Robert Steiner and his lectures on education

        I do not know how many of you know about the works of this brilliant person that wrote so many wonderful things in the 20s.

      The lecture I am referring to today was written in 1922 and it is a great example of in-depth analysis of understanding Antroposophy or Spiritual Science, that is the science that can help the teacher recognise in single concrete instances the connection between body, soul and spirit in the child. I will offer you some interesting ideas taken from his lecture.

       The teacher who lets the anthroposophic knowledge of man work upon his thought and feeling, comes, as we have seen, to a kind of artistic vision of the growing child, who is to him as individual, as full of mystery and enigma, as is every great work of art. But this is not all. Out of such a vision of the child proceeds also the manner in which the lesson is handled, the actual art of teaching. Not that the teacher consciously converts the knowledge of the child that he has acquired — whether by study or by his own observation — into educational formulae, into pedagogic maxims. The process is a more instinctive one than that.

       It must be admitted that, in spite of all the experimental Psychology of the present day, not forgetting too all the theories given out with authority concerning the nature of the soul, the teachers of today cannot get beyond rather hazy and abstract ideas of the connection between body and soul. There is indeed no one engaged in teaching who will not be able to enter into the feelings of thankfulness with which the teacher receives the anthroposophical knowledge of man and learns to perceive, for example, how the forces working in the child are transformed in the 7th year of his age.

      How before this period they work as psychic-spiritual forces giving form and shape to the body, and how these moulding processes come to a certain conclusion at the time of the change of teeth, the forces being then set free from the bodily and able to work in their own character as soul-forces, building up the life of ideas and memory in the child. The teacher can now begin to make observations of his own in this direction, to recognise through his own perception the working of these moulding forces in the child, and to make use of them — in the way, for instance, in which he introduces the child to the art of writing. He works with confidence, knowing he is working in the line of the child's development, not against it. 

     The manner in which a child reacts to the lesson will be a matter of no small interest to the teacher. Here is a child, for instance, continually holding up his hand, joining in with intense keenness, raising himself on his seat, glancing up with an expression of delight on his face, pleased with everything all the time, whether because he knows it already or because it is something he is eagerly wanting to know. Here again is another, whose disposition finds a different expression. After the teacher has finished and is passing on to a fresh subject, or else the school hours are at an end, he quietly leaves his seat, and approaching the teacher with earnest gaze asks a question in a half whisper, relating to what the teacher has been telling them, either wanting to carry the matter to a fuller completion, or indicating something that puzzled him, that was not quite clear. By such signs can we recognise the sanguine and the melancholic respectively among our pupils. 

         Imagine a teacher standing up before a large class of children, who are sitting all in confusion, not according to any inner law, just as for the untrained eye the stars stand arbitrarily in the heavens at night! How is he to comprehend his class, how is he to set to work with such a crowd of children so that each individual child may find his right place? This difficulty it is that gives rise to the cry for small classes. But it is for the teacher to carry out the task — and it is no light task, and is only possible on the foundation of a spiritual understanding of man — the task of so sounding the children in the depths of their being as to be able to sort them out into groups according to their peculiar temperaments. By this means order and harmony are brought in, where before was confusion, and it is then possible to conduct lessons in large classes; for as far as the actual class instruction is concerned, instead of having to handle a great number of particular children as so many individuals, the teacher is able to handle particular groups of children whose inner natures resemble one another.  

        Let us have an example of a group of children who are sitting quiet and good, but all too inclined to do their work in a sleepy, uninterested fashion. One can see among them pleasant round-faced, comfortable looking little people, with smoothly brushed hair and an expression that is thoroughly good-natured, if at times a trifle dull and slow. The first thing to be done with them is to wake them up, they must somehow or other be induced to listen and attend; one may even resort, as it were in jest, to some such device as culling upon them suddenly to pull their right ear with their left hand! 

        Another example is about a group of contented happy-go-lucky children, most of them of slender and well-proportioned figure. They look about them in a lively manner, and are fond of stealing a glance through the window or a chat with the boy or girl sitting next them. They enjoy the lesson and are all attention, but they enjoy just as well to have their attention drawn away by something of no importance. Instinctively, without hesitation, one would call upon these children to point out, for example, on the map the line of march of Alexander the Great. Pictures of Ionic and Doric pillars they looked at with interest; they could give good descriptions of them, pointing out their differences, and were delighted to make models of them in plasticine, which they did with a fair measure of success. Their attention was easily gained for everything that could be seen and looked at; in this way one could meet their instinctive interest in the outside world, and turn it to good purpose. 

          Thus can the child of every kind of temperament have his value in the class; every kind is absolutely necessary in its place, every kind completes the others, even leaves the others lagging helplessly behind if it is wanting. It will be readily seen that this arranging of the children according to inclination and talent will help very greatly to the promotion of the right kind of social outlook.