The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A teacher asks if the school should set up a public first-aid station since bandages and so forth would then be cheaper.

Dr. Steiner: I think we will have to buy those things by the case ourselves. Without doubt, it would be desirable if we had a room where we could take the children. On the other hand, it would not be so desirable if people from outside mixed in with that. There is no real value in that. It is good to have Dr. Kolisko here. The faculty should take care of that. Obviously, this can’t happen a couple of times every day, but with three hundred children, minor things will happen where we need a bandaging room we can sterilize and disinfect. Perhaps something will happen once a week, and it will be sufficient if we have a room. I think it is important that we have a doctor on the faculty, but the more we can close ourselves off from the outer world, the better it is. We should try to obtain bandaging material cheaply.

I had thought that there would be a number of questions. As I already said, we have generally made great progress. In the first year it was apparent that you struggled with the subject matter, but you made progress in all areas. What is important though, is what kind of progress you made and that in the coming years we work more with those ideas that are consistent with and related to the Waldorf School. I believe that progress lies in what the students have learned, as well as what the teachers have slowly discovered about how to treat the students. Everything has progressed, even the pranksters. The pranksters have become strong pranksters, but that doesn’t hurt anything. That is simply a side effect. Many have even become better behaved, more cultivated, more intellectual. That is very good and hurts nothing.

In my opinion, we must put more value upon psychology in the future. We must work with psychology. You should not understand that as abstractly or theoretically as it may appear. That might look as though we wanted to analyze the children. When we become accustomed to understanding the children psychologically, we will slowly find a relationship to them that results purely from our activity. That understanding of the children will not remain as a mere recognition, but will become another relationship if you really try to understand them. There is still much we need to catch up on in creating a proper relationship to the children. We need to be clear that when so much depends upon personal activities, as it does here, an intensive analytical understanding of the children is necessary. Then things that have occurred in the past will no longer happen.

It is difficulty to characterize individual cases, but that is not necessary. We should act psychologically. If you think about that, you will discover what I mean. I don’t so much mean that the children must achieve this or that, but that you ask yourselves what the children can achieve in accordance with their psychological makeup. Always work from the standpoint of the children. You can change individual behavior only if you really try to understand children in their different variations. Each child is interesting.

Miss Lang showed me a prankster, B.N. She had cried terribly, but today she skipped school again. That is interesting, and we will have to study it. I cannot promise she will keep her word. It may last for years. I can imagine that she spent some time with tightrope walkers; that is certainly a reason for being interested in her, isn’t it? If you create expectations about what a child is, you can easily define things. However, you can achieve a genuine psychological understanding of a child only through intense study. One of my thoughts is that we should consider learning to understand the children as one of the main things in the first year. We should never assume they must be one way or another.

There is something else that strongly disturbs me in nearly all classes. We should continually strive to integrate anthroposophy organically in the instruction. That truly enlivens the children’s strengths. Just the way that you, Dr. von Heydebrand, have done in anthropology and you, Dr. Stein, have done in history. That is something that is present intuitively with many of you. You cannot do eurythmy without Anthroposophy. You need to try to bring Anthroposophy into your teaching without teaching anything theoretical.

In my opinion, you include a great deal of Anthroposophy when you attempt, and that is the ideal, to bring what we call rhythm into your work. For instance, when you try to connect what the students learn in music, singing, and eurythmy with handwork. That has an extremely positive effect on the children. I would recommend that you read Karl Bücher’s book Work and Rhythm. We should have this book. All work is based upon musical work, threshing, blacksmithing, plastering. Today, you hardly hear that anymore. But if you had gone out into the country at an earlier time and listened to the threshing, you would have heard the flails swinging in rhythm. I think we can bring that into our work. That is what I mean when I talk about bringing the spirit into it. You will find that principle in Work and Rhythm, even though he states it rather pedantically.

Of course, I am also carrying the question about the end of school, about the closing ceremony. I definitely think it should include a certain amount of festivities. Today is the twenty-third, and I will not be able to attend. I simply cannot be there, though I surely would like to be. We need to begin the summer holidays on time. In my opinion, the teachers have done enough, and they will collapse otherwise. I would really like to be at the closing ceremony. Each teacher should give a short speech. Perhaps Mr. Baumann would be kind enough to take care of the musical part. Perhaps you could write something that could be presented through eurythmy, not a normal eurythmy presentation, but something that represents the close of school. It would be really wonderful if we could do that. Begin with a eurythmy presentation accompanied by music. Then go on into a musical presentation alone and close with eurythmy again. I would suggest your composition be connected with the closing of school. Perhaps Miss Röhrle could do something with two or three of the older girls. Then we must have something, and this is very important to me, that is a kind of speech about life, to let the children go and to receive them again. Something that has a connection with the children’s leaving school and their return.

Someone had written on a blackboard, “The sky is blue, the weather is nice, we want to go for a walk, dear teacher.” Dr. Steiner was rather angry about that.

Dr. Steiner: You haven’t seen that? Sometimes when the weather is too hot, you can let the children go. I don’t think it would be right to close earlier, though. I am not in favor of letting the children go as long as we can keep them here. We let them go earlier than we really should. We can, of course, make it easier for the children, but only when it is too warm. It would almost be better if we kept them and took them some place, but stayed with them. Don’t you think it is better when the children go to kindergarten. The longer we have them, the better it is. In that way, we can have the children who do not yet go to school. Right now we can generally take the children only when they begin elementary school. When the age of imitation ends, then we can begin. It would be nice if we could bring something into the child’s education during the first seven years. We will have to have something for the earlier years, later is less important.

Some people want some temporary school buildings, but I think we should discuss that in detail after school has closed. It is settled in general, but, nevertheless, we need to discuss it. There are some things we need to decide that cannot wait until after school has begun. We must expand the singing class, and we need a teacher for it. There are many other things we need to discuss if we have an additional grade. We must also carefully consider who will take over the first grade. We cannot assume that Stockmeyer’s and Stein’s work will cease. These are all things we need to discuss at an early enough time. For those reasons, I will have to be here when school ends unless something significant hinders that. I will probably need to be away only for four to six days. Today is too early.

How should we handle those children who arrive too late? I had to wait today as I came into the school. Three girls were coming in. They simply went in, not the least disturbed that they were late. The person I was walking with said to me, “It seems quite all right with them that they are late.” So, what do we do with the children who come late?

A teacher: Have them come a quarter of an hour earlier.

Dr. Steiner: Then we run the danger that they don’t come at all. We must avoid under all circumstances giving them a punishment we cannot carry out. We may never place ourselves in a situation where we may have to relent in a disciplinary decision. If we say that a child must come earlier, then we must enforce that. We must order the child to come earlier. The girls today were in the seventh or eighth grade. We lose all control the minute we look away. We will find ourselves on a downward path and will continue to slide. With punishment, we cannot relent. It is better to let it go. Under certain circumstances, it can lead to the opposite of what we want, with the children forming a group among themselves and saying, “Today I come late, tomorrow, you.” I don’t think that would work, because it would make us somewhat laughable. Of course, it’s just laziness. Having the children come earlier is not so good; it would be better if they stayed a quarter of an hour longer. That is something the children do not like.

Have you tried that to see if it works? If a child comes ten minutes late, having him or her stand for a half hour. If they have to stand three times as long, they will certainly think about every minute. Let them stand there uncomfortably. Your boy rubs the back of his head on the wall and amuses himself with all kinds of things. I think that in such cases, when there is some punishment connected with the misbehavior, you can be particularly effective if you allow them to stand in some uncomfortable place. The older children will then be careful that they do not come too late. We could also buy a number of little sheds, and then they will not come too late as a group. They may even get some cramps in their legs. We could have the sheds built in the shop class.

A teacher: What should we do if a teacher comes too late?

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have the children put the teacher in the pen. It is important, though, that we differentiate in such things. I would not punish the children as severely in winter as in summer. The moment the children notice there is some reason for the disciplinary action, they will agree to it. In the winter, we could discipline them less intensively and have them stand only twice as long. We need to stir them up. There are some who are inattentive. The industrious children will hardly come too late.

A teacher asks about the windows.

Dr. Steiner: Sometimes, when you go by, you want to climb in yourself. We will need to put some mesh up, so that they can’t climb in.

Concerning F.R. in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: That is a very difficult case. If he leaves school, that will be a real problem, something not particularly desirable. On the other hand, he should not suffer. We should not serve our school on a silver platter to the school he next attends. There will certainly be teachers there who will happily hear that someone comes to them saying he could not stand it here. Tomorrow, I will take a look to see what we can do. This is a very difficult situation.

Here, we have the question of whether to try a parallel class. Right now, there is hardly anything else we can do other than place him in the previous or the following grade. I definitely do not want him in the previous class, so he would then go in your class in the next higher grade. I don’t think there is any other solution, but that will cause considerable upset with the children. We will need to do it in such a way that it appears to be an exception. We will have to think about how we will handle this. It would be a bad story if people knew we did this for personal reasons. Of course, we also run the danger that the children will say, “Well, he got out, we could also try.” What should we do with such a boy though, if we do not want to send him away? Perhaps I will visit the class tomorrow. He is actually not the problem. That is something he inherited, and it has a continuous effect upon him. It is something in the family. It would be best if we could help him past that hurdle. Perhaps he might even become a really good person. He is certainly enthusiastic about eurythmy and singing, he simply does not want the normal class instruction. He finds it horrible. Then there are other things that people take too seriously. He took five marks, but only in fun. You can reach him, he just needs a certain kind of objective treatment because everything at home is so subjective. We have all tried that. His father is a person like the teacher who says when a child is excited, “I will teach you what being relaxed is, I’ll show you what relaxed is.” That is how his father is.

We cannot allow him to remain in the fourth grade. We would run the danger that he would jump overboard, and that would certainly not be pleasant. I still recall a very horrible situation. At that time, I was at an engineering school.7 The janitor’s son was very ambitious. A teacher who was very hot tempered grabbed him by the scruff and walloped him. The boy left the class. He knew from his father where the cyanide was; he took it and poisoned himself. After that, the teacher became red when someone left the class during the period. (Speaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) I only mention all this because he will be coming to you in the fifth grade. He does not belong in the fourth grade. We made an error there.

Act psychologically! We must study the children’s feelings.

A teacher asks about lace making and embroidery.

A teacher: Should we have school on Peter and Paul’s Day?

Dr. Steiner: We can take the day off. “Peter and Paul is always quite lazy.”

The following was also noted.

Bad teeth, the cause lies in the soul/spirit.

Connection between eurythmy and the formation of teeth.

Handwork. Knitting develops good teeth. The children gain dexterity through knitting.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps Mr. Molt would say a few words.

Mr. Molt thanks the teachers for their work in the past school year and gives particular thanks to Dr. Steiner. He recalls Dr. Steiner’s words about strength, courage, and light at the beginning of the course in 1919.

Dr. Steiner: I too must think of the time when we began our course last fall. It is certain that what we attempted to bring from spiritual life into our own spirits has had an effect upon our souls. I would like to recall that moment and again ask those good spirits who are watching over our deeds to bless us and give us strength for our work.

I would like to continue with what I briefly touched this morning. I said that it was particularly valuable at this important moment in human evolution to believe we need to use all our deeds and being in working toward the intent of the Waldorf School. I spoke of this at the beginning of the pedagogical course in Basel. At that time, I said that many teachers have done an enormous amount of work toward providing principles of education, and it is not our task as anthroposophists to replace everything people such as Pestalozzi or Fröbel right up through Diesterung and Dittes have done. I mentioned that the abstract foundations that have come down from the great pedagogues of the nineteenth century will certainly stand up to a didactic pedagogical critique and that people can justifiably criticize us when we speak of a renewal of pedagogy.

In reality, something quite different concerns us. If you read Pestalozzi, or Fröbel’s works, if you read from Herbart right up to Dittes, you will find they speak of many beautiful things in regard to pedagogy. However, if you look deeply at what the educational system does, if you look into what actually goes on in the Pestalozzi schools, you will recognize that the spirit active there does not correspond to those principles you can accept abstractly. You need only look at the critical remarks Fröbel wrote about the Pestalozzi schools. If you follow the development of education in the nineteenth century, you will see that, in spite of the fact that people often thought properly, the proper thing was not taken up, was not done. Why is that? There can be but one answer. Regardless of which realm of culture you look at, it is always the same. Namely, the entire nineteenth century was under the influence of materialism. If we formulate educational principles from our anthroposophical standpoint, they can sound identical to what the nineteenth-century pedagogues said. We must, therefore, mean it differently. We speak from the perspective of the spirit, whereas they spoke from the overwhelming impulse of the materialistic worldview. Regardless of how idealistic those things may sound, those thoughts nevertheless arise from the position of materialism. It is not important that we discover some new abstraction, but that we find a new spirit.

Today, I want to present you with something I have recently said repeatedly in various places, something we must take into account in our times. Modern people think, when you speak of materialism, that it is a false view of the world, that we lay it aside because it is not right. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. The human being is a being of soul and spirit and also a physical, bodily being. But, the physical body is a true reflection of the spirit and soul, to the extent that we live between birth and death. When people are as blinded by materialistic thoughts as they became during the nineteenth century and right into the present, the physical body becomes a copy of the spirit and soul living in materialistic impulses. In that case, it is not incorrect to say that the brain thinks. It is then, in fact, correct. By being firmly enmeshed in materialism, we have people who not only think poorly about the body, soul, and spirit, but people who think materially and feel materially. What that means is that materialism causes the human being to become a thinking automaton, that the human being then becomes something that thinks, feels, and wills physically. The task of Anthroposophy is not simply to replace a false view of the world with a correct one. That is a purely theoretical requirement. The nature of Anthroposophy is to strive not only toward another idea, but toward other deeds, namely, to tear the spirit and soul from the physical body. The task is to raise the spirit-soul into the realm of the spiritual, so that the human being is no longer a thinking and feeling automaton. I will say more about this tomorrow in my lecture, but human beings are in danger of losing their spirit-soul. What exists today in the physical as an impression of the spirit-soul, exists because so many people think that way, because the spiritsoul is asleep. The human being is thus in danger of drifting into the Ahrimanic world, in which case the spirit-soul will evaporate into the cosmos. We live in a time when people face the danger of losing their souls to materialistic impulses. That is a very serious matter. We now stand confronted with that fact. That fact is actually the secret that will become increasingly apparent, and out of which we can act fruitfully. Such things as the pedagogy of the Waldorf School can arise from a recognition that humanity must turn toward spiritual activity, and not simply from a change in theory. We should work out of that spirit.

We should all treasure having found ourselves here in this circle due to a feeling that we must so act, some of us more clearly, some of us less. You need only compare the seeds we have laid in the Waldorf School with all the terrible things giving rise to such a hostile storm.

The school was founded out of the echoes of our work in Stuttgart since April of 1919. Since that time, so many wonderful things have occurred. Nevertheless, we should not forget that what we intended in forming the Cultural Commission last year completely fell in the water. You can see why it failed by looking at the terrible scandals at the Goetheanum. The obvious demise of German cultural life reveals itself as a symptom through the things occurring at the Goetheanum. We will now have to use our strength very differently than we did before in order to counter that demise. That cannot, of course, occur only at the Waldorf School. Through the understanding that the Waldorf teachers have shown, through their dedication to their work, they are now called upon to act in a general anthroposophical cultural direction.

That struck me in such a living way today at the closing of the first school year, and was what I meant with the words I spoke in the presence of the children this morning. The children will not have understood those words, but that is unimportant. We know it is not so important that the children understand what we say to them, but that later many things brighten in their souls. I also received in the name of the spirit who is to permeate the Waldorf School the words of thanks given by Mr. Molt. That spirit will need to become more and more the spirit of Middle European culture. Those people who make themselves more materialistic, who lose their souls so that civilization will become materialistic, could still be saved today if what we have here in the spirit of the Waldorf School spreads out into the world.

Of course, we must protect the Waldorf School from every kind of false appearance. We should be clear that we must become increasingly reticent with those people who have heard of the founding of the Waldorf School, and now see it as their task to extend their world of loafing about into it. They also want to participate in the Waldorf School, to take part in what we offer, and to take some of that with them in order to make it into something similar elsewhere. We should be clear that we do not find it important to offer these loafers respite here, but that the anthroposophic spirit must be a part of the basis of any schools following the Waldorf School.

A few months ago someone came to me who wanted to found something similar to the Waldorf School in France, and asked if I could give some advice. She wanted to know if she could observe in the Waldorf School. I told her I could recognize what she wants to form in Paris as being in the spirit of the Waldorf School only if they formed the school in exactly the same way that we formed the Waldorf School. Thus, these friends in France would first have to be ready to call me there to hold a course, and they would also need to declare that their school arose from the same spirit. Otherwise, I would have to strictly deny that it was comparable.

You should not think that such answers are egotistical. You need to be clear that we will not move forward if we do not stand upon a firm anthroposophical viewpoint, that is, if we do not keep ourselves free from desires for compromise. If we take a clearly delineated standpoint, then it is not impossible that we would ourselves form a Waldorf school in Paris. What is important is that we cannot be moved to make any compromises. Today, you get the furthest if you have a clearly spoken standpoint. You can be outwardly conciliatory, but inwardly what is important is that you have basic principles, and that you stand by them. For that, you will need the strength to look at things in a radical way and not give in to a tendency for compromise. As you know, at least in the spirit of our endeavor, we have tried during this first year to work from such a firm position. I hope that will become clearer. As teachers in the Waldorf School, you will need to find your way more deeply into the insight of the spirit and to find a way of putting all compromises aside. It will be impossible for us to avoid all kinds of people from outside the school who want to have a voice in school matters. As long as we do not give up any of the necessary perspective we must have in our feelings, then any concurrence from other pedagogical streams concerning what happens in the Waldorf School will cause us to be sad rather than happy. When those people working in modern pedagogy praise us, we must think there is something wrong with what we are doing. We do not need to immediately throw out anyone who praises us, but we do need to be clear that we should carefully consider that we may not be doing something properly if those working in today’s educational system praise us. That must be our basic conviction.

To the extent that I feel in a very living way what it means to you to have devoted your entire person to work of the Waldorf School, I would like to say something more. As Waldorf teachers, we must be true anthroposophists in the deepest sense of the word in our innermost feeling. We must be serious about an idea often mentioned as a foundation of Anthroposophy, one of importance for us. We should be aware that we came down from the spiritual worlds into the physical world at a particular time. Those we meet as children came later and, therefore, experienced the spiritual world for a time after we were already in the physical world. There is something very warming, something that strongly affects the soul, when you see a child as a being who has brought something from the spiritual world that you could not experience because you are older. Being older has a much different meaning for us. In each child, we greet a kind of emissary bringing things from the spiritual world that we could not experience.

A consciousness of the message that the child brings is a positive feeling that can be, and in fact, is, taken seriously by the Waldorf faculty. This awareness counteracts the decline of our civilization. It also counteracts the traditional religious beliefs preached from all the pulpits about eternity, that eternity following death toward which people look with that clever soul egotism because they do not want to cease to exist. People do not cease to exist, but what is important is how you arrive at the conviction of the eternal soul, whether you come to it through egotism or whether you have a living perspective and comprehension of the eternal human soul. A living comprehension will lead you to see the pre-existence of the soul, to see what the human being experienced before birth, to see that human life in the physical world is a continuation of previous experiences. Traditional religions strongly oppose preexistence, which can make a human being selfless. They strongly oppose those things that do not strive toward a murky and numbing uncomprehending belief, but toward knowledge and the clear light of comprehension.

Such things become practical when we say a child came down from the spiritual world later than we did. From the child’s life before me, I can perceive what happened in the spiritual world after I left. To carry such a living inner feeling is a genuine meditation for teachers, one of tremendous value and significance. By enlivening anthroposophical nature in such a specific way, we will truly be teachers working from the anthroposophical spirit. The best we can develop in Anthroposophy is not what the lazy people of the world want to coax out of us. The best is what develops in your feelings and in your souls as the spirit of the Waldorf School. During this first year, that spirit has truly come alive in your souls. In the future, we will need to direct our efforts toward taking care of that spirit. That is what I wanted to say to you this morning.

We want to undertake all individual activities in that spirit. I am really very sorry that I could only come here today, and that I could not have been here for the preparation of the children’s reports. We must further develop what I said about the practical and pedagogical aspects of psychology. I can see how difficult it was for you to develop that psychology as a strength. We will continue to try because now that we have decided to be Waldorf teachers, something that arose from a cosmic impulse entering world history, out of that same impulse, we want to remain so.

Dr. Steiner, who had been standing until this time, sat down.

Dr. Steiner: We now want to continue our discussions. We need to discuss some things that have recently occurred and then see how to continue in our teaching.

A teacher reports about the year-end report meetings. Questions arose about whether some children were in the proper classes for their age and knowledge.

Dr. Steiner: That is an important question. We also need to take into account that the solution will not be very easy. If you came to particular impressions during your discussion about writing the school reports, then perhaps we need to go into those in detail. The question takes on a quite different aspect depending upon whether the situation concerns only some individuals, or whether a large number of the students are not in the proper class. We need to have an idea of how many children we should not move into the next grade, but keep in the lower grade. We need to go into detail about the numbers involved. Of course, a large redistribution of the children will reflect the inadequacy of our considerations at the beginning of school when we placed children in classes according to the information presented by their former school. We may need to disavow ourselves of things in that regard.

We will need to consider that in detail. I would ask that the teachers who have such children whom they believe were not properly placed say something about that. Can someone please begin?

A teacher mentions G.T. in the fourth grade who is too old.

Dr. Steiner: In regard to G.T., the question is not whether we should place him in another class, but whether we can bring him up to his grade next year. He is nearly twelve and I think we should try to do that. We can handle the question of French and English separately. He learns very well, and keeping him in the fourth grade would certainly be unjustified. We will need to do something about these differences.

(Speaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) Have you been able to accomplish anything with F.R.?

A teacher: He is very well behaved in class, but he does not know as much as the other children.

Dr. Steiner: He is, however, mature enough and will certainly come along. It was therefore not a mistake.

In that regard, could we perhaps go into the question that I heard gave you many headaches. I can certainly imagine how terribly difficult it would be, but we must objectively weigh whether we should form another sixth grade, given all the psychological peculiarities of the present fifth grade. We need to consider whether it might be better to create an additional class. We would not need to split the class down the middle. We can certainly arrange it so that you, as the present teacher, would have full say. Now, there are fifty-one children, so I think we could arrange it so that you could select your sixth grade class, which would then consist of thirty, and we would move twenty. I would certainly think that everyone has absolute freedom in that regard. You should choose fifteen boys and fifteen girls.

A teacher: I have a list of twenty-six for me.

Dr. Steiner: As you wish. The choice lies entirely with you. However, it seems we should do it this way since the class was somewhat too large.

Do you have something against dividing the class? I know that you like them all so well that you do not want to give up any. Still, it would be better. You could certainly achieve the sixth grade goals if you had no more than thirty. If you could keep those you believe should stay, and then split off a class of twenty, would you agree? That would be the right thing to do. Then it will be easier to work with children like G.T. Is there another child we should consider? A teacher: I had A.S.K. in the sixth grade. He is epileptic and had to stay away from school for several months.

Dr. Steiner: He must certainly repeat the sixth grade. He could go into the new sixth grade class. We need to be careful with those children we are holding back. We should speak about him with his parents.

A teacher: This is a tricky thing. The parents will not understand. They do not have a very positive attitude. There are always problems with the boys.

Dr. Steiner: Well, that is certainly no reason. Certainly not. The father is a reasonable person, though not a strong person; he is certainly reasonable. It would be best to speak with him and not with his wife. The boy is neglected, and it would certainly not matter if we kept him in the sixth grade. The question is whether he should be removed from school and whether we should let it come to that. If he really is removed, then that will be the end for him. If he remains, he will at least not sink further.

According to his report, there is really not much possible other than leaving him in the sixth grade. For the time being, I would suggest that you speak with his father, but that only needs to happen at the beginning of the new school year. There are advantages in having the boy do the sixth grade again. I would simply present that to the father objectively. From the way you judge him, it appears that he hears things only intermittently, and if he were to hear them again, that might be good. If you see that the father is going to remove him, then we will put him in the seventh grade. This is certainly difficult. Are there only these few cases?

A teacher asks about F.M. in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: There is no real reason not to put him forward. He is a weak student and difficult to handle. For the time being, we will need to put him forward and try to do some things so that he learns and catches up. Otherwise, we would contradict ourselves too strongly.

A teacher asks about K.A. in the fifth grade and suggests that he be placed for a quarter of a year in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: (speaking to Dr. Schubert) Perhaps you could take him on for a quarter year and bring him along. It appears that there is a kind of mental weakness in the family. I would advise you to work with him.

H. will remain with you in the remedial class, and then you can decide when you think she has caught up enough and should go into a class. The remedial class will remain as it was.

I thought that M.G. would not move on to the second grade. She was in the remedial class quite a long time, but one beautiful day the light will go on in that girl. It may happen. Let’s keep her in the remedial class and decide later. If she wants to, it would harm nothing if she participated in the lowest grade. She can also do that, so let her participate in the lowest grade. In general, we do not need to make any major changes. We can resolve the cases we have. We do not need a complete revision.

In teaching foreign languages, it will be less difficult because we do not have to divide the children so strictly according to grade. We should not teach foreign languages so strictly according to grades. Things have developed that way; in general, we do not need to arrange the foreign language classes according to the grades.

In teaching foreign languages, there is a tremendous difference between speaking in chorus and individual speech. The children can all easily speak in chorus, but individually they cannot. We should use that fact. We will discuss that in the pedagogical questions next year, namely, that we should try to have the children speak individually immediately after they have said something in chorus. That should become a basis of learning, without doubt.

A teacher mentions that it will be difficult to carry out the class schedule if children from one class have foreign language with other classes.

Dr. Steiner: It would be best, but this is not possible practically, if we had groups of two different ages together, so that one child could learn from another. It is good when the younger children learn a language from older ones. It helps when weaker and better children are together. For now, we cannot do that, but when it becomes possible, we should mix the weaker and better children together in the language class.

A teacher: What should we do with the new children in the language classes? Should we tutor them?

Dr. Steiner: We will need to tell the parents immediately that there will be a lesson in the afternoon. There is nothing else we can do other than simply to push harder. Are there really so many new children?

A teacher: Since Christmas, I have fourteen new students.

Dr. Steiner: We certainly do not want to set up any rules in this regard, but look into each case separately. In general, if there is no particular reason, it would be best to advise people to remain at their present school until the end of the year, but we do not want to be completely unfriendly.

We must form an extra class in foreign languages for such children. That is absolutely necessary since otherwise we cannot take children into the upper grades. If only that is possible! We need to do what needs to be done. In general, we can say that in the language classes it may be possible to have older and younger children since the younger children will learn from the older ones, and the older children will move forward by helping the younger ones. We can certainly mix up the ages.

A teacher asks about increasing the number of hours of language.

Dr. Steiner: You want more hours, but on the other hand, we really have the children in school long enough. We cannot increase the number of hours. I don’t think we can do anything there. Later, in the higher grades, we can think about it. Perhaps in the ninth and tenth grades we could do some more language. We cannot take any time away from the main lesson, not one half hour can be removed. We cannot keep the children in school even longer; they are already here most afternoons.

A teacher: What is the maximum number of hours we can teach children during elementary school? In the first grade, we have them for twenty-six hours, but in the higher grades there are already many more hours, due to Latin.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot increase the number of hours. Why didn’t you present eurythmy as a separate subject in the reports, instead of combining it with music? I see that as a shortcoming.

Dr. Steiner: With music it is certainly possible that we can do something. It is certainly true that there are not enough hours. Do you want to make a specific proposal about how many hours you want in each class?

A teacher: We could do that differently. We could arrange things so that we have separate classes for choral singing and for practice in listening, or we could give choral instruction at particular times around the times of the festivals. That would be my preference. I assume I will have the classes as they now are. In classes that are too large, I cannot meet each of the children adequately.

Dr. Steiner: How many hours would you need for music in the first grade? We already have twenty-six-and-a-half hours there.

A teacher: One hour.

Dr. Steiner: Then you could also meet each child individually. We still need to do much with the class schedule. Certainly this one hour is possible, also in the second and third grades. The question is whether we should always have choral instruction in the upper classes. That is something we could do from case to case. I think that you could divide the time you have for teaching music into individual and choral instruction.

Then there is also the deportment class. That is not a problem, and we can certainly add that, I mean, add it to the other hours, but it should not detract from music. What you want when we have the new teachers is to have individual students by class and not combined. We must do that.

In addition, as soon as we have the capacity, we will need to add some gymnastics. We can certainly include gymnastics so that we can say “gymnastics and eurythmy.”

That would be quite good. We could bring them together so that we have physiological gymnastics alongside psychological eurythmy. If anyone asks, we can say we have not ignored it, it is included. We cannot have less eurythmy, we must have a special period for it. It would probably be enough if we had a half hour of gymnastics per week connected with eurythmy, or if we mixed the exercises in both. We need exercises with standard gymnastic equipment.

There is a problem with gymnastics. We cannot put the boys and girls together. The division is a space problem. We cannot have the boys and girls together when we work with the gymnastic equipment. With the floor exercises, we could certainly put them together if the children have gym clothes. That would certainly be possible, everything else is simply prejudice.

An objection is made.

Dr. Steiner: Why do you think so? Often the girls do not do what the boys can do. You could form groups and work with them alternately. In the one case, the girls could work on the parallel bars and the boys with the high bar. The girls would need to have gym shorts. We would need to have decent pants made down in the factory.

The question now is, who could take over the gym class so that you are not overburdened? Already, everything in the school concerning singing, eurythmy, and music lies with you. In general, much depends upon you.

A teacher (who had previously done some gymnastics): If we have eleven classes, there is a question whether that is possible. Could the class teachers also provide some instruction in gymnastics? Not always, but here and there?

Dr. Steiner: The class teachers are already burdened. The lower three grades do not need any gymnastics. We can take care of the first and second grades with eurythmy alone. Afterward, however, we will need to have gymnastics. It would also be good to do it. It would be quite nice if we could connect it with eurythmy, so that the children first have eurythmy and then do gymnastics.

Gymnastics would be a little too much for you. I had not thought of that. There must be a way to give someone else that period. Actually, two need to be there. The eurythmy teacher needs to be there also, but that is not difficult.

Well, we need to look at that. Either we can let gymnastics go, or we find a way to have a gym teacher. It would be enough to have an hour of eurythmy and then, right after, a half hour of gym. But, then, we would have too many hours.

(Turning to Mrs. Baumann) Now you have two hours of eurythmy. Wasn’t that too much?

A teacher: I often had fifty-one children at once. In the third grade, I had forty-eight. I handled that by having half of them watch while the others did the eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner is in agreement with that.

A teacher wants to divide the classes.

Dr. Steiner: We will do that when we see what the other classes need. That is something we need to determine at the beginning of the next school year. The size of the classes is not yet clear, but there are more children coming. How many children do you think will be in the first grade next year?

A teacher: Fifty-six.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we must make two classes of that. For the second grade, we don’t need to consider it. The future fourth grade is also so large, it has over fifty children. There are so many new children. I also thought of giving the youngest children to Miss Lämmert for singing, as it will be too much for Mr. Baumann. It would also be too much for gymnastics. We have to see how we can work with the faculty we have.

We must also discuss the question of the faculty. The number of new classes is increasing, and we need new teachers. There are now two temporary buildings under construction, which we hope to complete by the beginning of the new school year. If they are ready, we will have just enough room. There may even be enough when we divide the future second and fourth grades since they are both more than fifty children. It will, however, be tight with the rooms. All we can do is keep the number of specialty classrooms down. We will have to put this off. We could just make it with the structures we now have. However, we are missing, at least for the time, a room for singing. A room is missing for the kindergarten, and we are also missing the rooms for the additional classes we will have in the following years. We do not have a library or a gymnasium. We lack rooms for the continuation school, but perhaps we can leave the continuation school aside for now. We still need a room for the physician, as we discussed before. We are missing a whole number of things. These are all things that we recently discussed. Perhaps we should try to solve these things by adding an extra floor.

A teacher: We can’t do that.

Dr. Steiner: Why is that impossible? Why did we want to add a floor and now we can’t do that?

A teacher: The foundation is inadequate.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t understand. What does the architect say? Didn’t he know that already? It is terrible when ideas come up that turn out to be impossible. Of course we can, we are told, and then afterward everything has to be changed. The building code should have been thought about earlier. In Dornach, I would never allow anyone to present a plan if we were not absolutely certain we could complete it. We only lose time with such things. We go around with ideas, and then nothing comes of them. We had counted upon having the eurythmy room upstairs. I mean, we counted upon it. You told me about that in Dornach.

A teacher: Not as a fact, but as a possibility.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t want to know about possibilities. If someone tells me about something, I assume it to be real. Otherwise, it is nothing. You should always get a definite answer from the Building Department first, and then the architect must know he can count on it.

Now the only possible plan is to build a gymnasium and attach the other rooms I mentioned to it. That would then be the first part of a rationally designed school building. Our concern now is where we should build it.

That is something we need to consider carefully. Is there enough money? The main question is whether we have enough money. We need to spend the money, even if the purchase is not entirely necessary. It is there, people have given ten million marks. Now everyone wants to do things without risk. This is entirely a question of courage. We must build upon that basis. The spiritual value will certainly come from the school, and not from other things. As a result, we must have the courage to undertake risky projects. However, we should not do more shaky things than we can balance with solid things.

We will need to travel around in the next six weeks to raise the money. The question is how we should do that. We need to see how we can find some way of doing it. We need to get some money, so it will be necessary to enlarge our plan for the school association. It is easily possible that we could get some money if we form a World School Association, that is, a general association for such schools, one that is international. Now everywhere we go, people say that Berlin has no interest in paying for the Waldorf School. If we form a World School Association, it might be possible to use some of the income for Stuttgart. It is unlikely that we would get very much if we ask people to pay for the Stuttgart Waldorf School. We need to see to it that we find some way to get some money. A number of things are in progress, but they are not going very quickly. We have something very promising in Dornach, a shaving soap and the hair tonic, “Temptation,” but we can’t get that going quickly enough. We cannot invent things fast enough to have a gymnasium, a eurythmy room, and a music room in the fall. Before we have that, all the baldies would have to grow hair.

A teacher: At the risk of my wife not recognizing me, I want to try it.

Dr. Steiner: Our eurythmy ladies have already decided to try the hair tonic so that their mustaches grow. Then they will shave them off with the shaving soap. The thousand-mark bills will grow on peoples’ heads. There is still some money. The members of the Anthroposophical Society do not know how important the Waldorf School is. I recently spoke with some women, and they had no idea it was so pressing. Everywhere people are saying we should form schools. All that we need to do is to ask people, but we should not give the impression that we want to spend everything here. For that reason, I said that we don’t want to center everything here in Stuttgart, but instead travel around to various cities and prepare people. We don’t want to send things out and dictate to people. That was how the thought arose of creating a school in Berlin. We should not try to have people put off their school plans. What is important is that we do not offend people, so we will have to travel. We could go to The Coming Day for capital we would then pay interest on. We could afford the interest for four hundred thousand marks, so what we need to do to keep things moving, we should do immediately. Enlarging the school further is another thing. If we want to continue the school beyond next year, and want it to continue to grow as it has, then we will need a great deal more room.

A teacher: Perhaps it would help if we used one of the larger classrooms as a music room in the afternoon.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps we could work that way until we build the gymnasium. We have now come to a question that we have to solve in some way, as otherwise the school cannot continue. We must solve the problems of classroom space and future teachers.

There is a discussion about the need to build housing for the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: The whole problem of space remains unresolved. We have resolved the space question only to the extent that we have room for the classes. The other rooms we need are to a large extent insufficient or not there at all.

How many new classes will we have? A first grade, a sixth, a ninth. We are also missing the gymnasium and an art room. The gymnasium would be the eurythmy room. We will need to make ends meet, only it must be large enough for eurythmy. We will have to see how we can build the gymnasium and the other additional rooms.

It seems to me that today we have made a list of only what is absolutely necessary. We can see from this situation that we will not move forward if we think only about the minimum. If we were to begin with the gymnasium now, the situation would improve so much by Christmas that we would really have acceptable conditions. Everything is hanging in the air, and no one knows if it will be different two weeks from now. We need specific information about what things cost. We cannot negotiate the way things are now.

A meeting with the architect was set up for the following day.

A teacher: It is our own fault, because we have only taken care of the present. There have been so many new enrollments that the situation completely changed within three weeks.

A teacher: We must look at what we must do, and in addition, we must raise the money. The question of money must be secondary. We haven’t yet had any personal discussions with the parents who certainly have a real interest in the continuation of the Waldorf School. Some of the them have given loans, but we need to work with them personally. What we cannot get together in that way we will have to borrow from The Coming Day. We need to create a comprehensive plan for raising money in the next few days. In my opinion, the progress of the Waldorf School should not depend upon financial things.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, we need something concrete. We cannot negotiate anything when we see that the architect says he can make the hall, and then says he can’t. To work in that way is terribly inefficient. We already discussed in our last meeting that we need a eurythmy hall. We have known that for some time. We based our plan upon that impression, namely, that the architect had said we could build it. In any event, we have lost three weeks since the architect claimed we could add a new floor, and today that is no longer true. We do not want any temporary structures. We must see that we build the new things with an eye toward a longer period. We definitely need to meet again tomorrow.

You could also inquire at the Building Department before you officially present something whether they might approve what we want to do. In any event, we cannot discuss it further until we have a plan. That is the main thing I wanted to say.

Dr. Steiner is asked to say something about the problem of the faculty housing.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult for me to say anything since I am not in a position of putting up the money. That is the first thing you need to know. As long as we do not have the money, the question of teachers’ housing remains purely academic. Apart from teachers’ housing, there are other things we need to do. Either we will carry things out or they will not be done. It is important to avoid making the mistake of planning only for the minimum. We need to do things as they should be done, independent of the financial situation.

I am certain, since the self-sacrifice of the teachers has so elevated things, that things will move forward spiritually, that there will be no spiritual fiasco. The events of the first year have shown that we can hold on. Whether the world will give us money? I hardly believe anymore that the world will give money for such things. People have no understanding for them. That is something that causes me tremendous distress. What I said at the beginning of this meeting is certainly correct for the spiritual realm. We need to place material questions upon a reasonable foundation.

What can we do? How far we can expand the school is an important question. Somehow we must find a limit, or we must have people behind us who can give millions. The situation is impossible because we have accepted every enrollment. For that reason, I would propose that, in the sense of my introductory remarks, we declare we will continue the school as it was, and that we will not accept new children if we cannot build a gymnasium. We can tell people that we receive no support. We need to do that in the most effective way. We will continue the school as we did in the previous year, but we must, unfortunately, reject those children we have already accepted. The world should know what the situation is. We should tell people about this. We can say, hypothetically, that if we do not receive the finances we need, if we are not able to build a eurythmy hall and gymnasium for the fall, then we must limit the school to its present size. If we do not state things this radically, we will not move forward. We will also not be able to pay the teachers.

A teacher: Could we raise money by traveling around and giving lectures?

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do that. However, I do not believe that your work will be fruitful if we don’t draw people’s attention to it. I also do not believe that we will be able to work if things stay as they are. I certainly think it will make an impression if we keep the children we now have, but do not enroll anyone new and turn away the new enrollments we have. If we tell people this, I think it would help. If we remain in this difficult financial situation, no one knowing where the money will come from, we will not move forward. It should be a “back against the wall” declaration that indicates what the work of the faculty can achieve here, and that the world has failed to provide the financial support that it should.

A teacher: People ask why they should give everything to Stuttgart. People in Hamburg and Berlin have no interest in what we are doing here in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: The important thing is for the spiritual movement to continue. We cannot say that what is important is that we are creating something here that is for everyone. We certainly cannot say that people should give for the work in Stuttgart and ignore other things. We should certainly not imply that we are forming a central organization in Stuttgart and demand that people give to it.

A teacher: Should we put an announcement in the newspapers that the number of students has grown unexpectedly, so that we now need to employ more teachers in order to continue the school in its original spirit? Also, that we depend upon their support?

Dr. Steiner: We should say in a positive way that we are ready to continue the school as it has been, but that we can no longer accept new enrollments if people do not help to support us. We need to say a radically serious word. We will not consider the formation of new classes with regard to new enrollment.

Dr. Steiner: I would first like to ask if anyone has something to say now that we have had time to think about things.

A teacher would like to know more about the financial situation of the school.

Dr. Steiner: I would ask Mr. Molt to answer that question, since he is better informed.

Emil Molt reports about the financial situation of the school.

A teacher asks if they could ask the audience at tonight’s public lecture to help.

A statement written by Dr. von Heydebrand and Dr. Hahn is read.

Dr. Steiner: That statement is excellent and will certainly have an effect. In my opinion, though, that will happen only if we also say that we can continue to work only if the public provides the necessary financial means.

A teacher: I would like to wait before turning back the new enrollments.

Dr. Steiner: Why shouldn’t we tell people now that we must reject the newly enrolled children if we do not receive the funds? Through just that, our appeal will be effective. We need to turn away the children because we cannot employ new teachers. I think it is necessary in order to be effective.

These requests have their difficulties. First, the public thinks the school is a Waldorf-Astoria school, and many people call it that. People think the Waldorf-Astoria Company supports the school financially, and they are surprised that this is not the case. Well, that is one thing. We must find some means of counteracting that kind of public surprise. We must clearly say that public support is necessary. That is one thing.

The second thing is that it is difficult to obtain money outside [Stuttgart for] the Waldorf School Association we are founding in Stuttgart. It is not the same as with the other central organizations in Stuttgart. Clearly The Coming Day and the Threefold are headquartered in Stuttgart. That is something for the world. Before people want to give money to the Waldorf School, they will want to send their children here. They ask us why we cannot raise the money here in the Stuttgart area, where most of the children come from. You can require people who bring their children from further away to pay so much to have their children here. We could demand a high tuition. If we expect people from outside to give money for a school association that is, in principle, for the Waldorf School, we must make it clear that we want to carry the Waldorf School we have begun in Stuttgart to the entire world. Of course, everyone asks why we don’t raise the money here in Stuttgart and vicinity. Those are difficulties we can counter by saying that we cannot extend the school beyond its present size. We will have to turn the children away if we do not receive financial help. I do not think we have reason for much optimism about that. Those two problems play an important role.

A teacher: Could we transform the Waldorf School Association into a world association if we could agree upon it?

Dr. Steiner: We formed the Waldorf School Association as a local group, to an extent under the assumption that the stockholders of the Waldorf-Astoria Company would be impressed and would provide some money. For that reason, I imagined we would have to create the World School Association separately.

A teacher: Dr. Steiner, you said we could take up the World School Association when we had moved forward.

Dr. Steiner: I meant that we would need to form the foundation from which it could grow, that we could clearly see the difficulties that exist in creating interest for the World School Association.

A teacher asks whether it would be possible to interest the Swiss members.

Dr. Steiner: The Swiss members are having so many difficulties because of the exchange rate that they can hardly do anything. In a brochure we recently sent out, we had to remove some words indicating that members in Middle Europe could do almost nothing because of the exchange problems. I am not terribly happy about pressuring the Swiss members anyway, since they do not easily open their wallets. We need to form a World School Association that does not include the Stuttgart school in its program, but has as its purpose the formation of schools according to our principles. The first responsibility of that association will be to undertake to support the Waldorf School.

Marie Steiner: I think we should first complete the Goetheanum, since otherwise the earlier projects would suffer because of the later projects. Members in Middle Europe can do much for the school. The people in Sweden and Norway are open to giving money. If we tap foreigners too much for the school, we will never complete the Goetheanum.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly true that if we form a World School Association, then it would also be important that it could freely determine how to use the money, and that it could support the Free University in Dornach with that money. My idea was to centralize the entire financial organization. We want a central financial organization so that all money donated for anthroposophical use will go to one central organization. That was what we wanted to do in those days when we worked toward forming The Coming Day and The Future. Then things became confused because the Waldorf-Astoria Company could no longer help, and we had to form the Waldorf School Association. We also had to found a number of things in Dornach, but all of them are only formalities. We could also include the Association for Goetheanism when necessary. We need to create everything we need so that in the end, everything leads to a central organization.

That was also our intention when we founded The Coming Day. It cannot accept yearly membership fees. An organization like the World School Association does not represent any kind of decentralization. It is not so that The Coming Day would be the central administration; it is only an organization that would participate. What I am thinking of as a central administration would be much broader. I did not say you should consider The Coming Day a central administration. The intention was to have all the money we receive go into a unified central fund, and then be distributed according to what is needed. If we founded a World School Association, it could administer its own money, but we would have to found it so that it could be a part of that central organization, just as the Association for Goetheanism in Dornach could be when we have someone to administer it. Purely objective principles must prevail here. We can found the World School Association in the same way. All we need is that its bylaws state that the money it receives can go to an elementary school as well as to the Free University.

Marie Steiner: Otherwise, everything would be at the expense of the Goetheanum.

A teacher: The way things are, I do not think the name “Waldorf School Association” is correct. We could use it for the lower eight grades, but for what is beyond, we need an “Association for the Founding of Rudolf Steiner Schools.”

Dr. Steiner: Under no circumstances can we do that.

Dr. Steiner: We need to find a much more modern name. Much of the opposition we encounter is due to the emphasis of the name. You will notice that people often say it with much emphasis. I can tell you that publishers accepted essays I wrote anonymously at one time or another, but when I included my name with them, the situation reversed. We could have another company name, but we will improve nothing by giving it a personal name. Marie Steiner: Could we perhaps talk about what name would be desirable?

Dr. Steiner: It would certainly be quite good if we did that, then we would settle things. Perhaps the Goetheanism School, or the School of The Coming Day. It needs something like that, something that looks toward the future. We also need to think of something that indicates it is not a state school. The name needs to express the independence from the state, the foundation of the school without the state. We can achieve that only through a neutral designation. We did that in the Waldorf School by using “Independent.” The designation “Independent Waldorf School” was good for the beginning, and had things continued as they had been, and had we not needed to form the Waldorf School Association, there would be little to say against that name. However, things have not gone on as they were. We need to express somehow the principle of independence from the state. We need something to indicate a school system created out of the independent cultural life. The question is whether we will be able to form the World School Association.

A teacher: Could we use “Anthroposophy” in the name?

Dr. Steiner: No, we need to leave that out.

A teacher: We should retain the name “Waldorf School” until the school reaches a certain size, so that interest does not wane. Dr. Steiner: Leaving the ninth grade aside, it is already so that we can no longer work with the eight classes as before. Without subsidies, we cannot continue the eight grades as we want. We will have to turn away new children for the eight grades unless we receive a subsidy. We can keep only the current level of activity. Then, there is the question of space. We cannot increase the number of students without increasing our space. With the fourth grade at fifty-three and the second grade at fifty-six children, there is also the question of additional teachers. In my opinion, if the classroom was large enough, a teacher could handle even a hundred children. Simply because we do not have the space, because our classrooms are too small, we will need more teachers. That will especially affect the future fourth and second grades that we will have to divide. In any event, we need to divide the first and fifth grades. The space problem is quite acute. There is still the problem of the eurythmy and gymnastics hall.

A teacher: Cultural School.

A teacher: I had thought of Independent Cultural School.

Marie Steiner: Perhaps someone else will think of something.

Dr. Steiner: It is not important to go into changing the name now. What is important is whether or not we receive the two million marks. We have this problem because we have accepted every child. The Waldorf-Astoria Company has done nothing wrong.

A teacher: It would be important to differentiate between the Waldorf School Association and the Waldorf School. We could leave the Waldorf School as the “Waldorf School.”

Dr. Steiner: The financial association does not need to carry that name. That would not hurt the Waldorf-Astoria Company. The Waldorf School is a historical fact that should remain. On the other hand, though, we do not need to expect that we should extend into other areas of Germany and Austria under the name of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. I think that for the purely practical reason that people will not give any money for it. We should limit announcements for the association to Stuttgart and Württemberg. On the other hand, though, it seems clear to me that we should do things so we can have an international outreach.

A teacher: Are we deciding to drop the association?

Dr. Steiner: I am convinced that continuing the first eight grades is a salary problem. How much do we have in the School Association account? We need to know, otherwise we will never come out of this murky situation. We will be clear about our situation only when the School Association exists, and the Waldorf-Astoria Company increases the amount of its contribution. Then we would have money in the Association’s account. We need to be able to say exactly how much the Waldorf-Astoria Company will need to provide, either as a certain donation per child or a particular amount we can count upon. Right now, that is all unclear.

I have the feeling that the financial basis of the school depends upon the Waldorf-Astoria Company and, to a large extent, upon the private wealth of Mr. Molt. We need to differentiate those two things. My feeling is that Mr. Molt has financially supported the Waldorf School himself. In addition to what he personally gave, the Waldorf-Astoria Company also provided support. Perhaps it is not appropriate to say so now, but Mr. Molt’s private resources are strongly involved.

Emil Molt: It is difficult to discuss this. The school is registered as my private property. I paid for the construction. The school pays no rent, and I also paid other amounts for the other school buildings.

Dr. Steiner: It is good that we know this. The problem we have is that the Waldorf-Astoria Company has come out a little too good in the picture of the Waldorf School. I do not find it responsible to give all the credit for the existence of this school to the Waldorf- Astoria Company when they were really not so enthusiastic about becoming the patron of the school, whereas, Mr. Molt actually did most of it. We could at best say that the Waldorf-Astoria Company is a member of the School Association.

It is certainly not right when people from out of town pay only what it costs for their child. They should also pay a part of the other costs, like the desks, and so on. However, this completely justifiable situation should be compensated for by not making the school purely a concern of Stuttgart. People need to understand that they will not have to pay so much when the school becomes an international organization.

A teacher: The tuition would be a thousand marks, since each child costs us about that much.

Dr. Steiner: If we knew the Waldorf-Astoria Company would pay that amount for the children of its employees, that would not help much, since we would not be able to accept other children without donations. We must maintain our principle of accepting children who cannot pay the tuition. The school suffers from the fact that, aside from the children of the Waldorf-Astoria Company, it is a capitalistic school. We can say these things publicly. In Switzerland, I was always in favor of saying that if every citizen gave a few marks, we could easily finish the Goetheanum. If we were to put that to people strongly, they would realize that what we are doing is for the general good, namely, that we accept poor children, for whom wealthier people pay the tuition. What I wanted to say before was that we cannot set the tuition for outside children according to what we are lacking. Therefore, we must continue to try to obtain public donations. We can reach this goal only when a wealthier person pays the tuition for a poor child.

Have we included patronages in the Waldorf School Association?

A teacher: I had thought that the membership would be a thousand marks for patrons. There are not many patrons yet.

A teacher: People could give bricks to the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do that. Collecting is good work. Of course, when we tell people they can give a small amount, then they will give a small amount. The members should go out and collect.

The main question is the formation of the World School Association. We must connect everything else with it. I still have not heard how much the Waldorf School Association has in its account. I would like to know that.

A teacher: Sixty to eighty thousand marks.

Dr. Steiner: So that is approximately what we have.

A teacher: The Waldorf factory pays 170,000 marks per year.

Dr. Steiner: Can we count on such donations in the coming years?

Emil Molt: If the economic situation does not break down, the amount will be raised to 200,000.

Dr. Steiner: And if that does not happen?

Emil Molt: That is why I am at the head of the company, in order to influence things enough.

Dr. Steiner: So, that would be the costs to the Waldorf-Astoria Company. We have so many wealthy parents who could afford to pay an appropriate amount, and who cannot demand that the company gives large donations. We need to approach those people who have an interest in the school if it does not fade as soon as we ask them to open their wallets. Otherwise, it is better the children do not come. We are not here to enroll children simply because the school is close. We will see what happens in the next week. If nothing happens, we will have to go back on the enrollments. There will be a parting of the ways if people say a unified school is one where no one pays anything, where everybody is equal, and they have nothing against that. We do not need to consider it an honor that the children of high government officials attend, but that in the future the children of wealthy people will sit next to those of poorer people.

Perhaps we can still gain some clarity about the question of the World School Association. In all these things we may not forget that we have great difficulty in obtaining money for the building in Dornach. We will have fewer difficulties in funding a school, particularly in America. We would have the least number of difficulties if we would create a sanitorium. People understand that we need a sanitorium, but they have less understanding that we need schools. However, they have no understanding for the building in Dornach.

A teacher: Then we will have to connect a sanitorium with the school.

Dr. Steiner: Our schools are built differently, but we have no way to express that. Otherwise, we could form a World Association for Young Invalids. A “School for Health.” That would be effective. However, that wouldn’t work. We will have to connect things in our circulars so that we have a common fund that will pay for sanitoriums and schools. If we want to start schools, we would have to give the Association the right to use the money for Dornach, also. Otherwise, the Association would be counterproductive in regard to Dornach and would suck up all the donations. If we transform eurythmy into curative eurythmy, we would soon have a sanitorium. I will try to do something in a very limited way to show what can be done. I have been asked if we can use eurythmy curatively. I will try to do that, and you will see that people will come.

We must emphasize that the school as such is independent of the state, and that it is created out of an independent cultural life.

A teacher: We should try to make specific proposals concerning the World School Association. Before we approach the public, we should do that and then wait to see the effect. We should not give the impression we cannot continue.

Dr. Steiner: We have so many applications that we can accept them only if we receive more donations. Do you think our appeal gives the impression that we feel we are failing? I wanted the faculty to emphasize what we have achieved with the school that would interest the public enough that they make some donations. The number of applications was emphasized. It appeared to me important that we wait with the numbers. There are already a hundred we cannot accept unless we receive financial support. I propose we write in a circular that the children are pouring in. I would also suggest that a teacher say that, because it makes more of an impression. Now we need only find a way of saying that so that people don’t say to us, “Well, if the children are pouring in, then their parents should pay.” It is one of our principles that we do not require every child to pay tuition. That is the reason for our difficulties, namely, that we accept children who cannot pay tuition.

A teacher proposes that Dr. von Heydebrand and Mr. Hahn prepare a statement to be read this evening.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against that since it is not actually a meeting. We could do that. I think, though, we should state it more clearly so that people become more concretely aware. I don’t think such a public statement would act against private activities. Perhaps it would be good to say this publicly.

There is a proposal that we continue this discussion again, and that you come ready to fire from both barrels. Is there anything against that? If you want to call another meeting today, you should do that. I cannot be here this afternoon.

A teacher asks about the curriculum of the ninth grade and about building a dormitory. Some people have offered to take children as a means of making a living or simply as a secondary income. There was also a question about the Abitur.

Dr. Steiner: Concerning the ninth grade curriculum, a primarily pedagogical question, we will take care of that at the beginning of the next school year. I will present that as a course of five to seven new lectures, which I still need to prepare. I will give them to the faculty at the beginning of the school year. Planning the curriculum for the ninth grade is something that will take five or six days, and to that extent we should put it off until the beginning of the next school year. Now we need only decide who will take the individual classes.

We also have the problem of the Abitur. That is a not so simple a question. If we were working toward official recognition of our middle school, we would have to be untrue to our principles. We would then be dependent upon the state and could no longer speak of an independent school. We can remain true to our principles only if we tell the children that they will have to take the state examination if that they want a position with the state, or that they will need to take the examination that gives them the right to attend a university. As soon as we begin to negotiate with the state, we will become dependent upon it. The state will probably demand that some state inspector be at our graduation examination. We may not allow that kind of substantial modification of our instruction. If they want to look at the school, they should do it, but we cannot allow ourselves to enter into any real negotiations. We will not be untrue to our principles if the state examines those children who want the security of civil service.

Forming a ninth grade really makes sense only if we intend to form a completely independent college. It makes sense only if we intend to form an independent college at the same time, and then it will not matter whether we have an Abitur or not. Then we will have to look only at the question of who may attend the college, but that is a question we can put off. By then, the situation will have changed enough that [the state] can ignore the accreditation of such a college.

A dormitory would be desirable. That is something connected with accepting children from far away. It would be quite nice. A lot of people talk about wanting to send their children here. We would immediately have the two X boys from Dornach. At present, they are only circling overhead, but soon they will land on the nose of the housemother. That is certainly an enticing prospect.

There is a question about what color to paint the desks.

Dr. Steiner: We could certainly paint the desks. Perhaps lilac, light bluish. We can do that with normal paint. The paints used in Dornach are too expensive to use here.

I brought some drawings from a few of the children in Dornach that Mr. B. has brought along quite well. These are drawings by the children who were given a theme, and we see the result for each of the children. When we have some time, I would like to go through these drawings and discuss them with you. They are important if you are thinking about publishing something. When I mentioned to little G.W. that we would display her drawings in the Waldorf School, she said she was making clay models, also. In this way, the children’s individual personalities are wonderfully expressed. I have no thought whatsoever of making a rule in that regard. Someone else might do it differently, but you can learn much from that. Mr. B. tells the children one thing or another, then, after giving them a little instruction, allows them simply to bring their ideas into some form. The children discuss it among themselves.

In the afternoon, there was a discussion with an extended group, but without Dr. Steiner, about how to raise money and about the formation of a World School Association. In the evening, Dr. Steiner gave the lecture “The Decline of the West” [July 29, 1920, contained in GA 335, not published in German or English].

A teacher: We need to discuss hiring new teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, we have the personnel problem. The problem is that our present shop teacher has not done what we expected, so we need to think of a replacement. We probably do not need to go into the details. I am not certain to what extent you are familiar with the problem that he could not handle the large classes. He has said that the children in the upper grades did not do the work. You can see that, since the children in the upper grades did not finish what they should.

He found it difficult to work in that area. What I have seen indicated that he does not have sufficient practical talent so that the children could not do their work well because he himself did not have an eye for what the craft demanded. Many of the projects remained at the level of tinkering and were not what they should have been. The children did not learn how to work precisely with him. In the gardening class, the work remained with each child having a small garden where each did what he or she wanted, with the result that it was more like a number of small children’s gardens than a school garden.

The worst thing was that he simply had no heart for his work. His main interest is in studying, but what we actually needed, namely, someone who could teach gardening thoroughly, did not occur. From my perspective, there is nothing else to do other than look for a better teacher. I don’t believe he is able to really bring the artistic into the shop instruction. As things have developed, it is impossible to keep him on the faculty. He doesn’t seem able to find his way into the spirit of the school.

A teacher: Since we brought him here, we should, of course, find a way to take care of him so that he does not become an enemy of the school when we remove him from the faculty.

Emil Molt: I will see that he is taken care of in some way. A teacher: I need to say that I don’t quite understand all this. He certainly gave considerable effort to finding his way into the spirit of the school. He definitely handled my children well and in the gardening class, my class also did well. He will find his way into the artistic aspect.

Dr. Steiner: That will be difficult. What I said about the artistic was in connection with the shop instruction. He will hardly find his way into that.

A teacher: He has the best will, and it will be difficult for him to understand. During the holidays he wants to learn cabinetmaking better and also shoemaking.

Marie Steiner: There is something trusting about him. Dr. Steiner: There is no doubt that he likes to work with children, and that he is serious about it, but there are some things lacking. When I saw certain things that occurred, I had to conclude that it was impossible to leave this work to him.

A teacher: Is there a reason we would need to get rid of him or could we employ him somewhere else, for example in the library? Dr. Steiner: It is certainly difficult to make a clear decision. I think it will be difficult for him to find his way into the real spirit of the school because he hasn’t the spirit in him.

It is certainly possible to carry someone along, but do you really believe that he could do the shop class alone permanently? He could never teach all of the shop classes. Possibly he could teach the four lower classes if we had a teacher for the upper grades. I have my doubts whether he has the spiritual capacity to handle the upper grades in shop. I have watched how he works, and it is really quite nice for the younger children if they put themselves to it. However, for later, when a certain feeling for the craft is necessary, it is a question whether he can gain that feeling. This is very difficult, and we would need to change our thinking if he were to remain. My impression is that this is the general opinion of the faculty.

He has poetic ambitions, but he imagines himself to be much better than he is. He has a wonderful amount of goodwill. I feel sorry for him because I think he will probably develop a lot of resentment. It is always difficult when someone brings a certain personal quality to things when they work at the school. He injects a personal note into everything and is not as objective as he should be. He wants to be someone who becomes a Waldorf teacher, he wants to be a poet. He wants the children to trust him. All of the characteristics he has certainly bring out sympathy for him. We will need to find another position for him. Nevertheless, it would remain difficult since he does not understand certain things about the spirit of the Waldorf School, particularly the shop class. In an area where objectivity is necessary, it is very difficult when sympathy plays a role. All that leads off the path.

Is there some possibility that we could resolve the situation by having him in the lower four grades? That would be desirable, but we would end up with a huge budget. The school is getting bigger.

Emil Molt: We don’t have the money to give him a soft job. As we saw recently, we must count every penny. What we need to do is to take care of him somewhere in the company so that he is not harmed, and we don’t hurt him.

Dr. Steiner: We certainly must take care of him, but we will need to see how to do that. A difficult situation.

We can objectively say that he was not fit for the task. He does not have an artistic feel. I don’t think he would find his way into the subject. As I said, it would hurt nothing if he took the lower grades and someone else, the upper classes. Often, that is the best way and the children will simply work. Later, when they need to show what they can do, things will be better. There is certainly nothing to object to for the lower grades, but for the upper classes, he simply will not do.

A teacher: Do you intend to have one person do it all?

Dr. Steiner: That is a budget question. In the shop class, we must stretch to the limit. It would be best if we strongly developed shop. If we had a good shop teacher, we could start in the sixth grade, but it is a different situation in the gardening class. That needs someone who really understands the subject. If we had two teachers, I would prefer that each would give shop in one year and gardening in the other.

We must realize that if we retain him, other difficulties will arise in the school.

I had the impression that was the opinion of the whole faculty. At the beginning, I thought this was already decided, but now I see that is not so. It is good we have discussed the matter so that we all understand it.

A teacher: Isn’t it possible to see that someone is inadequate for a position earlier?

Dr. Steiner: I already noticed it some time ago, and mentioned it at Christmas and in February. I didn’t go into it then because it is so difficult for me, but it comes up so often, namely, that we shut people out. Recently, there have been many times when the situation seemed to have improved.

Well, there is nothing left to do other than look for another solution. We will need to find another solution.

A teacher: In any event, we will need to find a first-rate shop teacher. It would be possible to have him as an assistant to the main teacher. Some time ago, Mr. X. wanted to take over the shop class.

Dr. Steiner: I already said that it would be best if someone who is one the faculty would learn how to make shoes. I didn’t think we should employ a shoemaker. The instruction in shop must come from the faculty, but suddenly Y. was there. It was only fleetingly mentioned to me, and it was certainly not intended that he completely take over the teaching of shop.

A teacher: He sort of grew into the faculty without a decision that he should become a part.

Dr. Steiner: Now we’re rather caught in the situation. We shouldn’t allow such things to happen. Recently when we were talking, I was quite surprised that someone who was not at all under consideration for the faculty was at the meeting. Those who are not on the faculty should not be at the meetings.

A teacher: I certainly think we can take him on as an assistant. Dr. Steiner: It would be too much for one teacher to do the gardening and the shoemaking, but then we would have to be able to pay him.

Emil Molt: I would say that budget considerations should be subordinate to the major considerations.

Dr. Steiner: It was certainly not harmful that he was there, but the harm may first arise when he is left out. He has become a teacher in a way I have often encountered in Stuttgart. If you ask how they reach their position, you find out that people have simply pushed their way in. They suddenly appear. I don’t understand how people move up. It is certainly true that we cannot continue in that way.

You need to realize, Mr. X., that one thing builds upon the other. As we decided, you were to create the shop instruction. Mr. Molt asked if we could consider Y. as an assistant for you, then, suddenly, he was sitting here in the faculty. He was never under consideration as a teacher for the Waldorf School. We can see that clearly because he is an employee of the Waldorf-Astoria Company that they sent over. Thus, there was not the least justification for him to be on the faculty.

A teacher: I don’t think we can work intimately if someone is here who does not belong.

Dr. Steiner: If he is already here, we can’t do that. If he has been teaching the subject and if other difficulties did not arise, we could not say that Y. is no longer on the faculty.

A teacher: It was a mistake to let him in.

A teacher: Yes, but we were the ones who made the mistake.

Dr. Steiner: The Waldorf School will pay for it. Just as people have made mistakes in the Anthroposophical Society, and in spite of the fact that people make these same mistakes time and again, I was the one who had to suffer. I had to suffer for each person we threw out. It is clear that in this case, the Waldorf School will have to suffer, but I think it is better that it suffer outwardly rather than within.

Following further discussion:

Dr. Steiner: Well, we will just have to try to keep him if there is no other way.

[After further discussion on the next day, of which there are no notes, Y. was told that he would no longer work in the Waldorf School.]

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly not so that we will include every specialty teacher in the faculty. The intent is that the inner faculty includes the class teachers and the older specialty teachers, and that we also have an extended faculty.

A teacher: My perspective is that we should include only those whom Dr. Steiner called to the faculty, and thus that someone’s mere presence in some position does not mean that he or she will automatically be part of the faculty.

A teacher: Who should be on the faculty?

Dr. Steiner: Only the main teachers, those who are practicing, not on leave, should be on the faculty. In principle, the faculty should consist of those who originally were part of the school and those who came later but whom we wish had participated in the course last year. We have always discussed who is to be here as a real teacher. If someone is to sit with us, he or she must be practicing and must be a true teacher.

Berta Molt: Well, then, I don’t belong here, either.

Dr. Steiner: You are the school mother. That was always the intent. Mrs. Steiner is here as the head of the eurythmy department and Mr. Molt as the patron of the school, that was always the intent from the very beginning.

If we have discussed it, then there is not much to say. That was the case with Baravalle. He was here as a substitute, but we discussed that. It was also clear that he would eventually come into a relationship to the school, because he would eventually be a primary teacher.

We still have the question of whom to consider as a teacher.

A teacher: Must the new teacher be an anthroposophist, or can it be someone outside?

Dr. Steiner: That is something I do not absolutely demand, we have already discussed it.

I propose that we talk with Wolffhügel regarding the shop class and see if he wants to take it. I think that Wolffhügel would be quite appropriate. That would be really good. He is a painter and works as a furniture maker. That would be excellent.

Now we need know only which of the new teachers should attend our meetings. Of course, Wolffhügel should.

I was only in the handwork class a few times, but once I had to ask myself why a child did not have a thimble on. I have always said that we must get the children accustomed to sewing with a thimble. They should not do it without a thimble. We cannot allow that.

We cannot know ahead of time whether a teacher can keep the children quiet. Often we can know that, I think, but we can also experience some surprises. You just don’t always know.

We need two teachers for the first grade. For the 1B class, I would propose Miss Maria Uhland and for the 1A class, Killian. I think we should hire them provisionally and not bring them into the faculty meetings.

We then have Miss von Mirbach for the second grade, for the third grade, Pastor Geyer, for the fourth grade, Miss Lang, for the fifth grade, Mrs. Koegel. Dr. Schubert will have the weaker children, the remedial class, and Dr. von Heydebrand, the sixth grade.

We still need someone. Baravalle would be good for the second sixth-grade class. I think we should take him. He can also do his doctoral work here.

Dr. Kolisko will take over the whole seventh grade.

I also think we should do the eighth and ninth grades as we did the seventh and eighth. How did that work?

A teacher: We took the classes in alternating weeks. Our impression is that if we alternate it daily, we would not know the class well enough.

Dr. Steiner: Then your perspective is that it is better to teach for a week, better than alternating daily?

A teacher: The reason why we two did not know our classes very well is unclear to me. The fact is that I knew the children the least of all our colleagues. Could you perhaps say what the problem was?

Dr. Steiner: That will not be better until you are more efficient in regard to the subject matter and how you treat it. You felt under pressure. You had, in general, too little contact with the children and lectured too much.

Dr. Steiner: What do we need to discuss? Who wants to say something?

A teacher: I want to ask how we will divide the foreign language classes.

Dr. Steiner: In general, the foreign language classes will continue as they were, and the teachers who taught them will continue next year. However, there will be something new with the first grade. How many class teachers have taught foreign language in their class themselves? Miss Lang and Mrs. Koegel, both languages. Geyer, Dr. von Heydebrand, Miss von Mirbach, and Kolisko, one language each. Next year, Miss Uhland will take over both languages in her first grade and perhaps Mr. Killian in his.

Dr. Schubert will have the beginning fourth grade Latin class and Geyer, the fifth and sixth grades. We will have to see how many want to take Latin. The interest is not too great.

Hahn will have the independent religious instruction for the first through third grade group and also the seventh through ninth graders. Then, we need someone only for the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. What should we do there? How about asking Mr. Uehli? That might be a solution. He doesn’t have much time, but two hours per week might be possible. I think we should consider Mr. Uehli for the fourth through sixth grades.

If there is nothing else, I would like to bring up something I know some of you want, namely, the problem of the World School Association.

A teacher: We thought we should immediately found the World School Association so it can begin collecting money, whether for schools or for the Goetheanum. The Waldorf School Association would be a member of the World School Association.

Dr. Steiner: How do you imagine we would collect the money and administer it from one place? We certainly cannot do what was requested after the lecture last night. We would collect that for the Waldorf School. What we collect for the Waldorf School should not be forgotten. Should we have a meeting and tell people that besides what we did last night, we will also do this other thing?

There was then considerable discussion about the events of the previous evening.

A teacher: What happened yesterday relates particularly to collecting for the Waldorf School. What we can do through the World School Association is to obtain money for all the activities so that there is no competition between these different collections by different groups.

Dr. Steiner: In a certain sense, competition already exists. We could wait until the things discussed last night are done, and then begin to think about founding a World School Association. Only when it is quite clear what will happen with the Waldorf School Association can we approach people about founding the World School Association. We cannot continue to try different things. What happened yesterday blocked the plan for the World School Association, and I do not think that is all that bad. We cannot do two such things at the same time.

A teacher: Couldn’t we found the World School Association in Dornach?

Dr. Steiner: We don’t need to decide that here. That would certainly not hinder collecting for the Waldorf School. If it were done in Dornach, we would need to stand behind it.

A teacher: We cannot postpone the plan for the Eurythmeum. We certainly cannot drop it.

Dr. Steiner: Well, because of the whole attitude that arose, it is certainly at an end. It was silly that I had to defend myself in that way, but it did happen, and we will now have to take the consequences. The dumb things we do exist so we can improve them, but important things should not suffer for that. Individual events express the whole.

A teacher: Dr. Steiner, you asked us to think about the name of the school. We should certainly assume that the whole business of the World School Association concerns us.

Dr. Steiner: I said that the name should indicate independence from the state. What I meant was that forming a World School Association could circumvent the difficulties that arise when people from out of town want to have their own schools, because the Association would exist to form such schools everywhere. I also said that could begin by supporting the Waldorf School with the money it needs. I did not mean we should spend our time on that. That would be important only if people wanted it. That is certainly the case. For now, we can only put things off until yesterday’s appeal takes effect. We cannot simply stand up now and say, “Yesterday we stood here and said we need to collect 256,000 marks for the Waldorf School, but today we’re going to give all that a new name. Today, we will collect for the World School Association.”

A teacher: That is not what I meant. What I meant is that we want to support the idea of creating a World School Association.

Dr. Steiner: Well, what does that mean? If you had added that we want to form a World School Association to what you said yesterday about how effective the school has been and our need for more donations, then that would now be on the table. We cannot form the World School Association ourselves. It was not my opinion that the faculty would form the World School Association. We certainly would not move one step forward regardless of how determined we are to do that.

A teacher: My understanding was that we wanted to ask you for some further suggestions.

Dr. Steiner: This seems premature to me. It is certainly premature to say anything about the work of such an organization. It is not yet urgent. You see, it might have helped had we stood firm upon the statement that we would not continue the school if we could not make the world understand that it must make sacrifices for this thing. That was the initial idea of the statement we wanted to present, but the picture shifted, primarily because, out of all we need, only a laughably small amount was presented. That is an illusion, because we will need two and a half times that much. It is certainly clear that we will receive the amount we asked for, and thus reach the first goal.

A teacher: Should we put announcements in the Norwegian and Dutch newspapers? Would that help?

Dr. Steiner: Certainly, if someone were to do it. All these things are good if they are done, very good. We do not need to decide things, someone can do them.

Well, then we’ve taken care of all the questions, if there is nothing more. I am certainly very sorry that a number of things happened that disturbed the harmony among us.

I want to say only that I’m sorry things did not end better. We will not meet again for some time. I wish you all a good and fruitful new year. For many of you, it will be a very difficult year if you are to achieve anything we have discussed. I cannot give you a longer speech now. Let’s begin the next school year fresh and strong.

Following the third lecture of the cycle Balance in Teaching.

Dr. Steiner: Professor Abderhalden was in Dornach. He didn’t understand the significance of the anterior and posterior nodes of the vertebrae. That is where most such people have problems. They don’t go into anything, but rather think to themselves that if they were to delve into a subject, they would be uncomfortable. It’s better to stay away.

Otherwise, he has rather radical views. He said, “What you said about gymnastics—from a physiological perspective, gymnastics is barbarous.” I said to him, “Please tell people that. You have the position of a professor. If someone else says that, people become angry. Physiologists can easily say that to people.”

One thing was very interesting. He mentioned that during the time of the revolution some people found themselves out on a limb. He proposed that each professor teach the subject as he or she saw fit. The others could not imagine it. That is what he said.

Well, let us begin our pedagogical work. Today, we need to come to some clarity about a number of things that I had to leave somewhat in the dark, partially because of all the other work I had.

There had been a difference of opinion regarding the relationship of the school and the faculty to the Waldorf-Astoria Company. Bylaws had been prepared saying, among other things, that the teachers would no longer be employed by the Waldorf-Astoria Company, and designating Dr. Steiner as the head of the school.

Dr. Steiner: Do you want to say something Mr. Molt?

Emil Molt speaks in detail about the difficulties, particularly about his own position within the faculty, the bylaws, and the proposal to choose Dr. Steiner as chairman.

Dr. Steiner: From what our dear friend Mr. Molt just said, I believe we clearly can eliminate appointing me chairman. I don’t believe those paragraphs of the bylaws would change anything concerning me at all.

I ask you to recall, also, that we have always discussed the naming of new teachers among the faculty. That is something I would like to continue. I think we should certainly work toward the ideal of arranging things so that the faculty would look into certain things concerned with hiring a new teacher, and that we should pay attention to the faculty’s judgment. I would always report what occurs there. I would never exclude the possibility that when someone makes a proposal, I will look into it. Bylaws cannot firmly determine these sorts of things. If you make a firm rule, it will not be accurate. The bylaws should, perhaps, be no more than an indication of direction so that still more misunderstandings do not arise.

I have the impression that other things are in the background that could explain much of this. When I heard about it while I was in Berlin, it seemed to me to be rather superficial, but I also felt there were some problems living beneath the surface. Those things certainly have nothing to do with Mr. Molt, the patron of our school, and the faculty, but with certain other problems. It would certainly be desirable if we could look into the genuine basis, into the real common problems. External influences can play no role here. It is better to discuss our problems, like this one, which come to such an explosion, while they are only problems than to allow them to end in an explosion. Who would like to say something?

A teacher: I wrote the bylaws to delineate the form of our working together. What was important was the independence of the faculty in cultural matters, as a group of cultural workers. Part of that is also the hiring and firing of teachers. It was important to me to find a form that properly expressed Dr. Steiner’s relationship to the faculty.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult for me to take a position in regard to these bylaws, since they are really unimportant to me. We can do things only as we need to do them from day to day. Bylaws are necessary for the external world, so that what we are doing looks like something. It is very difficult for me to take a position regarding these bylaws because they are really so useless to me. I don’t think such bylaws would change anything significant.

We can truly clarify the situation only when we speak as friends among friends. That is, when the faculty itself says how we are to understand these things, how we think, and how things should become.

A number of teachers describe their positions.

Dr. Steiner: You see, that is just what I meant. Some things that are actually interwoven into life have surfaced in the explosion of the bylaws. In the bylaws, we could separate them. We can see those problems that way. For instance, we could discuss for a long time whether or not the faculty is responsible for administering the finances of the school. You could show it would be proper to involve the faculty with the finances, but at the same time, we would need to feel certain the school will continue. We cannot eliminate that feeling of certainty or uncertainty regarding the continuation of the school. The last straw exploded in the last few days. It was already smoldering, but it burst out, and I think we can see that through this discussion. It burst out through what happened at the end of the past school year in the discussion of the school finances for the coming year. The things we discussed then were of such a nature that I said to myself at the time, “We certainly cannot know how things will look at our Waldorf School next Easter.” It is not so much that we do not have the money. Of course, we have to take into consideration that we do not have it. What appears necessary to me is that the teachers of the Waldorf School unite about how to achieve financial security for the future of the school. It is not possible for you to work as teachers if you have to work in absolute uncertainty about the future. The problem was most obvious when, at the end of last year, we couldn’t see how things would stand in regard to the future of the Waldorf School. I, myself, have no idea where we stand or how we will manage the more than 100 newly enrolled children. However, I said to myself that we will confront exactly the same problem next Easter. I had the feeling that the present relationships between the Waldorf School, the Waldorf School Association, and the faculty would render it impossible to imagine anything that would provide sufficient security for the future of the school. It seems to me that is what more or less quickly occurred. Through all these things, the question quickly arose about how to move forward.

I have to admit this troubled me greatly. You see, if we have to give up the Waldorf School someday, that would mean we would lose something that gives the entire anthroposophical movement a firm foundation. The Waldorf School must continue, it simply must succeed because it puts anthroposophy to the test. There are only two reasons why it may fail. First, because the school could no longer continue due to a change in the education laws, but we could endure that reason. The second reason would be that the school fails because the world does not sufficiently understand us and what we are doing and, therefore, does not finance us. The moment we say the school failed due to lack of understanding about the finances, the school fails in such a way that we can survive. I can think of no other possibility.

However, just that third possibility arose in what occurred in the last days, and that possibility is that differences arise within the faculty, to which Mr. Molt also belongs. That would make the world happy and that is what I perceive. Now something can happen that should not happen. Although we could fail with honor for financial reasons, we certainly may not endanger our position with discord. That would hide our financial miseries in a very horrible way. For that reason, I think it is much better to call things by their names. I think this whole thing has spilled out of the worries about what will happen with the Waldorf School. In all of these conflicts, I really see nothing other than a financial conflict. Why tiptoe around it?

I am certainly not criticizing anything. As you know, it is terribly difficult to talk about these things, because there is no interest in our circles for what is necessary. Until now, we have found no way of putting our ideas into practice, of actually doing them, because people have a sort of inner opposition and are unwilling to work to financially support our ideas. People are willing to undertake all kinds of confused business, but they have a certain kind of inner opposition to working in our way. This is most apparent in those people who must officially consider such things objectively. That is one of our main problems, and for that reason, we will have to do it ourselves. We, ourselves, must continue the work.

A teacher: Our desire to separate the school from the Waldorf- Astoria Company then carried over to Mr. Molt personally. That was certainly a misunderstanding. The faculty, of which Mr. Molt is also a part, represents the Waldorf School. The relationship of the faculty to the Waldorf School Association and to the Waldorf- Astoria Company is not clear, even today. The conflict we have is simply an expression of the fact that the faculty wants to take over the leadership of the school.

Dr. Steiner: In a certain way, we have now come to the core of the problem. The faculty is prepared to go with Mr. Molt in all the things resulting from the historical relationship, but it does not want to have anything to do with the Waldorf-Astoria Company. To the extent I am involved, that is what we have actually done. I most certainly wanted to work with Mr. Molt, but I could have nothing to do with the Waldorf-Astoria Company, simply because it wanted nothing to do with me. That is the problem, and we must overcome it in a wise and positive way. We should not simply say we are taking over the school, but instead, form the school so that we will have control.

You should also not forget what we had at the end of the last school year, namely, a spiritual profit due to the faculty and an absolute financial deficit that stood in sharp contrast to it. We must, therefore, conclude that the faculty understood the Waldorf School, but there was little understanding from those who certainly should have stepped forward to help resolve the problem of the school’s limited financial means. That is, from those within our circle who could certainly do something. You will recall that at the end of the last school year I mentioned, as an example, that the Waldorf-Astoria Company did not provide the building, that Mr. Molt provided it.

In my personal opinion, the school is simply a nightmare for the company, and Mr. Molt had considerable difficulty overcoming that and bringing about what lay in his heart. Those are the difficulties, and you can see that in the desire to separate the school from the company. That, of course, assumes Mr. Molt belongs to the faculty as the protector of the school and absolutely not just its financier.

If we accept that, we can also begin to discuss the problem in a healthy and objective way. We need only want to see Mr. Molt for himself and not in connection with the company. If we move onto this healthy ground, we can understand one another better. I think that is the core of the problem. The problems will become larger if we do not try to find some financially stable ground on our own. I don’t see any possibility other than that we come to a healthy basis ourselves.

Emil Molt: If the school had not grown beyond its original intent, these difficulties would not have arisen. The Ministry of Culture accepted the school because of the good name of the Waldorf- Astoria Company, and that good name continues to exist.

Dr. Steiner (speaking to Molt): It is certainly necessary in connection with what is said, to protect yourself from the opinions expressed about the Waldorf-Astoria Company. It is not quite correct that the school was dependent upon the Waldorf-Astoria Company children. We could have created such a school with anthroposophical children, and it most certainly would have succeeded. What is of value is that you were the first member of the Society who took up the idea of founding a school. That has nothing to do with the Waldorf-Astoria Company at all, but with your own person. I see no reason why you should identify yourself with the Waldorf-Astoria Company. They would not have understood it. This was your personal act. For that reason, I have spoken of the founding by Mr. Molt. That was absolutely intentional on my part. The fact that the workers’ children were involved lay entirely in the circumstances of the inauguration of the social movement in 1919. What we have here as a question of confidence is your trust in Anthroposophy, and what we have now arose from that. I certainly do not believe that the Württemberg Department of Education would have allowed less for you than for the good name of the Waldorf-Astoria Company. That is something we should clearly remember.

In a certain way, the desire to be independent of the Waldorf- Astoria Company is justifiable, because we must continue our work under all circumstances. At the time we presented the school to the world, it was not my intent to limit it to the Waldorf-Astoria Company, but to make clear to the world that it needed to do something so that the school not remain a Waldorf-Astoria school. According to their statements and present attitude, the Waldorf-Astoria Company would rejoice if you said someday that we should throw the school out. Perhaps that would in some way improve the name of the Waldorf Astoria Company, since perhaps it has sunk in some people’s opinions because of the founding of the school. You do not actually have a real reason for connecting the school with the company. You were, in fact, the person who understood the need to start such an initiative. It seems to me that we want to have everything to do with you and nothing to do with the company. Suppose someone else were in your position at the company. Then, the cultural fund would not have been increased by another 80,000 marks. That has nothing to do with the Waldorf-Astoria Company, but only with you. That is why, to use an unpoetic expression, this amount was coaxed out, not because the Waldorf-Astoria Company had any intent of making that money available. How many Waldorf children do we have? How many other children?

A teacher: We have 164 Waldorf children, 100 anthroposophic children, and 100 others.

Dr. Steiner: Now, the relationship of the numbers is the most unfavorable thinkable. If there were free access in Stuttgart, the number of enrollments would be limitless. There is no doubt of that. We have an extremely large number of requests that do not result in enrollments because the children have no place to stay. People cannot send their children or we would have many more from outside Stuttgart. For the time, the situation is such that the school is fairly ineffective in the outer areas. This is when we should have said that we will not accept the other hundred children because we do not have the money. We could have done that at the end of the last school year. Then, we would have only 365 when we opened the school this year instead of 465 children in the old rooms. We could have made things clear and said that the Waldorf-Astoria Company is paying for the classes. It is important now that we learn from the Waldorf School Association what the real budget is.

A teacher: We are preparing one.

Dr. Steiner: These things are always in preparation! You told me that just as I was leaving before. You must see to it that you prepare these things while I am away. All of these financial matters are always in preparation when I leave and usually still are when I return.

It is certainly clear that everything depends upon the financial question. Now that things have begun, we can certainly not so easily stop them as we could have done at the end of the last school year. Next Easter, we will be in the same situation. We need to get some money. It is certainly clear that the Waldorf School will need more financial support. The question is, though, whether the Waldorf School Association is the proper way to get it. At least according to its present capacities, it is not.

A teacher: Would a possible way be to tell parents now enrolling their children that we have nothing more?

Dr. Steiner: That would be a scandal. We could do that next Easter, but for now it would be better to see that we get some money. If we could only put this on a broader basis! It would be good to find some way of doing that. People also want to do something for the university course in Dornach. We must attack the problems of the school in another way.

I already said that we get the least amount of money for Dornach. It is easiest to obtain money for a sanitorium. Getting some money for schooling lies in between. We had an instance where we could see that a group of people had the least interest in doing anything for Dornach. Someone else wanted to do something like a sanitorium—that was taken up with the greatest interest. Everybody was like quicksilver. As soon as something like that is brought up, you get money. Schooling would likely fall somewhere in the middle. People would know how to find the way if hindrances were not always placed in front of what we have already done. What is important is that all the people working with us act together, and that we don’t have the kind of inner opposition we now have.

For now, we have the greatest desire to keep track of everything we spend, but we have not the least idea about what we receive. People have said they are ready to work all night when it comes to spending money, but when it comes to what is important, namely, to bringing in money, we find opposition.

If we do not place our financial affairs upon a firm basis, we will hardly be in a position to obtain money from people. We must find people who can administer the money we receive. For now, we cannot find any other people except those who want to create a new position for themselves by writing down a few numbers. I say that among us here in the faculty, but don’t let that be known. On the other hand, those working faithfully with us should know where the problem lies. The problems at the school relate directly to the fact that we have an extreme deficiency of people who can handle business affairs. That is our sickness. But, we don’t have to stay in that mire. Mr. Molt knows that as well as I, and he is suffering terribly under it. He is weighed down by the impossibility of extending the work in the economic area because he can find no one who can do it.

Credit for the school goes to you. The others have simply been passive. When people publicly speak about the Waldorf Company, we can do nothing about it. But, when they speak of the Waldorf School, it must be separate. They did not give the money, you coaxed it from them. They said they were in agreement in just the same way that a father is in agreement when the son spends too much. In the end, that’s how things are.

We will need to have a short faculty meeting, but first we must see to it that the board of the Waldorf School Association meets. Afterward, we will have a faculty meeting so that we can bring things into some sort of order.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to say a few words before we go into the individual points of discussion. Now that we are at the beginning of a new school year we need to clarify some things. There has been some discussion of things, including my own position, in relationship to the faculty. Today, I do not want to discuss the external relationship, only the inner. That seems appropriate this evening because you brought up my inner relationship, at least between the lines. In those things connected with our spiritual movement, I feel I am an esoteric among friends and cannot feel I am anything else. Running the Waldorf School is one of these spiritual things, at least to the extent it is a spiritual matter and to the extent the faculty takes up pedagogical questions and belongs to our anthroposophical movement. I need to say some things today about the position of an esoteric and how an esoteric perceives him- or herself, which you will need to apply to the particular case of the Waldorf School.

Someone who brings things from the spiritual world to his or her fellow human beings assumes, of course, that people do not necessarily accept them because of authority, but at least because they feel the things result from scientific research revealing a content that can perhaps be made known only by the person undertaking it. People can understand these things, of course, once they are said, but someone must first say them as a result of his or her own investigation. As you hear such truths, you are not exactly in a relationship to authority, but you somehow recognize that the things said can only arise from such a source.

Much of what I have recently had to say to you may appear simple, but I did not discover it in a simple way. Much of what we can learn about such a special area as pedagogy can become available only by going through a great deal, by experiencing a great deal, which is possible only after many years’ experience with this type of investigating. Understanding it is easy and can occur in a short period, but the investigation itself is not at all so simple and requires a path of initiation. However, when someone tells fellow human beings of such investigation, he or she never does so out of a desire to speak as an authority in the normal sense, that is, as the exoteric world understands authority.

I would ask that you take what I have to say about this very seriously and precisely. You should not accept what I have to say simply upon authority in the normal sense of the word. You see, if you did that, it would have no effect. You would not receive it through the necessary intangible forces. The relationship must be entirely different. The relationship must be one in which you accept everything said through a completely free will. Your acceptance may not in the least depend upon the will of the speaker. Everything must depend upon the will of the listeners. That is as exact a description of the relationship that must exist as is possible in human speech. I tell you things not to place them in the proper light, but because, in our times, we can base the effectiveness of esoteric work upon them.

If in our times we wanted to achieve something through authority, whether it be the authority of suggestion or any of the other numerous ways of affecting the soul, then that would eventually reveal itself as a great mistake. We now exist in the stage of human development when people mature enough to do so put more and more impulses of freedom into the world. Specifically, when we work as teachers we may not under any circumstances accept those things that arise out of the spirit and will move the world forward through an authority forced upon the soul. We must accept everything through goodwill, through the insight of the listener when the listener feels that the person speaking has something to say. No other relationship may exist. If the intent is that the listeners undertake some work based upon those statements, work that people can undertake communally, any other relationship would have a negative effect. If the spiritual researcher is to participate, then the capacity to speak free of authority and to listen through free will must be the basis of the entire relationship.

Nothing else may be the basis of the external relationships. Therefore, my relationship to the faculty must be one, right to the dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s, that neither I nor anyone else wants something against the will of any member of the faculty. The entire faculty as a whole must accept and desire it in their hearts. Whether something would pass in an election or not is unimportant. It requires that kind of inner relationship. The moment that is no longer so, the proper relationship would no longer exist. We need to somewhat keep an eye on that relationship.

Groups form in this area, not the way associations form, but more like a gathering around one person who has something to say in the sense that I mentioned. That is, those who want to hear something freely gather around someone. Regardless of what the external world may or may not expect of such a group, what I have said is all that is inwardly acceptable.

You will certainly feel that I want to describe my inner relationship to the faculty in that way, and I would ask that you understand it in that way. All healing forces of the future will be based in this. Specific things also lie in that direction. You need to feel that I have harmonized and do always intend to harmonize my decisions with each of you, that is, what you bring to me for a decision, because those who ask a question do so out of their own insight. If you think this through, you can clearly discern the nature of our esoteric relationship and the positive results of that esoteric relationship.

I wanted to make this our starting point today. You may have already found from your many experiences that things arising out of the spirit proceed properly only when such an understanding of spiritual relationships is their basis. Thus, in an exoteric organization you should separate the things that are simply necessary for the external world from what must lie between us. We can then move forward not only in the most rational manner, but also in the most spiritual work. We will move forward.

I wanted to say this to you now as a kind of inauguration of our work for this year, an inauguration of our work through which I would particularly like spiritual forces to flow. You can be certain that I will continue to pray for a blessing upon your work as a whole and the work of individuals in this coming year from the spiritual powers that carry our entire movement. If you are aware that is the case, if you not only act together, but think together and feel together, and thus receive the good spiritual forces in this thinking together, feeling together into the harmony of the entire soul life, then our work in this year will succeed.

Now we can go on to specific points. Does anyone want to say something about our agenda for today?

A question is asked about the official recognition of the Waldorf School as an elementary school.

Dr. Steiner: This is something that can go in one direction or another and depends upon the goodwill of the educational bureaucracy. We will achieve a certain degree of security about the future existence of the school only if we can negotiate through personal contacts. I wish to state expressly that we should not do this by telephone. If we can work through personal discussions and personal contact with all the possibilities of emphasis that arise in a personal conversation, if we can create an attitude through that, then we will achieve a certain degree of security. We will be unable to avoid being confronted with the same problem in the future if we handle this question in a strictly bureaucratic manner.

For that reason I think it would be best if Mr. Molt could do something personally, if you were personally involved. The situation is such that we will feel secure about the Waldorf School only if you personally speak with those people who have some influence. I am convinced that if an exchange of this sort occurs, and it forces the officials to say something in recognition of the school, that will offer us the best protection. Sending memos back and forth will achieve nothing. Particularly here in Württemberg, we can achieve more than in Prussia. In Prussia, after the final decision, we would have to dismantle this school within a short period of time.

We need to work on the problem in that way. We should not forget that some school principal or a teacher from a normal school will often come along and want to have the Waldorf School pedagogy. They will ask what they can do to help their schools. That is pure nonsense. The first thing they need to do is to free themselves from the state, and that gives rise to such a difficult problem that only a few people can think about it consequentially.

What is important is that what we could call our school movement, namely, a movement for independent schools, gets into more people’s heads so that a genuinely large movement toward educational freedom arises as a part of the Threefold Movement. We can use the opportunity that the excuse about a unified school provides. I must admit that I have always found a concrete definition of a unified school unpleasant, even though we had to use that term. It was unpleasant for me because it emphasized we wanted what the state defines as a unified school, but a unified school was less important than an independent school. That will come about by itself. What the present German government wants as a unified school is actually the opposite. We would be signing on to something terrible if we give in on this question. Somehow we need to feel our way through this. We need to be aware that such things happen in life, but we should realize that they do not arise inwardly—that would be deceptive—but from without, and that we should do them with a certain mental reservation. We should be aware that we need to do things, but not inwardly, to achieve at least the minimum of what we want, and that we will need to speak with people while inwardly tweaking their noses.

Emil Molt: I will do what I can to bring things into order.

A teacher asks about the lessons for the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I will write it down for tomorrow, but we will get farthest if we see it as a continuation of what we have already done. I would, therefore, ask you to provide me with all the information about what you have done and achieved in German and literature.

A teacher: I went through Goethe, Schiller, and Herder, but that was all. I was able to bring into history some discussion of things like Dante’s Divine Comedy, but mostly it was Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. In grammar, we wrote essays and I attempted to work on spelling from the perspective of speech. We did nothing with grammar as such.

Dr. Steiner: Well, what you will need to do in literature is to take care of Jean Paul. In particular, you will need to look at some sections of Aesthetics, or the Schooling of Beauty with the ninth grade—particularly the ones concerning humor. You should not pay too much attention to history. That would be about a semester’s work. Afterward, you would then go on with the students to something very different. They are, after all, fourteen and fifteen years old, and you could read and discuss some of the chapters in Herman Grimm’s lectures on Goethe. That is what you need to do in literature.

In German, I would recommend that you not go too deeply into grammar in the first semester. Discuss the phonetic law, particularly Grimm’s law. In the essays, I would recommend that you handle historical themes. The students should work primarily with the material you gave them last year in history. You will certainly have adequate opportunities to discuss grammar and syntax in connection with corrections. Before you have the children write an essay, though, you should have the children from last year orally discuss the theme for the new children in the class.

Now, what did you do in history?

A teacher: We went up to the Reformation and took Luther’s biography in detail. I then worked with Buckle’s History of Civilization in England, and attempted to use it to shed some light on the present.

Dr. Steiner: I would recommend that you for the time do not go further, but go through it again with a spiritual scientific perspective. Follow that with Lecky’s History of Modern Civilization.

A teacher: I now have a combined eighth–ninth grade class in German.

Dr. Steiner: It would perhaps be best if you precede Herman Grimm with Goethe, so that you could then catch part of the class up with what you already said about Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. That would be good for both classes, and then you could leave Jean Paul for later. You could teach both classes the same history, so that we have only geography left.

A teacher: We mainly did the Ice Age, the movement of land and water and so forth. In general, we focused on the geology of that period.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with all that, I would recommend that you thoroughly examine the Alps, the northern limestone Alps, the southern limestone Alps along with the river valleys that form the boundaries, the mountain ranges—in other words, the different sections. Then something about the landscape and about the geological qualities beginning with the Lake Alps all the way through Switzerland to the Austrian Alps. In this discussion of the Alps, you could also point out that the structure of the Earth forms a kind of cross, and that these mountainous formations represent that. Then continue the Alps toward the Pyrenees and all the way through to the Carpathians, and then go on with the forested mountains right through to the Altaic range, so that you then have an east-west range that continues under the Earth and encloses the Earth like a ring. The Rocky Mountain-Andes Cordillera crosses that at a right angle, forming another ring. You can explain these two rings crossing one another so nicely as the structure of the Earth. Through that the students can get an idea that the Earth has an inner organization. You can do all this, but allow yourself enough time. You do not need to handle everything in geography at once.

Then we have mathematics. You have already taken up equations, haven’t you? How far have you come in exponents? Squaring, cubing, and more general exponents? Have you already cubed binomials and trinomials?

A teacher: There were no difficulties, but there was no reason to do the binomial law, that is, \((a + b)^2\), \((a + b)^3\), \((a + b)^4\).

Dr. Steiner: How do the students do that?

A teacher: I had them multiply them out.

Dr. Steiner: What I mean is, do your students know that \((a + b)^3 = a3\) and so forth? Can they do that? If you have not required that they learn it as a formula, then you have not begun with raising numbers to a power, and you have not had them figure the formula \(3553\) or \(3552\). I would continue in this way by having the children do the cubes for numbers using a formula. Then have them do the square roots and cube roots.

A teacher: I did not think it was important.

Dr. Steiner: In such things, it is not so important that children do things the way they will need them later, but that they practice a particular form of thinking. The form of thinking that they practice in finding the cube or square, or by taking the root of a number, has the peculiarity that it abstracts from the concrete numbers and then puts the numbers together in another way. Such work in the depths of the numerical construct is so formative for thought, that they have to do it.

Then they need more practical computations. I would certainly find it proper if you had children figure things that have a practical content, which is certainly in accord with your intentions. I would say, for instance, that if a watering can is cylindrical or conical, it contains a certain amount of water. How much water is that if the diameter of the base of one can is half that of another one?

I would then go on to approximations so that the children get an idea of that. Begin with a transit and how to find the average value in such practical things as weighing things with a balance scale. You could then continue on with examples in the exchange of money. Then, of course, we need to consider geometry. You should, of course, begin with computing volumes of bodies, and then I would advise you to begin with descriptive geometry.

A teacher describes what he did in physics.

Dr. Steiner: In physics you should try to do two things. In the first case, present acoustics and electricity, to which magnetism also belongs, so that the children can understand the telephone. In the second case, cover heat and mechanics and everything else the children need to understand a locomotive. That is enough for the ninth grade.

A teacher: Last year, we divided geography and I presented something about astronomy.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, in that connection, we should look at the Doppler Effect, that is, the movement of the stars in the line of vision. You did not discuss the movement of stars in the line of vision? You need to include everything the children need in order to understand the movement of the stars in the line of vision. You should work toward that goal.

A teacher: Then you don’t want any optics in physics? Only heat, mechanics, and electricity?

Dr. Steiner: You can add as much of optics as you need to explain the Doppler Effect. Be sure to also include acoustics.

A teacher: Are the conclusions about the movement of stars from shifts in spectral lines justified?

Dr. Steiner: Why not? It is certainly correct to conclude that if you have two spectra and find one line in one position and the same line in a different position in the other one, that has something to do with different distances. That is a proper conclusion.

A teacher: We could conclude that about the Sun.

Dr. Steiner: I would use the Doppler Effect only with double stars; I would not generalize it. You should use it only to show that the stars rotate around each other, since the general assumption is that the stars move cyclically in the direction of vision. Only go that far. Then, we have chemistry. What we already did in the eighth grade, the fundamentals of organic chemistry, what an alcohol is, what an ether is, we should continue in the ninth grade.

Anthropology: Continue with that so that the children gain a proper understanding of anthropology. That should move in concentric circles from grade to grade in such a way that you connect the remaining natural sciences with it.

Mr. Baumann, what do you think about music and singing in the ninth grade?

A teacher: I was unable to accomplish what I wanted because the students had so little previous training in music.

Dr. Steiner: Could you give the music lessons in the eurythmy hall if they do not conflict with eurythmy?

A teacher: There is hardly space for eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Then, we will never be able to bring the music instruction into order until we have the large hall. The musical instruction will never be what it should be until we have the large hall.

Two things are important. We should teach music as completely as possible. If we want to prepare the children, we cannot do too much with instruments since hearing poor instruments will ruin their sense of tone. That is an important point. We could certainly do well with the old style of church singing.

A teacher: I want to say something about the majors and minors and about the color of sound in pure tones.

Dr. Steiner: That is the exact material for the ninth grade, and it is certainly something we should strive for under all circumstances. We should look at some things a little theoretically and also give something for the feeling. Major and minor should become a feeling.

A teacher: In deportment class, I went into the differences between men and women. The children seemed interested in that.

Dr. Steiner: I think it would be nice if you connected that with singing and made the connection with male and female voices. Not much has been tried in this direction. It is quite certain that teaching this age child about observed differences between male and female singing voices would counteract the false sexual feelings that are so strong today. That would certainly have a good effect.

It is painful for me that you cannot move forward with the instruments. Playing instruments is something we cannot replace. Regarding private lessons, well, private lessons are private lessons. Here we must remember that, as we understand it, children should take up musical instruments in the general context of education. Private lessons do not help in that regard. It is certainly too bad we cannot do that. I fear it will be a long time before we get to it. A teacher: We have some instruments, but we need rooms, and we really need a teacher.

Dr. Steiner: We already discussed that. Is it only a question of rooms?

A teacher: We have about fifteen instruments. If we had even the chorus room, we could do things like Hayden’s “Children’s Symphony.”

Dr. Steiner: That would be good.

A question is asked about language class.

Dr. Steiner: At that age, I would emphasize recitation. You can learn much about the mastery of language through recitation. The children can gain a sense for idioms through recitation and then learn to apply that to other things. We can continue that in eurythmy and grammar.

In the shop class, I had thought we could cultivate things about art and a feeling for art indirectly. In shop, it is important to have the children do different things and always complete them. I wouldn’t have them make only useful things, but toys also, reasonable toys. I think it would be very nice if the children made little blacksmiths that make each other move alternately. The children will become dexterous. They can also make presents. I would work in that direction.

If we could also do something festive for the children, that is, have them gather moss and make Christmas crèches, so that they make the little sheep and so forth and paint it, they will learn a great deal. Of course, we shouldn’t neglect useful objects. They are particularly happy when they can make something like a ratchet noisemaker, things that are like a little practical joke.

We rattle, we rattle the twelve together.
The bells are coming from Rome.

A teacher: There is still the question of the handwork teacher. I have spoken with Miss S. She is a drawing teacher, but can also teach handwork.

Dr. Steiner: That would be just the thing if someone who was artistic took over the handwork class. We would have to be certain, though, that she is capable of it. She would fit in well.

Under certain circumstances, there is something else we should consider. She does not have one characteristic that another lady has. Miss Hauck is from here and is the daughter of the former professor Guido Hauck, who wrote an article, “Arnold Böcklin’s Realms of the Soul and Goethe’s Faust.” He also wrote “A Technical Explanation of Faust.” Hauck was one of the last. If she could decide to become a handwork teacher, we would have the advantage that she is from Schwabia, something that would be quite good. She has been teaching at a workers’ school, and for that reason I would consider not calling her here, because it would be good if she taught the people there. The workers’ schools say that people don’t need to learn frivolous things like geometry. Only things such as class struggle and preparation for the revolution should be taught. That is one thing, and the other is a recent event, namely, that the technical school has fired her. Perhaps Mr. Strakosch could give an opinion about whether it is necessary for factory mechanics to learn something about geometry. I would ask you to give your own opinion, but I think architecture and mechanical engineering would cease if technical schools no longer teach geometry. Everything would sink into barbarism. In mechanical engineering, you can’t put a peg into a hole. People can’t construct anything like that. This is all pure nonsense.

I think she would be suitable, but I fear that under our present circumstances, she might be too much. She was an assistant at the technical university for many years. We should consider these two women. For personal reasons, Miss S. would prefer not to be asked. Perhaps we could telegraph Miss Hauck tomorrow and ask if she can come.

For the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade independent religious instruction we could move into a freer form and give a theoretical explanation about such things as life before birth and after death, and all the consequences of a life before birth. We could give them examples. We could show them how to look at the major cultural connections and about the mission of the human being on Earth. You need only to look at Goethe or Jean Paul to see it. You can show everywhere that their capacities come from a life before birth.

We could then go on with a good picture that really reaches into the religious if we explained the body of the Laocoön. With the Laocoön the etheric body actually separated; thus, the physical body made such contortions. You can illustrate much through the breaking of the Laocoön’s physical body. You would need a group, but you can lift the discomfort about the dissolution of the human body into the religious.

We have decided about the Sunday services. We need to name somebody to replace Mrs. Koegel in teaching the children. I would ask for suggestions. The person needs to feel called upon to do this. Does someone want to do that? Would you like to do it with Miss Röhrle?

A teacher: A deaf and dumb girl has enrolled.

Dr. Steiner: She cannot come to the Waldorf School.

A class teacher asks about another child who has enrolled.

Dr. Steiner: What is with him? I feel bad about the boy.

A teacher: He is impossible in class.

Dr. Steiner: That may be only a passing thing. When I spoke with him, he certainly seemed as if he could improve. I am also convinced that if you do what I suggested with him, he will improve in half a year. We can certainly not hope he will improve if we completely isolate him. We can’t do that.

A teacher: Then my other children will be shortchanged.

Dr. Steiner: I think it is only temporary. It is probably connected with the fact that he just came into the school. That could certainly have an effect.

A teacher: He was terribly nervous.

Dr. Steiner: The child’s constitution is quite irregular. This is a boy who has something like—well, you can break your arm or leg on your physical body, but you cannot break your head—but this boy has a broken etheric head, and for that reason he is, of course, always nervous. That is more evident with him than with other children, but I think it is only temporary. In any event, we will have to tell the parents that they will need to be patient until we have the remedial class. Have you known him long? Was he always that way? His whole life becomes chaotic with every event. Is he taking any medication? Has he had childhood illnesses? I thought so. You said he had a mental dysfunction. You can counteract that with hypophsis cerebri. Does he have any siblings? There is a disturbance in his growth caused by something the mother had before he was born.

A teacher: She once told me she was half crazy the whole time.

Dr. Steiner: The boy came into this situation through the pregnancy. Then we will work with him and take him into the school as soon as Dr. Schubert’s remedial class begins.

Surely, you have more questions.

The question of Dr. Steiner’s position in the school organization is brought up again.

Dr. Steiner: Defining my position has only opportunistic value. It would have been good if I had been included at the time the faculty was reported to the government. It is important now only because government officials require us to be exact.

A teacher: Perhaps we could send them a complete list and put you at the top.

Dr. Steiner: That always looks strange, because they will compare it with the old lists.

A teacher: We still need to fix it, though.

Dr. Steiner: There isn’t much we can do other than to write and say we forgot it and want to revise the list. “We unfortunately forgot this last time and want to make a revision.” I don’t know of any other way around this. It certainly would look funny if we did nothing, or if we made a new list.

A question is asked regarding the opponents of anthroposophy.

Dr. Steiner: These rumors are always coming up. You see it everywhere in Switzerland. We are now trying to trace all the different variations of these despicable things with the goal of wiping away all traces of their machinations, and of their being able to say that I had done something with Anthroposophy and turned things around. These people spread teachings they say are mine and then they wipe away their tracks.

Is there anything else?

A teacher asks about the World School Association, which is to be situated in Dornach, but work in Germany. If a German section were to be founded now, then everything could be brought into order during the courses in Dornach.

Dr. Steiner: Don’t we need a World School Association before we can form a German section? Now the path toward a World School Association must begin from an international center.

We could center the World School Association in Dornach, but we do not need to begin it there. Before, we had a particular presentation that sharply emphasized that we still have only a small school, but we cannot grow since we must turn away many children. We can no longer say that, so we must now begin the World School Association differently. Of course, if we have a large number of visitors in Dornach, we could begin by creating a good attitude. I don’t think it should begin here, because we can no longer say there are a hundred children waiting at the gates of the school.

We now need to begin it differently. We could work in Dornach, but I had also thought we could begin in a more international place, The Hague, for instance. We still have reason to believe we can do something for our movement, but we would ruin everything if we founded the World School Association here. We can do all kinds of things for the Waldorf School. There is such a positive attitude here, but we may not found the Association here. At the time I had thought we could begin an energetic campaign, but I would now favor a foundation arising in London. That, however, is not yet achievable. Apart from that, I still hope that other things will move more quickly.

[Editor’s note: The remaining notes of this meeting are very erratic and uncertain, as to both the content and the speaker. Possible missing parts are indicated by an ellipsis.]

Dr. Steiner: I had thought before that I would have to do that with the World School Association. We have a number of anthroposophists in The Hague.

A teacher: I think they are all mixed up.

A teacher: You cannot depend upon H. He will never say he is an anthroposophist.

Dr. Steiner: If I were to go to The Hague, H. would certainly help. A teacher: As long as you are there!

Dr. Steiner: It doesn’t need to be more … it is enough if he can do one thing, and if he prepares the way.

A teacher: He blocks the way. He has hidden the fact that there is a Goetheanum. The students were surprised when they heard that it exists, although they were brought to Switzerland under H.’s guidance.

Dr. Steiner: That’s how people are, but you cannot move forward if you do not take people as they are.…

In addition to The Hague, Zurich and Geneva also came under discussion.

A teacher: Don’t we have to do some preparation here? We should think about the names of the individual schools. We do not see your goals.

Dr. Steiner: I do not believe it is particularly urgent to find names for the individual schools. What kind of conditions do you want to create from here?

A teacher: I am not really certain we have thought of everything.

Dr. Steiner: In the end, what is important is that you master the situation at the proper moment, and that is today. I already mentioned that. If we could provide our movement with such basic principles, we would get somewhere. We need to comprehend the world situation.

We must use things as they come. You see, for example, we started the publishing company here, but it has done little until now. However, two books appeared, Dr. Stein and the one by Polzer. These were only beginning works, but in large editions. We sold both books in only a few weeks. Someone said today that the book against Traub also sold out. People are just sleepy there. The movement would move forward if people would just move with the stream. As such, the stream is already there, but no one is swimming in it. We can certainly say that the current is there, but no one is swimming in it. You can see that from the fact that my public lectures are always well attended. It is certainly true that movement is there, but no one thinks about the fact that there is such movement.

In reality—the things I have to say are confidential, but I need to make a remark—the leadership of The Coming Day does not realize there is a threefold movement. That is not something that we need to advertise. We need only to know that a sleepiness exists. Many things begin and then stop. If I am to give everyone an individual task, then I can say only that everything can happen. Then our meetings should definitely not last until three in the morning. You will find the least amount of support in Berlin. There is no interest there. But even in Berlin, we could accomplish something if I could be there for a week. I cannot do it in three days. In Berlin, people don’t see beyond the walls of their own city.

A teacher: When could we do something in The Hague?

Dr. Steiner: When I see there is some interest, we can begin to think about doing something in that connection in Dornach. A teacher: Then we will have to decide how we can generate some interest.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, you see we have to learn how to generate interest in a more noble sense. If you look at the Haaß-Berkow Group with all their noise, you can see they certainly have a knack for creating interest. It must be possible, for example, when people come from outside, to have other titles for our presentations. It is important that we create interest, but we do not need to do it in a negative way. It is important to generate interest rather than simply discuss how. When so many people gather in one place, there is much we can do from person to person.

For the purposes of founding the World School Association, it is important to generate the proper interest. Suppose you can get fifty people to believe we should found such a World School Association. If the people from Dornach then travel and work in the proper way, that would mean that three weeks later, five hundred, and six weeks later, five thousand, would believe we should found a World School Association. You need to have the guts to create such an opinion in a number of people.

A teacher: Could the Waldorf teachers work in that way following the lectures?

Dr. Steiner: Of course, you can do that, but creating the opinion would have to move in parallel. Why is it that an esprit de corps, in the best sense of the word, never arises in something like the Anthroposophical Society?

Several teachers attempt to answer that question.

Dr. Steiner: As long as we were simply the Anthroposophical Society, all that was not important. We did not need money. Now, we have the misfortune that we do need it. It is not that we are greedy, but somehow we must support the movement. We can accomplish that only by generating interest. Now, this is very painful for me, many people who should be doing something have a certain kind of inner opposition. They do not do what I think is right, but something else. They have considerable resistance. That is common in our time, as though we could work out of the spirit and need no money. If you need money, you have to do something. It does not have to be unidealistic, but you must do something. I believe there is much more opposition than you might suppose, an inner opposition. Thus, there is a resistance. There is a sleepiness, a formation of cliques. It would be good if we could develop an esprit de corps.

We cannot form a section of something that does not yet exist.

A teacher: Well, the impetus must arise somewhere.

Dr. Steiner: It must come from a more extended group.

A teacher: Perhaps we could approach the representatives of the local school movements and warm them to the idea of the World School Association. For example, Principal B. in Br.

Dr. Steiner: It is not our concern to publicize the name of the World School Association, but to put such an organization into the world. B. is interested enough. The moment we have the World School Association, he will join and be active. For B. in Br., that means nothing more than another opportunity for more freeloading. It is unimportant whether you go around and gather money as the Waldorf faculty or as the World School Association. That is only a new name for the same thing. We need to create a real organization, an organization in itself.

A teacher: We need to make use of the time of the Dornach course.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to get those people to carry the thoughts of political agitation. We cannot get much from them directly, they are just poor wretches who would rather receive something. We certainly have such people. What is important is that these people carry the thoughts and spread them. We will have to keep those agitators warm. If we inaugurate something in The Hague—it does not need to be an association, we only need to begin political agitation—if we can begin to do that in The Hague, we should not forget that there is also a strong interest in doing something to help Central Europe. People already want that. If we can find the right tone, something will happen. We will need to try to articulate the feelings that exist so they go in the right direction. The perspective already exists, and that is something we could achieve. We could soon achieve something if the souls would awaken. You are already awake enough. It would be good if you could send forth something clever from Dornach with the same strength.

It would be better if the beggars and hoboes did not form the association as something to combat poverty, but that people who have something in their pockets do it.

There is some discussion concerning the course to be held in Stuttgart in the coming winter, and there are reports about what the teachers intend to present.

Dr. Steiner: There has been much talk, but we must do something. My only desire is that you do not offer college level lectures that then fall flat. That would be terrible. I would say something about Anthroposophy and philosophy.

A teacher: We had considered giving lectures each semester.

Dr. Steiner: We could group the subjects differently. I wouldn’t do it in the old way. I would group them more objectively. Mr. von Baravalle, you can certainly take care of Einstein’s theories and quantum theory.

A teacher: I think we can present it more easily to the students. The people here will certainly understand it.

Dr. Steiner: I think the ideas of projective geometry are very promising. I agree with what you have presented as a program. The people will certainly have a very different kind of picture when, aside from being able to determine an ellipse from an equation, they can comprehend the creation of an ellipse from a bundle of rays. That is quite a lot.

Perhaps it would be interesting to first give, for example, the basic concepts of analytical geometry and then those of projective geometry. You could then handle conical sections analytically and projectively. Now, there is usually a course for analytical geometry and then one for projective. It would be very interesting to teach the whole theory of conical sections analytically and projectively.

I think we need to close for today. I would certainly advise you to consider the courses in Dornach. Bring your plans with you. In Dornach, our direction is more toward people, but students want to have it more toward subjects. We could certainly specialize things. Dr. Schubert, there is certainly not much research about the soul of language.

I hope that our working together will develop more in the way I mentioned at the beginning today.

Dr. Steiner: Today, I would first like to hear the wishes and reports from the members of the faculty. In the first part of this meeting, I want to know if the faculty has any wishes or questions we should discuss without the extended faculty, that is, without the younger teachers who will come later.

I would first like to know how the instruction in the ninth grade is going, and I would like to hear the experiences of the teachers working with that class.

A teacher: In the eighth and ninth grade German class, we are reading Herman Grimm.

Dr. Steiner: Have you had an opportunity to bring other things into the lectures by Grimm? How far have you come in history? What did you do with his first lecture where he speaks about Rome in the second part of his characterization of the last centuries?

A teacher: The children did not know that history.

Dr. Steiner: It is important that you cover the history of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, at least in the ninth grade. Perhaps you could do it that way. It is missing in the ninth grade. In teaching about these centuries, the goal would be that the students understand the present, don’t you agree? They are now fifteen years old. You could go through those themes as Herman Grimm presents them in each chapter and take the nineteenth century as a confluence of the histories of various peoples. Use the themes of the last four centuries as leitmotifs. Actually, it would be important to do that in both classes, only you should do it in different ways. In eighth grade, more narratively and in ninth grade, go more into the major ideas of the last centuries.

You need to work toward being able to present the major ideas to the children. There is a great deal of material in those lectures you can expand upon by bringing in literature from everywhere.

(Speaking to another teacher) You teach mathematics. Have you gone through geometrical drawing with the children?

I have been so occupied with other things, but do you find it necessary to bring so much reasoned and theoretical material into physics? Doesn’t so much purely conceptual material slow things down?

A teacher: I want to present only what is absolutely necessary.

Dr. Steiner: How many of the experiments have the students mastered? In electricity, it is, of course, necessary to present the observations very rationally with little theoretical speculation. That is something that probably does not stick with them too well. From a purely didactic perspective, it should not stick well. I think in this case we should have the ideal of developing the necessary concepts out of the experiment and drawing on the blackboard as little as possible. We should develop the whole thing out of the experiment. You can also try your Socratic method. When you develop something theoretically, the Socratic method is not of much help, since how can the children know anything? You can hardly ask them questions. Since you can do experiments, I would certainly take advantage of those opportunities. You can save a great deal of time. If you go through electricity in that way, you will complete it. The children will learn a great deal more than if you just explain the concept of voltage. Didactically, that would be unwise. You will then need to do two weeks of geometrical drawing, but only two weeks.

A teacher: In the foreign language class, we read the Forum scene from Julius Caesar.

Dr. Steiner: Could you also do that in writing as a kind of essay? You need to do something like that, also. In German, too, so that they have a picture, one that they can really articulate.

(Speaking to the German teacher) You don’t have any themes? It would not hurt if you repeated the material in your lecture, using your own words.

A report is given about French.

Dr. Steiner: In any event, we can do what we projected for the ninth grade.

The German teacher: I now need to do Jean Paul.

Dr. Steiner: I did not mean you should do everything one after the other. It is now mid-November, and we need to do some history. Actually, the four centuries in their context. You really need until mid-January in both classes. For all the other classes, the curriculum is fixed.

A teacher: Will this curriculum then become standard in the future?

Dr. Steiner: For now, we need to know what we need to do this year.

A teacher: Should we teach literary history in foreign languages?

Dr. Steiner: With those children you do not need to do anything more than to say something about Shakespeare in passing, for instance. Or things you can take care of in that way.

The methods the public schools use for Latin and Greek are horrible and utterly decadent. We need to bring our children along so far that they find a connection. When we have sufficiently developed our methods, we need to bring our children just as far. But our methods will not present things in the same way. I think that when we resolve this problem, you will no longer have discipline problems, and then you can achieve that. The real problem is that your children are out of control every five minutes.

The Austrian college preparatory high schools were exemplary. When you think of Leo Thun and 1854, their curriculum was the very best imaginable; Gautsch ruined it. They did history well. In Weimar, I found a different understanding of world history, namely, from the creation of the world until the Hohenzollern, only fifteen pages, and three volumes about the history of the Hohenzollern.

We also have the independent religious instruction for this class. How are things there?

A teacher: We have nine grades in three groups.

Dr. Steiner: Why have the classes become so enormous? If the distribution is reasonable, then large classes will not hurt. But in your case, the children are really sitting on top of one another. Mr. U.’s class is too large. We need to divide it. Seventy-three children! They don’t fit into the available seats, and then they push one another out. Terrible! Today, the worst students were absent. It is absolutely clear that we need to divide this class, and I think we should do it. Particularly in these cases where the instruction really depends upon having contact with the individuals—you must be able to ask one or another question as often as possible—surely we can arrange for two periods and divide the class between them. This is, at best, a question of space and is something we must solve, as otherwise we will fail in that area of instruction. Who could also give that class?

A teacher: I would be happy to do it.

Dr. Steiner: It needs to be someone who was not previously in religion. You may have been out for a number of years, but it still forms your thoughts. We have no one on the faculty. Of course, this is a difficult problem to solve, but we will have to get over this hurdle. The teacher must bring warmth into the instruction, warmth. I would, for example, propose A., but I do not know if he can acquire the necessary pedagogical perspective. How about trying A., since in the present crisis, who else could we propose from the anthroposophical movement? There is no one.

We’re stuck. I know of no one else. We cannot hang this around the necks of the teachers. The ninth grade is so small you can easily make contact with the individual students.

(To a teacher) It seems to me that you need a helper in your class, Miss H. Perhaps Miss S. could help you. We need to speak about that. You need someone especially when the children need to work. The class is too large for teaching in chorus. It has peripheral areas, and you cannot reach out into the farthest realms. I would prefer having two classes, but Miss S. can work in your class and help you when the children are busy, for instance, in drawing or painting. The class is falling apart. Individual children are not active enough during class. They just sit around. I also wondered if you could give a period and then stay in the class while Miss S. gives the next period. That would take care of the discipline problem. We could think about how to do it. In principle, a class could have one hundred and fifty students, but we will not have such large rooms. You have fifty students in your class, but it is too large.

A teacher: I would like to ask if I should stay with the C-major scale and emphasize the absolute tone in tone eurythmy. I was wondering if it was incorrect to present tone eurythmy as relative.

Dr. Steiner: You can do that.

A eurythmy teacher: I always assumed the absolute tone.

Dr. Steiner: You can teach the eurythmy movements by remaining with the absolute, but you don’t need to do that pedantically. What are the children doing with you in shop class?

A shop teacher: We have continued last year’s projects.

Dr. Steiner: How is the discipline in handwork this year? Last year, the last period was handwork and the discipline was quite good. Do you have much to do? I am asking because I think we should have discussed it in the foundation course last year. Is it possible to meet every other week about that subject, that is, apart from the school as such? Can you formulate some questions that will lead to a positive result? It would be good if we remained in contact about such things, if you developed some questions where you have doubts, and I could suggest some themes we could discuss when I am here. I hope in the future I will have some time to devote myself entirely to the Waldorf School. You need to think about some questions where you are having problems and send them to me so that I can answer them when I return.

A comment is made concerning painting.

Dr. Steiner: (To a class teacher) You have presented it?

A teacher: You saw some attempts today.

Dr. Steiner: As such, they were quite good, but you will need to work less from the conventional and develop writing more out of drawing and painting. That must be your goal. Guidelines are available for the first grade, but you must slowly develop them further so that color is more developed.

A teacher: At present, I can’t find a way. I am groping in the dark.

Dr. Steiner: Some of the children have done very good things, but it must come more out of the color. T.F. has some talent.

A teacher: I have found that the children have difficulty with forms using watercolor.

Dr. Steiner: You should not emphasize chalk too much. Unfortunately, we are not so far along yet, but it is quite important that we delineate. First, we will have an ordered curriculum in the lower classes. Of course, the others will do nearly the same thing, but we need to take the children’s age into account. The main thing now is that we awaken an inner feeling for color in the children, an experience of the world of colors, so that the children receive a feeling for the life in the world of colors through experiencing fairy tales.

A teacher: We need to give the children forms, particular motifs.

Dr. Steiner: The children will get forms if you allow their fantasy to be active. You need to allow the forms to grow out of color. You can speak with the children in the language of colors. Think about how exciting it is when to work with the children so that they understand something like: Here is a coy violet with a brash red right next to it. The whole thing sits upon a humble blue.

You need to do it concretely, so that the colors do something. That forms the soul. What we can imagine in the colors can occur in a hundred different ways. You need to get the children to live in the colors by saying things like, “When the red peeks through the blue.” Allow the children to really do that. I would try to bring a great deal of life into it. You must try to bring them out of their lethargy. Bring some fire into it. Nowadays, it is generally necessary to develop this feeling for colors. It is not as corrupted as music, but it will favorably affect their feeling for music.

A teacher: Would you be in favor of practicing drawing as well as painting?

Dr. Steiner: Not mechanical drawing. They should do that only when the object is geometrical understanding. In any event, it is important to work out of the polarity of light and dark. In that regard, the ninth grade has not shown itself to be particularly lively, and you need to help them.

A teacher: Could the eighth and ninth grades have painting lessons?

Dr. Steiner: That would have to occur in the periods we already have. We should do more artistic work, that is quite evident. That is also why it was important to me that Miss Hauck come into the handwork class and that handwork be taught artistically. Mostly the handwork is boring, and I would like to see it done really artistically. In handwork, you can use a ruler, but it is inappropriate with paper. We could form a bridge between shop and handwork. There are a number of things that can be painted. There are also things the children could paint by themselves at home. If the children would make things for their dolls, there is much we could develop. We could develop a sense of style and color. If we could overcome the naturalism in making dolls, we could make something lively, laughing dolls, ones that are artistic. That would be very beneficial.

Just as you can get children accustomed to writing in different ways, I do not know why you cannot teach children how to make a poster and how a poster can be beautiful, and how they can recognize the beauty of a beautiful poster. They should also recognize an ugly poster. But people look at such things without becoming angry. We must develop taste. We should develop a feeling for style. Concerning the feeling for style, the instruction, even in the most artistic schools, is terrible.

We had the most disgusting examples here a short time ago. You all know the drawings in Towards Social Renewal. They were changed to make them more current. What did the artist do? He created the motif so that the left side repeated on the right. He made a Gothic window out of it. Such things occur.

We could achieve something beautiful in the tenth or eleventh grade. One of our industrialists wants a logo for his baby food. That is something that should be created from within. There are inner needs. Today, people know only about art objects, but that is how it should be if it is to imitate something. In Basel, there is an art teacher who says he does not understand why, if I paint an eye here, I cannot paint the other one there. There is something to be said for that as long as you do not go along with the thing itself. What I mean is an inner ability to experience, that is what I mean by a feeling for style. People need to experience a triangle or a rectangle and not simply imitate. Today, people make dolls by simply imitating and not experiencing them from within. You need to be able to experience within yourself how a doll laughs or cries, and that all needs to be done properly, including the clothing. The girls could make a doll and the boys, a jester. We must take the capacity for inner experience into account in painting with colors.

A teacher: Could we use that also with tones?

Dr. Steiner: I think they can also be experienced inwardly. A music teacher: Should we express that to the children through words? The melody or the individual tones?

Dr. Steiner: That results from the theme alone, or the melody. If you treat tones that way, then something artistic results. I think that is what Goethe meant about how he learned to play the piano.

A teacher asks if the children should make eurythmy shoes.

Dr. Steiner: The children would become weak and ill from that. I think that would lead to problems. But, on the other hand, is there so much to making eurythmy shoes?

A teacher: Now, many children make them for the others.

Dr. Steiner: How long does a child need to make a pair of eurythmy shoes? I think that among the members there are many, that is, among the women, there are many who could make at least a dozen such shoes in a day, or at least nine or ten.

A teacher: There is a student in the fifth grade who does not want to do eurythmy. He has no interest for art, only for physics and electricity.

Dr. Steiner: Just as there are unmusical people, there can also be uneurythmic people. I would not excuse him from class. That should happen only when there is a partial idiocy present.

Comment about student S.

Dr. Steiner: The one who crept out from under the seats?

You need to always think, for example, I will make the drawing in a corner, I will make it large or small. You should make him develop some inner activity. You should not allow him simply to sneak away; he needs to be inwardly active. It is better if the boy has to do something that he first needs to decide to do. You can achieve the most with that boy by giving him some attention and being friendly. He can also be well behaved. I have found it curious. I have only seen when he is punished. What he did, I never saw.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to say a few things about my impressions of the past few days. I wish we had time to discuss them, but I fear it will not be possible during this visit. Before, it was not so bad, but now with the new classrooms I see we need to hang pictures on the walls. The fourth grade classroom is dreadful in that respect. It was so apparent to me that I mentioned to Mr. U., while he was teaching religion, that things are falling apart. You must take care of this. There is also much to be desired in the fifth grade room. The walls should not look only like walls; they need some pictures. But, you must do this carefully.

A Mr. G., a member of the Anthroposophical Society who wants to find some pictures, is mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: I am a little fearful of that. The pictures must harmonize with our pedagogy, and therefore cannot be chosen before I return.

Where are the painters who can do something? The impulses must arise from the respective class teachers, and then the paintings must be really very artistic. We cannot do anything inartistic. We must create something special for this school.

This morning Miss L. went through The Giant Toy, something Chamisso intended as a poem. As soon as you have gone through it with the children in Chamisso’s sense, you easily come into rationalism and lose the flavor of it. You need to understand it as a poem describing the old landed aristocracy traveling to castles. It is a very social poem. The giant toy is the farmer whom the landed aristocracy use as a toy. I would have been shocked to mention such a thing this morning. It can easily fall into rationalism. On the other hand, since the children really liked it, we should try to translate it into painting without losing the flavor of those thoughts—that is, the poem’s thoughts of the playthings of the declining landed aristocracy. We should not have the children translate this poem into prose, but into a picture. If we hung something like that as a picture, it would give a deep impression, something taken from the instruction that the children fully felt.

When the Waldorf School opened, I spoke in detail about this with Miss Waller. I spoke about the need to create something in a truly artistic way that gives metamorphic thought to the realm of life. We have done something similar in Dornach in the transition from one architrave to another. If we had such things, it would be much easier to explain things we teach. When G. donates things, he donates what he likes. That is something we want no part of. Perhaps you could think about these things, but we need them.

A teacher: Would it be in keeping pedagogically if the children painted something themselves?

Dr. Steiner: Your niece visited me and brought her first paintings. She said I should not just look at them, but should hang them on the walls in my home.

It depends upon how they are. I have nothing against hanging up things the children make, but with pictures it is very difficult. It is thoughtless simply to hang normal pictures on the wall. What does a picture on the wall mean? In artistic times, people never thought of just hanging pictures on the wall. They had to fit the room. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is in the dining room of the cloister. The monks sat in a circle, and the four walls were painted. He ate with them and was a part of them. That was thought of out of the relationship of the room. Such things justify the paintings. Simply hanging up pictures makes things more confused.

A teacher: I wanted to hang reproductions of the windows in Dornach.

Dr. Steiner: You should leave that for now.

A teacher asks if paintings from an anthroposophical painter should be hung.

Dr. Steiner: It depends upon how they are done. It is important that the children have pictures that will make a lasting impression upon them.

There is another thing I wanted to speak about. There are a number of things under construction. Due to the lack of appropriate rooms, music instruction is suffering terribly. That is a calamity. It is certainly true that if the music teacher goes deaf because he has to teach in an inappropriate space, that is a calamity. We must improve this. People would be quite satisfied if we had something like a quartet in the Waldorf School. That is the sort of thing we can achieve when we have everything we need. It would be good to know for sure that we would properly provide for music for the next three or four years.

A teacher: We have plans for a music room.

Dr. Steiner: Have you consulted the music teacher as an expert? It is important that you determine what you need yourselves. We must also take care to see that we do something for the gymnasium at the same time.

The music teacher: I also need an appropriate room to prepare for class. I need to try out things.

Dr. Steiner: We should do these things in the way you say we should do them.

Are there rooms large enough for the trades classes? How do you handle so many children? If you always have such a troop, you can hardly get through to them all.

A teacher: It only begins in the sixth grade.

Dr. Steiner: In spite of that, I am not certain you can get through everything. The problem is that there is not enough space in the classrooms, really only a corner. The children get sick in them. We need to take these symptoms into account.

Now, I would like to hear what you would like to talk about.

A teacher: What to do with children who are lethargic.

Dr. Steiner: How is Sch. in the trades class? He walks so oddly. Last year I gave some basic exercises for those children who were weak in comprehending so that they had to think about their own bodies. “Touch your left shoulder with your middle right finger.” Through such things, you have to think about your own body. I also showed you how to draw something in a stylized way, and then have the children figure out what it is. You can also have them draw a symmetrical picture. Through those things, you form a perspective connected with the structure of the body. When you bring such exercises into your teaching, they work to awaken the sleepy child. That boy is sleepy.

I ask you to accept no laziness in detail with the children. Do not tolerate the children holding chalk like a pen, or doing anything awkwardly. I would pay a great deal of attention to such things. Nearly half the children hold chalk improperly. You should not allow that to pass by. You should be very attentive to such things.

I would not allow the children to shuffle out, like the little girl today. I would try to see that she improves her walk. That has a very wakening effect.

N. in the sixth grade is also very apathetic, and such exercises would quickly help him.

I would also pay some attention to the little girl in the fourth grade at the back on the right. She tends to invent a great deal, and she thought that the whole scene from “The Ode to the Courageous Man” took place in the Mediterranean Sea. She began with the line, “The dewy wind came from the midday sea.” From that beginning, she made a fantastic geography. You need to speak with this little girl often, since she is in danger of suffering from flights of fancy. “The Aegean Sea flows into the Mediterranean Sea.”

There are some children who write very well and have progressed far, but the little boy writes like many communist speakers speak. He pays no attention. He writes disconnectedly, the way a speaker speaks of communism. Such exercises would awaken him also.

A teacher asks about F.L.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps you should often call upon F.L. He is not so bad, only dreamy. He does not find his way to himself. He needs to feel that you are interested in him, and then things will immediately improve. It’s already going better now.

A teacher: He doesn’t speak in class.

Dr. Steiner: Could he get himself to do that? He is always afraid that no one loves him. That is his basic problem. You shouldn’t look for anything more complicated.

A teacher: What would you advise for Ch.D. in the second grade?

Dr. Steiner: Has she learned something from the instruction?

A teacher: Her character disturbs me.

Dr. Steiner: Sit near her and pay no attention when she is flirting with you. Pay no attention at first, but on the next day speak a few words with her about what she did the previous day. Don’t do it immediately, only twenty-four hours afterward.

A teacher: W.R.K. is in my fourth grade class. He pays no attention, doesn’t learn anything and continually disturbs the other children. He is sleepy and apathetic.

Dr. Steiner: I would also try the exercises with him. Do everything from the beginning so that they don’t get used to anything, they don’t have any specific forms they comprehend.

A teacher: (Who took over the fifth grade because Mrs. K. fell ill) Since there have been so many changes in teachers, one of the main problems is that the children’s knowledge of arithmetic is so haphazard. Should I stop arithmetic and take up another subject?

Dr. Steiner: How long do you think it will take until each child is far enough along that things will work?

A teacher: The majority of the class is not so bad in arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: I think that it is good to teach in chorus. It is good to do that within bounds. If you do too much in chorus, I would ask you not to forget that the group soul is a reality, and you should not count upon the children being able to do individually what they can do properly in chorus. You may have the feeling that when the children are speaking in chorus, you can keep them quiet more easily. That is a good method when done in moderation so that the group soul becomes active. To that extent, it is good to leave the children in the hands of their group soul. However, as individuals they cannot do what they can do in chorus. You need to change that. You need to ask the children a lot individually. That is what you need to do because that has significant educational value. Don’t believe that when the children become restless you should always have them speak in chorus.

A teacher: What should we do about restlessness?

Dr. Steiner: What do the children do?

A teacher: They talk, chatter, and make noise.

Dr. Steiner: That appears to happen in arithmetic class. When I was there recently, the children were wonderfully quiet.

A teacher: They were afraid of you. That’s what they said afterward.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps you should try for a time to excite the children’s curiosity so that they follow the instruction with a certain level of interest. Do that through the material itself, not through something external to it.

(Speaking to Miss Hauck) It’s true, isn’t it, that I’ve never found the children misbehaving in your class. I think things will settle down, and the children will get used to you. The fourth grade is really well behaved and interested. They entered into a difficult discussion and thought things out well. I spoke a little about that. You should not immediately expect—as a teacher in the Waldorf School, you are still quite young and fresh as the break of day. You need to wait until the children come to see you more closely.

A teacher: G.Z. is homesick. He is always asking questions.

Dr. Steiner: He is also quite attentive in physics. I was amazed that he is so well behaved. The woman he is living with says he is always criticizing and complains terribly about the teachers and the school. He says that he learned much more at other schools. We should find out if that is true.

A teacher: G.D. is easily annoyed and feels unjustly treated.

Dr. Steiner: His mother feels herself to be very spiritual, and it appears she has told the child a lot of rubbish. Over the years she has said all kinds of terrible things. What is the problem?

A teacher: The mother complains that I am stressing the child.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t think that it would be so easy to work with the mother. She is a kind of society woman.

You will often notice that children who can still be guided and with whom you can achieve everything have the most horrible situations at home. This little boy could turn out to be a really wonderful young man through proper handling, but he cannot move forward in this situation. He is talented, but he has all the illnesses his mother has, only more so and in a different form. If you pay no attention to those things, you immediately do the right thing. A eurythmy teacher: I cannot awaken R.F.’s interest in eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Be ironic with him. He was in a parochial school. The main problem is that he does not participate in eurythmy. I would try to have him draw some eurythmy forms first. He should draw the forms and after he has done that, have him do them. A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have your primer. It is well done, and it would certainly be very helpful for someone who uses it. We could do a number of things with it. It would be a good example of the spirit active in the Waldorf School. I think it would be generally good to publish such things connected with the instruction. Not simply essays, but things that we actively use in teaching. That, however, would cost money, and the problem is, how can we do it? The way you have put your book together with its drawings, we should print it in an appropriate way. We can certainly have it set. We could do that. We could also make a title page. The typefaces available now are terrible. We would need to do that for the whole book. It would cost twenty thousand marks. If we assume we could sell a thousand copies, we would need to sell it for forty marks each. How can we do that financially? It would be interesting to discuss how we could do it. We need to think about that. Books are terribly expensive, and you could not do this sort of thing with normal typeface. It is so different as a primer, and it deserves support. I could write an afterword for it. No one would understand it if we published it as it is, but there would be much talk about it.

You have a system with the moveable pictures that have strings attached to them; you have a short text and above it a moveable picture. I find that very useful for picture books. Such picture books are extremely necessary in kindergarten. If you would only continue to work on it! Modern books are so boring.

A teacher: I wanted to ask if we should also include old documents in the religious instruction.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, but also things you do yourself. I think we should ask Mr. A. to take over half of the religion class. Give him only half and select those students you want to get rid of. In spite of his age, he will be just as young and fresh as the morning.

A teacher: Would he also participate in the services?

Dr. Steiner: That will soon be necessary.

(Speaking to Miss. H.) I would like Miss S. to join you. I think it would be good if Miss S. were with you, and if you allowed her to continue the instruction. You teach a period and then remain in the class and maintain contact. In between, there is someone else. It seems to me you should want that. Of course, you do not need to carry it out pedantically. I just think that should begin because you cannot manage that class by yourself in that room.

I was certain that I could give you the yearly report, but I have so much to do that I can only send it to you from Dornach. I was happy to see you are also not yet finished. I already wrote something for the Goetheanum, but you haven’t written anything yet.

A teacher: I would like to have the yearly report printed.

Dr. Steiner: I will really write it when I get to Dornach, and I will give it to Mr. M. Someone will have to edit all these articles. If only I had the time! I will have to take it with me to Dornach and do it there.

Dr. W. is also unhappy and makes a long face all day long. You should do the lectures from H. As I have often said with a certain kind of sensationalism, my father wrote love letters for all the fellows in his town. They were always coming by to have him write their love letters. The girls were always very happy. But that you should do H.’s lectures? I need to give some lectures in Zurich, and I will tell H. that he will have to do his own lectures.

I also need to think about your desire for a Christmas service. Is there anything else to discuss? We do not use illustrations just to make things clear, but to make the spirit more mobile. I would not find it unjustified if you illustrated the size of the community by taking the prime numbers contained in them and tossing them into a bowl. Then you have only the prime numbers. You can make that visible. Take a large bowl and the prime factor of two and throw it in. That is a number you can use to measure both.

It is important not just to reinforce what you want to make comprehensible. Memory is supported by including visible spatial thoughts, so the children need to have spatial ideas. There is nothing wrong with that. That period was very good, but we could connect something to it to give the children some idea of space.

If there are no further questions, then we will close. I can only say concerning something going around that the school has lost an intimacy due to the increase in the number of children, but I don’t find anything wrong in that. I don’t think it is something you should feel to be particularly unpleasant. We need to accept that as it is. In general, I can say that I think the school has made very good progress in every direction. Does anyone have a different opinion?

There is something else I want to mention. In a certain sense, our activities in Stuttgart need to be a harmonizing whole, and we need to feel them in that way. We need to develop a harmonious working together. It would be good if things everywhere went as the Waldorf School pedagogical work did last year. The Waldorf teachers are working valiantly so that one thing supports another. You need to consider what is in Stuttgart as a whole. The Anthroposophical Society and the Waldorf School are together the spiritual part of the threefold organism. The Union for Threefolding should be the political part, and the Waldorf teachers should help it with their advice. The Coming Day is the economic part. The Waldorf School began, but everyone must do what is necessary so that the other things do not get lost. In particular, everything depends upon the activities of the Union for Threefolding. We should remember that with each new step forward, new tasks arise. Now that we have added the Del Monte factory, we have a whole slew of workers. A factory meeting like the one we held is very visible in today’s society. Every bridge between the workers and the leading classes has broken. If we cannot awaken common interest through the threefold movement, like that of the 1870s when the European proletariat was interested in the democratic idea, so there were common interests, and people thought of more than simply bread, if we cannot do that, then we will move forward nowhere. We need to create a cultural atmosphere. In that connection, the cultural life in Stuttgart has been sleeping a deep sleep in the last five months, and we must awaken it again.

We can see that the threefold newspaper, that is as good as possible, has not had any increase in circulation in the last five months, nor has it had an increase in the number of employees. We need new people for the threefold newspaper. Our goal must be to change it as quickly as possible into a daily paper. If we are not consequential, that is, if we add new factories without accomplishing something positive for the political movement in Middle Europe, we will not survive. We cannot simply add new companies and at the same time fail to do something politically important.

In politics and social life things are not simply true. If you go to such a meeting today, and say that something is true, but do not act accordingly in the next months, then it is no longer true. It becomes untrue. If The Coming Day remains simply a normal company, it will become untrue. It is true only if we move forward with real strength. What is important is that we act against prejudice in current events.

Someone like Stinnes is very important for the near future. His ideas are gaining support. In particular, his party, the German Idiots Party, that is, the German Industry Party, is gaining strength through those ideas. We need to be clear though, that there are clever people behind the scenes. He intends to create a monopolistic trust for cultural life and economic activity so that the proletariat crawl to the gates of his factories and ask to be allowed in. He is well under way in that direction, and what he does is systematic. The cultural movement in Germany has a certain connection with such people. People in our group understand this trick too little, but Graf Keyserling in Darmstadt certainly saw through it.11 He has strong financing behind him. What Stinnes is trying to do is put forth as a salvation. You can read about it in the newspapers. This is bringing about a kind of threefolding, but with an Ahrimanic slant. It will be the devil’s work if it is not done in the way we can do it.

It is important that we keep our eyes open, our ears to the ground, and our noses to the wind for everything happening. It is nice to set up absolute theories, and we need to connect the overview with the details. Our activities need to remain current. In my lecture in the Liederhalle, I connected what I said with the miners’ strike. We need to raise people’s view from everyday things to the large perspective. We need to coordinate everything and through that The Coming Day will probably work. It would not hurt the Union for Threefolding if we lit a little fire under it.

The urgent question is what to do with all those children coming from the newly acquired factories. That is a question that can turn into an accusation if we do not act. It’s certainly true that Dr. Unger’s company has a hoard of children, as does the Del Monte factory. Since we took them over, our task has grown, so how do we now handle the Waldorf School? We need to take care of that. I would also like to remind you of what I said yesterday in a different place. We have a responsibility not to allow those students who have engaged themselves in spreading the word to be left out on a limb. We need to be careful about that. The call is a terribly valiant deed. It is having an effect. The students from the Agricultural College in Hohenheim have already reacted. We must see our movement in such a way that it does not stop, that it makes progress every day, for otherwise it makes no sense. We can’t move into a retirement home yet.

Dr. Steiner: Since we have only a little time, we can discuss only the most important things. Perhaps you would be good enough to present the things that have come up in the faculty.

A teacher: The school was approved, but now we have received an official edict about how many children we can accept in the first grade. We need to discuss that.

Dr. Steiner: Discussing it will not help much. The order says that as long as the government allows it, we can have a first grade that at best is only as large as it was in these two school years, and that we cannot accept more children. That is what it clearly contains. There can be no talk at all of the school continuing in any way we wish. We can accept no more children than we have already had.

What we can say about it is that if we actually had a Union for Threefolding, we could protest against this school regulation. In connection with such things, the individual can never achieve anything. It is necessary to take a general position against such tendencies. There is not much else to say, and we cannot do much else about that order.

I also need to mention something about limitations in another area. There has never been any intention within the Anthroposophical Society of acting publicly against medical tyranny. To the contrary, we have had a tendency toward quackery, and that is what is ruining our movement, namely, this secret desire that we cannot speak about publicly. It is rampant. (Speaking to a teacher) You were certainly courageous enough today with your words. They can have consequences, but that will hurt nothing.

Another thing we must speak of is the fact that the threefold newspaper has not had one single new subscriber since the end of May. The fact that the Union for Threefolding is absolutely not functioning needs to be said.

A teacher: The school building will not be completed in time. We may need to put up a temporary building.

Dr. Steiner: We probably will have to put up such a temporary building. The prospect that this large school building costing millions will be completed in the near future is minimal. The money would have to come from The Coming Day. It is not very likely that The Coming Day could afford it since it has a number of absolutely necessary things to do. It is virtually impossible that they could use the first money for the construction of the school building. If they cannot use the first money, then we cannot think the school building will be completed in time for next school year. Technically, we could complete it, but financially that is impossible. Several teachers speak about ways of obtaining money.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing standing in the way of obtaining money somehow. That kind of activity depends upon humor. I was unable to take care of the Waldorf School very much recently. That was very difficult for me. I have never gone away with such painful feelings as I do this time. I want to say a few things. It does not seem to me that our present Waldorf teachers can add much to such appeals. In general, I have the impression that the Waldorf teachers are sufficiently burdened with teaching the seminars. We need to relieve them of many things if the school is to flourish properly. I have the impression that we cannot burden you further. When you want to teach, you really need a certain amount of time for preparation. You need a thorough preparation of the material. Some of you are so burdened that that is no longer possible. Thus, I would decisively recommend to Dr. Stein that, when someone shoves him a task from the Union for Threefolding, he energetically refuse it. This is a way of correcting things. If the Union for Threefolding pushes things onto you that it should do itself, and then limits itself to withdrawing to its rooms, that is a method of overburdening and thus ruining those few people who really work, and allowing the others to return to their fortress so that nothing moves forward.

A teacher: I am supposed to give lectures. I have known for some time that I absolutely cannot do the necessary preparation.

Dr. Steiner: I am not complaining about you. I did not intend to criticize. It would certainly be inappropriate to criticize the best group. We need to spread things out more evenly. Certainly, when we arrange things properly, you can do things like you did in Darmstadt, but a much more intensive, cooperative working with the Union for Threefolding would need to exist. In any event, you must see to it that people do not hang things around your neck that are primarily the responsibility of those people in the Union for Threefolding. That goes for the rest of you also.

Our primary task is to take care of the school. The research laboratory and the school belong together in order to act in accord. They belong together.

A teacher: I would like to ask what to do about including music in the instruction. I have done it by playing a little piece on the piano at the beginning of class in order to prepare the mood.

Dr. Steiner: What you just said is nonsense. We can certainly not affect the instruction through an artificially created mood, and on the other hand, we cannot use an art for such an end. We must always maintain art for its own sake; it should not serve for preparing a mood. That seems to have a questionable similarity to a spiritualistic meeting. I do not think you should do this any more. The case would be different if you were teaching acoustics.

A teacher: I have always sought to make a connection.

Dr. Steiner: There is no connection between the Punic Wars and something musical. What do you suppose the connection to be? What is the goal? Not with eurythmy, either. You can certainly not present some eurythmy in order to create a mood for a shadow play. Would you want to give eurythmy presentations in order to write business letters? That would be an expansion in the other direction. Our task is to form the lessons as inwardly artistically as possible, but not through purely external means. That is as detrimental for the content of what we present as it is for the art itself. You cannot tell a fairy tale as preparation for a discussion on color theory. That would put the instruction upon the completely wrong track. We should form the instruction so that we create the mood out of it. If you find it necessary to first create a mood through something decorative, whereby the art itself suffers, then you are admitting that you cannot bring about that mood through the content of the lesson. I think it is questionable that sometimes anthroposophical discussions are preceded by some piece of music, although that is something else because that is done with adults. We cannot do that in the classroom, and we will need to stop it.

A teacher: Could we use that in physics as a bridge between music and acoustics?

Dr. Steiner: It would be desirable that you make acoustics more musical, and that you develop an artistic bridge to acoustics with music. It is certainly possible to bring music into that, but you should not try to do it in the way mentioned previously. I really don’t know what would remain for the Punic War if you took half an hour for all those things.

A eurythmy teacher: It was a very short poem.

Dr. Steiner: That is a ridiculous pedagogy. It is the best way to make eurythmy laughable.

A eurythmy teacher: I had the impression that the children were very interested.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps they would be even more interested if you showed a short film. We may never pay any attention to what interests the children. We could let them dance around. What interests them is unimportant, it leads only to a terribly nonsensical pedagogy. If that became normal practice, then our instruction would suffer and eurythmy would be discredited. Either it is proper in principle, in which case we should do it, or it is wrong. Those are the two choices. In any event, this is something that doesn’t work.

There was that boy, T.L. in the 6-b class, who had difficulty writing, who made one stroke into the next. In such cases there is a tendency to cramp in the central nervous system, which may lead later to writer’s cramp. You need to try to counteract it at an early age. You should have this boy do eurythmy with barbells. He should do the movements with barbells. They don’t need to be particularly heavy, but he should do eurythmy with barbells. You will notice that his handwriting will improve in that way. You could also do some other things. You could try to get him to hold his pen in a different direction. There are such pens, although I don’t know if they are still available now after the war, with the nib set at an angle to the pen. Such a boy needs to become accustomed to a different position. It will help him to become conscious of the way he holds his fingers. Another thing is that the axes of his eyes converge too strongly. Get him to hold the paper further from his eyes so that the axes converge less. You will need to wait to see how his handwriting changes due to the influence of these more organic means. If you observe that he makes some effort, and that he writes something more orderly, then you can begin to guide him and his conscious will can take over.

The other boy, R.F., is a bit apathetic. I have not seen his writing.

A teacher: His handwriting is quite beautiful. He wrote for an hour and a half.

Dr. Steiner: You don’t need to do anything there. He was always a problem child, and now there is not much we can do with him. Until the light goes on, in spite of the fact that he makes trouble, you will have to call upon him more often so that he sees that you see him lovingly. He will then think to himself, “I can be called upon more often.”

With such children, you need to remember to call upon them more often, and perhaps distract them from the normal course of things. There is not much else you can do with them. He is also nearsighted and apathetic. Probably there is an organic problem lying at the basis. You must work with him individually. Probably he is suffering from some organic problem. I had the impression that the boy should be given worm medicine every other day for two weeks. You will need to check him then. I think he is suffering from worms. If we can cure that, things will go better. You need to take care of such things with the children. Perhaps you could take a look at him, Dr. Kolisko, and see whether that or something similar is in his digestive system. There may be something else slowing his digestion. You can certainly find the actual reason for his apathy in the digestive system.

If there are things similar to those with these two children, please do not hesitate to mention them. The individual cases are not so important. What is important is that through discussing a number of such cases where we consider individual children, you will slowly gain some experience. Please do not forget to mention such things that seem important to you, or possibly unpleasant.

Now, what is the situation with the withdrawals?

A teacher: Many parents have removed their children after the eighth grade to put them to work. The children of laborers are particularly susceptible to that.

Dr. Steiner: That will truly be a problem if we cannot expand the instruction in the higher grades with training that people can see can replace what the children would receive through some sort of apprenticeship. We need to set up our upper classes in the way that I discussed in my “Lectures on Public Education.” That way, the children can stay. If we do not move in that direction, we will find it very difficult to get the parents to allow them to stay. Many will not see what we want to do with their children. We can still prepare the children for their final examinations. That is a practical difficulty, and we need to look for some solution. We can still prepare the children for their final examinations, even though they may do practical work. For those who tend more toward the trades, we should provide more practical training, but without splitting the school. I don’t think we can avoid losing a number of children when they are fifteen if we allow the school to become an “institution of higher learning.”

A teacher: I only hope the workers’ children will remain in the school as long as possible.

Dr. Steiner: First, the parents have no understanding, something that does not go very far in social democratic circles. “Our children should become something better,” is something they may understand a bit. That attitude is barely present. They may have taken the opportunity to allow their girls to be educated cheaply. We cannot immediately achieve very much in the area of people’s habits. It will also not be easy with the children who have not attended the elementary school from the very beginning, that is, with those who entered later, those we had for only a year in the eighth grade, and who will now move on to the higher grades. Those children cannot really move up. We did not have very many working-class children in the eighth grade.

A teacher: Nine have left. It is difficult to teach the children in the eighth grade what they need for the higher grades.

Dr. Steiner: We should not raise their attitude toward life, I mean exactly what I say, the inner attitude of their souls, to what we normally have in a higher school. Working-class children can get into the higher bourgeois schools only if they are ambitious, that is, if they want to move into the bourgeoisie. We would need to set up the school as I described it in my “Lectures on Public Education.” We would then see what we need to give these students as a proper education. As long as the law requires us to have a college preparatory high school, something that is purely bourgeois with nothing that is not precisely for the bourgeoisie, the working-class children will not fit in.

I would like to say something about this tone of “just teach.” That is, that we do not actually bring anything to the children. Here the issue is that the method we began and that I presented in my didactic lectures can offer a great deal toward efficient instruction when we properly develop it. We still need to work more toward efficiency in teaching. This efficiency is absolutely necessary if other things are to be retained.

I have not complained that the children cannot yet write. In this period of life, they will learn to do something else. I would like to mention the case of R.F.M. as an example. At the age of nine, she could not write and learned to write much later than all the other children. She simply drew the letters. Now she is over sixteen and is engaged. She is extremely helpful at work. This is really something else. In spite of how late the girl learned to read, she received a scholarship to the commercial school and has been named the director’s secretary. We do not take such things sufficiently into account. When we do not teach such things as reading and modern handwriting at too early an age, we decisively support diligence, for such things are not directly connected with human nature. Learning to read and write later has a certain value.

A teacher: There is talk among the parents that a certain discrimination exists between the working class children and the others.

Dr. Steiner: What has occurred in those relationships?

A teacher: I was unable to discover anything between the children. Only little W.A. draws such things out of a hat: “You allow the rich kids to go out, but you do not allow us poor people to do that.” In spite of that, we have never had an attitude against the working-class children.

Dr. Steiner: That is not particularly characteristic of the development of our school because he has become better here. He is much more civilized than he was. He was really wild when he first came, but has improved decisively. I don’t think he is an example of discrimination against the working-class children.

A teacher: He cannot concentrate.

Dr. Steiner: Things would significantly improve if we could look at him from a pathological standpoint. That is, if we could give him a couple of leechings. That is something that belongs to pedagogy, but we would cause a tremendous turmoil if we attempted it now.

You could achieve something with him if you could get him to do something of consequence in detail from the very beginning to the end. If he is chewing on a problem, then he should write it down. In some way, you will need to have him go through the problem into the last details. You can achieve a great deal if you have him do something until he has done it perfectly. His main problem is that his blood has too strong an inner activity. There is a tremendous tension within him, and he is what I would like to call a physical braggart. He wants to boast. He swaggers with his body. That is something that treating the blood could change significantly.

There is much you could do with many of the children if you take it up in the proper way. I will pick out a few children in each class who need physical treatment. It is certainly so that K.R. needs proper treatment. He needs to have a special diet that will treat him for what I spoke of.

We need a school doctor and we need to arrange that position in such a way that it is acceptable to official opinion. We need to create the special position of the school doctor.

A teacher: Couldn’t we do that quickly?

Dr. Steiner: I am not certain if Dr. Kolisko could do something like that. The school doctor I am thinking of would need to know all the children and keep an eye on them. Such a person would not teach any special classes, but would take care of the children in all the classes as necessary. He would have to know the state of health of all the children. There is much I could say about that. I have often mentioned that people say there are so many illnesses and only one health. But, there are just as many healths as there are illnesses.

The position of the school doctor who knows all the children and keeps an eye on them would be a full-time position. That person would have to be employed here. I don’t think we can do it. We are not so far along financially that it would be responsible. We would have to carry it out strictly as that is the only way the officials would accept it. The doctor would have to be employed by the school.

There are questions about W.L. and R.D.

Dr. Steiner: R.D. is much better. Last year he was not in that state. Why did you put him in the back of the class? Last time he sat quite close to the heater.

A teacher: That was mostly because he was too preoccupied with E.

Dr. Steiner: In any event, R.D. is better now. Concerning W.L., I know only of his general state of health as I have not given him much thought. There is something wrong with him physically. R.D. is hysterical, he has an obvious male hysteria. Perhaps the other one has something similar. We will have to examine him to see if there is something organically wrong.

A teacher: May I ask if you recall D.R.?

Dr. Steiner: The boy is physically small, but he seems to be very curious. I think what the boy needs is to often experience that you like him so that he has some security. He receives little love at home. It may well be that the mother talks cleverly, but we should give him some love here at school. You should speak to him often and do similar things. That will be difficult because he makes such an unsympathetic impression. You should speak with him often and ask him about one thing or another. I have the impression that we need to treat him along those lines. The boy is simply a little stiff.

A teacher: Should I also do something special with N.M.?

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether we can awaken her.

A teacher: She is quite distracted, and her eyes are a little askew.

Dr. Steiner: She is intellectually weak. We need a class for weak-minded children so that we can take care of them systematically. These children would gain a great deal if we did not have them learn to read and write, but instead learn things that require a certain kind of thinking. They need basic tasks like putting a number of marbles in a series of nine containers so that every third container has one white and two red marbles. They need to do things that involve combining, and then you could achieve quite a bit with them. We need a teacher for these emotionally disturbed children.

A teacher: In ninth grade history, I have gotten as far as 1790, but I should be at the present. I’m moving forward only slowly.

Dr. Steiner: Recently, I was unable to determine how quickly you were moving forward. What is the problem, in your opinion?

A teacher: The problem is that I am not very familiar with history. The preparation needed to encompass entire periods is very arduous.

Dr. Steiner: Where did you begin?

A teacher: With the Reformation.

Dr. Steiner: What follows is short. You need to come to the present as quickly as possible.

A teacher: Is it better to begin with the artistic or with the geometric when teaching sixth grade projective geometry?

Dr. Steiner: Probably the best thing is to form a kind of bridge in the instruction between art and what is strictly geometric. I don’t think you can treat it through art. What I mean here is the central projection. I think the children really need to know about how the shadow of a cone falls upon a plane. They need an inner perspective.

A teacher: Should I use expressions such as “light rays” or “shadow rays”?

Dr. Steiner: Well, that is a more general question. It is not a good idea to use things in projective geometry that do not exist. There are no light rays and still less shadow rays. It is not necessary to work with such concepts in teaching projections. You should work with spatial forms. There are no light rays and no shadow rays. There are cylinders and cones. There are shadows that arise when I place a cone at an angle and illuminate it from a point and allow a shadow to fall upon an appropriately angled plane. Then I have a shadow form. The form of the shadow as such is the boundary of the shadow, and even a child should understand that. It is the same later in projective geometry when the child learns what occurs when a cylinder cuts through another with a smaller diameter. It is very useful to teach children that, but it does not detract from the artistic. It guides children into the artistic. It makes their imagination flexible. You can imagine flexibly if you know what section occurs when two cylinders intersect one another. It is very important to teach these things, but not as abstractions. A teacher asks about plane geometry.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps I came in the middle of the class. In this case I think you should proceed more visually. The children could answer more rationally. Everything fell apart. The children spoke in a confused way. If you taught them juicier ideas, that would, of course, change. I would begin with more visual things; teach the children how different a building looks when seen from a balloon. Or, how different things look when you look down upon them from a mountain behind them. In this way, I would then move on from the more complicated object to explain the concepts of the horizontal and vertical projections before I went on to a presentation of the point.

This sort of geometry is something children would do with a passion when you teach them. It is something terribly fruitful. I think you talked too much about placing a point in the surface of a triangle. When you drew a point at the beginning of the lesson and then spoke about all kinds of things without having come to drawing the lines at the end of the class, then I think you have spread the picture out too much. When you spread children’s’ imaginations out so much, they lose the connection. They lose the thread. Everything is so spread out that the children can no longer understand it. It breaks apart.

A teacher: Is there some artistic value in learning “The Song of the Bells”?

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that if you raise it to a freer understanding. “The Song of the Bells” is one of those poems where Schiller made concessions to convention. A great deal of it is very conventional. Many of the ideas are quite untrue, and for that reason, it is dangerous. Of course, the working-class children will tell it to their parents, something we don’t want. People perceive it as a bourgeois poem. How are things with the first grade? A teacher reports.

Dr. Steiner: The homogeneity of your class makes a good impression. The children in both first grade classes do not seem to be particularly gifted or dull.

A teacher: There are some individuals with some difficulties.

Dr. Steiner: That is also good; you should awaken some individuals. In general, I was quite pleased with both first grade classes. They were relatively quiet, whereas the second grade is terribly loud. They are having a hellish time of it. They are also restless. In that regard, the two first grade classes are quite good.

A teacher: It is somewhat more difficult in foreign language.

Dr. Steiner: In general, we can be satisfied with the children in these classes. There are a few lagging behind. The little girl in the first row to the left is moving forward only with difficulty. Also, little B.R. is not doing too well.

Dr. Steiner had proposed that a younger teacher, Miss S., help one of the older class teachers, Miss H. A question arose as to how they should work together.

Dr. Steiner: I thought you would relieve one another, but while one of you was not teaching, you would not simply listen, but go around a little to maintain discipline on the side.

A teacher: We did not do that because we thought it would not work.

Dr. Steiner: In an abstract connection that may be correct, but in the intimacy of the class, that is not so. Miss H. is under terrible strain, so that if you were to go around a little, you could keep those children seated when they jump up. That is certainly more effective than when you simply listen.

A teacher: When I tell the children something, Miss H. says the opposite.

Dr. Steiner: Well, that certainly does not come into question if you are seeing to it that a child who is jumping about remains in his seat. I don’t think we want to get into a discussion about principles here. The interesting thing about this class is that the children all run around in colorful confusion. You can certainly keep them from that confusion. What could Miss H. say in opposition? I certainly hope you are not having differences between yourselves. I don’t mean that when children go somewhere for a reason you should keep them in their seats. The concern here is with those obvious cases when children are misbehaving and it is difficult to maintain discipline. Do it unobtrusively so that you do not do anything about which Miss H. could complain.

Is it really so difficult to do that? My intent in proposing this was to give Miss H. some help because the class was too large for her, and the children are somewhat difficult to keep under control. We cannot make an experiment like this one if it remains an experiment. I can easily imagine that you might come so far as to speak for five minutes with one another about the object of the next day’s lesson.

It appears that a question was posed in regard to the telling of fairy tales.

Dr. Steiner: If you think that it is justifiable. I would, however, warn you about filling up time with fairy tales. We should keep everything well divided pedagogically. I do not want these things emphasized too much, so that you do not think through the instruction sufficiently. I do not want you simply to tell a fairy tale when you don’t know what else to do. You should think out each minute of the lesson. Telling a fairy tale is good when you have decided to do it. In the sense of our pedagogical perspective, these two hours in the morning should be a closed whole. Diverging interests should not enter into them.

You will get through only if the two of you are together heart and soul, that is, when you have a burning desire to continue your work together. To be completely of one accord, that is most essential.

A teacher: Miss Lang wants to leave because she is getting married.

Dr. Steiner: I can say nothing other than that it is a shame. We will need to have another teacher. It is absolutely necessary that we call someone who can find the way into the spirit of the Waldorf School completely out of his or her heart. We have gone through nearly all the people who come into consideration as teachers. Not many more may marry.

When will Boy be free? I received a very reasonable letter from him. The question is whether he can be here heart and soul. He is a little distant from the work. I have the feeling he might come here with a predetermined opinion about teaching and not be quite able to find his way into our methods. teachers at such schools have their own curious ideas. I have seen from a number of signs that he is not quite so fixed in such things, but, of course, I would have to know he would be here heart and soul. I would like to meet Mr. Boy personally.

Boy was at that time working at a country boarding school. Other candidates were also discussed.

Dr. Steiner: Well, then, we’re in agreement that we will give Mr. Ruhtenberg one class and that we will try to get Boy or someone else. Is it possible for me to meet Boy personally?

Is there still a class in deportment?

A teacher: I have included all of it in the music class.

Dr. Steiner: If it is properly done, that may be good. In this class, you must teach through repetition so that the rhythm of the repetitions affects the children.

I have not seen much of the eurythmy.

A teacher asks about curative eurythmy and how difficult cases are to be treated in particular.

Dr. Steiner: I have been considering the development of curative eurythmy for a long time, but it has been difficult for me to work in that area recently. We will have to work out curative eurythmy. Of course, there is also much we can do for the psychological problems. If we have the children, then there is much we can do. A teacher reports about the singing class.

Dr. Steiner: I can hardly recommend using two-part singing with the younger children. We can begin only at fifth grade. Until the age of ten, I would remain primarily with singing in one part. Is it possible for you to have the children sing solo what they also sing in chorus?

A teacher: I can do that now.

Dr. Steiner: That is something we should also consider. I think we should give attention to allowing the children to sing not only in chorus. Do not neglect solo singing. Particularly when the children speak in chorus, you will find the group soul is active. Many children do that well in chorus, but when you call upon them individually, they are lost. You need to be sure the children can also do individually what they can do in chorus, particularly in the languages.

How do things stand with the older children in singing?

A teacher: The boys are going through the change of voice. They receive theory and rhythmic exercises. The older children work in various ways. Perhaps we could form a mixed choir. That would be fun.

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do that. How is it in the handwork classes?

A report is given.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to take into account the needs of the children when you select the work. It is not possible to be artistic in everything. You should not neglect the development of artistic activities nor let the sense of art dry out, but you cannot do much that is artistic when the children are to knit a sock. When the children are knitting a sock, you can always interrupt with some small thing. We want to bring some small activities into our evening meetings [with parents], perhaps making a small bracelet or necklace out of paper, but we shouldn’t get into frivolous things. Things people can use, which have some meaning in life and can be done artistically and tastefully. But, make no concessions. Don’t make things that arise only out of frivolous desires. There are not many things we can do with paper. I also hope to attend.

Mr. Wolffhügel, you certainly have some special experiences with shop.

A teacher: The children have begun making toys, but they have not yet finished.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against the children making cooking spoons. They don’t need to make anything removed from life, and when possible, no luxury items.

A biennial report is mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: A yearly report would be good. We cannot say enough about the Waldorf School, its principles and intentions and its way of working. It is a shame when that does not always occur objectively. I will see what I can write. It should not be too long.

A teacher: In the parent evening for my class, I gave a talk about all the children have learned.

Dr. Steiner: Nothing to say against that, but it cannot become a rule. Those who want to do it, should do it. You simply need to believe it is necessary. Not everyone can do that. People will need the kind of energy you have if they are to do such things.

When we cannot increase the number of students due to the lack of space, quite apart from the problems with the regulations, then you, of course, need to consider our primary work is for the continuation of the Waldorf School. That is what is important. It is important that we place the goals of the Waldorf School in the proper light. Within the threefold movement, it is more important to present the characteristic direction of the Waldorf School objectively, not as advertising for the school, but as characteristic of our work. It is certainly much more necessary to do that than to speak about Tolstoy among the members of the Union for Threefolding. People already know about the school to a certain extent, but it must become much better known, particularly its basic principles. We also need to emphasize the independence of the faculty, the republican-democratic form of the faculty, to show that an independent spiritual life is thinkable even within our limited possibilities.

A teacher: Would you advise us to continue to travel north to give lectures?

Dr. Steiner: Well, we would have to decide in each case whether that is possible. If we can make good arrangements, it would certainly be good to reach as many people as possible with our lectures.

Marie Steiner: Mr. L. wants to meet with me tomorrow regarding a performance in another city.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is in general not possible for the children from the Waldorf School to travel around. I am not sure we should even begin that when the whole thing is somewhat spinsterish. We cannot be sending the Waldorf children around all the time, so that must be an exception. The Waldorf children can’t be a traveling troupe. I don’t think that would be appropriate. We can certainly work for the children’s eurythmy, but we should have people travel here to see it. It must be taken more seriously than Mrs. P. and Mr. L. would do. They want to make it into some sort of social affair. There is also too much energy being expended in giving lectures in this connection. We should not accept this tea party Anthroposophy too much.

Those who have time may want to go, but it is really a little bit wasted energy. Those who want to can go to lectures. Popular celebrities also hold lectures, but it is relatively clear that the audience is not very promising. It’s a little bit of a mixture of Bohemians and salon people, not people who could really contribute in some way to the further development of the anthroposophical movement.

In Bavaria, the major party is completely narrow-minded. These idealists have done everything wrong, so that narrow-minded viewpoints easily arise. When Bavarians say “Wittelsbacher,” they mean a good bratwurst.

Is there anything else? From my own perspective, I wish I could be more active here in the Waldorf School.