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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 5501 through 5510 of 6552

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304a. Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy II: Moral and Physical Education 19 Nov 1923, The Hague
Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch, Roland Everett

In the evolving of memory, the soul life of the child undergoes a radical change. The child’s ability to form representations presents us with the same picture. When you look without bias at a young child’s mental imagery, you will find that the will forces are very active. The child under seven cannot yet separate inner will experience from the experience of will in thinking. This separation begins during the change of teeth.
Basically, unless one can lead abstract natural laws into an artistic appreciation, one does not understand what is weaving and living in nature. What is the central point of such an attitude toward education?
304a. Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy II: Educational Issues I 29 Aug 1924, London
Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch, Roland Everett

I must quickly add that the school authorities have always shown great understanding and cooperation ever since the school was founded. It was fortunately possible to begin “The Free Waldorf school” in complete freedom.
If, in creating a picture for the child, one thinks that one is doing so only to help the child understand the abstract concept of immortality, such a picture will not convey much, because imponderables play a role.
The child cannot yet understand the point in question because the necessary life experience has not occurred. Much later—say, at the age of thirty five—life may bring something like an “echo,” and suddenly the former student realizes that long ago the teacher spoke about the same thing, which only now, after having gained a great deal more life experience, can be understood fully.
304a. Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy II: Educational Issues II 30 Aug 1924, London
Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch, Roland Everett

Only when one knows the condition of the human being under the influence of these successively developing members, can one adequately guide the education and training of children.
He only imitated what his mother had done. When this example is understood, one knows that, in the case of young children, imitation is the thing that rules their physical and soul development.
Yet this inconvenience must be carried by the teacher with understanding and equanimity. The first step is for the children to learn to create resemblances of outer shapes, using color and form.
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: The Necessity for a Spiritual Insight 16 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

Mackenzie, the organiser of this conference, in particular, and to the whole committee who undertook to arrange the lectures here. I feel deep gratitude because this makes it possible to give expression to what, in a sense, is indeed a new thing in the environment of that revered antiquity which alone can sponsor it.
Conviction, when the isolation of our worldly life and worldly outlook makes us ask: “What is the eternal, super-sensible reality underlying the world of sense-perception?” We may have beliefs as to what we were before birth in the womb of divine, super-sensible worlds.
Perhaps it will take the form of a great love and attachment felt for some grown-up person. But we must understand how rightly to observe what is happening in the child at this critical time. The child suddenly finds himself isolated.
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: Spiritual Disciplines of Yesterday: Yoga 17 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

I have been informed that there was something difficult to understand in what I spoke about yesterday. In particular that difficulties had arisen from my use of the words “Spiritual” and “spiritual cognition.”
Mind, Intellect, is copy, reflection, passivity itself:—that thing within us which enables us, when we are older, to understand the world. If intellect, if mind were active we should not be able to understand the world. Mind has to be passive so that the world may be understood through it.
Thus he came to experience how in the brain, breath unites with the material process which under-lies thinking, which underlies intellectual activity. He searched into this union between thinking and breathing and finally experienced how thought, which is for us an abstract thing, pervades the whole body on the tide of the breath.
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: Spiritual Disciplines of Yesterday and Today 18 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

He believes me; and accepts what I say, although he does not yet understand it. So much of what we receive in childhood unconsciously we do not understand. If in childhood we could only accept what we understood we should receive little of value for our later life.
If one does not know what lives immediately in the rhythmic life, and how this is merely projected into the nerve life, to become idea (concept) one does not understand man. One does not understand man if one says: “The soul's nature is dependent on the nerve-nature”, for of the soul's nature it is only the life of thought, thinking, that is dependent on the nerves.
You all know that there are people who investigate certain things under the microscope. They see wonderful things under the microscope; but there are also people who have not learned how to look through a microscope; they look into it and no matter how they manipulate it they see nothing.
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: Body Viewed from the Spirit 19 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

Now it is here contended that it is not enough to know what good education is but that one must have a grasp of the technique and detail of educational art, one must acquire practical skill. And for this, knowledge and understanding are necessary. Hence yesterday I tried to explain the elementary principles of guidance in this ability, and I will now continue this review. It is easy to say man undergoes development during his lifetime, and that he develops in successive stages. But this is not enough.
In the adult these physical conditions are merely faint undertones of life. The child who is growing up in the company of the adult is an imitator; he models himself entirely on the physiognomy of the adult, on what he perceives:—on the adult's sad manner of speaking, his sad feelings.
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: How Knowledge Can Be Nurture 21 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

Anything further that is said here on primary school education must be understood in the light of this proviso. In the art of education with which we are here concerned the main thing is to foster the development of the child's inherent capacities.
I said: I will try—in a case like this one can make no promises that this or the other result will be achieved,—but I would do everything that lay within my power, only I must be left complete freedom in the matter of the education. So now I undertook this education. The mother was the only member of the family who understood my stipulation for freedom, so that the education had to be fought for him in the teeth of the others.
The hair only arises in connection with an organism and cannot be understood apart from the organism. Therefore: In the teaching of botany we must take our start, not from the plant, or the plant family but from the landscape, the geographical region: from an understanding of what the earth is in a particular place.
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: The Teacher as Artist in Education 22 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

Before his 11th year a human being has in reality no understanding of cause and effect. He hears the words used. We think he under-stands them. But he does not, because he is controlling his bone system from out of his muscular system. Later, after the 12th year, the bone system, which is adjusting itself to the outer world, dominates the muscular system, and through it, influences spirit and soul. And in consequence man now gets an understanding of cause and effect based on inner experience,—an understanding of force, and of his own experience of the perpendicular, the horizontal, etc.
Thus there arises, not an abstract, intellectual understanding, but a psychic understanding, an understanding in the soul. And it is this we must aim at. But what of the teacher who has to make this endeavour?
305. Spiritual Ground of Education: The Organisation of the Waldorf School 23 Aug 1922, Oxford
Translated by Daphne Harwood

It is as necessary to under-stand the individual teacher as it is, in the human organism, to understand the nose or the ear if one is to accomplish something.
One saw that there was not much to be done with adults as far as social life was concerned; they came to an understanding for a few weeks in middle Europe after the end of the war. After that, they fell back on the views of their respective classes.
Not until a child is between 9 and 10 years old can he understand grammar—namely, when he reaches an important turning point of which I shall be speaking when. I deal with the boys and girls of the Waldorf School.

Results 5501 through 5510 of 6552

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