Waldorf Schools: Not a worldview but an educational system and teaching technique

We should in the strictest sense retain the attitude that the Waldorf School is not a school where a specific view of the world is to be taught. What we have gained from our worldview, which we have been presenting during the past decades, should never be brought as dogma. It should only be used – because it can be used – to improve and reform the didactic methodology, the pedagogical technique.  

Our times require it of us to completely relinquish the idea of handing on the content of our worldview to the children. The Catholic Child should have a Catholic religion teacher and be taught the Catholic doctrine; his religious exercises should be led by the Catholic religion teacher. The same holds good for the Protestant child. What must be brought about through the Waldorf schools we want to establish, is not to be found in the dissemination of a view of the world, but we want a new educational method, a new approach to teaching, a new didactic system sprouting from what we are able to bring.

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 297 – Idee und Praxis der Waldorfschule – Stuttgart, August 31, 1919 (page 86-87)

Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger

https://odysseetheater.org/GA/Buecher/GA_297.pdf#view=Fit9

Entire lecture in English: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA297/English/AP1995/19190831d02.html

Previously posted on 17 June 2019

The “school-bench” of life

One of the impulses which ensoul us in the sphere of our anthroposophical movement is that we, in a sense, carry into the whole of man’s life that which most people apply only to youth. We sit on the “school-bench” of life long after we have become grey. This is one of the differences between us and others, who believe that at the age of 25, or sometimes 26, when they have finished lazying about with their education, that they are ready for the rest of life — at most there may still be some amusing additions to one’s education.

But when we approach the very nerve of Spiritual Science, we feel that the human being really must continue to learn throughout his whole life if he wishes to tackle the tasks of life. It is vital that we should be permeated with this feeling. If we do not get rid of the belief that people can master everything with the faculties they have developed up to their 20th or 25th year, that then one only has to meet in Parliament or some other forum to decide all affairs — as long as we do not get rid of this view, we shall never be able to establish healthy conditions in the social structure of mankind.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 186 – Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being – Bern, 12th December 1918

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181212p01.html

Translated by Christopher Schaefer

 

Rudolf Steiner 1892 by Otto Fröhlich

Previously posted on 12 June 2019

The cultivation of the will

The cultivation of the will depends upon repetition and conscious repetition. This must be taken into consideration. And so it is not enough to say in the abstract that the will must be educated. For then people will believe that if they have good ideas themselves for the development of the will and apply them to the child by some clever methods, they will contribute something to the cultivation of the will. But in reality this is of no use whatever.

Those who are exhorted to be good become only weak nervous men. Those become inwardly strong to whom it is said in childhood: “You do this today and you do that, and both of you do the same tomorrow and the day after.” [And they do it merely on authority because they see that one in the school must command.] Thus to assign to the child some kind of work for each day that he can do every day, sometimes even the whole year through, has a great effect upon the development of the will.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 293 – The Study of Man: Lecture IV – Stuttgart, 25th August 1919

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA293/English/RSP1966/StuMan_index.html

Translated by Daphne Harwood & Helen Fox

Art of Hans Georg Leiendecker

Previously posted on 23 May 2019

Education in childhood will in some way go on living and working for decades beneath the surface, reappearing in remarkable ways many years later

As a teacher, anything I do to a child during the years of education will sink deeply into the physical, psychological, and spiritual nature of that individual. Whatever I do that plants a seed at the beginning of life will in some way go on living and working for decades beneath the surface, reappearing in remarkable ways many years later, perhaps not until the very end of life. It is possible to affect childhood in the right way if we consider not just childhood but all of human life as seen from the perspective of a real knowledge of the human being.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 308 – THE ESSENTIALS OF EDUCATION – Lecture One – 8 April 1924, Stuttgart

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA308/English/AP1997/19240408d01.html

The future – Arild Rosenkrantz

About authority and education of feeling and willing

When the child is educated with love under the guidance of authority— when the child learns feeling and willing under the guidance of others, under the guidance of adult instructors — then at the proper moment, namely at puberty, the child’s own independent feeling and willing will be born. We can only properly develop our feeling and willing in that we allow them to develop under the authority of other people. If we achieve an independent development of will too early, if we achieve what I might call certain secret functions of the will too early, that will damage us for the remainder of our lives. We achieve a subtle functioning of the will too early if we are tempted to subject our moral and religious impulses to our own judgment at too early a time.

Until puberty, children should learn morality and religion through the influence of moral and religious authorities. Only at puberty does the spiritual and soul nature of the human being begin to become free of the body so that we can allow it to make its own judgments. When you say such things today, you have the prejudices of our times against you. As I mentioned this question of a natural feeling for authority in a more or less public lecture in Germany at a time when everything seemed to be under the influence of a revolution (though it did not turn out to be), everyone objected to this because they all wanted to keep the authorities away from children. What they really wanted was that teachers cease to exist and that the children would teach and raise themselves in a democratic way.

I had to answer that this is something that children do not want at all. Children want to be guided, they want to love and learn from authority. What develops within children as a love of authority is connected with their own nature.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 301 – THE RENEWAL OF EDUCATION – IX. Dialect and Standard Language – 4 May 1920, Basel

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA301/English/AP2001/19200504d01.html

Art of Carol Herzer