If you give good definitions to children, they will hold those definitions, and since definitions are
by nature stiff, the children will grow up into stiff adults. If you say something to a stiff adult, you are
likely to get this response back, "I know that!" What they really know is some definition they accepted
as a child which they deem as sufficient for the rest of their life. Ask such a child what a lion is and they
will give you a definition of a lion they heard from some so-called teacher. They think they know what
a lion is, but all they know is a stiff, lifeless definition of a lion. What children need more than stiff
definitions are unanswered questions, good questions about possibilities, good questions which will live
inside of them and find answers later in life, good answers which will live inside of them. A question
such as this, "Why does a lion lie down for a long time after a meal?" Humans don't need to do this, but
lions do. Why is that so?
If you assume something to be true and act on that assumption, you are believing the map, and it
may differ from the terrain drastically. Maps operate in so many ways in our lives that we are rarely
aware of them, until something goes wrong. Steiner strove in his Waldorf School to instill in children
the living ideas that help them to grow and prosper.
If you regulate the play of children, for example, you are applying a map, a goal, and then it is no
longer play. Coerced play is not play.
One can only wonder how little focus parents have on the manual dexterity of their children. Fathers
are the butt of many jokes in comic strips and most often because of some lack of manual dexterity. They
destroy plumbing doing a simple J-trap replacement, they burn supper and order pizza, they fall off a
roof putting up a satellite dish, etc, etc. In a comic strip this morning a father goes to set a mouse trap
and we hear a loud snap! The son asks what his dad caught, and his mom answers, "His finger." I rarely
find this funny because my father had a physical and manual dexterity that I absorbed. I have set many
mouse traps and never caught my finger in one. Steiner helps me to understand that my choice of father
for this lifetime gave me someone to teach me physical dexterity which led my own development of will.
That so many comics portray fathers as inept in physical dexterity and therefore weak-willed is an
indictment on our state-controlled school systems and a powerful incentive for parents to place their
children in Waldorf Schools.
Children today go to school in a hurry to get out, and then wonder what to do after they graduate.
They miss the essence of the Commencement ceremony, whose name means that life outside of school
is ready to commence, to begin. "But what are we to do, they think, without any teachers to tell us to
do?" Few actually think that, but it would be an excellent unanswered question for new graduates to
hold. No one has shaped such children to expect that learning to learn is a lifelong occupation, one
which, if done poorly or not at all, can lead to a sad, empty, and unhappy life.
The word Liberal, which referred to a supporter of free trade, limited government, and
unencumbered individual freedom, has come to mean the opposite of its original meaning. Isn't there
a truth-in-meaning law that some Liberal would support? Things haven't changed in a hundred years,
have they?
Can education improve if it remains in the grip of natural science? Education as we've known it for
centuries is based on natural science, a materialistic science which ignores the living capabilities of
human beings. These educators treat individual humans as if they were molecules in a chemical solution:
each one completely identical with no individual characteristics. Education that is based on natural
science tends to treat children like identical molecules, separating them only by general characteristics,
grade level, sex, IQs, etc, in other words, as things that can be tested for and graded, like the quality of
ball bearings from a factory. These educators are taught what the essence of natural science dictates.
Waldorf teachers are held to a higher standard: they are to look for the essence of humanity in each child.
Don't all educators consider the distinct personalities of the children? Sure, about the same way
chemists consider the distinctive properties, e.g., of ammonium nitrate and calcium carbonate molecules.
They treat all the molecules of a given chemical alike and want to identify equivalent distinctive
properties of children via testing so they can treat them as groups rather than individuals.
And where did the old teachers and educators of teachers learn how to deal with children? They got
it from the swollen morass of academic asses over the centuries before Steiner's time. Their maps are
no longer useful for modern times.
We need a GPS locator for every individual child, not a Handbook of Properties such as chemists
and physicists use, whose values have hardly changed for centuries. The teacher becomes the GPS
locator, not pinpointing longitude and latitude of each child, but the predominate mixture of
temperaments of each child.
Over the past centuries until today, educators strove to develop the thinking of their students and
students were left alone to develop their feeling and willing. What is needed is focus and implementation
of all three aspects of the full human being, and it must start at the earliest grade level.
What can be the difference between two teachers if they both have the same academic training? All
the difference in the world. One teacher can approach the job mechanically and make no connection with
the children. The other teacher can communicate the lesson wordlessly while engaging the children's
rapt attention.
What the first teacher communicates wordlessly is their own dislike for being in school and the
students absorb that quickly. The other teacher creates a lesson plan to ensure their understanding of the
material, and that understanding flows wordlessly into their students as the teachers shares the material
with them(2).
From dead science can only come dead lecturing — that's what Steiner says in this next passage.
The best way to enliven a lecture is to educator teachers from an early age in Waldorf schools. Steiner
was faced with a bootstrap problem. How to create Waldorf teachers from adults not schooled in a
Waldorf school? By a combination of astute selection and intensive training he quickly gathered adept
teachers for the initial Waldorf school. This book contains some of the initial lectures he gave to Waldorf
teachers as part of this bootstrap endeavor.
[page 60] I am not surprised that the majority of today's teachers view their work
mechanically. Their understanding of humanity comes from the dead science that
has arisen out of the industrial statist and capitalist life of the past three or four
centuries. That science has resulted in a dead art of education, at best a wistful form
of education. We are striving for the understanding of humanity that we need to
create the art of teaching in the Waldorf School. This vision of humanity, this
understanding of humanity, so penetrates the human being that of itself it generates
enthusiasm, inspiration, love. Our aim is that the understanding of humanity that
enters our heads should saturate our actions and feelings as well. Real science is not
just the dead knowledge so often taught today, but a knowledge that fills a person
with love for the subject of that knowledge.
In my grade school education in public school during th mid-1940s, we had no art classes. Maybe
some colored crayons and a coloring books of pre-drawn figures to fill in, but nothing that would
constitute true art as an expression coming out of me. What I did was fill in the dead lecture time with
surreptitious drawings, doodling in the pages of my notebook while I pretended to be paying attention.
Yes, I paid attention to stuff I heard that was new to me, but that took only about 20% of my time as best
I can recall. One activity I did a lot was to scribble a continuous line down the margin of a page with lots
of angles and shapes. Then I would look for faces in a short portion of the scribbled line and draw out
the face. Often I'd end with 7 to 10 different faces on that line. I didn't know that by my doodling I was
building up my will power, up until now.
The North American Indians did not have a written language before the white settlers came to their
continent. Seeing the whites's writings, they saw a lot of "little devils" all lined up on a page. Our Native
Americans had a very strong will power, and they sensed intuitively that the little devils were destructive
to the will power of the whites.
[page 61] Our children will learn to read and write from life itself. This is our
intention. We will not pedantically force them to write letters that for every child
at first seem all the same. They need not learn it as an abstract thing, as letters were
for the North American Indians when the Europeans came. It is true, isn't it? The
Europeans destroyed the North American Indians down to the root. One of the last
chiefs of the North American Indian tribes destroyed by the Europeans tells that the
white man, the paleface, came to put the dark man and all he stood for under the
earth. "The dark man had certain advantages over the palefaces," the chief then
continued; "he did not have the little devils on paper."
By showing children how writing comes from drawing, they will learn quickly and grow up as
strong-willed adults.
[page 63] These people will have learned to think; these people will have learned to
correctly feel; and these people will have learned to properly use their will. . . . We
should make the child a true person.
Free education is an empty phrase, Steiner says. My basic motto is that anything you get free is
worth less than you paid for it. There is always a cost, not matter how well hidden in taxes, via inflation,
or by outright fraud. To say something is free, rightly understood, is a fraud, i.e., "without a basis in
reality". We cannot provide education without cost. If anyone thought it was possible, Steiner asked
how:
[page 64] I would like to know how we can, in fact, do this. We just deceive
ourselves, since we must pay for education. It cannot be free of cost — that is only
"possible" through the deception of taxes or such things. We make up such phrases,
which do no have any basis in reality.
A week before opening the first Waldorf school, Steiner said two things could happen: 1) Resistance
could prevent the Emil Molt ideas from being implemented and the school would disintegrate. 2) The
ideals could become customary and people will say, "Something really practical was put into the world!"
(Page 69) Lucky for the 21st Century the second of these came to pass and Waldorf Schools are found
all over the world.
Steiner's earnest prayer has come to fruition and is growing every year.
[page 69] May it prosper! May it thrive, so that those who see this blossoming
decide to do that same in many different place. Of course, only when, and may it be
as soon as possible, the same takes place out of the same spirit in many place, only
then can what should come out of the Waldorf School come out of it. Then soon
many more will follow. The free spirit will rule and a free social training and
educational system will spread over the civilized earth.
Steiner says we each have certain capacities for spiritual knowledge sleeping in us. (Page 76) If this
is the case, those capacities must have been active in us previously or else how could they be sleeping
now? And if they're sleeping, it must be possible for them to be awakened, makes sense? What are these
three stages?
[page 76] If vou look at my book How To Know Higher Worlds, you will see that I
describe those stages of supersensible knowledge that people can attain through the
development of certain capacities sleeping within them: 1) the Imaginative stage of
knowledge, 2) the stage of Inspiration and 3) the stage of true Intuition(3).
How did these capacities first appear in humans and why did they later go to sleep? These first
appear as growth forces in humans between birth and the age of 21, and afterward they will sleep unless
we consciously awaken them. The highest stage, that of Intuition, is at work in babies until 7, the age of
teeth change. During this time, children are very intuitive and imitate whatever happens around them.
After seven, children will be inspired by and follow the orders of their adult caregivers. After 14, the
onset of sexual maturity, young adults will imagine doing things out of their own power and judgment,
often resisting adult authorities during their teenage years. These three stages of growth forces are crucial
for development into an adult, and thereafter they become latent forces for further spiritual growth such
as the development of supersensory perception as Steiner outlines in How to Know Higher Worlds.
[page 77, 78] These forces really exist. The forces that in a certain sense cause the
crystallization of the second set of teeth out of human nature, a meaningful
conclusion to the stage of human development ending at age seven, really exist. The
forces that work mysteriously on that part of human beings that is connected with
growth and the unfolding of human nature until age fourteen really exist. These
forces are real; they are active. But after the completion of physical development
(around the age of twenty), where are these inner spiritual forces that have acted
upon our physical form? They still exist; they are still there. These inner forces fall
asleep, just as the forces we use in our everyday life, our everyday work from
waking to sleeping, fall asleep and become dormant while we sleep. The forces of
human nature that blazed during childhood and youth, the forces that fired the
developmental changes that transform children into adults, and everything
connected with these changes, fall asleep around the age of twenty. Those who look
at the whole human being know that at the very moment when human beings reach
this point, the forces that acted in the child, in the youth, step back into the
innermost part of human nature. These forces go to sleep.
These are three levels of bootstrap forces which raise mere living matter into a human being. Having
completed three growth functions, they lie dormant until a given individual calls upon them. Why is this
so? It is a safety mechanism, basically. Similar to a parent not allowing an eleven-year-old boy to drive
a high-powered Ferrari! There no shortcuts to growing up. Likewise there are no shortcuts to spiritual
knowledge. Those who seek shortcuts to spiritual growth, by taking LSD or other mind-altering
substances, will endanger themselves and others, just as a small boy driving a Ferrari at high speed on
a city street. Steiner says on page 78, "The forces we use until the age of twenty-one for growing and
forming the inner organs become inflexible, just critical intellect." In other words, when a force stops
working as a growth force for our inner organs, it turns into an inflexible, merely critical intellect, but
at age 21, it becomes available as an inner force of spiritual perception. This happens in three stages.
The first is Imagination, second is Inspiration, and third is Intuition(4). Note how the stages develop
in the reverse order in and adult from the order in which they appeared as growth forces in the pre-adult
human being. Note how this is the teenager stage of growth force which goes to sleep after 21, but which
can be re-activated consciously as an inner spiritual perception or supersensible knowledge.
[page 78, 79 Imagination] It becomes an imaginary inner force, a power of the soul,
no longer so strong as it was earlier when it had to guide human formation. If we
can find it sleeping in human nature, this power that once was a formative force but
after the age of twenty no longer is, if we develop it so it exists with the same
strength as before, then, acting now through love, it becomes Imaginative power.
People attain a capacity to see the world not only through abstract concepts, but in
pictures that are alive, just as dreams are alive, and that represent reality just as
our abstract concepts do. The same force that previously acted upon the healthy
developing human to form the capacity to love, can enable us to see such pictures
of the world and to reach the first stage of supersensible knowledge. We can
awaken this human capacity and plunge it deeper into our surroundings than
normal thinking and normal sensing can go.
The second stage is Inspiration. The growth forces which became active from teeth-change-to-puberty become quiescent, go to sleep, after the age of 14. They can be resurrected consciously as the
inner spiritual perception of Inspiration after 21.
[page 79] Then we can go further, since the forces that cause the important
formative changes from approximately seven years of age, from the change of teeth,
until sexual maturity, are also sleeping in us. These forces sleep deeper under the
surface of normal soul life than the forces I just characterized as Imaginative. When
we reawaken these idle formative capacities, when we call these spiritual powers out
of their sleep, they become the forces of Inspiration. These teach us that Imaginative
pictures are filled with spiritual content, that these pictures, which appear to be
dreams but really are not, reflect a spiritual reality that exists in our surroundings,
outside ourselves.
The third stage is Intuition. These are the deepest, most unconscious forces of growth from birth
until teeth change, after which it goes quiescent, sleeping until called into action by the adult human as
supersensible knowledge after age 21.
[page 79]These formative forces that were active in the first years of life have
withdrawn themselves most deeply from external life. If we bring them forth again
in later life and imbue them with Imagination and Inspiration, we will then have the
Intuitive powers of supersensible knowledge. These are the powers that enable us
to delve into the reality of the spiritual world in the same way that we can delve into
the physical world through the senses and the will usually associated with the body.
With these three powers, an adult human being is able to gain access to the supersensible world
using the most normal of all forces: the growth forces from birth to twenty-one. Yes, all three of these
forces become dormant after age 21 when their growth functions are completed, but they can be re-activated to allow the spiritual world to open up to us in a safe, completely conscious fashion.
Should we discard our sense-perceptual understanding of human beings and adopt a supersensible
understanding? No, we shouldn't. Steiner emphasizes this as he helps Waldorf schools develop a living
pedagogy to supplement the abstract-logical pedagogy which came down to us over the past centuries.
[page 84] This supersensible perception of human beings does not at all ignore
sense-perceptible understanding — it takes it fully into account. The
sense-perceptible view of human beings, with all its understanding of anatomy,
physiology, and so forth, treats people as an abstraction. Supersensible perception
adds the spirit-soul element, while at the same time taking sense-perceptible
knowledge fully into account. It observes the whole person, with emphasis upon the
development of the whole person.
[page 86] Think about it for a moment. Consider how close the sources of
pedagogical art are to what grows in the child when supersensible knowledge
controls and directs what the teacher brings to the child! We should not search for
new abstract ideas nor clever new rules in what we refer to as social pedagogical
effectiveness. What we should search for is that the living should replace the dead,
the concrete should replace the abstract.
Holding an unanswered question(5) can be a fruitful source of understandings over time. The person
who replies to some new source of knowledge with a perfunctory, "I know that!", has little chance of
acquiring new understandings. They aimlessly become a person of whom one can say after their death,
"They spent their life perfecting their faults." How can teachers avoid stultifying their pupils? Teach
them things which will stretch their understanding instead of fit neatly inside what they already know.
[page 88] Now, if you only teach children what they can understand, then you
neglect what can be the most beautiful thing in human life. If you always want to
stoop to the level of what the children can already comprehend, then you do not
know what it means later in life, perhaps at the age of thirty or thirty-five, to look
back upon what you were taught in school. You do not understand what it means
to have been taught something that you did not fully comprehend because you were
not yet mature enough. But it comes up again. Now you notice that you are more
mature, because you now understand it. Such a re-living of what has been taught
forms the real connection between the time in school and the whole rest of life. It is
immensely valuable to hear much in school that we cannot fully comprehend until
we re-experience it later in life. We rob the children of this possibility when, with
banal instruction, we stoop to the level of the child's understanding.
Spiritual science, rightly understood, is not abstract, but something that enters directly into living
humans. It is the basis upon which Waldorf schools have been formed, a basis in truly practical life.
(Page 95) Steiner closes Lecture 4 with this set of axioms, each of which should fill an reasonable person
with one or more unanswered questions (Page 98):
1) Seek the truly practical material life, but seek it such that it does not numb you
to the Spirit working in it.
2) Seek the Spirit, but seek it not in supersensible lust, out of supersensible egotism;
seek it because you want to become selfless in practical life, selfless in the material
world.
3) Turn to the old maxim: Never Spirit without matter, never matter without Spirit!
And he adds:
[page 98] Do this so that you can say, "We want to perform all material deeds in the
light of the Spirit, and we want to seek the light of the Spirit in such a way that it
develops warmth within us for our practical deeds."
At the turn of the twentieth century, a spate of spirit channels appeared and became very popular,
offering all kinds of advice and insight from the spiritual world. Steiner eschews such advice, calling it
a "final decadent outstreaming of a desire for an abstract spiritual life." Note that he was referring to the
kind of spiritualism popular in the beginning of the twentieth century, characterized by table-tipping,
seances, and sleeping prophets like Edgar Casey, etal. These fell out of fashion by mid-century, only to
be replaced by the very popular Seth, Ramtha, Lazaris, etal in the 1980s, who remain mostly as
memories in the twenty-first century.
[page 105] The science of the spirit cannot speak of a spirit that partakes of guest
appearances that have nothing to do with external reality, and are called forth
simply to convince passive people that spirit exists. The science of the spirit cannot
speak of such a spirit. Spiritual science can speak only of the spirit that in truth
participates in every material effect and every material event. It speaks of the spirit
with which people can connect themselves in order to master external reality.
On page 106 Steiner gives us a story of a young girl who limped regardless of how people tried to
get rid of the limping. He says, "The reason the child limped was that she had an older sibling who, due
to a diseased leg, actually had cause to limp!" She limped because between birth and seven she imitated
the way her sibling walked. Much of what passes as pedagogy today evolved over the centuries by
imitating a limping pedagogy based solely on physical science. A modern pedagogy must be based on
spiritual science and physical science. The Waldorf school system is bringing a new pedagogy which
will overcome the absurdities of the old pedagogy, much as modern science since Copernicus and
Galileo has overcome the absurdities of the earlier sciences of astronomy and mechanics.
[page 116] In the same way, the knowledge of the three stages of life, their basic
forces and their transformation into Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition
through spiritual science will become a matter of course.
Steiner was never hypnotized by the masses's cry for bread during his time; he saw it rightly as a
cry for spirit.
[page 122, 123] We have to see through the cry for bread, to see that it is nothing
other than a modern cry for the spirit. Only out of an understanding of the true
spirit can come the social strength of will that can properly provide tools for bread
production. The point is not to cry for programs, but to turn rightly to human
faculties, to turn to the strength of human activity. That means to correctly
understand people, so that hey find their proper place in life and can work in the
most efficient way to feed their families, to work for the whole life of their fellow
human beings.
Rightly understood, this would require the implementation of Steiner's 3-fold society, but as he and
Emil Molt realized, there was a dire need for spiritually-based education before such three-foldness
would be accepted and implemented in society.
For over forty years now, I have disliked wax fruit and wondered why. During a visit to a friend's
house in California, I admired how his wife kept fresh fruit in a bowl in their kitchen. I returned with a
resolve to do the same thing in our kitchen. I found a beautiful Portofino Pear bowl which has become
our fruit bowl ever since. It requires tending on a weekly basis, but it repays my attention by its natural
beauty and its constant availability of fresh, live fruit to eat and use in salads and desserts. In a humorous
fashion, Steiner explains my own dislike for wax fruit.
[page 126, edited] An outrageously inept thing often occurs that is the expression
of bad taste. You show someone, let's say, an apple that you find particularly
pleasing, beautifully polished, and so forth. Then, they say, "It's as pretty as if it
were made out of wax!" It's impossible to think of something more outrageously
inept than when someone compares something from nature with an artificial thing,
regardless of how good this artificial thing is!
Steiner was pointing out that an imitation of nature can never be real art. The map (wax apple)
cannot reach or exceed the territory (real apple). Art that claims to be lifelike fails to reach the status of
true art. And a pedagogy which claims to follow a hide-bound tradition fails to reach the level of a living
pedagogy for human beings.
[page 128] You must understand what it means not to practice a learned pedagogy
from memory, but to invent at each moment the individual methods that this child
needs.
Art without creativity is kitsch; it is not effective in inspiring awe in an art lover. Similarly, a
pedagogy without creativity cannot reach the living human being. A teacher must "invent at each
moment the individual methods that this child needs." (Page 128)
If you have ever been present at a lecture in which the speaker reads entirely from notes, you might
have been reminded of a wax apple which promised more than it delivered in your presence. What gives
life to a speaker's words is the immediacy, the unexpected, the thrill of discovery by the speaker of the
right metaphor, the right words to express ideas in a living fashion.
Many people present at Steiner's lectures have commented that he seems always to shape his
lectures to the wants and needs of those present, as if he sensed their unanswered questions and found
a way to include an answer to them in the course of his already planned lecturers. The best examples of
Steiner doing this in the series of "From . . . to . . ." lectures he gave to workers at the Goetheanum in
Dornach(6).
[page 128] There have been times, and probably still will be, when I have lectured
on the same theme week after week. I do not think anyone can say that I have ever
spoken about the same theme in the same way. When you speak from the spirit,
your concern is to create something immediate. It is not at all possible in the normal
sense to memorize what comes from the spirit, because it must continuously develop
in direct contact with life.
Memorized speeches are map; extemporaneous speeches are territory, as unique as a real apple
appears next to a wax apple.
[page 128, 129] The true spirit must at all times be a creator. In the same way,
education carried by the spirit must be a continuously creative art.
There will be no blessing upon our elementary schools, and there will also
be no healing in our school systems, until education becomes a continuously living,
creating art, carried by true love and those intangibles of which I have spoken.
We begin to comprehend why the centuries-old pedagogy which fills our non-Waldorf schools fails
to meet the needs of our students and creates adults who so often live stilted, loveless lives and work in
equally dismal work environments.
[page 131] . . . because the unifying spirit is something concretely alive, we cannot
understand it by encompassing it with abstract concepts, with ideology. We must
resolve to seek the living spirit. We can only seek it, though, if, with a certain
intellectual modesty, we find the bridge between the sleeping inner human forces
that are of a spiritual nature and the spirit that lives in nature, in human life, in the
whole cosmos.
The eye cannot see itself except by reflection. These seem like a tautology, but rarely do we use the
eye to see itself; most of the time we ignore its presence so long as it is working normally. Our human
self is that way when it comes to the methods of natural science, we forget ourselves in the scientific
method and along with it we forget everything connected with human life. One example of this came
to my mind in studying the process of digestion. Steiner explains that food we digest must be converted
into living nutrients before it can enter the blood stream or else it will act as a poison(7). Has anyone ever
told you that you poison yourself when you eat and that your body undertakes to change the dead
chemicals of your food into living nutrients before it can process the nourishment you need without
killing you? Kind of an important insight, don't you think? But the typical doctor or medical researcher
is oblivious of this, so far as I know, always assuming that chemicals are chemicals, always dead
substances that one can analyze the constituents of with a mass spectrometer.
It would likely shock these highly trained medical personnel if we told them that they knew as much
about human beings as a five-year-old child can know about the world from reading Goethe's lyrical
poetry. The child may be able to read all the words and still make no sense of the realities Goethe is
writing about.
[page] 134] Suppose we put a book of Goethe's lyrical poetry in the hands of a
five-year-old child. This book of Goethe's poems contains a whole world. The child
will take the book in hand and play around with it, but will not perceive anything
that actually speaks to people from this volume. However, we can develop the child,
that is, we can develop the soul powers sleeping in the child, so that in ten or twelve
years the child can really take from the volume what it contains.
Why does Steiner tell us this story? Because it would take a similar amount of training for average
medical professionals of our day to come to understand the spiritual processes of the human being which
are otherwise as transparent to them as our eyes are to us. Like any 21-year-old, these professionals have
powers sleeping within them which they can awaken, if they will take over their own development.
[page 134, 135] We need this attitude if we are to find our way to the science of the
spirit. We must be able to say to ourselves that even the most careful education of
our intellect, of our methods of observation and experimentation, brings us only so
far. From there on, we can take over our own development. From that stage on, we
can develop the previously sleeping forces ourselves. Then we will become aware
that previously we stood in the same relationship to the external nature of our
spirit-soul being, particularly the essence of our humanity, as the five-year-old child
to the volume of Goethe's lyrical poetry. In essence and in principle, everything
depends upon a decision for intellectual modesty, so that we can find our way to
the science of the spirit.
Most medical professionals do not form a picture of their patient's body, soul, and spirit
interweaving each other, but focus mostly on the body's functions and try not to upset the soul of their
patient. To Steiner this is a skewed materialistic view of human life, one not suited to medical doctors
or educators.
[page 136] Usually people observe the different manifestations of human life much
too superficially, both physiologically and biologically. People do not form a picture
of the whole human being in which the body, soul, and spirit intertwiningly affect
one another. If you wish to teach and educate children as they need, you must form
such a picture.
Why should children change dramatically at 7, 14, and 21? Isn't it said that Nature takes no leaps?
Yes, but wrongly so. Look at the green leaves on a plant, one identical leaf after another, then suddenly
the topmost leaf changes shape and color and becomes a flower! That's a dramatic leap! For a child, as
dramatic as getting new teeth at age 7. Then, the multicolored flower develops a fruit containing the
seeds of reproduction, another dramatic leap! For a new teenage, as dramatic as voice deepening in boys
and menarche for girls, both signs that they are now able to reproduce. Yes, human life does undergo
leaps at critical points in life. And a spiritual science inspired pedagogy will produce teachers who
understand this as their pupils grow and mature through these stages. It is the reason which Waldorf
teachers remain with a class over the first 8 grades: they get to observe these changes in each child and
facilitate their passage into maturity. The Waldorf teacher approaches each child as a divine riddle to be
solved at each hour, not as an empty bucket for knowledge to be poured into.
[page 154] This is the goal of spiritual science. It does not desire to be something
foreign and distant from the world. It desires to be a leaven that can permeate all
the capacities and tasks of life. It is with this attitude that I attempt to speak from
spiritual science about the various areas of life and attempt to affect them. Also, do
not attribute to arrogance what I have said today about the relationship of spiritual
science to pedagogy. Rather, attribute it to an attitude rooted in the conviction that,
particularly now, we must learn much about the spirit if we are to be spiritually
effective in life. Attribute it to an attitude that desires to work in an honest and
upright manner in the differing areas of life, that wishes to work in the most
magnificent, the most noble, the most important area of life — in the teaching and
shaping of human beings.
Surely there must be some rules for Waldorf teachers, you must be thinking. Yes, there is one:
understand the rule through the specific case. The individual comes before the general rule and teachers
learn how to apply that rule in a wise manner to foster the growth of the individual student.
[page 165] To guide educationally each individual child by interpreting general
ideas, we must acquire, through a particular spiritual knowledge, an eye for what
cannot be included as a specific case under a general rule — for that rule first must
be understood through the specific case. Unlike the model of normal cognition, the
spiritual knowledge meant here does not lead to a set of general ideas and to their
utilization in specific cases. Rather it brings people to a certain condition of the soul,
so that they may, through observation, experience the particular case in its
individuality.
Reducing class size seems to be a goal of so many school systems, but paradoxically Waldorf
schools are able to manage large class sizes while giving individual attention when required. Once a
teacher has grouped a class so that the various temperaments are together, the rough edges of each
temperament are smoothed out by rubbing against each other(8). The sanguine become less obstreperous
among other sanguines, for example. But everything creating an involved and orderly class flows out
from the teacher.
[page 167] The spiritual understanding reveals itself in the entire demeanor of the
teacher. It will give character to each word, to everything done by the teacher.
Under the guidance of the teacher, the children will become inwardly active. The
teacher's general conduct will affect the children in such a way that they do not
need to be forced into activity.
[page 170] Through a teacher who understands the soul, who understands people,
the totality of social life affects the new generation struggling into life. People will
emerge from this school fully prepared for life.
Spiritual science and pedagogy not only mix together, but they both prosper in each other's
presence. Together they create teachers who understand human nature and inspire their pupils to do the
same, while in school and later in life outside of school. What more can we ask of teachers than this?
---------------------------- Footnotes -----------------------------------------
Footnote 1.
See in this review my discussion of Frederick the Great's ill-fated experiments in which all the babies died:
Manifestations of Karma.
Return to text directly before Footnote 1.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 2.
See my The Live Lecturer in the Classroom essay.
Return to text directly before Footnote 2.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 3.
These thee stages of supersensible knowledge and the spiritual growth forces in human beings are capitalized to
distinguish them from the ordinary human processes we know as imagination, inspiration, and intuition.
Return to text directly before Footnote 3.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 4.
See Footnote(3) re consistent use of Capitalization for these three growth forces and stages of supersensible perception.
Return to text directly before Footnote 4.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 5.
See "What is the power of an unanswered question?" here.
Return to text directly before Footnote 5.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 6.
All seven of these books I have reviewed, and each review links to the other books in the series. Here's the first in the
series chronologically: From Crystals to Crocodiles.
Return to text directly before Footnote 6.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 7.
See Physiology and Healing, GA#314.
Return to text directly before Footnote 7.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnote 8.
Read about the four temperaments: melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric as characteristics of pupils viewed
in the Waldorf teacher's macroscope here in The Spiritual Ground of Education.
Return to text directly before Footnote 8.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RUDOLF STEINER'S LECTURES
and WRITINGS ON EDUCATION
LEGEND: (TBA) indicates this review to be added later.
Underlined Title indicates Available Review: Click on Link to Read Review.
(NA) indicates the Book is NOT in Print presently, so far as we know.
I. Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik: Pädagogischer Grundkurs,
14 lectures, Stuttgart, 1919 (GA 293). Previously Study of Man.
The Foundations of Human Experience (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).
II. Erziehungskunst Methodische-Didaktisches, 14 lectures, Stuttgart, (GA 294). Practical Advice to Teachers (Anthroposophic Press, 2000).
III. Erziehungskunst, 15 discussions, Stuttgart, 1919 (GA 295). Discussions with Teachers (Anthroposophic Press, 1997).
IV. Die Erziehungsfrage als soziale Frage, 6 lectures, Dornach, 1919 (GA 296). Previously
Education as a Social Problem. Education as a Force for Social Change
(Anthroposophic Press, 1997).
V. Die Waldorf Schule und ihr Geist, 6 lectures, Stuttgart and Basel, 1919
(GA 297). The Spirit of the Waldorf School (Anthroposophic Press, 1995).
VI. Rudolf Steiner in der Waldorfschule, Vorträge und Ansprachen, 24 Lectures and conversations and one essay, Stuttgart, 1919-1924 (GA 298) Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Lectures and Conversations
(Anthroposophic Press, 1996).
VII. Geisteswissenschaftliche Sprachbetrachtungen, 6 lectures, Stuttgart, 1919
(GA 299). The Genius of Language (Anthroposophic Press, 1995).
VIII. Konferenzen mit den Lehrern der Freien Waldorfschule 1919-1924, 3 volumes
(GA 300a-c). Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner
, 2 volumes: 
