no longer be required. He proposes Russian as a replacement.

Dr. Steiner: This question has a number of different aspects. The first is on the cultural side, and any serious pedagogical system must take that into account.

We see in the current activities of the French something that fundamentally cannot be explained from the outside. It is inexplicable because anyone should be able to see, even from the French perspective, that France will not reach its own goals by what it undertook today. We should not view this merely from a cursory political standpoint, but from a historical political perspective. What France is doing today is something like death throes—of course in history such things last a longer time—the death throes of a people in decline and in the process of disappearing from earthly development. Such views arise, of course, from spiritual observation of European history. The French nature is, in a sense, an initial wave of the demise of Romanism—the demise of the Romantic peoples of Europe. Naturally, the Spanish and Italian portions have somewhat more life than the French, who have the least life among the Romantic population.

We can clearly see the decadence of French culture in the language. Among the common languages of Europe, French is the language that, in a sense, most forces the human soul to the surface. It is the language in which it is possible (and this is a paradox) to lie in the most honest way. In that language, it is easiest to lie in the most naïve and honest way, because it lacks any real connection with the inner human being. French is spoken entirely at the surface of the human being.

Consequently, the French language, and thus the French nature, has a certain attitude of the soul. The attitude of the French soul is directed by the French language, whereas in German, the soul controls the inner configuration of the language, the mobility of the language. The French language is currently something that paralyzes—it directs the soul. It rapes the soul, and thus makes the soul hollow, so that French culture is hollowed out under the influence of the French language. Those who have a feeling for such things can see that the soul does not speak in French culture, only a petrified formalism has a voice. The difference is that, in speaking French, the language rules the speaker. The infinite freedom possible in German, and that we should use more than we normally do, that enables you, for instance, to put the subject in any position, depending upon your inner life, does not exist in French.

The reason Germany has brought French into education is not due to pedagogy; we do not teach French in our schools for any pedagogical reasons. We teach it because what was considered useful for a certain group of young people was modified and masked when the old college preparatory high school system was replaced by a number of modern institutions. It is significant that people believed what was available in the old system through Latin could be found in French. People had assumed French had a pedagogical effectiveness similar to that of Latin. That is, however, not true. Latin has a kind of inner logic and brings logic to people instinctively. That is not true of French, which has slipped into clichés and is no longer based on logic. It is only clichés—such things must be stated in a radical way—so that learning French brings a great deal to the surface in children, and that is why a desire to remove French from education has gradually arisen. It is obvious that French will disappear from education in the future.

In the Waldorf School, which exists to make a radical new beginning, we have a different perspective. The school can make a beginning only through the understanding our teachers have for the character of the French language, in that they teach it with an awareness that they are actually teaching something decadent. You do not have to tell that to the children, but we certainly should be clear about it. We are clear about it, but from a different perspective, it is completely out of the question that we here at the Waldorf School begin by fighting to remove French from the curriculum. We cannot do that for purely external reasons. We do not yet have an independent cultural life. We have, of course, a Waldorf School pedagogy based upon the idea of an independent cultural life, but that is only an ideal that we cannot completely implement under the present conditions.

For that reason, we had to sign a declaration when we founded the Waldorf School in which we agreed we would always meet the learning goals of the public schools at appropriate stages. For instance, we have to insure that our nine-year-old children meet the learning goals of the public third grades. We are pedagogically free for periods of three years. In general, we would place ourselves in an impossible position if we did not fulfill these responsibilities. We cannot keep our children from being able to transfer to another educational institution through testing. If we did that, we would rob our children of the possibility of finding their own path in life. There is, therefore, nothing we can do other than attempt to bring as much of the ideal Waldorf pedagogy as possible into the school. We cannot go further than the possibilities allow. If the building in Dornach had not burned down, we would still have been far from obtaining accreditation for the Dornach University. We could not have given doctoral diplomas. Since we must take into account that those children who complete our school may transfer into other learning institutions and universities, we have to allow them to meet learning goals at a particular age.

All this assumes that we teach foreign languages the way we do for inner pedagogical and psychological reasons. Seen from outside, people could say we do not need to begin teaching foreign languages as early as we do. If, however, we are to achieve in a pedagogical way what eighteen-year-old boys and girls need of foreign languages for their final examinations, there is nothing else we can do. Under the assumption that it is justifiable that our children achieve a certain level of education, we must form foreign language instruction as we have. We must swallow the bitter pill of French until we can do something else.

That brings me to what is of primary importance for the work of our movement. You see, well-intended people are always asking our movement to undertake this or that remedy. In the area of medicine, people make all kinds of demands. We need to take the position that we cannot do such things individually, but only through major movements. We have begun to develop medicine in the light of an independent cultural life. Thus, in such a question where we can best find the pedagogical basis through the practical experiences of the Waldorf School, a major movement would need to begin. A single private school, where the light of life could be instantly snuffed out if it undertook such things, cannot do it.

Aside from that, we could not accomplish much. Whether or not our students learned French would make little difference in the cultural status of the German empire. In contrast, a major cultural deed could occur if people overcame all the things connected with the false valuing of French in Middle Europe through a genuine understanding of the things I mentioned and Dr. Karutz also indicated. If people saw that and it became part of their flesh and blood, and if, therefore, the French language disappeared from the schools in a healthy way, then that would be a path toward a major cultural deed. A cultural movement directed toward removing French from the schools could begin that in a proper way while retaining a proper appreciation of French itself. Today, it is no longer valid to teach French for practical reasons. I do not believe that was true even before the war. In countries outside France, people respected French and valued it in teaching, not because of its commercial significance, but because it was used as the language of diplomacy, and because it was used in conversation in the salons of the so-called better circles in society. That, too, came from using French in diplomacy. If this was done with the necessary force and motivation, it could kill two birds with one stone by hitting the decadence of both French and diplomacy. It could show that diplomacy is just as decadent, because it is necessary to lie when being diplomatic. In war, success results in surrounding the opposing forces. The technique of winning a war is to mislead the opponent. Diplomacy is well described by a peculiar statement, namely, “War is the continuation of policies by other means,” something as insightful as “Divorce is a continuation of marriage by other means.” Diplomacy consists of using the same means, but at a different level, as those used to mislead the opponent in war. In this case, a language that can mislead others is required. Nietzsche made a major error when he spoke of the German language as the language of deception. The French language is not the language of deception, but the language of stupefaction that actually brings people outside themselves. Someone who is enthusiastic about speaking French seems like someone who is not quite in control of themselves. That is, of course, expressed in an extreme way. You need to look at things that way, otherwise you will not come to the subtle feelings you need to present in teaching French.

The parents of the Waldorf children can be very sure that we will contribute nothing to the false estimation of the French language. However, we do live under the compulsion of the state and, for that reason, cannot include anything in the constitution of our Waldorf School that would do anything against the French language. We depend upon the creation of a major cultural movement in this regard, one that is objective, one that at some time can also present these views and that values spirituality. If we were to once begin such an action, then we would see that a much different culture would replace today’s. It is important to put forward the differences in evaluation of the languages. We would win some trust and strength from certain people for the mission the German language still has in Western civilization. However, people would still need a feeling for what is declining or rising in the language. In the German language, many elements are still positively developing, although, since High German entered, there is much that can no longer develop. We still have the inner strength to transform words. Under certain circumstances, we can still transform words that have petrified in the substantive into verbs. I have used the word kraften as a verbal form of kraft. And we may also do similar things. People understand them. German still has a lot of inner strength. French no longer has that. Everything is prescribed. When language takes over everything, it corrupts the human soul.

That is what I have to say, Dr. Karutz. You see, we understand your request, but our hands are tied. At the moment, we cannot really discuss the question.

A teacher: The public schools in Bavaria no longer require French.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to wait until Württemberg does something. Since things can quickly change from one day to the next, we will have to make our decisions accordingly. I am not sure that, if French were removed today, it would not be included again later if something did not take hold of human souls at a deeper level.

A teacher: The decision in Bavaria occurred several years ago.

Dr. Steiner: It occurred only now. We will certainly shed no tears about the French language if it comes to that here. Perhaps some of the teachers would like to say something about French.

A teacher: It would not be so easy to do here.

Dr. Steiner: We will address these questions when they become more pressing.

A teacher: I thought it was easier to comprehend the spirit of a language when it is in the process of dying.

Dr. Steiner: That is the case with human beings, but not with languages. The French language is now more dead than Latin was in the Middle Ages when it was already a dead language. There was more spirit living in Latin when it was clergy- and kitchen-Latin than lives in the French language now. What keeps the French language going is the furor, the blood, of the French. The language is actually dead, but the corpse continues to be spoken. This is something that is most apparent in French nineteenth- century poetry. The use of the French language quite certainly corrupts the soul. The soul acquires nothing more than the possibility of clichés. Those who enthusiastically speak French transfer that to other languages. The French are also ruining what maintains their dead language, namely, their blood. The French are committing the terrible brutality of moving black people to Europe, but it works, in an even worse way, back on France. It has an enormous affect on the blood and the race and contributes considerably toward French decadence. The French as a race are reverting.

Marie Steiner: You can notice the superficiality and hollowness of the language when you compare it with Italian. In Italian you can still present the spirituality of the content. That is often lacking in French, the depth disappears.

Dr. Steiner: We had the strangest experiences. Mrs. Steiner translated two major works by Schuré. At the time, there were some reasons for the translation, but we always had a feeling that only through the translation was the actual content of these two works apparent. The reason for that was Schuré’s own development. His first work was L’histoire du Lied, in other words, a history of German lyrics written in French. He was thinking in German but wrote in French. He thinks substantially in German, and had his first cultural impressions from the Wagnerian school. I still remember Mrs. Schuré’s genuinely French fury when she told me that as a student he had sold his gold watch in order to be able to go to Tristan. You can see how the translations of these two works appears as though they were translations into the original language, that is, as though they had originally been written in German. They are thought in German, and the French can feel that in Schuré’s work.

A teacher mentions that German style was transformed by Heine and anti-romantic journalism.

Dr. Steiner: The effects of Heine and Börne have been very colorfully described by Treitschke. There is a wonderful chapter in one of Treitschke’s books on history about the rise of journalism. In it you can see all of Treitschke’s fury. He could be very radical and was often not very tactful.

We once both received an invitation in Weimar, where he saw me for the first time. He couldn’t hear, and you had to write everything for him. He always asked where people came from, and he said that the Austrians are either very clever people or scoundrels.

A teacher: I would like to say how it is for me when I teach French. I overdo it. I get right into it, but nothing is so strenuous as teaching French.

Dr. Steiner: If you meant that in a good sense, I would advise you to overdo yourself in other things more.

Marie Steiner: It is very funny how that affects Rostand in Chantecler. It is a real mess.

Dr. Steiner: The conclusion we should draw is that as long as we have French, we should teach it with the proper attitude and under the proper estimation of its pedagogical value. The remainder we must leave to the future.

Dr. Karutz leaves.

Dr. Steiner: We needed to take care of this matter or it would have come up at the next parent meeting, and I must admit it does not seem right to me to broach the question at this quasi-public occasion. We may not expose ourselves too much in regard to such current questions. This is not a question where we can make compromises. The fact is, we can only maintain our general direction and path if we do not put hurdles in our own way and do not allow ourselves to be drawn into such current questions about pedagogy. If we do, the light of our lives will be snuffed out. We must take this position also regarding less significant questions. Today’s questions about elementary schools will find their answer the moment there is support for the Waldorf School method. Discussions over such things really become quite trivial. When such problems come up, we can certainly participate in the discussion, but we must maintain our position.

Is there anything else to discuss? There is not enough time for a lecture on medicine. Perhaps you could bring some current problems for discussion in the time remaining.

They discuss the many children who are absent from school.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly something to be concerned about. In the first grade, I found only nine of twenty-seven children. That is really terrible. How is it in the other classes?

A teacher: In the 1b class, I had only half the children.

Dr. Steiner: These things are connected with the general state of nutrition. We should be aware that such things appear as illnesses about three and a half years later, that is, malnutrition then appears as an illness. That is something reasonable physicians were aware of at the beginning of the war. Only Abderhalden claimed that hunger during the war had no effects, though he was sometimes reasonable about other questions.

The school doctor: The children’s health is getting continually worse. Of six hundred and fifty children, about one hundred and eighty are severely undernourished.

Dr. Steiner: When we think about the physiological corruption of the children’s organism, we now need to try to make those forces that support the necessary functions of the human organism more effective. We need to make those forces more effective. We need to be aware that the correct view of the human organism views human nutritional and growth forces as located in a kind of reservoir. The way we should imagine that reservoir is a question that leads deeply into occult physiology. Actually, you need to think of a created reservoir out of which the forces for nutrition and digestion and rhythmical processes arise.

Perhaps you can best understand that if I draw your attention to the difference between vegetarian and meat nutrition. If you look at a plant, you will see that the plant completes the mineral and vegetable processes to a certain point, so that as a human being we have to work further upon what the plant has made of earthly substances. We must further transform the substances into the form they should have in the human body. Thus, when I eat plants, I must further transform the final stages of plant existence into what is necessary for human existence. These forces are available in various ways in the human organism, that is, there are forces that create sugar, transform fat or protein. The salts are used in a certain almost physical-chemical way in the organism. These forces exist.

If I eat meat, the mineral and vegetable processes have been continued beyond the stage reached by the plant to that of the animal, and I do not need to change the meat in the same way I need to change plants, because that has already happened in the animal. The animal has already made the changes I should undertake. Thus, if I eat, say, some grass or something like that, I would have to do what a cow would otherwise do. But, if I eat some beef, the cow has relieved me of this inner work. In a sense, I thereby leave the work of the cow in my reservoir of forces. Thus, I fill myself with unused forces. I leave those unused forces within me. Actually, I carry them with me.

That was not meant as some sort of fanaticism for vegetarianism. This can definitely have to do with heredity. Nevertheless, it is correct that when people eat meat, they do not fully use their inner functions. They sentence themselves more easily to gout than when they train their inner functions so that they become vegetarians.

Under some circumstances, the work required with fruit is even greater because it has to be transformed backwards. If you can perform this reverse transformation, you awaken even more forces within your organism. You should, however, not believe that awakening such forces is tiring. Under some circumstances, allowing forces to lie fallow is much more tiring because those forces collect. Thus, you can see that we either fully use the forces in that reservoir, or we leave them unused. I have mentioned all this only as a kind of discussion of how forces act in the organism. All the aspects of human nature, the I, the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, participate in using those forces. The situation in the human being is such that, in general, the development of forces acts in what we might call a centrifugal manner, that is, from within, outward, and from below, upward, depending upon the various parts of the physical body. In general, the development of those forces follows the path of the blood, and it is their responsibility to carry what lies in the blood’s path.

There exists another force counter to those forces, one that goes parallel to the paths of the nerves and is particularly important for the child’s organism,. Everywhere within the human being you will find these two extremes. For example, the blood moves from within toward the outside in the eye, whereas you observe the nerves properly only when you consider that they go from outside, inward. The centripetal forces go parallel to the nerve pathways. These two forces achieve their general harmony through the breathing and circulatory systems and are the two poles of the human threefold organism. The nerves act centripetally. The metabolic- limb system works centrifugally, parallel to the path of the blood. What is important is that the liveliness of all inner functions depends upon the proper interaction of these two systems, and thus these two forces. The centrifugal and centripetal forces need to be properly activated in each individual organ.

Malnutrition during and after the war caused what I saw yesterday in a little child in the first grade. The centrifugal forces in that child have developed only to a dangerously weak point, so that those forces need to be enlivened by support from the outside. That was why I advised giving the child those baths, since they support the centrifugal forces from outside. Those are things that are important when dealing with such acute cases, but of course, they must be applied very individually.

On the other hand, it is necessary to work on improving general nutrition in Germany and Austria. There we can enliven both sides, namely, the centrifugal and centripetal forces. We can enliven the centripetal forces, so that they support the blood stream, primarily through dietary means or through providing medications based upon calcium phosphate. In the reverse situation, we can enliven the centrifugal forces by using calcium carbonate. I said in the reverse situation because calcium carbonate enlivens the nerve system and enlivening the nerves achieves a greater activity in the centrifugal forces. Calcium phosphate enlivens the centrifugal forces, the blood, and thus has a reverse effect upon the nerves.

The effect of the carbon is to enliven the centrifugal forces through the nerves. You can see this enlivening in a coarse way when you simply drink some carbonated water. There, it is the carbon that has the effect. Since we are using a calcium compound, people will have to work with things right into their bones. You can see quite clearly that the bones are included, and that is why this compound should be used, so that people can work right into their bones. This may seem like a strange statement, but physiologically it is correct to say that the bones are the final extension of the nerve system. The nerves are bones at the lowest level of development. They are bones that have been stopped from developing into bones. Nerves tend to become bone-like, only they have been stopped at a very early stage. For that reason, calcium carbonate enlivens the nervous system right into the bones. In contrast, calcium phosphate enables the bones to participate in distributing the blood. The bones play a role in the formation of red blood cells, and that can be increased through calcium phosphate. Oyster shells are an empirical proof of that. Oysters have no blood, which is why we find only calcium carbonate in them.

What you can see from all this is that if you properly combine calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate, you can enliven the organic functions and thus strengthen the organism when it is too weak to digest what comes into the stomach.

That is the cause of modern malnutrition. The problem is not that there is no food, but that the food is not used beyond the intestine because the organism is so weak. The body actually takes in only a little bit of the chyme. That could be improved if we strengthened those forces related to organic forces.

This needs to be done alternately, so that the calcium carbonate is taken at the night and the calcium phosphate is taken in the morning so that it is effective during the day. Thus, the calcium phosphate would be connected with the activity of the nervous system, and the calcium carbonate active during the night will strengthen the blood system.

I think that a sufficient dose of calcium carbonate would be 5% and of calcium phosphate, .5% at a potency of 5X or 6X. In connection with calcium phosphate, the higher the potency, the better, but calcium carbonate is allopathic.

What we actually have here is a genuine illness that we should, therefore, heal. No one should complain that we want to give all the children some medicine. Since we actually have an epidemic, we should undertake mass treatment. That is a commandment of genuine love of humanity.

A teacher: We would have to discuss that with the parents.

Dr. Steiner: That is something we cannot easily do in a parent evening, although I think it would be basically proper. Nevertheless, we should not become too prominent, so you should speak with the parents individually.

The school doctor: If we did that on a broad scale, we could discuss it with the parents. There are some financial difficulties, and we would also be entering the realm of the local doctors.

Dr. Steiner: We can expect the support from the Clinical Therapeutic Institute. The other thing is, it is advisable not to treat such things as medicine at all. Nevertheless, some of these things lie right at the limits of diet, so we do not really have to consider this a question for physicians. To restate it, first, Palmer at the institute could give us some support, and second, we do not need to see this as medicine. It is a dietary question and therefore we do not need any medical justification. The third thing is that the parents would pay nothing for it. Doctors start to get nasty if you require payment. I think it would be difficult to use genuine medications. In connection with calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate, we could take the position that they are simply dietary supplements. We could even extend this and make it into a kind of popular movement, so that people simply received a dietary supplement through one of these preparations at the table, just as we might put salt on the table. You certainly do not need a doctor for that. Today, I wanted to handle only the general question. This is how we would have to take care of it if we are to handle public questions with the slightest bit of reason.

A teacher presents the request of a mother who wants to have her son put in a parallel fourth-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: The lady told me she believes that her child cannot work in the present class, and the class teacher also wants the child to leave. She is not bothered by that, but now she is asking that he be put in a parallel class. I have nothing against that if it is best for the child. My only question is whether Mr. K. would take him. He is one of the few boys who does not want to be taught by a female teacher. If the parallel class were also taught by a woman, he would have no interest in it. Now that we have the request, and you don’t have anything against it, perhaps it is best to do it. Is there anything else we need to do?

A teacher: S.R. does not want to participate in shop because of his music instruction.

Dr. Steiner: If such things come up often, then we will have to create a category of special students who can have such changes, and whose parents are ready to be responsible for the student not meeting the goals of our teaching. We would have to handle each case that way. We would have to treat him as a special student.

A teacher: The children often ask what is the deeper meaning of learning to spin yarn.

Dr. Steiner: It is something that enhances the life of their souls, and they also learn something about genuinely practical life through spinning. You cannot really learn anything about practical life by just watching how something is done, only by doing it the way it is really done. The children should also notice that you can learn to make a pair of shoes in a week, but a shoemaker’s apprenticeship lasts three years.

A teacher asks how to present The Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You have already done that, haven’t you? You need to first teach the children about the whole context of The Song of the Niebelungs, so that they understand how it fits into the historical perspective. You should do that as pictorially as possible, similar to the way I did Parzival and Christianity in Dr. Stein’s class. It took place during the time of the Great Migrations. Present it in a very lively way and then give the children some examples. Teach it so that the children first have a complete picture, not with boring lectures, but in an exciting, pictorial way. Give them a picture of what you will read to them as an example. Above all, see to it that you are not the only one who reads. The children should also read in a way that is not boring, through the way you gave them a proper picture. It is not possible to read in a boring way if you have given them the proper picture. Stop for a moment at some of the interesting passages where you can say something about the beautiful words. It is possible to create some real excitement and illuminate the whole scene from some individual words or phrases. If you do that, you will have given the children enough.

A teacher: What could I use as a historical source?

Dr. Steiner: You can use any book on the history of the Middle Ages. The history has been so worked over that any fool could do it in the same way. A person would not need to be particularly insightful. Those history books are all the same.

A teacher asks whether a book on mathematics should be written for the use of the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: A teaching guide for mathematics and geometry in the upper grades would be good. You would need to write it so that the material is presented in a very clear way, so the reader does not drown in the amount of material and important things are not missing. All textbooks are really unusable. They are not very helpful. It should be a text without any remarks or figures that you can read like a novel.

As a boy of about fourteen or fifteen, I once wrote one myself, because all of the geometry books were so boring. It is too bad I no longer have it. It was not bad, you could read it like a novel. It might be interesting if you put it together as connected text that reads like a novel. It does not need to be as voluminous as things are today, and we could even have one edition for teachers and a still shorter edition for children, like a short story. Children would be very thankful if every day in class they could read a page or two about geometry written in a readable form. There are no good books anymore. The books on geography are horribly written. The grammar books are terrible. This is something that The Coming Day publishing company could do.

A teacher asks about speech exercises for a child in the first grade who has a very soft voice.

Dr. Steiner: I would have to see and hear him. Perhaps you could show him to me when I am here for the delegates’ conference.

At the beginning, Graf Bothmer gave a lecture about teaching gymnastics with approximately the following content:

Should boys and girls participate together or exercise in the same room, but separately? Girls hold the boys up. Should we group the children according to their temperaments? That would be the ideal.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps I can say something more general about gymnastics later. When we have time before the beginning of the new school year, I can discuss gymnastic exercises in relationship to the child’s age and how to make them whole. That is what we will do. Today, I would like to speak about what you just presented. Please consider what I do not speak about as meaning I agree with what you said. I will not emphasize anything I agree with.

Concerning the relationship of gymnastics to eurythmy, there can actually not be any conflict between gymnastics and eurythmy. In general, we can generally see gymnastics exercises and how they are presented as a continuation of eurythmy exercises. Suppose we take a particular movement of the arm in eurythmy and a corresponding movement in gymnastics. In eurythmy we need to take care that the form of the movement itself lies nearer the center of the body than it would in gymnastics. Thus, there can actually be no conflict.

You can best understand that when you realize that in eurythmy you are primarily concerned with that part of the human organism that is directly connected with the inner breathing process. Thus, what an arm or leg, a finger or toe does in eurythmy is directly connected with what plays out as the inner breathing process, that process of the transition from air to blood. On the other hand, what happens in gymnastics is primarily connected with the human organic process basic to the transition from blood to muscle. That is primarily physiological and sheds complete light upon what we develop. As soon as we understand that instinctively or intuitively, we will see that every movement in gymnastics is connected with strengthening the muscles, with their growth, and with making them elastic by forcing blood into the muscles. The more you understand that, the more you will be able to develop free exercises.

We can say the same thing from a different perspective. Eurythmy is primarily a pliable forming of the organism. Or, I could also say that eurythmy exists in the sculpting of the organism. Gymnastics lives in the statics and the dynamics of the organism. Of course, you, Graf Bothmer, felt that when you mentioned that the children feel the room during gymnastics. You can best understand that through the picture of how an arm or leg moves in space, or their relationships to weight.

That we do not have any conflict with eurythmy, we can see if we take character into account. We do that much too little in pedagogical eurythmy because it is not so important in artistic presentations, but it is much more important in pedagogy. If you have seen the eurythmy figures, you will have noticed that we differentiate between movement, feeling, and character. In movement and feeling, which you have taken into account almost exclusively, things are going well. However, character has not permeated eurythmic movements to any great extent. That is natural because it has no great importance in artistic eurythmy that is viewed by others.

In contrast, the character of a movement should be a significant part in pedagogical eurythmy. A person doing the eurythmy should feel how a movement or position flows back into their own feeling. For example, such a person should feel the pressure of one limb upon another in a eurythmy movement and how that pressure flows back into the center of the body. For that reason, I colored the eurythmy figures so that it would be clear. You will find three colors in all the eurythmy figures. One is for the movement, the second, which is like a veil over the first, is for feeling, and the third is for character. For a person doing eurythmy, it indicates the specific part of the body where the muscles should be tensed, and the feeling that muscle tension should produce. That is part of the life of eurythmy within the form of the body.

The students have asked if we could present the figures during the pedagogical week at Easter, so I will bring them here. We should have such a series here. The Waldorf teachers should study those figures because they are also important for a more psychological physiology. The Waldorf teachers should study them to gain greater understanding of the human organism. At the same time, they can form the basis of a more general feeling for art, for a greater understanding of the inner aspects of the human organism.

We can, therefore, say that the gymnastics teacher should have an idea of the spiritual relationship of statics and dynamics in the human organism. The gymnastics teacher should have a clear picture of what it means to raise a leg or to drop an arm in relationship to gravity. On the other hand, the eurythmy teacher should have a strong feeling for what will develop the limbs sculpturally. It is incorrect to say that the gymnastics teacher is like a sculptor. That would be true for the eurythmy teacher. The work of gymnastics teachers is to picture an ideal human being in terms of lines, forms, and movements to which they must develop these lazy, sloppy people they have before them. You were certainly correct when you mentioned how children should carry themselves. Whereas the eurythmy teacher should work so that the muscles feel themselves, feel how they gain strength through the character of the movement, the gymnastics teacher should feel how people can properly perceive the heaviness or lightness of a limb. The child should learn, not through reason, but instinctively, how to perceive the lifting of an arm or leg in relationship to gravity. Children should, for example, develop a feeling for how their foot becomes heavy when they stand on one leg and lift the other.

The task of the gymnastics teacher is, therefore, to place the dynamic ideal human being he or she carries in his or her soul into another person. Of course, the artistic must also play a role, since we can realize human statics or dynamics only through artistic feeling. Whereas, artistic feeling plays a major role in eurythmic sculpturing, it must precede the forms the gymnastics teacher creates statically and dynamically.

Concerning the question of breathing, it is significant that eurythmy lies closer to the breath, whereas gymnastics lies closer to the blood process. Aside from the fact that the tempo of breathing increases during the course of the exercises, something that is a physiological process, it is important that we should develop gymnastic technique in such a way that it does not affect the breathing process. We could call a gymnastics exercise incorrect if, while maintaining the proper physical position, the exercise negatively affects the breathing process. We should exclude those gymnastic exercises that disturb the breathing process, even though the body is properly held. Now that I have seen everything you are doing, it seems to me that all the breathing exercises in modern gymnastic methods are directed toward maintaining proper posture, and that breathing is treated as a reaction. I have noticed that all the things presented are directed primarily toward creating proper posture, at least to the extent it is expressed through the breathing process. That is something Swedish gymnastics for the most part takes into account. That is what I want to say about that.

In gymnastics, it is important that we take the will into account. The teacher must, therefore, whether instinctively or intuitively, live directly into the connection between movements of the body and expressions of the will. The teacher must have a feeling for what the connection between movement and will is. In eurythmy, there is also a development of will, but one that uses a more indirect path through inner feeling and occurs at a level where will is expressed through feeling. That is what I just referred to as character, and it is the experience of feeling in an act of will. The gymnastics teacher works directly with the act of will, but the eurythmy teacher works with experiencing the feeling in an act of will. You can see how there is everywhere a very strict separation and we need to take that into account when developing a curriculum. Perhaps we cannot immediately do that, but we should certainly see it as our ideal. Then, from these two things we will clearly see why it is much easier for girls in eurythmy and for boys in gymnastics. Things are more clearly differentiated with boys. For that reason, we will, in fact, have to allow the boys and girls to do their gymnastics in the same room, but in different groups. The girls can form a group for themselves and do those exercises that create a relationship between them. If we do such exercises that are modified for boys and girls, they will enjoy them more.

I think we will see that when we discuss the curriculum in detail. That is also true of the differences in age.

Concerning exercises with equipment, I would like to remark that we could modify the form of the equipment and make it more appropriate. In that way, at least to an extent, we can make the most common pieces of equipment not quite so bad, so we can do something with them. Although I do not want to be fanatical about this, I would also like to see that we have no climbing poles, but I don’t want to complain about them too much.

Those people who have observed what boys in the villages do when a tree is brought from the woods and placed atop a pole on a church holiday will know how valuable such climbing poles can be. Up there, a few branches remain with a small kerchief, a piece of candy, or maybe a small bottle of wine, and the boys have to climb their way up to that little tree attached to the top of the pole from which the bark has been removed. The victor is the boy who brings it down. That very strongly connects the activity of the will to the nature of the body. We do this same thing artificially with a climbing pole. It is certainly better when the children have to learn how to climb a rope. The pole has a rather limited significance in gymnastics, I would say, but I do not want to completely remove it. With the parallel and high bars, with the horse and so forth, if they are properly used, you can certainly gain something from them.

I also agree you should do the exercises, at least to an extent, by combining the different pieces of equipment, because that emphasizes what equipment exercises should achieve, namely, more presence of mind. That has a secondary effect of also strengthening the muscles. The children thus develop proper strength and elasticity.

I also agree that the high bar should be more prominent, and that it will gain that through a kind of observation, not an observation with the eyes, but through bodily feelings. One useful exercise would be to have the children swing so they must then catch the bar. They would need to hold themselves in the air. That is only an example to give the direction I am thinking of. It could be done with the hands or also with the entire arms, but the movement really becomes significant only if it is done with the arms. You could, however, allow the children to begin with their hands.

These things that allow the children to feel the device with their entire body can also give them a greater sympathy for the equipment. That is particularly true with the high bar when the children learn to work on it with their legs. You could combine exercises with the high bar by first having them do what I mentioned above and then having them “walk” the bar with their legs dangling.

All that simply gives the spirit of the direction. I don’t think I need to speak about dead equipment and simple routine. That is the way things were, but things do not need to be routine when we emphasize this way of experiencing the equipment. The children can use their legs in wonderful ways on the bars.

I completely agree with what you said about games and sports. Our gymnastics should lead to what you described.

We want to discuss the gymnastics curriculum at the next opportunity. Then, we will also consider the temperaments at various ages.

The school doctor: Some of the anemic older girls often become tired easily.

Dr. Steiner: This is where the pathology and therapy of gymnastics begins. What you have termed “gymnastics pain” arises because the process between the blood and the muscles in such children leads to the crystallization of uric acid. What is important is that we combat this nearly inorganic metabolic process through diet. That is, of course, a task only when we see that gymnastics tires the children beyond a certain degree. At that point, we need to try therapy. Through gymnastics we can most easily see whether a child is healthy or not. If you wanted to determine whether someone will have gout in three years, you could have that person do some physical exercise, and if he or she shows some kind of gout-like feelings, that person will most certainly have gout within three years. Today, when children are so malnourished, many of them will have such symptoms because the process between the blood and muscles no longer functions properly.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to do something. Mrs. R. gave me a donation. I have discussed the matter with her, and these million Marks should be used to start a fund so that something can be done about the children’s nutrition. I would like to see these million Marks she gave used to improve the children’s health. We should create such a fund, and this could be its foundation.

A teacher asks about how to occupy the children during breaks and on field trips.

Dr. Steiner: The question of children’s play is certainly appropriate. We should not overdo play since it could soften the children. It is valid to object if there is insufficient time for play, but we could also make a valid objection now. Nevertheless, I would say that it is not sufficient to speak just about play. When the children need a break, what is important is to allow them to sit. First, they need to sit and eat. They need to be able to occupy themselves with that, but quite consciously and with real appetite. When they have fully satisfied their hunger, you can allow them to play, as you have done. If you lead this activity, you must try to see to it that they eat as slowly as possible, so that they use the time available for eating to savor every bite.

Games where the children just crawl around are not very good. Children’s play should require their attention, and their games should offer them some enjoyment. What you have described gives them some enjoyment because of their anticipation. Amusement is necessary in games. You also need to be sure the children drink, so they have fluid throughout their bodies before you continue the field trips. There is no harm in allowing them to drink when they sit down during a break. During the break, they should begin with eating, and drink at the end. The time in between should be amusing, so that their souls are occupied with anticipation, with solving a problem, with excitement or disappointment. That is how we should include the element of entertainment. What you are doing now is simply boring. Sports are not particularly exciting, they are actually boring. In games, we need to avoid being like the English. Our games should not be influenced by the West. They should be healthy, entertaining games.

I certainly do not want to imply that the old games are very good simply because they come from older times. They need to be replaced. Blind Man’s Bluff or such things are the right thing. Or, A-Tisket, A-Tasket. In other words, games that do not require a lot of effort, but that are amusing. When the children are resting, they should first have something good to eat. I would also have them stretch, or perhaps sing. After they have played for a while, they could sing, have something to drink, and end the break.

A teacher asks about marching and singing.

Dr. Steiner: These military or war-like games can be done in a healthy way if they are done artistically. What was done where I grew up was pure nonsense. Someone composed some sentences, and then two from the group of children shouted out one sentence. The others standing further away could no longer understand what was said. We need to drop things like that. On the other hand, if we connect something genuinely rhythmic with walking as a group or with marching, that is quite proper. When art plays a part, you can allow people to do something as a group, allow them to think together, or something of that sort. It is important that there is no fooling around. Playing Cowboys and Indians and so forth is healthy if it is done with spirit. We can differentiate among all those things, between play at the right time and sport. Healthy play occupies you with something you enjoy because of the movement in healthy thinking and feeling. Sports are so bad because you simply move without any thinking, and thus become lazy in your thinking. People want to do things so they do not have to be mobile in their thought and feeling. It would be good if we could remove from our bodies those things that exist in the English-speaking world due to their belief in sports.

A question is asked about cooking outdoors.

Dr. Steiner: That is good to do since it extends mealtime, that is, it extends the time used for eating. There is nothing better. When you take the children outside, you should extend their mealtime during rest period as far as possible. It is best if you make them as uncomfortable as possible, so that they have to make some effort.

A teacher: Should we have swimming in school?

Dr. Steiner: That would hurt nothing and could be quite good. However, I think that for technical as well as scheduling reasons, it would not be possible. We need to do what is possible under present circumstances.

The gymnastics teacher: Could we arrange to have showers?

Dr. Steiner: That would be good. The only problem then is that when it becomes known that a child is lacking in that area, then people think that the child has to be bathed. If we had showers, we would have to avoid that kind of negative thought, but that is, of course, often difficult to do. If we had a boarding school, we could do all sorts of such valuable things. I have, however, found no way of avoiding such negative thoughts. We should see to it, however, that the children come to school properly dressed and washed. There would be no negative opinions if we required children to come to school clean and well-kept. In such cases, there is sometimes something pathological present. There are people who cannot avoid looking dirty and smelling bad even when they are washed. I would agree to having showers, but we would have to find some way to connect it with a moral perspective.

A teacher: Should I take up Virgil in Latin? Perhaps the Fourth Song of the Aeneid.

Dr. Steiner: That would be very good if you could connect it with other things. Very good indeed.

Dr. Steiner: We want to take a look at how things should run.

They decide upon a provisional assignment of subjects for the coming school year.

Dr. Steiner: We have always divided the subjects beginning with the ninth grade, so that the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades have separate subjects. We have had some difficulties in that regard, and I would ask you to look into them. We are still missing eight hours of ancient languages since we are missing one teacher. Tittmann is coming to teach modern languages. If possible, I would like to have Dr. Lehrs teach mathematics and natural sciences for the higher grades. I think that Lehrs could also teach Latin for the lower grades. He has much goodwill and is also very capable in mathematics and physics, so I think he will do well here.

We have still not decided upon the 1a, 1b, and 3b classes. Miss Bernhardi could still take over one of the lower grades, and we are also considering two other ladies. For the upper grades, we will need to find some way of unburdening the teachers. In any event, we will still have Tittmann and Lehrs.

Now I can think about other things. In handwork, I am thinking of Miss Christern. Mrs. Baumann will not return until fall. Mrs. Fels will continue with her class. The question now is whether the one more teacher can handle remaining periods.

Marie Steiner: I would suggest Miss Wilke.

Dr. Steiner: She could teach for the time being and replace Mrs. Husemann who had been substituting for Mrs. Baumann.

Aside from the question of scheduling, I would like to know if there are any other wishes.

A teacher: The twelfth grade are anxious about their examinations.

Dr. Steiner: We still need to discuss the schedule for the twelfth grade. It would be good if someone got a description of the standard college preparatory teaching goals for the twelfth grade. I would then arrange the class plan so that we could promise people—of course, they could always fail, we cannot guarantee anything.

The difficulty is that there is much too much lecturing, and in spite of the fact that we have often discussed this, you are still not having the students participate enough. We therefore need to be certain that the students in the twelfth grade participate more. We cannot say they are incapable, but what they have learned doesn’t stick to them strongly enough for them to get past their anxiety about the upcoming examinations. They cannot get past their anxiety. Those wonderful lectures are quite nice for the students, but they do not retain them.

It would be a good idea if you gave me the standard teaching goals for the eleventh and twelfth grades when I am here tomorrow, so we can see how things actually are. We need to see if we can help the children past their anxiety.

We have no reason to have a thirteenth grade as they do in Bavaria. Imagine the problems we would have if we had to say we needed a thirteenth grade.

I don’t think the question of the examination problem will change. We will, however, have to limit our lecturing and allow the students to participate more.

A teacher asks about admitting the students to anthroposophical lectures.

Dr. Steiner: The school cannot possibly state it agrees with that. It would be difficult to keep them out according to the Society regulations, but this must not be a school question. The school could even raise an objection.

It is not a good idea that they attend Society lectures without being members. Earlier, very young members were also accepted. It is a shame the Waldorf School cannot raise an objection, since it is actually nonsense for the middle-grade students to attend the lectures.

Marie Steiner: It seems that some of the children have witnessed the self-destructiveness present in the Society. It might be possible for the Society to object to their presence.

Dr. Steiner: It would be best if such young children did not attend things not intended for them. In the Waldorf School, we assume they do not do such things, but if we forbid it, there will be a revolution. We need to assume that the children are so occupied by the Waldorf School that they could not possibly meet the learning goals if they also attended other lectures. That is an obvious perspective. We may expect that Ch. O., now in the first grade, will be listening to anthroposophical lectures. Part of the regulations of the Anthroposophical Society is that only adults are accepted, and minors are accepted only with the approval of their parents.

Marie Steiner: How can children who are not members get in? At occasions such as this, we can certainly see how idiotic that is. It is disastrous. This is impossible.

Dr. Steiner: The school should advise against it and we need to have at least enough connection with the students that that has an effect, but we cannot simply throw out those who are already members.

A religion teacher: We are introducing the 8a and 8b classes to the Youth Service. H.R. and L.F. would like to be confirmed in the Christian Community, and that is also their parents’ desire.

Dr. Steiner: That does not concern us here. Those children who participate in the Independent Religious Instruction can be confirmed there when they have reached the required age. It is, of course, also possible that they do not want that, but if they do, why shouldn’t we allow them to participate? If they do not want to, then they do not need to. But if they want to participate in both of the youth services, we can do nothing about that. There isn’t any real difference. It’s all the same to us what occurs there. In the end, what is important is whether the children want to participate in the Sunday services. We can leave it up to the children whether they want to or not. We cannot require them to go to the Youth Service. The answer to the question is obvious. We cannot discuss it. We have no reason to negotiate with the Free Religious Movement. We can do what we want, and they can do what they want. The children would then have it twice. I have always understood that we do not need to worry about it because it is a question for the Free Religious Movement. We cannot stop parents from sending their children there to be confirmed. Religious instruction is not obligatory. We cannot make any draconian rules. The children will certainly stay away if we make draconian rules. Someone might participate in the Independent Religious Instruction without going to the Youth Service, but not the other way around. That girl can certainly participate in both. If she does not do something, it would not be good if she went to our Youth Service, but perhaps the father doesn’t notice that at all. It is the parents who are responsible, not us.

A teacher: One girl occasionally faints at the Sunday service.

Dr. Steiner: We should do it twice, one for each half of the children. A teacher: The tenth and eleventh-grade children could come to the sacrament. Should the ninth-grade children also participate?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, they can. We can divide the Youth Service by class. Mr. Uehli will be the main celebrant at both.

A teacher: Should B.B. receive additional instruction? Also, N.N.?

Dr. Steiner: This all began last year. Is it possible he could be handled alone? Perhaps he would realize he is not really very nice at school. Perhaps we could give him individual instruction for the remainder of the year. It looks as if that would have a purpose, but only if we were to make it so that he realized he had done something wrong here at school, so that for the weeks until Easter, he has to attend such a class. I think that he is really a very nice boy, but he is asleep. In this way, he may wake up.

There are a lot of new bright children around. The question is whether they are really so bright when you ask them to do something. Concerning N.N., he is not very good in handling money. B. needs individual instruction. I will take another look at these two boys.

A teacher asks about two students in the fourth grade who are completely incapable in foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We could ask the parents if they would forego the language class. That is something we could ask parents. In fact, that is something we can generally do for the children in the remedial class.

A teacher: P.M. in the fifth grade cannot add.

Dr. Steiner: We could ask the parents if they would allow him to repeat the class.

A teacher: L.B. has been mistreated and is afraid.

Dr. Steiner: Treat her with patience.

A teacher: A girl in my eighth-grade class has only attended a country school in Silesia.

Dr. Steiner: We will need to carry her along. She should remain in the class, and she will find her way.