The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This meeting took place following the Pedagogical Conference.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing I would like to say is that we can be deeply satisfied when we look back over the previous years. The conference was extremely satisfying. The way the Waldorf School was described, the way the various subjects were presented, the way individual speakers gave their presentations, made the conference very good both inwardly and outwardly. The conference most certainly made a great impression upon the visitors. We will undoubtedly overcome the difficulties we confront, particularly the financial difficulties, through presenting such conferences, if we can just hold out long enough to reach as many people as possible.

We certainly need to be thankful to all those who worked to make the conference such an extraordinary success. We need to recognize the significant efforts you made for the conference in spite of all the work you have to do in the school during the year. I only hope that you are not too tired to make this new school year just as good as the ending of the last. You can, of course, assume I fully support everything you have done. I particularly want to thank the people who organized the conference for their enormous work. I think the entire faculty needs to be very thankful to those individuals.

There are two things I believe are important to say now. I want to mention them to the extent that they are appropriate within the faculty. The first concerns general anthroposophical activities, and the second relates to what I believe may be important for future conferences. Nevertheless, I want to expressly emphasize that this past conference was extraordinarily successful.

The first thing I would like to say is that if we want future conferences to be successful, we will need to really understand what is going on in Stuttgart when such a conference is held. In particular, we will need to understand what happens within the Anthroposophical Society itself. If we do not understand the environment in which we live, we will run a certain risk. The Waldorf School did not create this difficult situation, but in the future we must see that the school reaches an understanding with the Society so that if the majority of participants at our next conference are anthroposophists, they will not be in the position of having no opportunity to hear anything specifically anthroposophic. That is, we must avoid having people travel a long distance to a conference where nothing is said about Anthroposophy. This completely ignores the anthroposophical movement as such. That situation clearly formed the background and significantly affected the whole conference, which was itself the result of enormous effort and sacrifice. It would, of course, have been an enormous advantage had someone asked for a specifically anthroposophical session during the conference.

Of course, the anthroposophical committee (actually, there are two) gave no thought to the fact that such meetings would be entirely appropriate, even though they knew a large number of anthroposophists would be here. You should have no illusions about that. A large number of people came with the justifiable expectation of meetings more connected with anthroposophy, an expectation that would be unjustifiable if the conference did not have an anthroposophic background.

You will find genuine supporters for the Waldorf School only among people who understand anthroposophy. You should not expect that the impressions of the moment will have any lasting effect on others or that this conference will not give rise to opposition, which will then be unloaded on me. Even the most wonderful conference, if we forget such things, will give rise to opposition that will be unloaded on me. Things will be better in such cases if we are careful to create an understanding within the Anthroposophical Society. Then we could show that anthroposophy exists within the school, but because of its nature, anthroposophy does not tend to turn what it creates into something specifically anthroposophical. Anthroposophy exists to make something more generally human.

Dr. Schubert emphasized that very well. If you create wonderful rules and find them to be very valuable, but then put them over a hole, you will soon find that those rules no longer exist. That is what we do not consider. We create the most beautiful things, but they exist without any foundation. The foundation must be the anthroposophical movement. We are slowly coming to the same place as the old Austrian empire when the various realms disintegrated and the empire no longer existed. We are faced with the absurdity that there are two newsletters containing absolutely nothing. We face the danger of the Anthroposophical Society disintegrating into a number of individual movements. We face the danger that we will have the Waldorf School, The Coming Day, and so forth, but no longer an Anthroposophical Society. In that situation, there will no longer be any interest for our movement as a whole.

We can be polite to school officials, but you should not expect any success through them. If you believe they can be a source of our success, you are creating an illusion for yourself. That is just the problem, we create illusions. That is something we should not do, or else one day we will find the most beautiful forces poised over a hole. That is something we must avoid, something we must seriously consider. We should not limit the future of the whole movement by allowing the brilliance of such a conference to blind us.

I would also like to mention that in the future we must avoid emphasizing the negative and critical aspects too strongly. The first mention will not have much influence because the people who heard it will soon forget it unless opposition was lying dormant in their souls. That negative aspect existed in even the best lectures, and is something we must significantly reduce. I am certainly not against hitting people with a sledgehammer, but we should avoid being negative. Dr. N.’s lecture was filled with negative examples. Such things eat away at people if they hear them repeatedly. You spoke about experience in history, but then argued horribly against documents in connection with Herman Grimm. Grimm often stressed that we can speak about history only to the extent we have material about it. If you tell people they should base history upon inner experience and ignore documents, they will object, saying, “What does this Dr. N. know about history? He never even studied it!” Then, what you said simply collapses. (Speaking to another teacher) On the next day, you had to show that you do use documents.

In such cases, we certainly need to place documents in the proper light. You can tell people only that we must first illuminate every document. The sun that sheds light on a document cannot come from the documents themselves. If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, you give people new points of attack at each step. Without documents, you cannot do the least thing in history. You can do nothing unless you develop a counterpoint and show that each document has its proper value only when properly illuminated. Such negative situations are enormously detrimental because they continue to grow. It was quite good that you (speaking to another teacher) corrected the situation in a mild way. It was necessary to say that an error had occurred, so that you could present the whole thing as a complete picture. It needed to be corrected from a different perspective. You seem to have been quite near, but could not say something positive about the documents. You should have done that.

Another thing that was a kind of error was to try to enliven the discussion of religion in the lecture “The Artistic Element in Religion Class.” You didn’t say anything in the lecture about the artistic presentation of religion, so the title was not justified. You didn’t connect the discussion about teaching religion with that. Such things simply have a negative effect.

We must make a serious effort to avoid such negative situations. I intentionally wrote an essay about Richard Wahle because I wanted to show how the Anthroposophical Society should interact with the rest of the world, both verbally and in writing. I wrote that essay to illustrate the attitude we should have. When you read the essay, I would ask you to recognize that it handles the question of how we should orient ourselves when working with people in the world outside.

We have to take the positive things into account also; otherwise we will never get past our illusions. It is destructive to work with illusions, and we cannot permit ourselves to be devoted to them in our judgments. We need to be clear that we can move forward only through people who come to us as spiritual virgins. We can move forward only with such people. If you think all of your politeness can change the opinion of a school official, then you have one of the strongest illusions, one that can be terribly harmful. It is important that you keep people’s good intentions, but have no illusion that they will help you. At best, they may help in externalities by not forbidding that you do something. We might summarize the school officials’ impression as, “Things are not so bad at the Waldorf School. It, of course, represents things we believe in.” If you think that opinion is true, then we should close the Waldorf School tomorrow. It would not have been necessary to have started it at all.

You must have no illusion. It is easy to criticize. You do not need to avoid criticizing, but you should allow the criticism to result in something positive. It is important to use these things we learn clairvoyantly to illuminate these things that approach us from outside. If you understand the intent of Truth and Science, you will find that reality lies in the interpenetration of perception and the results of human activity.

Well, that is what has happened recently, at least to the extent that the Waldorf School is affected, and I want to do everything to bring our movement forward. What we need, however, is some kind of communication with the central directors, in the normal sense of the word, about anthroposophical work. That is slowly disappearing in spite of the fact that important members of the committee are on the faculty. You seem to forget you are anthroposophists the instant you become Waldorf teachers. That is not acceptable.

The major failing of the conference was that no one thought of doing something for these anthroposophists who had traveled here from afar and to whom we should have brought something more anthroposophical. It is very curious that we are approached from all sides to convey something about anthroposophy. It is really so; I couldn’t take a step without someone saying something, and those who volunteered to direct such activities did nothing to meet the concrete wishes of members of the Society. On the contrary, they did not even take their own wishes into account. They certainly have wishes themselves. That would change immediately if the various streams, such as the pedagogical, suddenly shifted toward the other side. Now that we have finished the conference, we need to be conscious about taking that into account in the future.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: Now we need to make a final decision about the classes. The main problems are the 1a and 1b classes. Before Miss Hofmann can continue her work here in the Waldorf School, she will need a year to recover. She cannot use her strength here until she has recuperated for a year. I therefore propose that Dr. von Heydebrand take over the 1a class. I believe that is also her desire. I think we can resolve such problems in this way. The question of who teaches the classes needs to be considered by the whole faculty. I would ask that you say everything you have to say about who teaches each class, both for and against. In the case of Dr. von Heydebrand, there is, of course, no “for” or “against.” Everyone will be happy if she takes over the 1a class. Are there any proposals for 1b? I ask that all of you say what you have to say, since the faculty as a whole needs to agree with who teaches each class.

There is some discussion about Miss N.

Dr. Steiner: Much of the problem lies in the fact that you cannot speak. You can never teach in that way. You really need to get used to the idea of taking a course in speech. You did not complete last year because of the way you present yourself, how you used to present yourself. You cannot speak. When you stand in front of the class that way, you will never finish.

Z. says something about that.

Dr. Steiner: That is true for many. Mr. Z. does not understand that because he has developed a language for himself that works right down into the fibers. You should not underestimate what a difference working to develop your speech makes. If someone does it instinctively, as you do, and it is certainly positive that your voice is so effective, then you should not be surprised that the subject comes up here. Miss N. will have difficulties as long as she does not accept the need of taking a course in proper speaking. (Speaking to Mr. Z.) Your speech carries, and so much depends upon the speech. (Speaking to Miss N.) You will see that you will have a completely different attitude after you have taken some instruction in speech. The one you have now gives the children the impression you are a dried-up old lady. That is what is important. Mr. Z. makes the impression of a lively young man. Why shouldn’t we say such things? So much depends upon these things in pedagogy. You need to get used to them if you are to make any progress in putting aridness aside.

If you took some good speech instruction, you would not have as many colds. I am not at all surprised. Do not underestimate the hygienic influence proper speech can have. Being able to speak properly is very significant. As long as you cannot use your organs of speech properly and one thing runs into another, as long as you do not properly cultivate your organs of speech, you will have colds. I think it is terrible that so many of you have colds. If people would properly “onion” themselves by learning how to speak, colds would disappear.

Marie Steiner: Proper speech often helps getting past colds, but not always.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the fact is that we really need to do something in this direction. I don’t mean that in a moral sense, but aesthetically. There is a discussion about whether Miss N. could or should stay at the Waldorf School. Some of the teachers object to her teaching.

Miss N.: I would find it most valuable if you, Dr. Steiner, would say something.

Dr. Steiner: I already said what I think. If things continue in this way, then we will have enormous difficulties. I would like you to recall, however, that what happens to A could also happen to B. I think that if we continue with this depressing way of looking at things, we could close.

The general opinion has been that I should select the teachers. We should continue with that, but now the problem is that although that opinion has not changed in fact, it has changed in feeling, in how we look at the situation. I may have to pose the question now of whether the faculty members want to select the teachers themselves.

On the other hand, today’s discussion has not changed the fact that it may be better if you were to go to C. I think that might be better. It is not easy to overcome such a mood. That just occurred to me.

It is too bad. How can we make a decision when you want to discuss everything within the faculty? This could happen to anyone tomorrow. In deciding who will take a position here at the Waldorf School, there are so many things to consider that are no longer the same thing when they are spoken in words. It is really very difficult to do when things are said such as, “A person is completely unfit to teach a class.” That is something that could happen to someone else tomorrow, and should not happen here. One such case is enough. It is terribly sad that we have even one such case. I do not think it is completely unfounded, though. Miss N. has been unable to gain the sympathy of a number of colleagues, not just in the question concerning her class. That, however, could happen to any of you.

For those who have experienced the things I have, this may be an interesting story. In Vienna there was a lecturer, Lorenz, who was appointed as the rector, and who then gave a speech about Aristotle’s view of politics. He was now God. His predecessor was a theologian. The assistant rector was very much disliked for a speech he had given in the state assembly. The students decided to stamp him out. This situation was now presented to the rector for a decision. Lorenz went into the class and was greeted with, “Rise.” He said, “Gentlemen, your ‘rise’ is quite insignificant to me. Your ‘rise’ is quite unimportant to me after you have trampled out a man who, regardless of his political opinion, is such a scientific great, someone standing far above me.” Then the students shouted, “Die, Lorenz!” You can learn a great deal from this story. The question is, therefore, who will take over the 1b class. Perhaps we should leave it open for now.

Dr. Steiner reviews the teaching schedule for the 1923–1924 school year and makes a number of decisions.

Dr. Steiner (speaking to one of the teachers): You need to go on vacation for a year. I cannot take the responsibility for your taking a leave due to illness and then reappearing here shortly afterward. When you have been as sick as you were, then you were so sick that I would ask you to go on vacation for a year. Since you participated in the pedagogical conference, it is clear you could have waited to take your sick leave. I am affronted by the fact that you went away and caused so much confusion, then returned and participated in the conference; I cannot say I have very much trust that you will be able to take up your teaching at the beginning of school. I can only suggest that you take a year off. The whole thing is a ridiculous situation.

I have to say that from my perspective, the situation was such a major disappointment that I no longer believe you will be able to teach successfully. This is not a severe rebuke. The work here in the Waldorf School is not a game. We cannot allow people to take things lightly.

You can see that it is not easy for me to take up a second case. Of course, we had to bow to health, but then you must want to become healthy again. It is not a harsh decision to ask you to go on leave for a year.

Anyone can attack me through their personal ambition. Everyone can trample around on me. Those are things I don’t discuss with others. Before 1918, I did not need to speak in that way. Things are terribly misused. This is no harsh rule. It was enormously foolish for you to come again. You really need to gain some strength, and you should not undertake such foolish things again. Were you to continue to teach as you have, I could have no trust. The events have shown that you needed to leave, but then you come back at a time when it is silly to return.

I know those sayings. When people want to come to such a conference, they say it is terribly important. You need to be clear that I can do nothing more than say you need to recuperate for a year. I do not understand why you find that so difficult. You need to get used to undertaking things conscientiously and to feeling responsibility, and not simply skip recuperating because you want to hear certain things now. If you have something important to do, you should also be careful with your health. I am saying that in a very decent way and have good intentions toward you. Nevertheless, you need a year’s leave. (Speaking to one of the upper-grade elementary-school teachers) There is a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction with you. A whole group of parents think that you are rude and that the children cannot handle the way you present yourself. That saddened me because I thought the way you taught botany was very good. It is difficult, because people do not see that things come from various directions.

A teacher: I will try to improve that.

Dr. Steiner: I think you should not be too childish in the way you present things to illustrate the subject. It seems to me that you underestimate the children’s souls. You do not live with their souls at the stage in which they now exist. You need to teach without presenting things too childishly.

I wonder if we need to change things in the ninth grade so that we no longer have the normal main lesson. The eighth grade is really the last year of elementary school. In the following grades, we change teachers. It is a question whether we can continue. Let’s take a look at the teachers.

Dr. Steiner discusses in detail the teaching schedule, the subjects, and the class schedule.

Dr. Steiner: In the upper grades a thorough review of mathematics would be included in main lesson. Two hours would be enough for that. If the mathematics teacher takes over the main lesson, then we do not need more time for review.

(Concerning a new teacher) X. will come and be integrated here so that he is not ruined by having to go through the Stuttgart system. It would be good if he could jump in wherever we need a replacement in academic subjects. First of all, we would then have a substitute teacher, and second, he might effectively take over teaching academic subjects in the upper grades. He would have to be guided if he were to take over such a class. We could achieve some kind of relief if we used him to continue what was introduced by one of you teaching a core subject. Otherwise, we could not develop new teachers. This is something that might work well. The problem with these subjects is that there is not enough time for preparation; the teachers are simply not well enough prepared. That is the situation. We can only improve that if you are relieved.

I would like to have X. here for that reason, but there is an additional reason. X. may really achieve something someday. I don’t see that the Research Institute is in such a condition that we should send him there. If we did, he would only stand around. We cannot afford to simply throw young people away when we can include them here. He will do something. That needs to be our standpoint, as then we can properly fill out the positions for teaching academic subjects.

A teacher says something.

Dr. Steiner: (During the discussion concerning hiring somebody to teach humanities) Could your wife take over teaching the humanities in the ninth grade? I have not proposed that as yet, because I thought she had too much to do with the children. We cannot allow it to become common that man and wife are both employed here. When the children are no longer in diapers, it would be a good idea if she could take over literary history and history.

We need to fulfill other conditions when we are under the pressure of having to prepare the twelfth grade for their final examinations. In that case, the teaching has to be very concentrated. We will have to take up the question of final examinations soon. We will have to ask the students questions in such a way that they can easily fail.

The best thing would be if we were in a position to work only with those students who really want to take the final examination. This final examination question is really a burden for us, but there will probably not be very many who really want to take it. Are there many girls who want to take the final examination?

A teacher: In the other upper grades, there are many who want to go into eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Then they should not take the final examination. When the eurythmy school is halfway established, we will have to form eurythmy more completely. It cannot remain the way it is now, but will have to be more completely developed. When someone wants to become a ballet dancer, she must undergo training for seven years. We also need to have some supplementary subjects. In time, it will be absolutely necessary to have a genuinely human education there. Related arts such as dance and mime will also have to be taught. If the eurythmy school is to be successful, we must develop it further. Such training will most certainly need five years. We cannot afford to just wildly produce eurythmists. Those who are later to become teachers certainly need to have a complete education. They need to know something about the human being, also. They will need an education in literary history, for example. Slowly, we will have to develop a proper curriculum.

The question now is whether we could free those who are to become eurythmists from those classes they do not want to take. They could then go over to the eurythmy school and learn there.

It would be best if we did not split the curriculum at the Waldorf School with eurythmy. We would have to do things so that when there is a split, those who are moving on would not take the final examination. That is, those who want to have further education in art could not take Latin and Greek.

A teacher asks if the twelfth grade should learn bookbinding and working with gold leaf.

Dr. Steiner: It would be wonderful if we could continue with that.

Dr. Steiner: I think it would be good if we took care of the formal things today. If there is still something to say about the beginning of school, it might be better to do that after we have taken care of the formal things. We will probably need to meet again tomorrow to speak about the beginning of school from a more spiritual perspective. Today, I think we should try to take care of the various needs that have arisen from the faculty.

The classes and the foreign language classes are assigned.

Dr. Steiner: The question now is if anyone has a particular wish regarding these assignments.

Changes are made to meet some expressed desires.

A teacher: I would like to ask if we can define an order of presentation for art. I thought that I would begin tomorrow in the ninth grade with those things connected with the curriculum as a whole, that is, related to history and literary history. I want to show how art arose from mythology.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to bring the art class into step with history and literary history. You could try to make a transition from Germanic mythology to art and then remain with that for a time. Then, perhaps you could show how the Germanic myths reappear in a different artistic form as aesthetics. You could certainly show, for example, the connection between Dürer and German mythology. They are fifteen-year-old children. You could use this as an occasion to show how the old Germans painted their gods just as Dürer painted his figures later.

You could then go on into the tenth grade, since the curriculum depends upon the previous year. In the tenth grade, we have Goethe’s poems and style, and that can stay. In the eleventh grade, summarize music and poetry.

Dr. Steiner confirms the teacher’s understanding about art instruction in the previous grades. The same teacher now proposes artistically treating what is done in the twelfth-grade German class, literature beginning in 1740, in preparation for the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: Then, we would no longer need a special literary history class. We need to see to it that the students learn the things they may be asked. In connection with modern literary history, they will certainly be asked about things that began with Gottsched and Bodmer and what followed them. German and art class can certainly cover the same material.

In order not to make compromises, I think it would be good to recognize that a large number of Goethe’s works are based upon impressions of paintings, and also that we can trace back much romantic art to musical impressions. Try to develop how the arts are intertwined.

An essay by Burdach, “Schiller’s Chordrama und die Geburt des tragischen Stiles aus der Musik” (Schiller’s choral drama and the birth of the tragic style from music) in the Deutschen Rundschau (German review) is mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: Burdach’s research has a problem in that it has an underlying tendency. He wants to show that somehow certain themes arise out of some primal forces, and then he follows them further. This is really very contrived. Schiller was certainly not as dependent upon earlier streams as Burdach claims. We certainly cannot ignore Schiller’s dramatic experimentation and the fact that he created a choral drama after many attempts. In Demetrius, he created a romantic drama in a style much like Shakespeare’s. You cannot ignore the details Burdach cites, since they may be useful. However, you will probably arrive at a different conclusion, probably that Schiller would have created something quite different from The Bride of Messina had he really swum in that stream.

That essay belongs with the series of things Burdach has produced. He has an idée fixe. He wants to show that a theme arises out of a subhuman source. All these things are similar, so you need to be cautious with Burdach. He also wrote other things where he derives the minstrel from Arabic provincials by finding the original impulse in the middle of the Middle Ages and using it as the beginning of the literary stream. Faust and Moses also belong in this group, as do Shakespeare’s dramas.

A teacher speaks about his tenth-grade class in Western history and Middle High-German literature.

Dr. Steiner: You need to do that harmoniously. Even if you do not like the material, we have to begin with what you have already done as a basis. There is nothing from the present we could use as a basis. We have to use an older historical picture as our basis and then present our perspective as history. Couldn’t you use Heeren as a basis? You could just as well take Rotteck, though he is a little bit old-fashioned and one-sided. It would also be good if you brought out the correspondences with artistic styles. Young people today could learn a tremendous amount if you were to read some chapters from Johannes Müller’s Vierundzwanzig Bücher allgemeiner Geschichte (Twenty-four books of history) with them. That is historical style, almost like Tacitus. Such attempts to work in a unified way have been made time and again, something that needs to be renewed from our perspective.

If you lean too heavily upon geology, you are in danger of taking the basement, leaving out the ground floor, and then taking the second floor, whereas you should actually begin with what geology offers for historical themes, such as the Great Migrations and dependence upon territory. My public lectures in Stuttgart could be helpful for that. Of course, you cannot present that in class. It was intended for enlightened older people in Stuttgart. You will need to translate it for the students and, in the future, be sure to leave out the Chymical Wedding.

If you begin preparing for this now and immediately begin with literature, you will have to use something like Heeren, Rotteck, or Johannes Müller. It is certainly not right to transform history into religious history alone. That is something for the religion teachers. I will give you the curriculum tomorrow.

A teacher: Where should I begin in this class?

Dr. Steiner: You said yourself you wanted to begin with the dependence upon the Earth. Therefore, you should take the climates of the various regions, today’s cold and temperate zones, and geological formations as a basis for history. Show how a people changed when they moved from the mountains down into the valleys, but do all this from a historical perspective, not a geographical one, so that you speak about a particular people during a particular period. Show, for example, why the Greeks became Greeks. Here, you could use Heeren as a guide. What is important is that things be done properly.

A teacher (who is to take over teaching history and German in the ninth grade): I would like some guidance for ninth-grade history. What should I particularly emphasize?

Dr. Steiner: You need to deepen their understanding.

The previous class teacher: In the eighth grade I presented history in pictures and biographies. I particularly emphasized cultural history in the nineteenth century.

Dr. Steiner: According to our curriculum, the children in the eighth and ninth grades should gain a picture of the inner historical themes, the major movements. They should learn how the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought an enlarged viewpoint to human beings, an increase in all directions, geography and astronomy. They should learn how that played out historically. Then they should learn how the effects of the seventeenth- and eighteenth- century enlightenment played out in history and how, in the nineteenth century, the integration of peoples and nations had an effect. Taking each century, you can present the facts from these perspectives.

Regarding your preparation, it would be very good if you could create a picture for yourself of what story would result if Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years War were continued to the present time, that is, what modern history would be like. In regard to Middle Europe, Treitschke’s summaries are very good. In the first chapter of his German History, he brought all the threads together. A teacher wants to begin the twelfth grade with series and then go on to integral and differential calculus.

Dr. Steiner: Differential and integral calculations are not really demanded. If you want to do this efficiently, you can begin integration earlier, and use series to explain both. I would try to get far enough that the students can use differential and integral computations with curves. That is sufficient for the final examination. If the students can work with second- and third-degree equations, that is enough. The problems that will be given are published.

Dr. Steiner learns that there are also more difficult problems.

Dr. Steiner: I would certainly like to know what is left to learn at college. There is really not much more. In any event, you can begin tomorrow with series.

A teachers asks about chemical formulas.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to find out what is required for the final examination. That is the problem; we start making these compromises, but we need to go far enough that the students can pass the final examination. This is terrible.

There would be some sense in it if they at least used stereometric formulas, but they mostly use planar formulas, which is quite senseless. The students need to know the processes. All this is senseless and very sad, but we have to take it into account.

Tomorrow, we can meet again at the same time to discuss questions concerning the curriculum, but for now I would like to take care of any other questions and desires.

A teacher asks about texts for English. Dickens’s Christmas Carol is too difficult for the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You can be certain that you can read Dickens with children who know almost nothing, and what they need to learn, they can quite easily pick up. Tell them how the story goes on. Perhaps you could solve the problem if you first told the children about the content and selected some simpler excerpts for them to read. You can certainly overcome such difficulties. These texts are the very best for those children who cannot read English.

An eighth-grade teacher: E.B. is not very happy with me.

A teacher: One of his comrades would like to be in your class because it is more artistic.

Dr. Steiner: You could exchange the two.

There are problems with the class schedule, and the religion classes are too large.

Dr. Steiner: It cannot be any different than last year. There must be some way of solving the scheduling problem. I cannot imagine that we cannot solve it. There should be no more than fifty students in a religion class.

A teacher asks about a deaf-and-dumb child in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: She is not deaf. She can hear and can also be taught to speak. She is only a little slow. She does not respond, so you will simply have to try everything. You need to say something slowly, then have her speak it after you. Continue in that way; first speak slowly, then increase the speed so that she gradually needs to understand things more quickly. You could also do the exercise by speaking loudly, then having her speak softly, and then the other way around. You could do it slowly and have her do it quickly. Do variations of that. If possible, use a series of words that have some connection. Do them forward and backward in order to develop the center of speech. I would also have her do the curative eurythmy exercises connected with the head. She should do them daily, even if for only a short time.

(Speaking to the school doctor) She should also receive edelweiss at 6X potency, which is an effective means for healing the connection between the hearing nerves and the hearing center. It has a strong effect and is effective even when the hearing organs are hardened. The hardening has a relationship to edelweiss; it absorbs the flowers. You will find that the relationships that exist within this mineral, but not mineralized, material are within the flower also, and that they have an extreme similarity to the processes that constitute the hearing organ. We have used this remedy for ten years. Be sure to soak the flowers well first. A teacher asks about decorating the room for religious services.

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, our main problem is that we must give up the Waldorf School ideal for the twelfth grade. We cannot base the twelfth-grade curriculum upon our principles. We simply have to admit that we must take all the subjects in other high schools into account during the final year. I am looking with some horror at the last semester, when we will have to ignore everything except the subjects required for the final examination. It’s inconceivable that we can work any other way if the students are to pass the final examination. This is really a problem. After thinking about it a long time, I do not think there is much to say about the curriculum for that class except those things we already considered, such as chemical technology and such.

The students are about eighteen, and at that age it is best if they attain an overall understanding of history and art. We should give them an understanding of the spirit of literature, art, and history without, of course, teaching them about anthroposophy. We must try to bring them the spirit in those subjects, not only in the content but also in the way we present them. With the students, we should at least try to achieve what I have striven for with the workers in Dornach, pictures that make it clear that, for instance, an island like Great Britain swims in the sea and is held fast by the forces of the stars. In actuality, such islands do not sit directly upon a foundation; they swim and are held fast from outside. In general, the cosmos creates islands and continents, their forms and locations. That is certainly the case with firm land. Such things are the result of the cosmos, of the stars. The Earth is a reflection of the cosmos, not something caused from within. However, we need to avoid such things. We cannot tell them to the students because they would then need to tell them to their professors in the examinations, and we would acquire a terrible name. Nevertheless, that is actually what we should achieve in geography.

In physics and chemistry, we should try to cover every principle that reveals the whole system of chemistry and physics as an organism, a unity, and not simply an aggregate as most people assume. With the twelfth grade, we have a kind of conclusion, and we must draw conclusions everywhere. We must give answers to the questions that arise, for instance, in mineralogy, where the five Platonic solids manifest. We should do that when we study minerals and crystals.

In art, we can only continue what we previously did in music, sculpture, and painting. That can never be concluded.

Unfortunately, we can do none of that. The only new thing we can do is one hour of chemical technology. Elsewhere, we will need to make sure that we simply bring the students far enough along that they can answer the questions on the final examination. This is terrible, but there is nothing we can do to avoid it. However, we should follow our curriculum as exactly as possible until the students are fourteen. As far as possible, I would ask you to consider up to that year all the things that have fallen by the way. We need to strictly carry out the curriculum until the students are fourteen.

I am telling you all this so that you will know how you would need to think were it possible to apply the principles of the Waldorf School with eighteen-year-old students. Eighteen-year-olds need to understand the various historical periods in a living way, particularly regarding the “getting younger” of humanity. That would have an important influence upon people. In the oldest periods of humanity, people could feel the development of their souls until the age of sixty. Following the Mystery of Golgotha, they could feel it only until the age of thirty-three, and today that is possible only until twenty-seven. Students need to comprehend this ongoing decrease before they begin their studies at an institution of higher learning. It is something that belongs in the general education in a Waldorf school and would have a tremendously beneficial effect upon the students’ souls.

The situation is as follows. When we look at the learning goals of the twelfth grade, we need to imagine that the students will continue at a college, and we also need to imagine that they have completed their general education. We can find our teaching goals in the following circumstances. Today, you can represent anthroposophy to the world such that people with sound human feeling can understand it. (Sound human understanding does not exist today.) They can understand it through feeling. Today, however, if those who have gone through a modern high-school education do not have a particular predisposition, it is impossible for them to comprehend certain anthroposophical truths. Today, they have hardly any possibility of understanding such things.

If you consider Kolisko’s chemistry, it is clear that it is unimaginable for modern chemists. You can teach students that kind of imaginative capacity until the age of eighteen or nineteen, that is, until the completion of the moon cycle, which then begins again. If people are to comprehend certain concepts, they must achieve a particular development during that period.

Compared to other people today, you are all a little crazy. You all have something that sets you apart from the current general development, something that is present to a greater or lesser extent in each of you. You have a certain kind of eccentricity. You are, in a certain way, not quite normal. Those who are normal, that is, “normal people,” cannot understand some things. Chemists with a normal education cannot understand Kolisko’s chemistry. They simply have no concepts for it. Our goal should be to make that understanding possible for our students. However, we cannot achieve that when we are forced to work toward ruining brains in exactly the same way that modern schools work toward that goal. Souls cannot be ruined. They undergo a self-correction before the next earthly life, although if things remain as they are today and continue into the next earthly life, humanity will degenerate. We cannot do these things. It is simply impossible. Even people like Herman Grimm could maintain themselves upon their islands only by brusquely brushing away certain concepts. People like him simply went past others, but they were the last who had such concepts. Those people, who were quite old during the 1890s, were the last who had them, and that possibility died with them.

It is particularly difficult with today’s youth. Today’s young people, as we have seen quite clearly in our anthroposophical youth movement, have a tendency to reject all ideas. They are not interested in ideas and, therefore, to the extent that they do not accept anthroposophy, become disorganized. Today’s young people are forced into a terrible tragedy, particularly if they are academically inclined and have gone through our college preparatory schools. We can achieve more for those students who go into practical life at the age of fourteen.

It is impossible, for example, to develop a spatial concept as I described it in the recent teachers’ course in Dornach, that is, the three dimensions, up-down, left-right, front-back. That is why it is so difficult to give people an understanding of anthroposophical truths. No one today is interested in things for which there should be broad public interest. I have said that everything connected with the will works three-dimensionally in the earthly realm. Everything connected with feeling is not three-dimensional, but two-dimensional, so that when you move from willing to feeling in your soul, you have to project the third dimension onto the plane in a direction that corresponds with front to back. We need to remember that we cannot simply—we can reduce it to the symmetry of the human being, but we cannot limit it to only that. This plane is two-dimensional everywhere—thinking then leads to one dimension and the I to zero dimensions. When we do that, the situation becomes quite clear. Now I ask you, how can such elementary things be presented in a lecture? There is simply no possibility of making that plausible to the modern public. No one is interested in it.

It would certainly be wonderful if, for example, in addition to the normal perspective of orthogonals, planes, and centers, people understood perspectives of three dimensions to two, from two dimensions to one, and then from one to the zero dimension. It would be wonderful if people could do that so that we could differentiate a point in many ways.

I am telling you all these things so that you can see how things need to be in the future and how we should form a school that would really educate people. Today, so-called educated people are really very undeveloped because today’s students are required to know many things in a certain way, but they really need to know them in a quite different way. I think we should try to do as much of that as possible in the lower grades, but in the upper grades, we must be untrue to our own principles, at least for the most part. We can only include one thing or another here and there. Even someone like J.W. can say to me that she would take the final examination if she thought she would pass. I told her that would be sensible only if she is certain she will pass. If she failed, it would not be good for the school.

The worst thing is that if we could convince the state to accept our reports, our students could very well follow a course of study at the university with what they would learn from our curriculum. Everything connected with the final examination, which causes such misery in modern school life, is absolutely unnecessary for studying at the university. Students could take up Kolisko’s chemistry as a subject. They would at first be surprised by chemical formulas, of course, but they could learn that later. It is much more important that they understand the inner processes of materials and the relationships between them. These are the things I wanted to say. I would like to discuss this whole question further. I would have completed the curriculum, but it has no meaning for the twelfth grade. We already know what we must do.

The students need to complete all the practical subjects insofar as possible. That is something you will feel after a time. So that the children have some sense of security, I would like to ask them about these subjects. I had the impression a while ago that the children thought the questions were unusual when you stated them poorly.

A teacher: Could we split the classes?

Dr. Steiner: We would need to have parallel classes from the age of fourteen, but we do not have enough teachers. The problem is financial. I would like to know how the finances are now. We should always keep that in mind.

There is some discussion about the financial situation.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the important thing is not that we have a financial report, but that we always have what we need in the bank. We can certainly continue, but we will have to do something. Otherwise, it will be impossible to do what needs to be done. For now, we cannot consider such a split.

At the college level, we cannot reach our goals for a very long time. The Cultural Committee might have done that, but they fell asleep after a few weeks. We might be able to achieve the things we want so much if we had the situation that existed in Austria for many private high schools. There many parochial high schools had the right to give and grade the final examinations, and technical schools could provide an accepted final report. I believe there are no such institutions in Germany. We would need a state official to be present, but the teachers would actually do the testing. A state official, while certainly causing many difficulties in our souls, in the end would have little effect on the grades if the final examination was held by our teachers.

A teacher: I believe we should speak to the students who will not be able to pass the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: That depends. People will say the faculty is at fault if more than a third of the class do not achieve the learning goals. If it is less than a third, the fault is thought to be the students’, but when a third or more do not achieve what they should, then it is seen as the faculty’s problem. You know that, don’t you?

In general, no one who has had good grades fails. The problem is, that is not taken into account. A further point is whether we could avoid using those really unpedagogical textbooks. The teacher could, of course, use them for preparation. Most of those texts are simply extracts from various scientific books. I have noticed that the questions come from such books and that there are readings from them, also. That can, however, cause many problems. We need to get away from using such references. We can use Lübsen’s books since they are quite educational, although the last editions have been somewhat ruined. His books are very pedagogical through all the editions before those made by his successor. Imagine for a moment the wonderful value of calculus in pedagogy. His analytical geometry is also pedagogically wonderful, at least the older edition, as well as his volumes on algebra and analysis. He has, for example, a collection of problems that are extraordinarily good because the methods required to solve them are very instructive.

A teacher: Should we throw out all the textbooks?

Dr. Steiner: For translation, they are not so bad. However, for German readings, you should not use normal textbooks. They are quite tasteless. Perhaps we should write down our lesson plans for the following teachers, so they could at least have some material for reading. There are so many people here who can type. Why can’t we prepare documents that people can read? The offices are filled with people, but I have no idea what they do.

A teacher: The students in the twelfth grade would like an additional hour of French.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to make everything possible. It is terrible that the twelfth-grade students will not receive an introduction to architecture. If everyone teaching languages helped, it might be possible.

An English teacher asks about prose readings for the twelfth grade, about Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History, and about the English art and literature magazine The Athenaeum.

Dr. Steiner: The Athenaeum is edited very practically. You should not give it to the students, but instead use some individual essays. You could also use it in the eleventh grade. We do not have such well-edited magazines in Germany anymore. This is an old magazine, a humanistic magazine par excellence. There was a terrible German imitation called Literary News. Zarnck’s Literarisches Zentralblatt (Literary journal) was also a terrible imitation. It was a magazine for people who do not exist even in England.

A teacher: We have done enough of Tacitus and Horace. Should we take up Sallustius?

Dr. Steiner: Sallustius and Tacitus. I think the Germania would be enough. You could have them read a larger piece from that and then give them a test.

A teacher asks about music for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: A feeling for style, as such, an awareness of how Bach differs from others, is the main thing for the twelfth grade. At worst, you will have a problem at Christmastime if we see that we cannot continue all of the art instruction. Do not consider it an impossibility that we have to stop all art instruction at Christmas. Other people make fun of our things.

A teacher asks about religious instruction for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should go through religious history and give an overview of religious development. Begin with the ethnographic religions and then go on to folk religions and finally universal religions.

Begin with the ethnographic religions such as the Egyptian regional gods, where the religions are still quite dependent upon the various tribes. There are also regional gods throughout Greece. You need to do this in stages. At first, we have the religions that are fixed at a given location, the holy places. Then, during the period of wandering, the tent replaces the holy places, the religion becomes more mobile, and folk religions arise. Finally, we have universal religions, Buddhism and Christianity. We cannot call any other religions universal.

In the ninth grade, read the Gospel of Luke, which is a pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

A teacher asks about the Apocrypha.

Dr. Steiner: The children are not yet mature enough to go through the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha contains many things that are more correct than what is written in the Gospels. I have always extended the Gospels by what we can verify from the Apocrypha. Sometimes there are strong conflicts. When they take up the Gospels, the children must grasp them. It is difficult to explain the contradictions, so if they took up the Apocrypha nothing would make sense anymore. I would simply study the Gospels. A teacher asks about religion in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Following St. John’s Gospel, a number of paths are possible. You could do either the Gospel of St. Mark or Augustine, selecting some sections from the Confessions where he speaks more about religion.

A teacher asks if they should teach zoology and botany in the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Those subjects need to be included if our reports are to be officially recognized. We study zoology in the fifth grade, then the human being, then zoology again. If we did not have this problem of final examinations, I think it would be wonderful to present zoology to the children in the course of three weeks. That would be eighteen mornings to handle the twelve groups of animals. In the twelfth grade, we should limit zoology to categorization; the same is true of plants.

The students already know about skeletal structure, since you have already done anthropology. The most important thing is that they gain an overview about how we classify animals. You should begin with single-celled animals, then go through the worms. You will have twelve if you consider the vertebrates as one class. A teacher asks about how continents swim.

Dr. Steiner: Usually people do not think about how it looks if you move toward the center of the Earth. You would soon come to regions where it is very fluid, whether it is water or something else. Thus, according to our normal understanding, the continents swim. The question is, of course, why they don’t bump into one another, why they don’t move back and forth, and why they are always the same distance from one another, since the Earth is under all kinds of influences. Why don’t they bump into one another? For instance, why is a channel always the same width? We can find no explanation for that from within the Earth. That is something that comes from outside. All fixed land swims and the stars hold it in position. Otherwise, everything would break apart. The seas tend to be spherical.

A teacher asks for more details. Dr. Steiner takes a teacher’s notebook and draws the following sketch in it while giving an explanation.

Dr. Steiner: The contrast is interesting. The continents swim and do not sit upon anything. They are held in position upon the Earth by the constellations. When the constellations change, the continents change, also. The old tellurians and atlases properly included the constellations of the zodiac in relationship to the configuration of the Earth’s surface. The continents are held from the periphery; the higher realms hold the parts of the Earth. In contrast, the Earth holds the Moon dynamically, as if on a leash. The Moon goes along as if on a tether.

A teacher asks about drawing exercises for fourteen- and fifteenyear- olds.

Dr. Steiner: You should have the children paint the moods of nature. The continuation students in Dornach have done wonderful work in painting. I had them paint the difference between sunrise and sunset, and some of them have done that wonderfully. They should learn those differences and be able to paint them. Those are the kinds of things you could work with, for example, the mood of rain in the forest. In addition, they should learn the differences between painting and sculpting.

In the lower grades, take care, when things get out of hand and you cannot get through the material, that you do not rashly reach for a substitute and simply tell the children a story to keep them quiet.

I hope to be here again tomorrow morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner gives some examples of questions from examinations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher asks about curative eurythmy.

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

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

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

A teacher asks about visitors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How are things going in twelfth-grade mathematics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: They can do that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher asks about gardening class for the upper grades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher makes a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher tells about students spitting out cherry pits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher comments about B.B.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The school doctor speaks about some medical cases.

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

A teacher: How is that possible?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FIRST GROUP

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

SECOND GROUP

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

THIRD GROUP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher makes a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A number of classes were cancelled because of the heat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher: How can I learn to be sly?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher asks about King Henry II.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: No one knows that now.

A teacher makes a comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some teachers report about their impressions of England.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The gardening teacher asks whether they should create class gardens.

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

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

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

A teacher asks about handwork.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is the situation in the 9b class?

A teacher: T.L. has left.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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