The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we will try an exercise in which we have to hold the breath somewhat longer. Speech exercise:

Fulfilling goes
through hoping
goes through longing
through willing
willing flows
in wavering wails in quavering
waves veiling
waving breathing
in freedom
freedom winning
kindling

You can only achieve what is intended by dividing the lines properly. Then you will bring the proper rhythm to your breath. The object of this exercise is to do gymnastics with the voice in order to regulate the breath.

In words like fulfilling and willing, both “l’s” must be pronounced. You shouldn’t put an “h” into the first “l”, but the two “l’s” must be sounded one after the other.

You must also try to avoid speaking with a rasping voice, and develop instead tone in your voice, bringing it up from deeper in your chest, to give full value to the vowels. (All Austrians have tinny voices!)

Before each of the above lines the breath should be consciously brought into order. The words that appear together also belong together when you read.

You know that we usually do the following speech exercises also:

Barbara sass stracks am Abhang
or: Barbara sass nah am abhang
or: Abraham a Sancta Clara kam an¹

The Steed and the Bull.

An impudent boy came flying along on a fiery steed. A wild bull called out to the horse, “Shame on you! I would not be governed by a lad!” “But I would,” replied the horse, “for what kind of honor would it bring me to throw the boy off?”

They all read the fable aloud.

RUDOLF STEINER: After hearing this fable so often you will certainly sense that it is written in the particular style of fables and many other writings of the eighteenth century. You get the feeling that they didn’t quite finish, just as other things were not fully completed then.

Rudolf Steiner read the fable aloud again.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now, in the twentieth century the fable would be continued something like this: “That may be the honor of bulls! And if I were to seek honor by stubbornly standing still, that would not be a horse’s honor but a mule’s honor!” That is how it would be written in these days. Then the children would notice immediately that there are three kinds of honor; the honor of a bull, the honor of a horse, and the honor of a mule. The bull throws the boy, the horse carries him quietly along because that is chivalrous, the mule stubbornly stands still because that is the mule’s idea of honor.

Today I would like to give you some material for tomorrow’s discussion on the subject of your lessons, since we will then consider particularly the seven-to-fourteen-year-old children.²

So we will now speak of certain things that can guide you, and after I have presented this introduction, you will only need an ordinary reference book to amplify the various facts we have spoken of in our discussions. Today we will consider not so much how to acquire the actual subject matter of our work, but rather how to cherish and cultivate within ourselves the spirit of an education that contains the future within it. You will see that what we discuss today focuses on the work in the oldest classes.³

I would therefore like to discuss what relates to the history of European civilization from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. You must always remember that teaching history to children should always contain a subjective element, and this is also true, more or less, when you work with adults. It is easy enough to say that people should not bring opinions and subjective ideas into history. You might make this a rule, but it cannot be adhered to. Take aspect of history in any country of the world; you will either have to arrange the facts in groups for yourself, or you will find them already thus assembled by others in the case of less recent history.

If, for example, you want to describe the spirit of the old Germanic peoples, you will turn to the Germania of Tacitus. But Tacitus was a person of very subjective thought; the facts he presents were clearly arranged in groups. You can only hope to succeed in your task by marshalling the facts in your own personal way, or else by using what others have done in a similar way before you. You can find examples, from literature for example, to substantiate what I have said.

Treitschke wrote German History of the Nineteenth Century in several volumes; it delighted Herman Grimm, who was also a competent judge, but it horrified many adherents of the entente. But when you read Treitschke you will feel immediately that his excellence is due to the very subjective coloring of his grouping of facts. In history the important thing is the ability to form a judgment of the underlying forces and powers at work. But you must realize that the judgment of one is more mature, that of another less so, and the latter should not pass any judgment at all because nothing has been understood about the underlying forces. The former, just because an independent judgment has been formed, will very well describe the actual course of history.

Herman Grimm portrayed Frederick the Great, and Macaulay also portrayed him, but Macaulay’s picture is completely different. Grimm even composed his article as a kind of critique of Macaulay’s article, and speaking from his perspective he said, “Macaulay’s picture of Frederick the Great is the grotesque face of an English lord with snuff on his nose!” The only difference is that Grimm is a nineteenth-century German and Macaulay a nineteenth-century Englishman. And any third person passing judgment on both would really be very narrow-minded if one were found to be true and the other false.

You might as well choose examples even more drastic. Many of you know the description of Martin Luther in the ordinary history books. If one day you try the experiment of reading it in the Catholic history books, you will get to know a Martin Luther whom you never knew before! But when you have read it you will find it difficult to say that the difference is anything but different viewpoints. Now it is just such points of view arising from nation or creed that must be overcome by future teachers. Because of this we must earnestly work so that teachers are broad-minded, so that the point will be reached of having a broad-minded philosophy of life. Such a mental attitude gives you a free and wide view of historical facts, and a skillfull arranging of these facts will enable you to convey to your pupils the secrets of human evolution.

Now, when you want to give the children some idea of cultural history from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, you would first have to describe what led up to the Crusades. You would describe the course of the first, second, and third crusades, and how they gradually stagnated, failing to achieve what they should have. You would describe the spirit of asceticism that spread through much of Europe at the time—how everywhere, through the secularization of the church (or in any case in connection with this secularization), there arose individuals such as Bernard of Clairvaux, natures full of inner piety, such piety that it gave the impression to others that they were miracle-workers. From reference books you could try to become acquainted with biographies of people of this kind and then bring them to life for your pupils; you could try to conjure before them the living spirit that inspired those great expeditions to the East—because they were powerful in the views of the time. You would have to describe how these expeditions came to be through Peter of Amiens and Walter the Penniless, followed by the expedition of Godfrey of Bouillon and others.

Then you could relate how these Crusades set out toward the East and how enormous numbers of people perished, often before they reached their destination. You can certainly describe to boys and girls of thirteen to fifteen how these expeditions were composed, how they set out without any organization and made their way toward the East, and how many perished because of unfavorable conditions, and having to force their way through foreign countries and peoples.

You will then have to describe how those who reached the East had a certain degree of success at first. You can speak of what Godfrey of Bouillon accomplished, but you will also have to show the contrast that arose between the Crusaders of the later Crusades and Greek policy—how the Greeks became jealous of what the Crusaders were doing, feeling that the Crusaders’ goals were contrary to what the Greeks themselves were planning to do in the East; how fundamentally the Greeks, as much as the Crusaders, wanted to absorb the interests of the East into their own sphere of interests. Paint a graphic picture of how the goals of the Crusaders roused the Greeks’ opposition.

Then I suggest that you describe how the crusading armies in the East, instead of taking up arms against the Eastern peoples in western Asia, began to fight among themselves; and how the European peoples themselves, especially the Franks and their neighbors, began to quarrel about their claims to conquests and even took up arms against each other. The Crusades originated in fiery enthusiasm, but the spirit of inner discord seized those who took part in them; furthermore, antagonism arose between the Crusaders and the Greeks.

In addition to all this, at the very time of the Crusades we find opposition between church and state, and this became more and more evident. It may also be necessary to acquaint the children with something that is true, although in all its essential points it is veiled by the bias of historical writers. Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first Crusade, really intended to conquer Jerusalem in order to balance the influence of Rome. He and his companions did not say this openly to the others, but in their hearts they carried the battle cry, “Jerusalem versus Rome!” They said among themselves, “Let us exalt Jerusalem so that it may become the center of Christianity, so that Rome no longer holds that position.” This, the underlying motive of the first Crusaders, can be conveyed to the children tactfully, and it is important to do so.

Those were great tasks that the Crusaders undertook, and great too were the tasks that gradually arose from the circumstances themselves. Little by little it came to be that the Crusaders were not great enough to bear the burden of such tasks without harm to themselves. And so it happened that, at the time of the fiercest battles, licentiousness and immorality gradually broke out among the Crusaders.

You can find these facts in any history book, and they serve to illustrate the general course of events. You will notice that in my arrangement of facts today, I am actually describing them without bias, and I will try also to describe in a purely historical way what took place in Europe from the eleventh to the seventeenth century.

It is often possible to make history clear through hypothesis, so let’s suppose that the Franks had conquered Syria and had established a Frankish dominion there—that they had reached an understanding with the Greeks, had left room for them, and had relinquished to them the rule of the more western portion of Asia Minor. Then the ancient traditions of the Greeks would have been fulfilled and North Africa would have become Greek. A counterbalance to subsequent events would have thus been established. The Greeks would have held sway in North Africa, the Franks in Syria. Then they wouldn’t have quarrelled with each other, and thus they wouldn’t have forfeited their dominions, and the invasions of the worst Eastern peoples—the Mongols, the Mamelukes, and Turkish Ottoman—would have been prevented. Because of the immorality of the Crusaders, and inevitably their inability to rise to their tasks, the Mongols, Mamelukes, and Ottomans overran the very regions that the Crusaders were attempting to “Europeanize.” And so we see how the reaction toward the great enthusiasm that led to the Crusades, spread over vast regions, is counterattacked from the other side. We see the Moslem-Mongolian advance, which set up military tyrants, and which for a long time remained the terror of Europe and cast a dark shadow over the history of the Crusades.

You see, by describing such things and acquiring the necessary pictorial descriptions from reference books, you can awaken in the children themselves pictures of the progress of civilization—pictures that will live on in them. And that is the important thing—that the children be given these pictures. They will initially be conjured in their minds through your graphic descriptions. If you can then show them some works of art, notable paintings from this period, you will find this supports what you say.

Thus, you will make it clear to the children what happened during the Crusades, and enable them to make their own mental pictures of these events. You have shown them the dark side of the picture, the terror caused by the Mongolians and Moslems, and now it will be well to add the other side, the good things that developed.

Describe vividly to the children how the pilgrims who had migrated east, came to understand many new things there. Agriculture, for example, was at that time very backward in Europe. In the East it was possible for these Western pilgrims to learn a much better way of farming their land. The pilgrims who reached the East and afterward returned to Europe (and many did return), brought with them a skilled knowledge of agricultural methods, which raised the standard of agricultural production considerably. The Europeans owed this to the experience that the pilgrims brought back with them.

You must describe this to the children so graphically that they actually see it there before them—how the wheat and other cereals flourished less before the Crusades, how they were smaller, more sparse, the ears less full, and how after the Crusades they were much fuller. Describe all this in pictures! Then you can also tell how the pilgrims really came to understand industries found in the East at the time, and still unknown in Europe. The West was in many ways more backward than the East. What grew and flourished in such a fine way in the industrial activity of the Italian towns and other places further north, was all due to the Crusades; we also have to thank them for a new artistic impulse. Thus you can call on pictures of the cultural and spiritual progress of that time.

There is something else you can describe to the children: you can say to them, “You see, children, that was when the Europeans came to know the Greeks; they had fallen away from Rome in the first thousand years after Christ, but had remained Christians. All over the West people believed that no one could be a Christian without viewing the Pope as the head of the church.” Now explain to the children how the Crusaders, to their astonishment and edification, learned that there were other Christians who did not acknowledge the Roman Pope. This freeing of the spiritual side of Christianity from the temporal church organization was something very new at the time. This is something you can explain to the children.

Then you can tell them that even among the Moslems, who could scarcely have been called very pleasant denizens of the world, there were also noble, generous, and brave people. And so the pilgrims came to know people who could be brave and generous without being Christians; thus a person could even be good and brave without being a Christian. For the Europeans of that time this was a great lesson that the Crusaders brought with them when they returned to Europe. During their stay in the East they gained many things that they brought back to Europe to further its spiritual progress.

You can then continue, “Just imagine, children, there was a time when the Europeans had no cotton cloth, they did not even have a word for it; they had no muslin—that too is an Eastern word; they could not lie down or laze about on a sofa, for sofas and the word for them were brought back by the Crusaders. They had no mattresses either. Mattress is also an Asian word. The bazaar also belongs to the East, and this suggests immediately an entirely new view of the public display of goods, and it initiated large scale exhibitions of goods. Bazaars (of an Eastern kind) were very common in the East, but there was nothing of the kind in Europe before the Europeans went on their Crusades. Even the word magazine [the word for “storeroom” in German] bound up though it now is with our trade life, was not originally European; the use of great warehouses to meet the growth of trade is something that the Europeans learned from the Asians.

“Just imagine,” you can say to the children, “how restricted life was in Europe; they hadn’t even any warehouses. The word arsenal too has the same origin. But now look; there is something else that the Europeans learned from the East and that is expressed in the word tariff. Until the thirteenth century the European peoples knew very little about tax-paying. But payment of taxes according to a tariff, the payment of all kinds of duties, was not introduced into Europe until the Crusaders learned about it from the Asians.

“Thus you see that a great number of things were changed in Europe due to the Crusades. Not much of what the Crusaders intended to do was realized, but other things were brought about, and transformations of all kinds occurred in Europe as a result of what was learned in the East. And further, this was all connected with what they observed of the Eastern political life. Political life—the state as such—developed much earlier in the East than in Europe. Before the Crusades the forms of government in Europe were much freer than they were afterward. Because of the Crusades it also happened that wide areas were grouped together as political units.”

Always assuming that the children are of the age I indicated, you can now say to them, “You have already learned in your history lessons that in former times the Romans became rulers over many lands. When they were extending their dominions, at the beginning of the Christian era, Europe was very poor and becoming even poorer. What was the cause of this increasing poverty? The people had to hand over their money to others. Central Europe will become poor again today because it must also hand over its money to others. At that time the Europeans had to give up their money to the Asiatics; the bulk of their money went to the borders of the Roman Empire. Due to this, barter became more and more the custom, and this is something that might happen again, sad though it would be, unless people rouse themselves to seek the spirit. Nevertheless, amid this poverty the ascetic, devotional spirit of the Crusades evolved.

“Through the Crusades, therefore, in faraway Asia, Europeans learned to know all kinds of things—industrial production, agriculture, and so on. In this way, they could again produce things that the Asians could buy from them. Money traveled back again. Europe became increasingly rich during the Crusades. This growth of wealth in Europe occurred through the increase in its own productions; that is a further result of the Crusades. The Crusades are indeed migrations of peoples to Asia, and when the Crusaders returned to Europe they brought with them a certain ability. It was due only to this ability and skill that Florence, Italy arose and became what it did, and also due to this, such figures as Dante and others emerged.”

You see how necessary it is to allow impulses of this kind to permeate your history lessons. When it is said today that more should be taught about the history of civilizations, people think they should give dry descriptions of how one thing arises from another. But even in these lower classes, history should be described by a teacher who really lives in the subject, so that through the pictures created for the children, this period of history will live again before them. You can conjure the picture of a poverty-stricken Europe, with acres of poor and sparsely sown crops, where there were no towns—only meager farms in poor condition. Nevertheless, an enthusiasm for the Crusades arises out of this same poor Europe. But then you will have to tell them how the people found this task beyond their powers and they began to quarrel and fall into evil ways, and even when they were back in Europe discord and dissension arose again. The real purpose of the Crusades was not achieved; on the contrary, the ground was prepared for the Moslems. But the Europeans learned many things in the East: how towns—flourishing towns—arise, and in the towns a rich spiritual life and culture; agriculture improved and the fields became more fertile, the industries flourished, and a spiritual life and culture arose.

You will try to present all this to the children in graphic pictures and explain to them that, before the Crusades, people did not lounge on sofas! There was no bourgeois life at that time with sofas in the best parlors and all the rest of it. Try to make all these historical pictures live for the children, and then you will give them a truer kind of history. Show how Europe became so poor that people had to resort to bartering goods, and then it became rich again because of what people learned in the East. This will bring life into your history lessons!

One is often asked these days what history books to read—which historian is best? The reply can only be that, in the end, each one is the best and the worst; it really makes no difference which historical author you choose. Do not read what is written in the lines, but read between the lines. Try to allow yourselves to be inspired so that, through your own intuitive sense, you can learn to know the true course of events. Try to acquire a feeling for how a true history should be written. You will recognize from the style and manner of writing which historian has found the truth and which has not.

You can find many things in Ranke.⁴ But what we are trying to cultivate here is the spirit of truth and reality, and when you read Ranke in the light of this spirit of truth, you find that he is very painstaking but that his descriptions of characters reduce them to mere shadows; you feel as though you could pass through them, because they have no substance—they are not flesh and blood, and you might well say that you don’t want history to be a series of mere phantasms.

One of the teachers recommended Lamprecht.⁵

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, but in him you have the feeling that he does not describe people, but figures of colored cardboard—except that he paints them with the most vivid colors possible. They are not human beings, but merely colored cardboard.

Now Treitschke on the other hand is admittedly biased, but his personalities do really stand on their two feet!⁶ He places people on their feet, and they are flesh and blood—not cardboard figures like those of Lamprecht, nor are they mere shadowy pictures as with Ranke. Unfortunately Treitschke’s history only covers the nineteenth century.

But, to get a feeling for truly good historical writing, you should read Tacitus.⁷ When you read Tacitus, everything is absolutely alive. When you study the way Tacitus portrays a certain epoch of history—describing the people as individuals or in groups—and allow all of this to affect your own sense of reality, it exists for you as real as life itself! Beginning with Tacitus, try to discover how to describe other periods as well.

Of course you can’t read what is out of date, otherwise the fiery Rotteck would always be very good.⁸ But he is dated, not merely because of the facts, but in his whole outlook; he considers as gospel the political constitution of the Baden of his time, as well as liberalism. He even applies them to Persian, Egyptian, and Greek life, but he always writes with such fire that one cannot help wishing there were many historians like Rotteck today.

If, however, you study the current books on history (with a sharp eye for what is often left out), you will gain the capacity to give children living pictures of the process of human progress from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. And, for your part, you can omit much that is said in these histories about Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Coeur de Leon, or Frederick II. Much of this is interesting but not particularly significant for real knowledge of history. It is far more important to communicate to the children the great impulses at work in history.

We can continue now to the question of how to treat a class where several boys and girls have developed a foolish kind of adoration for the male or female teacher.

Idolization of this kind is not really unhealthy until the age of twelve to fourteen, when the problem becomes more serious. Before fourteen it is especially important not to take these things too seriously and to remember that they often disappear again very quickly.

RUDOLF STEINER: I would consider that exposing the children to ridicule in front of the class is very much a two-edged sword, because the effect lasts too long, and the child will lose a connection with the class. If you ridicule children it is very difficult for them to regain the proper relationship with the rest of the class. The result is usually that the children succeed in being removed from the school.

Prayer was mentioned, along with other possible ways of helping these children.

RUDOLF STEINER: You are quite right!

It was suggested that one might speak to the child and attempt to divert such affection.

RUDOLF STEINER: The principle of diverting the devotion and capacity for enthusiasm into other channels is proper—except that you will not gain much by talking with such children, because that is exactly what they want. Precisely because this foolish adoration arises much more from feelings—and even passions—than from thinking, it would be extremely difficult to work against it effectively by being with the child frequently. It is certainly true that unhealthy feelings of this kind are due to the qualities of enthusiasm and devotion having taken the wrong path—enthusiasm in the gifted children and devotion in the less gifted. The whole thing is not very important in itself, but it will have repercussions in the way the children participate in the lessons, and this is the more serious aspect. When all of the children are affected by this foolish adoration, it is not so serious and will not last long; it will soon disappear. The class gets ideas that do not materialize; this leads to disappointment, and then the thing dies naturally. In this case it could be very good to tell a humorous story to the whole class. It only becomes detrimental when groups of children yield to this unwholesome idolization.

It became necessary to think this matter over thoroughly, because it can play a role in the entire life of the school. Affectionate attachment is not so bad in itself, but it weakens the children when it becomes unhealthy. The children become listless and lethargic. In some cases it can lead to serious conditions of weakness in the children. It is a very subtle and delicate matter, because the treatment could result in turning the children’s feelings toward the exact opposite—into hatred. In some cases it could be very good to say, “You look too warm. Perhaps you should go outside for five minutes.

In any case, this problem should be handled individually and each child treated individually. You should try anything that common sense tells you may help. There is one thing however that you should be extremely careful about—that such children do not get the idea that you notice their adoration. You really have to acquire the art of making them think you are unaware of it. Even when you take steps to cure them, the children should think you are merely acting normal.

Let’s suppose that several children have this foolish feeling for a man who has four, five, maybe six children of his own. In this case he has the simplest remedy; he can invite the “adoring” children to go for a walk with him and bring his own children along. This would be a very good remedy. But the children should not know why they were invited. You should use concrete things like this.

In a situation like this, it’s most important that you yourself act correctly, not treating those children who idolize you any differently than the others. When you remain unaffected by such foolish behavior, it disappears after awhile. It becomes serious, however, when a certain antipathy replaces adoration. This can be minimized by ignoring it. Don’t let the children know you have noticed anything, because if you call them on it or ridicule them in front of the class, the hatred will be that much greater. If you tell a story it must appear as though you would have told it anyway, otherwise certain antipathy will certainly arise afterward as a result; that can’t be avoided. But when you work with the same class for several years you will be able to restore a normal sympathy over time.

You cannot prevent another consequence, either, because when this foolish adoration assumes a serious form, the children will be somewhat weakened by it. When it is finished, you must help them to get over this weakness. This will indeed be the best therapy that you can apply. You can make use of all the other remedies—sending the children out for five minutes, taking them for walks, and so on, but your attitude must always be to ignore the whole matter in a healthy way. The child will be somewhat weakened, and afterward the teacher will be able to help the child through love and affection. If the matter were to become very serious, the teacher, because of being the object of adoration, could not do much; such a teacher would then have to seek the advice and help of others.

Tomorrow’s subject has to do with actual teaching rather than educational principles as such. Will each of you imagine that several children in your class are not doing very well in one subject or another—for example, arithmetic, languages, natural history, gymnastics, or eurythmy. How, through special treatment of the children’s human capacities, would you try to meet a misfortune of this kind during the early school years? How could you use the other subjects to help you?

• 1. The entire verse: “Barbara sass nah am Abhang, / Sprach gar sangbar—zaghaft langsam; / Mannhaft kam alsdann am Waldrand / Abraham a Sancta Clara!” is from material given by Julius Hey in Die Kunst der Sprache, Mainz-Leipzig, 1914. Rudolf Steiner found that these sound-sequences could be used and also mentioned the exercise of Hey’s for E (eh). While Hey’s exercises have a certain meaning, the exercises given by Steiner come purely from the element of sound.
• 2. Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 8.
• 3. The Waldorf School began with grades 1–8 only. The oldest children in the school were thus fourteen to fifteen years of age.
• 4. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), German historian and founder of the modern school of history. He championed so-called “objective” writing based on source material instead of legend and tradition.
• 5. Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915) wrote a German history in nineteen volumes.
• 6. Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), German historian and publicist. Considered the successor to Ranke as Prussian historian, he advocated authoritarian “power politics” (i.e., German unity through force), favored colonial expansion, and promoted anti-British sentiment in Germany.
• 7. Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 56–120; not to be confused with Tacitus, the Roman emperor from A.D. 275 to 276), Roman orator, politician, and historian. His main work was Historiae.
• 8. Karl von Rotteck (1775–1840) wrote numerous volumes on national and world history.

Speech Exercise:

In the vast unmeasured world-wide spaces,
In the endless stream of time,
In the depths of human soul-life,
In the world’s great revelations:
Seek the unfolding of life’s great mystery.

RUDOLF STEINER: The first four sentences have a ring of expectation, and the last line is a complete fulfillment of the first four. Now let’s return to the other speech exercise:

Proxy prized
bather broomstick
polka pushing
beady basket
prudent pertness
bearskin bristled

RUDOLF STEINER: You can learn a great deal from this. And now we will repeat the sentence:

Dart may these boats through darkening gloaming

RUDOLF STEINER: Also there is a similar exercise I would like to point out that has more feeling in it. It consists of four lines, which I will dictate to you later. The touch of feeling should be expressed more in the first line:

Lulling leader limply
liplessly laughing
loppety lumpety
lackety lout

RUDOLF STEINER: You must imagine that you have a green frog in front of you, and it is looking at you with lips apart, with its mouth wide open, and you speak to the frog in the words of the last three lines. In the first line, however, you tell it to lisp the lovely lyrics “Lulling leader limply.” This line must be spoken with humorous feeling; you really expect this of the frog.

And now I will read you a piece of prose, one of Lessing’s fables.¹

The Oak

One stormy night the raging north wind pitted its strength against a magnificent oak, which now lay on the ground. A number of low bushes lay shattered beneath it. A fox, whose lair was not far away, saw it next morning. “What a tree!” he cried, “I never would have thought it had been so big!”

RUDOLF STEINER: What is the moral of this fable?

Someone suggested: That it is not until someone is dead that we see how great that person was. Another suggested: That, until the great are overthrown, the small do not recognize what they were.

Rudolf Steiner: But why then choose the fox, who is so cunning?

Because the cunning of the fox cannot compare with the magnificence of the tree.

RUDOLF STEINER: In which sentence would you find the moral of the fable in relation to the cunning of the fox? “I never would have thought it was so big!” The point is, he had never even looked up; he had run round the bottom of the trunk, which was the only part of the tree he had noticed, and here the tree had only taken up a small space. Despite cunning, the fox had only seen what is visible around the foot of the tree.

Please notice that fables—which by their very nature are enacted in their own special world—can be read realistically, but poems never.

Now the problem I placed before you yesterday brings us something of tremendous importance, because now we must consider what measures to take when we notice that one group of children is less capable than another in one or another subject or lesson. I will ask you to choose from any part of the period between six and fourteen, and to think especially of, let’s say, a group of children who cannot learn to read and write properly, or those who cannot learn natural history or arithmetic, or geometry or singing. Consider what course you will pursue in the class, or in your general treatment of the children, both now and later on, so that you can correct such shortcomings as much as possible.

Several teachers contributed detailed suggestions.

RUDOLF STEINER: The examples you mention might arise partially from general incompetence. On the other hand, it could also be a question of a particular lack of talent. You could have children who are perhaps extraordinarily good at reading and writing, but as soon as they come to arithmetic they do not demonstrate any gift at all for it. Then there are those who are not so bad at arithmetic, but the moment you begin to call on their power of judgment, such as in natural science, their powers are at an end. Then again there are children who have no desire to learn history. It is important to notice these specific difficulties.

Perhaps you can find a remedy in this way: When you notice that a child, right from the beginning, has little talent for reading and writing, you would do well, anyway, to get in touch with the parents and ask them immediately to keep the child off eggs, puddings, and pastry as much as possible. The rest of the diet can remain more or less as it was. When the parents agree to try to provide the child with a really good wholesome diet, however—omitting the items of food mentioned above—they might even cut down on the meat for awhile and give the child plenty of vegetables and nourishing salads. You will then notice that, through a diet like this, the child will make considerable gains in ability. You must take advantage of this improvement, and keep the child very busy when the diet is first changed.

But if you notice that a mere change of diet doesn’t help much, then, after you have talked it over with the parents, try for a short while, perhaps a week, to keep the child entirely without food for the whole morning, or at least the first part of the morning when the child should be learning to read and write—to allow learning on an empty stomach—or maybe give the child the minimum of food. (You should not continue too long with this method; you must alternate it with normal eating.) You must make good use of this time, however, when the capacities will most certainly be revealed, and the child will show greater ability and be more receptive to what you are teaching. If you repeat a cure of this kind several times over the year, you will see that the powers of a fairly young child undergo a change. This applies to the first years of school life. I ask you to consider this very seriously.

Generally speaking, you should be very aware that the foolish ways many parents feed their young children contributes greatly to the lessening of their faculties, especially with phlegmatic and sanguine children. Perpetually overfeeding children—and this is somewhat different at the present time,² but you should know these things—stuffing them with eggs, puddings, and starchy foods is one of the things that makes children unwilling to learn and incapable of doing so during the early years of their school life.

A teacher asked about cocoa.

RUDOLF STEINER: Why should children drink cocoa at all? It is not the least bit necessary except to regulate digestion. Things like this are needed sometimes for this purpose, and cocoa is better than other remedies for children whose digestion works too quickly, but it should not be included otherwise in children’s diet. These days children are given many things that are unsuitable for them.

You can experience some very strange things in regard to this. When I was a teacher in the eighties, there was a young child in the house; I did not actually teach him, since I had only the older children; he was a little cousin. He was really a nice lovable child with bright ideas. He could have become a gifted pupil. I saw him a good deal and could observe for myself how witty and gifted the child was. One day at table this little fellow—although he was scarcely two years old—had two little dumplings, and when someone said to him, “Look Hans, now you already have two dumplings,” he was clever enough to answer, “And the third will follow in a minute.” That’s what the little tyke said!

Then another thing: he was very fond of calling people bad names. This did not seem very important to me in a child of that age—he would soon grow out of it. He had gotten into the habit of being particularly abusive to me. One day as I was coming in the door (he was a little older by this time) he stood there and blocked the way. He couldn’t think of any name bad enough for me, so he said: “Here come two donkeys!” That was really very smart of him, wasn’t it?

But the boy was pale; he had very little appetite and was rather thin. So, on the advice of an otherwise excellent doctor, this child was given a small glass of red wine with every meal. I was not responsible for him and had no influence in this extraordinary way of treating a child’s health, but I was very concerned about it. Then in his thirty-second or thirty-third year I saw this individual again; he was a terribly nervous man. When he was not present I enquired what he had been like as a schoolboy. This restless man, although only in his thirties, had become very nervous, and demonstrated the lamentable results of that little glass of red wine given to him with his meals as a boy. He was a gifted child, for a child who says “Here come two donkeys” really shows talent.

Frau Steiner interjected, “What an impudent boy!”

RUDOLF STEINER: We needn’t bother with impudence, but how does this really come about? It’s amazing. He can find no word bad enough, and so he makes use of number to help him. That shows extraordinary talent. But he became a poor scholar and never wanted to learn properly. Thus, because of this method of treatment—giving him wine as a young child—he was completely ruined by the time he was seven years old.

This is what I want to impress upon you at the beginning of our talk today—that, in relation to a child’s gifts and abilities, it is not the least unimportant to consider how to regulate the diet. I would especially ask you, however, to see that the child’s digestion does not suffer. So when it strikes you that there is something wrong with a child’s capacities, you must in some tactful way find out from the parents whether or not the child’s digestion is working properly, and if not you should try to put it in order.

Someone spoke about the children who are not good at arithmetic.

Rudolf Steiner: When you discover a special weakness in arithmetic, it would be good to do this: generally, the other children will have two gymnastics lessons during the week, or one eurythmy lesson and one gymnastics lesson; you can take a group of the children who are not good at arithmetic, and allow them an extra hour or half-hour of eurythmy or gymnastics. This doesn’t have to mean a lot of extra work for you: you can take them with others who are doing the same kind of exercises, but you must try to improve these children’s capacities through gymnastics and eurythmy. First give them rod exercises. Say to them, “Hold the rod in your hand, first in front counting 1, 2, 3, and then behind 1, 2, 3, 4." Each time the child must change the position of the rod, moving it from front to back. A great effort will be made in some way to get the rod around behind at the count of 3. Then add walking: say, 3 steps forward, 5 steps back; 3 steps forward, 4 steps back; 5 steps forward, 3 steps back, and so on. In gymnastics, and also perhaps in eurythmy, try to combine numbers with the children’s movements, so they are required to count while moving. You will find this effective. I have frequently done this with pupils.

But now tell me, why does it have an effect? From what you have already learned, you should be able to form some ideas on this subject.

A teacher commented: Eurythmy movements must be a great help in teaching geometry.

RUDOLF STEINER: But I did not mean geometry. What I said applied to arithmetic, because at the root of arithmetic is consciously willed movement, the sense of movement. When you activate the sense of movement in this way, you quicken a child’s arithmetical powers. You bring something up out of the subconscious that, in such a child, is unwilling to be brought up. Generally speaking, when a child is bad both at arithmetic and geometry, this should be remedied by movement exercises. You can do a great deal for a child’s progress in geometry with varied and inventive eurythmy exercises, and also through rod exercises.

Comment: Where difficulties exist in pronunciation, the connection between speech and music should be considered.

RUDOLF STEINER: Most cases of poor pronunciation are due to defective hearing.

Comment: Sanguine students do not follow geography lessons very well because their ideas are vague. I recommend taking small portions of a map as subjects for drawing.

RUDOLF STEINER: When you make your geography lessons truly graphic, when you describe the countries clearly and show the distribution of vegetation, and describe the products of the earth in the different countries, making your lessons thoroughly alive in this way, you are not likely to find your students dull in this subject. And when you further enliven the geography lessons by first describing a country, then drawing it—allowing the children, to draw it on the board and sketch in the rivers, mountains, distribution of vegetation, forest, and meadow land, and then read travel books with your pupils—when you do all this you find that you usually have very few dull scholars; and what’s more, you can use your geography lessons to arouse the enthusiasm of your pupils and to stir up new capacities within them. If you can make geography itself interesting you will indeed notice that other capacities are aroused also in your pupils.

Comment: I have been thinking about this problem in relation to the first three grades. I would be strict with lazy children and try to awaken their ambition. In certain cases children must be told that they might have to go through the year’s work a second time. Emulation and ambition must be aroused.

RUDOLF STEINER: I wouldn’t recommend you to give much credit to ambition, which cannot generally be aroused in children. In the earliest school years you can make good use of the methods you suggest, but without overemphasizing ambition, because you would then later have to help the child to get rid of it again. But you must primarily consider food and diet, and I need to say this again and again.

Perhaps the friends who speak next will consider the fact that there are many children who in later life have no power of perceiving or remembering natural objects properly. A teacher may despair over some pupils who can never remember which among a number of minerals is a malachite or a hornblende, or even an emerald—who really have no idea of how to comprehend natural objects and recognize them again. The same is true also in relation to plants and animals. Please keep this in mind also.

Comment: I have noticed that with the youngest children you often find some who are backward in arithmetic. I like best to illustrate everything to them with the fingers, or pieces of paper, balls, or buttons. One can also divide the class without the children knowing anything about it; they are divided into two groups, the gifted ones and the weaker ones. We then take the weaker ones alone so that the gifted children are not kept back.

RUDOLF STEINER: In that case, Newton, Helmholtz, and Julius Robert Mayer would have been among the backward ones!

That doesn’t matter.

RUDOLF STEINER: You are right. It doesn’t matter at all. Even Schiller would have been among the weaker ones. And according to Robert Hamerling’s teaching certificate, he passed well in practically everything except German composition; his marks for that subject were below average!³

We have heard how eurythmy can help, and now Miss F. will tell us how she thinks eurythmy can be developed for the obstinate children, for they too must learn eurythmy.

RUDOLF STEINER: These suggestions are all very good. With regard to the children who resist doing eurythmy, there is still another way to get them to take pleasure in it. Besides allowing them to watch eurythmy frequently, try to take photographs of various eurythmy positions. These must be simplified so that the child will get visual images of the human being doing eurythmy forms. Pictures of this kind will make an impression on the children and kindle their abilities in eurythmy. That was why I asked Miss W. to take pictures of this kind (I don’t mean mere reproductions of eurythmy positions, but transformed into simple patterns of movement that have an artistic effect). These could be combined to show children the beauty of line. You would then discover an exceptionally interesting psychological fact—that children could perceive the beauty of line that they produced themselves in eurythmy, without becoming vain and coy. Although children are likely to become vain if their attention is drawn to what they have themselves done, this is not the case in eurythmy. In eurythmy, therefore, you can also cultivate a perception of line that can be used to enhance the feeling of self without awakening vanity and coquettishness.

Someone spoke of how he would explain the electric generator to children. He would try to emphasize in every possible way what would show the fundamental phenomenon most clearly.

RUDOLF STEINER: That is a very important principle, and it is also applicable to other subjects. It is a good principle for teaching, but to a certain extent it applies to all children in the physics lessons. It has no direct connection with the question of dealing with backward pupils. In physics the backward ones, especially the girls, are certain to put up a certain amount of opposition, even when you show them a process of this kind.

Question: Since food plays such a very important role, would Dr. Steiner tell us more about the effect of different foods on the body.

RUDOLF STEINER: I have already spoken of this, and you can also find many references in my lectures. It would perhaps lead us too far afield today to go into all the details of this subject, but most of all one should avoid giving children such things as tea and coffee.

The effect of tea on our thoughts is that they do not want to cohere; they flee from one another. For this reason tea is very good for diplomats, whose job in life is just to keep talking, with no desire to develop one thought logically out of another. You should avoid sending children’s thoughts into flight by allowing them to indulge in tea.

Neither is coffee good for children, because it disposes them to become too pedantic. Coffee is a well-known expedient for journalists, because with its help they can squeeze one thought out of another, as it were. This would not be the right thing for children, because their thoughts should arise naturally, one from another. Coffee and tea are among the things to be avoided. The green parts of a plant and also milk may be considered especially important food for children, and they should have white meat only, as far as possible.

Comment: When a child has difficulty in understanding, the teacher should offer a great deal of individual help, and should also inquire about how the child does in other subjects; but if too much time is spent with the duller children, the difficulty would arise that the others are left unoccupied.

RUDOLF STEINER: Please do not overestimate what the other children lose because of your work with the less gifted ones. As a rule, not much is lost provided that, while you present a subject properly for the duller children, you also succeed in getting the brighter ones to pay attention to it also. There is really then no serious loss for the more talented children. When you have a right feeling for the way in which a subject should be introduced for the weaker ones, then in one way or another the others will profit by it.

Comment: Whenever there is lack of interest, I would always have recourse to artistic impressions. I know of one child who cannot remember the forms of different minerals—in fact he finds it difficult to form a mental image of any type of formation. Such children cannot remember melodies either.

RUDOLF STEINER: You have discovered the particular difficulty found in children who have no perception of forms and no power of retaining them in memory. But you must distinguish between forms related to the organic world and those connected with minerals, which in fact run parallel to the forms of melodies. The important thing is that here we touch on a very, very radical defect, a great defect in the development of the child, and you must consider seriously how this defect can be fundamentally healed. There is an excellent way of helping these children to remember organic forms in nature—the forms of plants and animals; draw caricatures for them that emphasize the characteristics of a particular animal or plant. These drawings must not be ugly or in bad taste, but artistic and striking; now have the children try to remember these caricatures so that, in this roundabout way through caricature, they begin to find it easier to remember the actual forms. You could, for example, draw a mouse for them like this. Give it teeth and whiskers too if you like!

Then there is also another way of possibly helping children to grasp forms: have them understand from inside what they cannot grasp from outside. Let’s suppose, for example, that a child cannot understand a parallelepiped from outside.⁴ The child cannot remember this form. You say to the child: imagine you are a tiny little elf, and that you could stand inside of this form as if it were a room. You allow the child to grasp from inside what cannot be understood from outside. This the child can do. But you must repeat this again and again.

With forms of this kind, which also appear in minerals, this is relatively easy to do, but it is not as easy when it comes to perceiving color or any other quality of the mineral. In that case you can help the child to understand merely by letting the imagination see that a small thing is very large indeed. Have the child repeatedly try to picture some little yellow crystal as a gigantic crystallized form.

When you are dealing with the element of time, however—in music, for example—it is not such an easy matter. Let us for the moment suppose that you have not yet made any progress in improving the children’s grasp of spatial forms. Now, however, if you want to use caricature in musical form, you will only succeed when you introduce an arithmetical process, making the intervals infinitely larger and drawing out each sound for a very long time; thus by greatly increasing the time between each sound, you can produce the melody on a much larger scale, which will have an astonishing effect on the children. In this way you will achieve something, but otherwise you will not be able to effect much improvement.

Questions for tomorrow:

1. How can I treat the higher plants from a natural-scientific viewpoint in the same spirit shown yesterday for the animals, for cuttlefish, mouse, and human beings?⁵

2. How can I introduce mushrooms, mosses, and lichens into these lessons?

These two questions can perhaps be answered together. It is a case of applying the same methods for the plants as those I spoke of yesterday. It is not a question of object lessons, but of the proper teaching after the ninth year, when natural history is introduced into the curriculum.

• 1. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), German dramatist, poet, critic, editor, and translator.
• 2. Due to the food shortages in Germany in 1919.
• 3. Robert Hamerling (1830–1889) was a distinguished German poet and a personal friend of Rudolf Steiner.
• 4. A parallelepiped is a solid with six sides, all of which are parallelograms.
• 5. See Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 7.

Speech exercise.

Deprive me not of what, when I give it to you freely, pleases you.

Rudolf Steiner: This sentence is constructed chiefly to show the break in the sense, so that it runs as follows: First the phrase “Deprive me not of what,” and then the phrase “pleases you,” but the latter is interrupted by the other phrase, “when I give it to you freely.” This must be expressed by the way you say it. You must notice that the emphasis you dropped on the word “what” you pick up again at “pleases you.”

Rateless ration
roosted roomily
reason wretched
ruined Roland
royalty roster

Name neat Norman on nimble moody mules

Piffling fifer
prefacing feather
phlegma fluting
fairground piercing

Weekly verse from The Calendar of the Soul:

I feel a strange power bearing fruit,
Gaining strength, bestowing me on myself,
I sense the seed ripening
And presentiment weaving, full of Light,
Within me on my selfhood’s power.¹

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we arrive at the difficult task before us today. Yesterday I asked you to consider how you would prepare the lessons in order to teach the children about the lower and higher plants, making use of some sort of illustration or example. I have shown you how this can be done in the case of animals—with a cuttlefish, a mouse, a horse, and a person—and your botany lessons must be prepared in the same spirit. But let me first say that the correct procedure is to study the animal world before coming to terms with the natural conditions of the plants. In the efforts necessary to characterize the form of your botany lessons—finding whatever examples you can from one plant or another—you will become clear why the animal period must come first.

Perhaps it would be a good idea if we first ask who has already given botany lessons. That person could speak first and the others can follow.

Comment: The plant has something like an instinctive longing for the Sun. The blossoms turn toward the Sun even before it has risen. Point out the difference between the life of desire in animals and people, and the pure effort of the plant to turn toward the Sun. Then give the children a clear idea of how the plant exists between Sun and Earth. At every opportunity mention the relation of the plant to its surroundings, especially the contrast between plants and human beings, and plants and animals. Talk about the outbreathing and in-breathing of the plant. Allow the children to experience how “bad” air is the very thing used by the plant, through the power of the Sun, to build up again what later serves as food for people. When speaking of human dependence on food you can point to the importance of a good harvest, and so on. With regard to the process of growth it should be made clear that each plant, even the leaf, grows only at the base and not at the tip. The actual process of growth is always concealed.

RUDOLF STEINER: What does it actually mean that a leaf only grows at the base? This is also true of our fingernails, and if you take other parts of the human being, the skin, the surfaces of the hands, and the deeper layers, the same thing applies. What actually constitutes growth?

Comment: Growth occurs when dead matter is “pushed out” of what is living.

RUDOLF STEINER: Yes, that’s right. All growth is life being pushed out from inside, and the dying and gradual peeling off of the outside. That is why nothing can ever grow on the outside. There must always be a pushing of substance from within outward, and then a scaling off from the surface. That is the universal law of growth—that is, the connection between growth and matter.

RUDOLF STEINER: Much of what you have said is good, but it would also be good in the course of your description to acquaint your students with the different parts of a single plant, because you will continually have to speak about the parts of the plant—leaf, blossom, and so on. It would therefore be good for the pupil to get to know certain parts of a plant, always following the principle that you have rightly chosen—that is, the study of the plant in relation to Sun and Earth. That will bring some life to your study of the plants; from there you should build the bridge to human beings. You have not yet succeeded in making this connection, because everything you said was more or less utilitarian—how plants are useful to people, for example—and other external comparisons.

There is something else that must be worked out before these lessons can be of real value to the children; after you have made clear the connection between animal and human being, you must also try to show the connection between plant and human being. Most of the children are in their eleventh year when we begin this subject, and at this point the time is ripe to consider what the children have already learned—or rather, we must keep in mind that the children have already learned things in a certain way, which they must now put to good use. Then too you must not forget to give the children the kind of image of the plant’s actual form that they can understand.

Comment: The germinating process should be demonstrated to the children—for example, in the bean. First the bean as a seed and then an embryo in its different stages. We could show the children how the plant changes through the various seasons of the year.

RUDOLF STEINER: This should not really be given to your students until they are fifteen or sixteen years old. If you did take it earlier you would see for yourself that the children who are still in the lower grades cannot yet fully understand the germinating process. It would be premature to develop this germinating process with younger children—your example of the bean and so on. That is foreign to the child’s inner nature.

I only meant to point out to the children the similarity between the young plant and the young animal, and the differences as well. The animal is cared for by its mother, and the plant comes into the world alone. My idea was to treat the subject in a way that would appeal more to the feelings.

RUDOLF STEINER: Even so, this kind of presentation is not suitable for children; you would find that they could not understand it.

Question: Can one compare the different parts of the plant with a human being? The root with the head, for example?

RUDOLF STEINER: As Mr. T. correctly described, you must give plants their place in nature as a whole—Sun, Earth, and so on—and always remember to speak of them in relation to the universe. Then when you give the proper form to your lesson you will find that the children meet what you present with a certain understanding.

Someone described how plants and human beings can be compared—a tree with a person, for example: human trunk = tree trunk; arms and fingers = branches and twigs; head = root. When a person eats, the food goes from above downward, whereas in a tree the nourishment goes from below upward. There is also a difference: whereas people and animals can move around freely and feel pleasure and pain, plants cannot do this. Each type of plant corresponds to some human characteristic, but only externally. An oak is proud, while lichens and mosses are modest and retiring.

RUDOLF STEINER: There is much in what you say, but no one has tried to give the children an understanding of the plant itself in its various forms. What would it be like if, for example, you perhaps ask, “Haven’t you ever been for a walk during the summer and seen flowers growing in the fields, and parts of them fly away when you blow on them? They have little ‘fans’ that fly away. And you have probably seen these same flowers a little earlier, when summer was not quite so near; then you saw only the yellow leaf shapes at the top of the stem; and even earlier, in the spring, there were only green leaves with sharp jagged edges. But remember, what we see at these three different times is all exactly the same plant! Except that, to begin with, it is mainly a green leaf; later on it is mainly blossom; and still later it is primarily fruit. Those are only the fruits that fly around. And the whole is a dandelion! First it has leaves—green ones; then it presents its blossoms, and after that, it gets its fruit.

“How does all this happen? How does it happen that this dandelion, which you all know, shows itself at one time with nothing but green leaves, another time with flowers, and later with tiny fruits?

“This is how it comes about. When the green leaves grow out of the earth it is not yet the hot part of the year. Warmth does not yet have as much effect. But what is around the green leaves? You know what it is. It is something you only notice when the wind passes by, but it is always there, around you: the air. You know about that because we have already talked about it. It is mainly the air that makes the green leaves sprout, and then, when the air has more warmth in it, when it is hotter, the leaves no longer remain as leaves; the leaves at the top of the stem turn into flowers. But the warmth does not just go to the plant; it also goes down into the earth and then back again. I’m sure that at one time or another you have seen a little piece of tin lying on the ground, and have noticed that the tin first receives the warmth from the Sun and then radiates it out again. That is really what every object does. And so it is also with warmth. When it is streaming downward, before the soil itself has become very warm, it forms the blossom. And when the warmth radiates back again from the earth up to the plant, it is working more to form the fruit. And so the fruit must wait until the autumn.”

This is how you should introduce the organs of the plant, at the same time relating these organs to the conditions of air and heat. You can now go further, and try to elaborate the thoughts that were touched on when we began today, showing the plants in relation to the outer elements. In this way you can also connect morphology, the aspect of the plant’s form, with the external world. Try this.

Someone spoke about plant-teaching.

RUDOLF STEINER: Some of the thoughts you have expressed are excellent, but your primary goal must be to give the children a comprehensive picture of the plant world as a whole: first the lower plants, then those in between, and finally the higher plants. Cut out all the scientific facts and give them a pictorial survey, because this can be tremendously significant in your teaching, and such a method can very well be worked out concerning the plant world.

Several teachers spoke at length on this subject. One of them remarked that “the root serves to feed the plant.”

RUDOLF STEINER: You should avoid the term serves. It’s not that the root “serves” the plant, but that the root is related to the watery life of earth, with the life of juices. It is however not what the plant draws out of the ground that makes up its main nourishment, but rather the carbon from the air.

Children cannot have a direct perception of a metamorphosis theory, but they can understand the relationship between water and root, air and leaves, warmth and blossoms.

It is not good to speak about the plants’ fertilization process too soon—at any rate, not at the age when you begin to teach botany—because children do not yet have a real understanding of the fertilization process. You can describe it, but you’ll find that they do not understand it inwardly.

Related to this is the fact that fertilization in plants does not play as prominent a part as generally assumed in our modernday, abstract, scientific age. You should read Goethe’s beautiful essays, written in the 1820s, where he speaks of pollination and so on. There he defends the theory of metamorphosis over the actual process of fertilization, and strongly protests the way people consider it so terribly important to describe a meadow as a perpetual, continuous “bridal bed!” Goethe strongly disapproved of giving such a prominent place to this process in plants. Metamorphosis was far more important to him than the matter of fertilization. In our present age it is impossible to share Goethe’s belief that fertilization is of secondary importance, and that the plant grows primarily on its own through metamorphosis; even though, according to modern advanced knowledge, you must accept the importance of the fertilization process, it still remains true, however, that we are doing the wrong thing when we give it the prominence that is customary today. We must allow it to retire more into the background, and in its place we must talk about the relationship between the plant and the surrounding world. It is far more important to describe the way air, heat, light, and water work on the plant, than to dwell on the abstract fertilization process, which is so prominent today. I want to really emphasize this; and because this is a very serious matter and particularly important, I would like you to cross this Rubicon, to delve further into the matter, so that you find the proper method of dealing with plants and the right way to teach children about them.

Please note that it is easy enough to ask what similarities there are between animal and humankind; you will discover this from many and diverse aspects. But when you look for similarities between plants and humankind, this external method of comparison quickly falls apart. But let’s ask ourselves: Are we perhaps on the wrong path in looking for relationships of this kind at all?

Mr. R. came closest to where we should begin, but he only touched on it, and he did not work it out any further.

We can now begin with something you yourselves know, but you cannot teach this to a young child. Before we meet again, however, perhaps you can think about how to clothe, in language suited to children, things you know very well yourselves in a more theoretical way.

We cannot just take human beings as we see them in life and compare them with the plant; nevertheless there are certain resemblances. Yesterday I tried to draw the human trunk as a kind of imperfect sphere.² The other part that belongs to it—which you would get if you completed the sphere—indeed has a certain likeness to the plant when you consider the mutual relationship between plants and human beings. You could even go further and say that if you were to “stuff ” a person (forgive the comparison—you will find the right way of changing it for children) especially in relation to the middle senses, the sense of warmth, the sense of sight, the sense of taste, the sense of smell, then you would get all kinds of plant forms.³ If you simply “stuffed” some soft substance into the human being, it would assume plant forms. The plant world, in a certain sense, is a kind of “negative” of the human being; it is the complement.

In other words, when you fall asleep everything related to your soul passes out of your body; these soul elements (the I and the actual soul) reenter your body when you awaken. You cannot very well compare the plant world with the body that remains lying in your bed; but you can truthfully compare it with the soul itself, which passes in and out. And when you walk through fields or meadows and see plants in all the brightness and radiance of their blossoms, you can certainly ask yourselves: What temperament is revealed here? It is a fiery temperament! The exuberant forces that come to meet you from flowers can be compared to qualities of soul. Or perhaps you walk through the woods and see mushrooms or fungi and ask: What temperament is revealed here? Why are they not growing in the sunlight? These are the phlegmatics, these mushrooms and fungi.

So you see, when you begin to consider the human element of soul, you find relationships with the plant world everywhere, and you must try to work out and develop these things further. You could compare the animal world to the human body, but the plant world can be compared more to the soul, to the part of a human being that enters and “fills out” a person when awaking in the morning. If we could “cast” these soul forms we would have the forms of the plants before us. Moreover, if you could succeed in preserving a person like a mummy, leaving spaces empty by removing all the paths of the blood vessels and nerves, and pouring into these spaces some very soft substance, then you would get all kinds of forms from these hollow shapes in the human body.

The plant world is related to human beings as I have just shown, and you must try to make it clear to the children that the roots are more closely related to human thoughts, and the flowers more related to feelings—even to passions and emotions. And so it happens that the most perfect plants—the higher, flowering plants—have the least animal nature within them; the mushrooms and the lowest types of plant are most closely akin to animals, and it is particularly these plants that can be compared least to the human soul.

You can now develop this idea of beginning with the soul element and looking for the characteristics of the plants, and you can extend it to all the varieties of the plant world. You can characterize the plants by saying that some develop more of the fruit nature—the mushrooms, for example—and others more of the leaf nature, such as ferns and the lower plants, and the palms, too, with their gigantic leaves. These organs, however, are developed differently. A cactus is a cactus because of the rampant growth of its leaves; its blossom and fruit are merely interspersed among the luxuriant leaves.

Try now to translate the thought I indicated to you into language suited for children. Exert your fantasy so that by next time you can give us a vivid description of the plant world all over the Earth, showing it as something that shoots forth into herb and flower, like the soul of the Earth, the visible soul, the soul made manifest.

Then try to bring some fruitful thoughts about how to distinguish between annuals and perennials, or between the flora of western, central, and eastern European countries. Another fruitful thought that you could come to is about how the whole Earth is actually asleep in summer and awake in winter.

You see, when you work in this way you awaken in the child a real feeling for intimacy of soul and for the truth of the spirit. Later, when the children are grown, they will much more easily understand how senseless it is to believe that human existence, as far as the soul is concerned, ceases every evening and begins again each morning. Thus they will see, when you have shown them, that the relationship between the human body and soul can be compared to the interrelationship between the human world and the plant world. How then does the Earth affect the plant? Just as the human body works, so when you come to the plant world you have to compare the human body with the Earth—and with something else, as you will discover for yourselves.

I only wanted to give you certain suggestions so that you, yourselves, using all your best powers of invention, can discover even more before next time. You will then see that you greatly benefit the children when you do not give them external comparisons, but those belonging to the inner life.

• 1. Verse for August 25–31 (twenty-first week); see Rudolf Steiner, The Calendar of the Soul, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1988.
• 2. See Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 7.
• 3. See The Foundations of Human Experience, lecture 8.

Speech Exercises:

Children chiding
Chaffinch chirping
Choking chimneys
Cheerfully chattering

Children chiding and fetching
Chaffinch chirping switching
Choking chimneys hitching
Cheerfully chattering twitching

Beach children chiding and fetching
Reach chaffinch chirping switching
Birches choking chimneys hitching
Perches cheerfully chattering twitching

RUDOLF STEINER: The “ch” should be sounded in a thoroughly active way, like a gymnastic exercise.¹

The following is a piece in which you have to pay attention both to the form and the content.

From “Galgenlieder” by Christian Morgenstern:

The Does’ Prayer

The does, as the hour grows late,
Med-it-ate;
Med-it-nine;
Med-i-ten;
Med-eleven;
Med-twelve;
Mednight!
The does, as the hour grows late,
Meditate,
They fold their little toesies,
the doesies.²

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will continue our talk about the plant world.

Various contributions were offered by those present.

RUDOLF STEINER: Later there will be students in the school who will study the plant kingdom on a more scientific basis, in which case they would learn to distinguish mosses, lichens, algae, monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and so on. All children, who in their youth learn to know plants according to scientific principles, should first learn about them as we have described—that is, by comparing them with soul qualities. Later they can study the plant system more scientifically. It makes a difference whether we try first to describe the plants and then later study them scientifically, or vice versa. You can do much harm by teaching scientific botany first, instead of first presenting ideas that relate to the feeling life, as I have tried to show you. In the latter case the children can tackle the study of scientific botanical systems with a truly human understanding.

The plant realm is the soul world of the Earth made visible. The carnation is a flirt. The sunflower an old peasant. The sunflower’s shining face is like a jolly old country rustic. Plants with very big leaves would express, in terms of soul life, lack of success in a job, taking a long time with everything, clumsiness, and especially an inability to finish anything; we think that someone has finished, but the person is still at it. Look for the soul element in the plant forms!

When summer approaches, or even earlier, sleep spreads over the Earth; this sleep becomes heavier and heavier, but it only spreads out spatially, and in autumn passes away again. The plants are no longer there, and sleep no longer spreads over the Earth. The feelings, passions, and emotions of people pass with them into sleep, but once they are there, those feelings have the appearance of plants. What we have invisible within the soul, our hidden qualities—flirtatiousness, for example—become visible in plants. We don’t see this in a person who is awake, but it can be observed clairvoyantly in people who are sleeping. Flirtation, for example, looks like a carnation. A flirt continually produces carnations from the nose! A tedious, boring person produces gigantic leaves from the whole body, if you could see them.

When we express the thought that the Earth sleeps, we must go further: the plant world grows in the summer. Earth sleeps in the summer and is awake during winter. The plant world is the Earth’s soul. Human soul life ceases during sleep, but when the Earth goes to sleep its soul life actually begins. But the human soul does not express itself in a sleeping person. How are we going to get over this difficulty with children?

One of the teachers suggested that plants could be considered the Earth’s dreams.

RUDOLF STEINER: But plants during high summer are not the Earth’s dreams, because the Earth is in a deep sleep in the summer. It is only how the plant world appears during spring and autumn that you can call dreams. Only when the flowers are first beginning to sprout—when the March violet, for example, is still green, before flowers appear, and again when leaves are falling—that the plant world can be compared to dreams. With this in mind, try to make the transition to a real understanding of the plant.

For example, you can begin by saying, “Look at this buttercup,” or any plant we can dig out of the soil, showing the root below, the stalk, leaves, blossoms, and then the stamens and pistil, from which the fruit will develop. Let the child look at a plant like this. Then show a tree and say, “Imagine this tree next to the plant. What can you tell me about the tree? Yes, it also has roots below of course; but instead of a stalk, it has a trunk. Then it spreads its branches, and it’s as if the real plants grew on these branches, because many leaves and flowers can be found there; it’s as if little plants were growing on the branches above. So, we could actually look at a meadow this way: We see yellow buttercups growing all over the meadow; it is covered with individual plants with their roots in the Earth, and they cover the whole meadow. But when we look at the tree, it’s as if someone had taken the meadow, lifted it up, and rounded it into an arch; only then do we find many flowers growing very high all over it. The trunk is a bit of the Earth itself. So we may say that the tree is the same as the meadow where the flowers grow.

“Now we go from the tree to the dandelion or daisy. Here there is a root-like form in the soil, and from it grows something like a stalk and leaves, but at the top there is a little basket of flowers, tiny little blossoms close together. It’s as though the dandelion made a little basket up there with nothing in it but little flowers, perfect flowers that can be found in the dandelion-head. So we have the tree, the little ‘basket-bloomers,’ and the ordinary plant, a plant with a stalk. In the tree it’s as though the plants were only high up on the branches; in the compound flowers the blossom is at the top of the plant, except that these are not petals, but countless fully-developed flowers.

“Now imagine that the plant kept everything down in the Earth; suppose it wanted to develop roots, but that it was unsuccessful—or perhaps leaves, but could not do this either; imagine that the only thing to unfold above ground were what one usually finds in the blossom; you would then have a mushroom. At least, if the roots down below fail and only leaves come up, you would then have ferns. So you find all kinds of different forms, but they are all plants.”

Show the children the buttercup, how it spreads its little roots, how it has its five yellow-fringed petals, then show them the tree, where the “plant” only grows on it, then the composite flowers, the mushroom, and the fern; do not do this in a very scientific way, but so that the children get to know the form in general.

Then you can say, “Why do you think the mushroom remained a mushroom, and why did the tree become a tree? Let’s compare the mushroom with the tree. What is the difference between them? Take the tree. Isn’t it as though the Earth had pushed itself out with all its might—as though the inner being of the tree had forced its way up into the outside world in order to develop its blossoms and fruits away from the Earth? But in the mushroom the Earth has kept within itself what usually grows up out of it, and only the uppermost parts of the plant appear in the form of mushrooms. In the mushroom the ‘tree’ is below the soil and only exists as forces. In the mushroom itself we find something similar to the tree’s outermost part. When lots and lots of mushrooms are spread over the Earth, it is as though you had a tree growing down below them, inside the Earth. And when we look at a tree it is as though the Earth had forced itself up, turning itself inside out, as it were, bringing its inner self into the outer world.”

Now you are coming nearer to the reality: “When you see mushrooms growing you know that the Earth is holding something within itself that, in the case of a growing tree, it pushes up outside itself. So in producing mushrooms the Earth keeps the force of the growing tree within itself. But when the Earth lets the trees grow it turns the growing-force of the tree outward.” Now here you have something not found within the Earth during summer, because it rises out of the Earth then and when winter comes it goes down into the Earth again. “During summer the Earth, through the force of the tree, sends its own force up into the blossoms, causing them to unfold, and in winter it draws this force back again into itself. Now let us think of this force, which during the summer circles up in the trees—a force so small and delicate in the violet but so powerful in the tree. Where can it be found in winter? It is under the surface of the Earth. What happens during the depth of winter to all these plants—the trees, the composite flowers, and all the others? They unfold right under the Earth’s surface; they are there within the Earth and develop the Earth’s soul life. This was known to the people of ancient times, and that was why they placed Christmas—the time when we look for soul life—not in the summer, but during winter.

“Just as a person’s soul life passes out of the body when falling asleep, and again turns inward when a person wakens, so it is also for the Earth. During summer while asleep it sends its sap-bearing force out, and during winter takes it back again when it awakens—that is, it gathers all its various forces into itself. Just think, children, our Earth feels and experiences everything that happens within it; what you see all the summer long in flowers and leaves, the abundance of growth and blossom, in the daisies, the roses, or the carnations—this all dwells under the Earth during winter, and there it has feelings like you have, and can be angry or happy like you.”

In this way you gradually form a view of life lived under the Earth during winter. That is the truth. And it is good to tell the children these things. This is something that even materialists could not argue with or consider an extravagant flight of fancy. But now you can continue from this and consider the whole plant. The children are led away from a subjective attitude toward plants, and they are shown what drives the sap over the Earth during summer heat and draws it back again into itself in winter; they come to see the ebb and flow in plant life. In this way you find the Earth’s real soul life mirrored in plants. Beneath the Earth ferns, mosses, and fungi unfold all that they fail to develop as growing plants, but this all remains etheric substance and does not become physical. When this etheric plant appears above the Earth’s surface, the external forces work on it and transform it into the rudiments of leaves we find in fungi, mosses, and ferns. But under a patch of moss or mushrooms there is something like a gigantic tree, and if the Earth cannot absorb it, cannot keep it within itself, then it pushes up into the outer world.

The tree is a little piece of the Earth itself. But what remains underground in mushrooms and ferns is now raised out of the Earth, so that if the tree were slowly pushed down into the Earth everything would be different, and if it were to be thus submerged then ferns, mosses, and mushrooms would appear; for the tree it would be a kind of winter. But the tree withdraws from this experience of winter. It is the nature of a tree to avoid the experience of winter to some extent, but if I could take hold of a fern or a mushroom by the head and draw it further and further out of the Earth so that the etheric element in it reached the air, then I would draw out a whole tree, and what would otherwise become a mushroom would now turn into a tree. Annual plants are midway between these two. A composite flower is merely another form of what happens in a tree. If I could press a composite flower down into the Earth it would bear only single blossoms. A composite flower could almost be called a tree that has shot up too quickly.

And so we can also find a wish, a desire, living in the Earth. The Earth feels compelled to let this wish sink into sleep. The Earth puts it to sleep in summer, and then the wish rises as a plant. It is not visible above the Earth until it appears as a water-lily. Down below it lives as a wish in the Earth, and then up above it becomes a plant.

The plant world is the Earth’s soul world made visible, and this is why we can compare it with human beings. But you should not merely make comparisons; you must also teach the children about the actual forms of the plants. Starting with a general comparison you can then lead to the single plant species.

Light sleep can be compared with ordinary plants, a kind of waking during sleep with mushrooms (where there are very many mushrooms, the Earth is awake during the summer), and you can compare really sound deep sleep with the trees.

From this you see that the Earth does not sleep as people do, but in one part it is more asleep and in another more awake; here more asleep, there more awake. People, in their eyes and other sense organs, also have sleeping, waking, and, dreaming side by side, all at the same time.

Now here is your task for tomorrow. Please make out a table; on the left place a list of the human soul characteristics, from thoughts down through all the emotions of the soul—feelings of pleasure and displeasure, actively violent emotions, anger, grief, and so on, right down to the will; certain specific plant forms can be compared with the human soul realm. On the right you can then fill in the corresponding plant species, so that in the table you have the thought plants above, the will plants below, and all the others in between.

Rudolf Steiner then gave a graphic explanation of the Pythagorean theorem and referred to an article by Dr. Ernst Müller in Ostwald’s magazine for natural philosophy, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, entitled “Some Observations on a Theory of Knowledge underlying the Pythagorean theorem.”

In the drawing, the red parts of the two smaller squares already lie within the square on the hypotenuse. By moving the blue and the green triangles in the direction of the arrows, the remaining parts of the two smaller squares will cover those parts of the square on the hypotenuse still uncovered.

You should cut out the whole thing in cardboard and then you can see it clearly.³

• 1. The original German exercise (which appears in the appendix) uses the “pf ” sound; the “ch” sound has been substituted in the English version.
• 2. Max Knight, trans., University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964.
• 3. The Pythagorean theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. For another brief discussion of the Pythagorean theorem in teaching see Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995, pp. 85–90.

RUDOLF STEINER: In the speech exercises that we will take now, the principal purpose is to make the speech organs more flexible.

Curtsey Betsy jets cleric
lastly light sceptic

One should acquire the habit of letting the tongue say it on its own, so to speak.

Tu-whit twinkle ‘twas
twice twigged tweaker
to twenty twangy twirlings
the zinnia crisper
zither zooming shambles
this smartened smacking
smuggler sneezing
snoring snatching.

Both these exercises are really perfect only when they are said from memory.

From “We Found a Path” (by Christian Morgenstern):

Those who don’t know the goal
can’t find the way,
they will trot the same circle
all their lives long,
and return in the end
whence they began,
their piece of mind
more disturbed than before.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will proceed to the task that we have been gnawing at for so long.

Someone presented a list of the human soul moods and the soul moods of plants that could be said to correspond to them.

RUDOLF STEINER: All these things that have been presented are reminiscent of when phrenology was in vogue, when people classified human soul qualities according to their fantasies, and then searched the head for all kinds of bumps that were then associated with these qualities. But things are not like that, although the human head can certainly be said to express human soul nature. It is true that if a person has a very prominent forehead, it may indicate a philosopher. If a person has a very receding forehead and is at the same time talented, such a person may become an artist. You cannot say that the artist is located in a particular part of the head, but through your feelings you can differentiate between one or another form. You should consider the soul in this way. The more intellectual element drives into the forehead, and the more artistic element allows the forehead to recede. The same thing is also true in the study of plants. I mean your research should not be so external, but rather you should enter more deeply into the inner nature of plants and describe conditions as they actually are.

Some remarks were added.

RUDOLF STEINER: When you confine yourself too much to the senses, your viewpoint will not be quite correct. The senses come into consideration insofar as each sense contributes to the inner life of human beings, whatever can be perceived by a particular sense. For example, we owe several soul experiences to the sense of sight. We owe different soul experiences to other senses. Thus we can retrace our soul experiences to these various senses. In this way the senses are associated with our soul nature. But we should not assert unconditionally that plants express the senses of the Earth, because that is not true.

Someone cited samples from the writings of Emil Schlegel, a homeopathic doctor from Tübingen.

RUDOLF STEINER: Schlegel’s comparisons are also too external. He returns to what can be found in the mystics—Jacob Boehme and others—to the so-called “signatures.” Mystics in the Middle Ages were aware of certain relationships to the soul world that led them into deeper aspects of medicine. You find, for example, that a definite group of plants is associated with a quality of soul; mushrooms and fungi are associated with the quality that enables a person to reflect, to ponder something, the kind of inner life that lies so deeply in the soul that it does not demand much of the outer world for its experience, but “pumps,” as it were, everything out of itself. You will also find that this soul quality, most characteristic of mushrooms, is very intimately associated with illnesses of a headache nature; in this way you discover the connection between mushrooms and illnesses that cause headaches. Please note that you cannot make such comparisons when teaching about animals.

There are, as yet, no proper classifications of plants, but by means of these relationships between human soul qualities and groups of plants you must try to bring some kind of classification into the life of plants. We will now attempt to classify the plant kingdom.

You must first distinguish what are properly seen as the different parts of the plant—that is, root, stem (which may develop into a trunk), leaves, blossoms, and fruits. All the plants in the world can be divided into groups or families. In one family the root is more developed; the rest of the plant is stunted. In another the leaves are more developed, and in others the blossoms; indeed, these last are almost entirely blossom. Such things must be considered in relation to each other. Thus we can classify plants by seeing which system of organs predominates, root, trunk, leaves, and so on, since this is one way that plants vary. Now, when you recognize that everything with the nature of a blossom belongs to a certain soul quality, you must also assign other organic parts of the plant to other soul qualities. Thus, whether you associate single parts of the plant with qualities of soul or think of the whole plant kingdom together in this sense, it is the same thing. The whole plant kingdom is really a single plant.

Now what are the actual facts about the sleeping and waking of the Earth? At the present time [September] the Earth is asleep for us, but it is awake on the opposite side of the Earth. The Earth carries sleep from one side to the other. The plant world, of course, takes part in this change, and in this way you get another classification according to the spatial distribution of sleeping and waking on the earth—that is, according to summer and winter. Our vegetation is not the same as that on the opposite side of the Earth.

For plant life, everything is related with the leaves, for every part of a plant is a transformed leaf.

Someone compared groups of plants with temperaments.

RUDOLF STEINER: No, you are on the wrong track when you relate the plant world directly to the temperaments.

We might say to the children, “Look children, you were not always as big as you are now.¹ You have learned to do a great many things that you couldn’t do before. When your life began you were small and awkward, and you couldn’t take care of yourselves. When you were very small you couldn’t even talk. You could not walk either. There were many things you could not do that you can do now. Let’s all think back and remember the qualities you had when you were very young children. Can you remember what you were like then and what kinds of things you did? Can you remember this?” Continue to ask until they all see what you mean and say “No.” “So none of you know anything about what you did when you were toddlers?

“Yes, dear children, and isn’t there something else that happens in your lives that you can’t remember, and things that you do that you can’t remember afterward?” The children think it over. Perhaps someone among them will find the answer, otherwise you must help them with it. One of them might answer, “While I was asleep.” “Yes, the very same thing happens when you are very young that happens when you go to bed and sleep. You are ‘asleep’ when you are a tiny baby, and you are asleep when you are in bed.

“Now we will go out into nature and look for something there that is asleep just like you were when you were very young. Naturally you could not think of this yourselves, but there are those who know, and they can tell you that all the fungi and mushrooms that you find in the woods are fast asleep, just as you were when you were babies. Fungi and mushrooms are the sleeping souls of childhood.

“Then came the time when you learned to walk and to speak. You know from watching your little brothers and sisters that little children first have to learn to speak and walk, or you can say walk and then speak. That was something new for you, and you could not do that when you began your life; you learned something fresh, and you could do many more things after you learned to walk and speak.

“Now we will go out into nature again and search for something that can do more than mushrooms and fungi. These are the algae,” and I now show the children some examples of algae, “and the mosses,” and I show them some mosses. “There is something in algae and mosses that can do much more than what is in the fungi.”

Then I show the children a fern and say, “Look, the fern can do even more than the mosses. The fern can do so much that you have to say it looks as if it already had leaves. There is something of the nature of a leaf.

“Now you do not remember what you did when you learned to speak and walk. You were still half asleep then. But if you watch your brothers and sisters or other little children you know that, when they grow a little older, they do not sleep as long as when they were first born. Then came the time when your mind woke up, and you can return to that time as your earliest memory. Just think! That time in your mind compares with the ferns. But ever since then you can remember more and more of what happened in your mind. Now let’s get a clear picture of how you came to say ‘I.’ That was about the time to which your memory is able to return. But the I came gradually. At first you always said ‘Jack wants.. .’ when you meant yourself.”

Now have a child speak about a memory from childhood. Then you say to the child, “You see, when you were little it was really as though everything in your mind was asleep; it was really night then, but now your mind is awake. It is much more awake now, otherwise you would be no wiser than you used to be. But you are still partly asleep; not everything in you is awake yet; much is still sleeping. Only a part of you has awakened. What went on in your mind when you were four or five years old was something like the plants I am going to show you now.”

We should now show the children some plants from the family of the gymnospernms—that is, conifers, which are more perfectly formed than the ferns—and then you will say to the children, “A little later in your life, when you were six or seven years old, you were able to go to school, and all the joys that school brought blossomed in your heart.” When you show a plant from the family of the ferns, the gymnosperms, you go on to explain, “You see there are still no flowers. That was how your mind was before you came to school.

“Then, when you came to school, something entered your mind that could be compared to a flowering plant. But you had only learned a little when you were eight or nine years old. Now you are very smart; you are already eleven years old and have learned a great many things.

“Now look; here is a plant that has leaves with simple parallel veins

and here is another with more complicated leaves with a network of veins. When you look at the blossoms that belong to the simple leaves, they are not the same as those on the plants with the other kind of leaf, where the blossoms and everything else are more complicated than in those with the simpler leaves.”

Now you show the children, for example, an autumn crocus, a monocotyledon; in these plants everything is simple, and you can compare them to children between seven and nine. Then you can continue by showing the children plants with simple blossoms, ones that do not yet have real petals. You can then say, “You have plants here in which the green sepals and the colored petals are indistinguishable, in which the little leaves under the blossom cannot be distinguished from those above. This is you! This is what you are like now.

“But soon you will be even older, and when you are twelve, thirteen, or fourteen you will be able to compare yourselves with plants that have calyx and corolla; your mind will grow so much that you’ll be able to distinguish between the green leaves we call the calyx and the colored leaves called petals. But first you must reach that stage!” And so you can divide the plants into those with a simple perianth—compared to the elevenyear- old children—and plants with a double perianth—those of thirteen to fourteen years.² “So children, this is another stage you have to reach.”

Now you can show the children two or three examples of mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, monocotyledons, and dicotyledons, and it would be a fine thing at this point to awaken their memory of earlier years. Have one of them speak of something remembered about little four-year-old Billy, and then show your ferns; have another child recall a memory of seven-year-old Fred, and then show the corresponding plant for that age; and yet another one could tell a story about eleven-year-old Ernie, and here you must show the other kind of plant. You must awaken the faculty of recalling the various qualities of a growing child and then carry over to the plant world these thoughts about the whole development of the growing soul. Make use of what I said yesterday about a tree, and in this way you will get a parallel between soul qualities and the corresponding plants.

There is an underlying principle here. You will not find parallels accidentally according to whatever plants you happen to pick. There is principle and form in this method, which is necessary. You can cover the whole plant kingdom in this way, with the exception of what happens in the plant when the blossom produces fruit. You point out to the child that the higher plants produce fruits from their blossoms. “This, dear children, can only be compared to what happens in your own soul life after you leave school.” Everything in the growth of the plant, up to the blossom, can be compared only with what happens in the child until puberty. The process of fertilization must be omitted for children. You cannot include it.

Then I continue, “You see, dear children, when you were very small you really only had something like a sleeping soul within you.” In some way remind the children, “Now try to remember, what was your main pleasure when you were a little child? You have forgotten now because, in a way, you were really asleep at that time, but you can see it in little Anne or Mary, in your little baby sister. What is her greatest joy? Certainly her milk bottle! A tiny child’s greatest joy is the milk bottle. And then came the time when your brothers and sisters were a little older, and the bottle was no longer their only joy, but instead they loved to be allowed to play. Now remember, first I showed you fungi, algae, mosses; almost everything they have, they get from the soil. We must go into the woods if we want to get to know them. They grow where it is damp and shady, they do not venture out into the sunlight. That’s what you were like before you ‘ventured out’ to play; you were content with sucking milk from a bottle. In the rest of the plant world you find leaves and flowers that develop when the plants no longer have only what they get from the soil and from the shady woods, but instead come out into the sun, to the air and light. These are the qualities of soul that thrive in light and air.” In this way you show the child the difference between what lives under the Earth’s surface on the one hand (as mushrooms and roots do, which need the watery element, soil, and shade), and on the other hand, what needs air and light (as blossoms and leaves do). “That is why plants that bear flowers and leaves (because they love air and light) are the so-called higher plants, just as you, when you are five or six years old, have reached a higher stage than when you were a baby.”

By directing the children’s thoughts more and more—at one time toward qualities of mind and soul that develop in childhood, and then toward the plants—you will be able to classify them all, based on this comparison. You can put it this way:

Pleasures of infancy (babies): Mushrooms and Fungi
Pleasures of early childhood (the awakening life of feeling, both sorrows and joys): Algae, Mosses
Experiences at the awakening of consciousness of self: Ferns
Experiences of fifth and sixth year, up to school age: Gymnosperms, Conifers
First school experiences, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh year: Parallel-veined plants, Monocotyledons; Plants with simple perianth
Experiences of the eleven-year-old: Simple dicotyledons
School experiences from twelfth to fifteenth year: Net-veined plants, Dicotyledons; Plants with green calyx and colored petals

“You are not smart enough yet for these last experiences (the plants with a green calyx and colored blossoms), and you won’t know anything about them until you are thirteen or fourteen years old.

“Just think; how lovely! One day you will have such rich thoughts and feelings, you will be like the rose with colored petals and green sepals. This will all come later, and you can look forward to it with great pleasure. It is lovely to be able to rejoice over what is coming in the future.” The important thing is that you arouse within children’s hearts a joyful anticipation of what the future will bring them.

Thus, all the successive soul qualities before puberty can be compared with the plant kingdom. After that the comparison goes no further because at this point the children develop the astral body, which plants do not possess. But when the plant forces itself into fertilization beyond its nature, it can be compared with soul qualities of the sixteenth to seventeenth year. There is no need to call attention to the process of fertilization, but you should speak of the process of growth, because that agrees with reality. The children would not understand the process of fertilization, but they would understand the process of growth, because it can be compared with the process of growth in the mind and soul. Just as a child’s soul is different at various ages, so also the plants are different because they progress from the mushroom to the buttercup, which is usually included among the most highly developed plants, the Ranunculuses. It is indeed true that, when the golden buttercups appear during spring in lush meadows, we are reminded of the soul life and soul mood of fourteen-and fifteen-year-old boys and girls.

If at some time a botanist should go to work along these lines in a thoroughly systematic way, a plant system would be found that corresponds to fact, but you can actually show the children the whole external plant world as a picture of a developing child’s soul. Much can be done in this way. You should not differentiate in the individualized way practised by the old phrenologists, but you should have one clear viewpoint that can be carried right through your teaching. Then you will find that it is not quite correct to merely take everything with a root nature and relate it to thought. Spirit in the head is still asleep in a child. Thus, thinking in general should not be related to what has root nature, but a child’s way of thinking, which is still asleep. In the mushroom, therefore, as well as in the child, you get a picture of childlike thinking, still asleep, that points us toward the root element in plants.

Rudolf Steiner then gave the following assignments:

1. To comprehensively work out the natural history of plants as discussed up to this point;

2. The geographical treatment of the region of the lower Rhine, from the Lahn onward, “in the way I showed you today when speaking of lessons in geography”: mountains, rivers, towns, civilization, and economics.³

3. Do the same for the basin of the Mississippi.

4. What is the best way to teach the measurement of areas and perimeters?

• 1. According to the Waldorf curriculum, the children are around eleven years old when they are taught about the plant kingdom.
• 2. The perianth is the envelope of a flower, particularly one in which the calyx and corolla are combined so that they are indistinguishable from one another; these include such flowers as tulips, orchids, and so on. The perianth is single when it has one verticil, and double when it has both calyx and corolla.
• 3. See Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 11.

Speech Exercises:

Curtsey cressets Betsy jets cleric
lastly plotless light skeptic

RUDOLF STEINER: You will only get the words right when you can reel them off by heart. Be conscious of every syllable you speak!

Narrow wren
mirror royal
gearing grizzled
noting nippers
fender coughing

Some of the teachers, as requested, gave a comprehensive survey of the natural history of plants as discussed in yesterday’s discussion.

RUDOLF STEINER: Give as many examples as possible! Ideas about metamorphosis and germination cannot really be understood by children under the age of fourteen, and certainly not by children of nine to eleven. Related to this is something else of great importance that needs to be said. You must have followed the recent discussions from every side about so-called “sex education” for children. Every possible perspective, for and against, has been presented.

The subject essentially breaks down into three questions. First, we consider who should present such sex education. Those who think seriously about their great responsibility as teachers in the school soon realize the extraordinary difficulty of such an undertaking. I doubt if any of you would really welcome the job of providing sex education to young teenagers between twelve and fourteen. The second question concerns how this teaching should be given. This is not an easy question either. The third question is about its place in education. Where should you introduce it? In natural history lessons perhaps?

If teaching were based on true educational principles this task would fall very naturally into place. If in your teaching you explain the process of growth to the children in relation to light, air, water, earth, and so on, the children will absorb such ideas so that you can proceed gradually to the process of fertilization in plants, and then in animals and human beings. But you must look comprehensively at this matter and show how plants come into existence through light, water, earth, and so on; in short, for the complicated process of growth and fertilization you must prepare ideas that will provide children with a foundation in imaginative thinking. The fact that there has been so much chatter about sex education proves that there is something wrong with teaching methods of today; it should certainly be possible in the early school years to prepare for later sex education. For instance, by explaining the process of growth in connection with light, air, water, and so on, the teacher could foster the pure and chaste views necessary for sex education later on.

In map drawing you should color the mountains brown and rivers blue. Rivers should always be drawn as they flow, from source to mouth, never from mouth to source. Make one map for the soil and ground nature—coal, iron, gold, or silver, and draw another map for towns, industries, and so on. I ask you to note the importance of choosing some particular part of the world as a subject for your lessons, and then as you continue, you should refer back to this area again and again. The way that your subject is presented is also very important; try to live directly into your subject so that the children always get the feeling that you are describing something in which you are actually involved. When you describe an industry they should feel that you are working there, and the same is true when you describe a mine, and so on. Make it as lively as possible! The more life there is in your descriptions, the better the children will work with you.

Someone calculated the measurement of areas, beginning with the square and proceeding to the rectangle, parallelogram, trapezium, and triangle.

RUDOLF STEINER: It is difficult to explain to a child what an angle actually is. Can you make up a method for doing this? Perhaps you remember how difficult it was for you to be clear about it—aside from the fact that there may be some of you who do not yet know what an angle really is.

You can explain to the children what a larger or smaller angle is by drawing angles, first with longer arms and then with shorter arms. Now which angle is the larger? They are exactly the same size!

Then have two of the children walk from a certain point simultaneously, two times, and show them that the first time they walked they made a larger angle, and the second time a smaller one. When they walked making the smaller angle their paths were closer together, with the larger angle further apart. This can also be shown with an elbow movement.

It’s good to arrive at a view of larger and smaller angles before beginning to measure angles in degrees.

The transformation of a parallelogram into a square was spoken about, to show that the area, in both cases, is base multiplied by height.

RUDOLF STEINER: Yes, it can be done like that. But if by tomorrow you would consider the whole subject on a somewhat different basis, perhaps you will find it beneficial to introduce the children to a clear concept of area as such first, and then the size of the area. The children know the shape of a square, and now you want to show it to them as a surface that could be larger or smaller.

Second, figure out for tomorrow how you would give the children arithmetical problems to solve without writing down any figures—in other words, what we could call mental arithmetic. You could, for example, give the children this problem to do: A messenger starts from a certain place and walks so many miles per hour; another messenger begins much later; the second messenger does not walk but rides a bicycle at a certain number of miles per hour. When did the cyclist pass the messenger on foot?

The object of these problems is to develop in children a certain presence of mind in comprehending a situation and evaluating it as a whole.

Speech Exercises:

Clip plop pluck cluck
clinked clapper richly
knotted trappings
rosily tripled

RUDOLF STEINER: Memorize this before you practice it!

An attempt was made to illustrate the concept of a surface area for nine-year-old children; have the children cut out squares to measure from larger squares and copy them.

RUDOLF STEINER: It is certainly good to make it clear to children that, if the length of one side of a square is 3 feet, the area of the surface is 9 square feet, but this limits us to an area of thought where a whole is built from its parts, and this will not help children to gain a true concept of what a surface area really is. What I meant was: What is the right way to proceed, and at what age, in order to actually discover what a surface really is, and that it is obtained by multiplying length by breadth. How can you manage to awaken this concept of a surface in the child? This depends on when you begin teaching children about surface areas. It doesn’t make sense to teach them about surface areas until after you teach them some algebra. The answer, therefore, is to wait for lessons on surface areas until after we deal with algebra.

Now comes another question: How do you make the transition from ordinary problems with figures to problems with letters—that is, algebra? I will give you a suggestion about how to begin, and then you can work it out for yourselves. Before you move on to algebra you must have already worked on interest with the children; interest is principal multiplied by rate percent multiplied by time, divided by 100.

Interest = Principal × Rate × Time

To arrive at this formula, begin with ordinary numbers, and children understand principal, rate percent, time, and so on, relatively easily. So you will try to make this process clear and assure yourself that most of the children have understood it; from there you should move on to the formula, and always make sure that you work according to rule.

\(P\) = principal; \(R\) = rate; \(T\) = time; and \(I\) = interest. What I gave you is a formula I view merely as a basic formula, and with this formula I have taken the first step in moving to algebra. When the children have this formula they merely need to substitute figures for the letters, and then they will always get the right answer.

Now if you have the following formula derived from the first:

you can see that you can change about the 3 letters \(P\), \(R\), \(T\), however you wish, so that the following are also possibilities:

In this way we have taught the children how to work with\(\) interest, and now we can go on to algebra. You can simply say, “We have learned that a sum of \(25\) was equal to \(8\), then \(7\) and \(5\), and another \(5\): that is, \(25 = 8 + 7 + 5 + 5\).” The children will already have understood. Now after you have explained this, you can say, “Here, instead of 25 you could have a different number, and, instead of \(8\), \(7\), \(5\), \(5\) you could have other numbers; in fact, you could tell them that any number could be there. You could have \(s\), for example, as a total, and then you could have \(a + b + c + c\); but if c represents the first \(5\), then \(c\) must also represent the second 5. Just as I put P in place of principal, so in the same place I put the lettecr .

After having shown in a concrete example the transition from number to letter you can now explain the concept of multiplication, and out of this concrete \(g × g\) you can develop \(a × a\), or from \(a × 2\) you can evolve \(a × b\), and so on. This then would be the way to progress from the numbers in arithmetic to algebra with its letters, and from algebra to the calculation of surface areas; \(a × a = a^2\).

Now here is your task for tomorrow. Try to find a truly enlightened way to present to children of ten and eleven the concept of interest and everything associated with it, as well as inverse calculations of rate, time, and principal; then from there demonstrate how to deal with discount—how to teach a child the discounting of bills and the cost of packing and conveyancing, and then continue on to bills of exchange and how to figure them out. That belongs to the twelfth and thirteenth year, and if it is taught at this time it will be retained for the rest of life; otherwise it is always forgotten again. It is possible to deal with it in a simpler form, but it should be done at this age. Anyone who can do this properly has mastered the fundamental method of all computation. Compound interest is not involved at this time. You should therefore go over algebra in an organic way until multiplication, and then continue on to surface area calculation.

Now let’s proceed to the other questions from yesterday, because here it is important also that you should engender presence of mind in the children by assigning them problems.

Someone proposed setting up a little stall with fruit, vegetables, potatoes, and so on, so that the children would have to buy and sell, pay for their purchases, and actually figure out everything for themselves.

RUDOLF STEINER: This idea of buying and selling is very good for the second grade. Also, you should insist that those who have been assigned a problem should really work it out for themselves; you must not allow anyone else do it for them. Keep their interest awake and alive at every point!

Mental arithmetic was discussed.

RUDOLF STEINER related how Gauss¹ as a boy of six arrived at the following solution to a problem he had to do: all of the numbers from 1 to 100 had to be added together. Gauss thought about the problem and concluded it would be a simpler and easier to get a quick answer by taking the same numbers twice, arranging them in the first row in the usual order from left to right—1, 2, 3, 4, 5... up to 100, and beneath that a second row in the reverse order—100, 99, 98, 97, 96 ... and so on to 1; thus 100 was under the 1, 99 under the 2, 98 under the 3, and so on. Then each of these 2 numbers would in every case add up to the whole. This sum would then have to be taken 100 times, which makes 10,100; then, because you have added each of the numbers from 1 to 100 twice (once forward and once backward) this sum would then be halved, and the answer is 5,050. In this way Gauss, to the great astonishment of his teacher, solved the problem in his head.

RUDOLF STEINER: You can use your imagination in making up arithmetical problems, and you can engender presence of mind through problems that deal with movement. With yesterday's example you can progress to practical life by saying, “I sent an express messenger with a letter. Because of certain circumstances the letter was no longer valid. So I sent another messenger. How quickly must the second messenger travel to arrive before the letter had caused any harm? The children should be able to figure this out at least approximately, which is good for them.

One of the teachers spoke of errors in calculation.

RUDOLF STEINER: These kinds of errors in calculations are usual. It is very common to figure the errors into the whole. There is one such mistake made these days that will at sometime or another have to be corrected. When Copernicus formulated his “Copernican system” he proposed three laws. If all three were to be used to describe the Earth’s course through space we would get a very different movement from what is now accepted by astronomers and taught in schools. This elliptic movement would only be possible if the third law were disregarded. When the astronomer uses the telescope, these things do not add up. Because of this, corrections are inserted into the calculations; through the use of Bessel's equations, corrections are introduced every year to account for what does not accord with reality.² In Bessel’s corrections there is the third law of Copernicus.

Your method must never be simply to occupy the children with examples you figure out for them, but you should give them practical examples from real life; you must let everything lead into practical life. In this way you can always demonstrate how what you begin with is fructified by what follows and vice versa.

How would you resolve all these problems? (the flow of fluids slowly through small holes, quickly through large holes; rates of circular motion in machines with wheels of different sizes, and so on.)

The best way would be to proceed at this point to the explanation of what a clock is in its various forms—pendulumclocks, watches, and so on.

These are your tasks for tomorrow:

1. Some historical subject related to the history of civilization to be worked out on the lines of the example.

2. The treatment of some subject taken from nature—sunrise and sunset, seasons of the year and so on—whatever may suggest itself to you, something out of the great universe. The point is to show your method of teaching.

3. The principles of music for the first school year.

4. What form would you give to teaching the poetry of other languages? How would you give the children a feeling for what is poetic in other tongues?

5. How can you provide children with an idea of the ellipse, hyperbola, circle, and lemniscate; also the concept of geometrical locus? The children must be taught all this just before they leave our school at fourteen.

• 1. Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), German mathematician and astronomer. He demonstrated that a circle can be divided into seventeen equal arcs through elementary geometry and developed a new technique for calculating the orbits of asteroids. He is also the originator of the Gaussian error curve in statistics and is considered the founder of the mathematical theory of electricity, from which derives the gaussmeter.
• 2. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846), German astronomer; he calculated the orbit of Halley’s comet in 1804 and made the first “authenticated” calculation of a star’s distance from Earth. He also calculated the elliptical nature of Earth’s orbit.

The principles were developed for teaching music to the first and second grades.

RUDOLF STEINER: Children should be allowed to hear an instrument, to hear music objectively, apart from themselves. This is important. It should be a matter of principle that well before the ninth year the children should learn to play solo instruments, and the piano can be added later for those for whom it is considered advisable. What matters most is that we make a right beginning in this sphere.

Further remark on the concept of interest, proceeding to algebra:

If \(A =\) amount, \(P =\) principal, \(I =\) interest, \(R =\) rate of interest, \(T =\) time, then \(A = P + I\).

Since

$$I = \frac{PRT}{100}$$

then

$$A = P + \frac{PRT}{100}$$

RUDOLF STEINER: It would never be possible to describe capital in this way these days; this formula only has real value if \(T\) equals a year or less, because in reality two cases are given: Either you remove the interest each year, in which case the same initial capital always remains, or else you leave the interest with the capital, in which case you need to figure according to compound interest. If you omit \(T\)—that is, if you figure it for only one year, then it is an actual thing; it is essential to present realities to the children. Do not fail to observe that the transition to algebra as we have spoken of it, is really carried out—first from addition to multiplication, and then from subtraction to division. This must be adhered to strictly.

RUDOLF STEINER explained the transition from arithmetic to algebra with the following example: First you write down a number of figures in which all the addenda are different:

Some of the addenda could also be equal:

Or all the addenda could be the same:

If you proceed, as described in our previous discussion, to replace numbers with letters, then you could have the equation:

\(S_1 = a + a + a\); that is, three \(a\)’s, or three times \(a = 3a\).

then

then

\(S_3 = a + a + a + a + a + a + a\); or seven times \(a = 7a\)

and so on. I can keep doing this; I could do it \(9\) times, \(21\) times, \(25\) times, I can do it \(n\) times:

\(S_n = a + a + a ... n\) times \(= na\)

Thus, I get the factor by varying the number of the addenda, while the addendum itself is the other factor. In this way multiplication can easily be developed and understood from addition, and you thus make the transition from actual numbers to algebraic quantities:

\(a × a = a2\), \(a × a × a = a3\).

In the same way you can derive division from subtraction. If we take b away from a very large number a, we get the remainder \(r\):

\(r = a – b\)

If we take b away again, we get the remainder:

\(r_2 = a – b – b = a – 2b\)

If b is taken away a third time we obtain:

\(r_3 = a – b – b – b = a – 3b\) and so on.

We could continue until there is nothing left of number \(a\): suppose this happens after subtracting \(b\) \(n\) times:

\(r_n = a – b – b – b ... n\) times \(= – nb\) When there is nothing left—that is, when the last remainder is \(0\), then:

\(0 = a – nb\)

So a is now completely divided up, because nothing remains:

\(a = nb\)

I have taken b away n times, I have divided \(a\) into nothing but \(bs\), \(a/b = n\), so the \(a\) is completely used up. I have discovered that I can do this \(n\) times, and in so doing I have gone from subtraction to division.

Thus we can say: multiplication is a special case of addition, and division is a special case of subtraction, except that you add to it or take away from it, not just once, but repeatedly, as the case may be.

Negative and imaginary numbers were discussed.

RUDOLF STEINER: A negative number is a subtrahend [the number subtracted] for which there is no minuend [the number from which it is subtracted]; it is a demand that something be done: there being nothing to do it with, thus it cannot be done. Eugen Dühring rejected imaginary numbers as nonsense and spoke of Gauss’s definition of “the imaginary” as completely stupid, unrealistic, farfetched nonsense.¹

From addition, therefore, you develop multiplication, and from multiplication, rise to a higher power. And then from subtraction you develop division, and from division, find roots.

addition—subtraction
multiplication—division
raising to a higher power—finding roots

You should not proceed to raising to a higher power and finding roots until after you have begun algebra (between the eleventh and twelfth years), because, with roots, raising to a power of an algebraic equation of more than one term (polynomial) plays a role. In this connection you should also deal with figuring gross, net, taxes, and packing charges.

A question about the use of formulas.

RUDOLF STEINER: The question is whether you should avoid the habitual use of formulas, but go through the thought processes again and again (a good opportunity for practicing speech), or whether it might be even better to go ahead and use the formula itself. If you can succeed, tactfully, in making the formula fully understood, then it can be very useful to use it as a speech exercise—to a certain extent.

But from a certain age on, it is also good to make the formula into something felt by the children, make it into something that has inner life, so that, for example, when the \(T\) increases in the formula \(I = PRT/100\), it gives the children a feeling of the whole thing growing.

In effect, this is what I wanted to say at this point—that you should use the actual numbers for problems of this kind—for example, in interest and percentages—in order to make the transition to algebra, and in doing so, develop multiplication, division, raising powers, and roots. These are things that certainly must be done with the children.

Now I would like to ask a question: Do you consider it good to deal with raising to a higher power and finding roots before you have done algebra, or would you do it later?

Comment about raising to a higher power first and finding roots after.

RUDOLF STEINER: Your plan then would be (and should continue to be) to start with algebra as soon as possible after the eleventh or twelfth year, and only after that proceed to raising to a higher power and finding roots. After teaching the children algebra, you can show them in a very quick and simple way how to square, cube, raise to a higher power, and extract the root, whereas before they know algebra you would have to spend a terribly long time on it. You can teach easily and economically if you take algebra first.

A historical survey for the older children (eleven to fourteen years) was presented concerning the founding and development of towns, referring to the existence of a “Germany” at the time of the invasion of the Magyars.

RUDOLF STEINER: You must be very careful not to allow muddled concepts to arise unconsciously. At the time of Henry, the so-called “townbuilder,” there was of course no “Germany.” You would have to express what you mean by saying “towns on the Rhine” or “towns on the Danube” in the districts that later became “German.”²

Before the tenth century the Magyars are not involved at all, but there were invasions of Huns, Avars, and so on. But after the tenth century you can certainly speak of “Germany.” When the children reach the higher grades (the seventh and eighth grades) I would try to give them a concept of chronology; if you just say ninth or tenth century, you do not give a sufficiently real picture. How then would you manage to awaken in the children a concrete view of time?

You could explain it to them like this: “if you are now of such and such an age, how old are your mother and father? Then, how old are your grandfather and grandmother?” And so you evoke a picture of the whole succession of generations, and you can make it clear to the children that a series of three generations makes up about 100 years, so that in 100 years there would be three generations. A century ago the great grandparents were children. But if you go back nine centuries, there have not been three generations, but \(9\ x\ 3 = 27\) generations. You can say to the child: “Now imagine you are holding your father’s hand, and he’s holding your grandfather’s hand, and he is, in turn, holding your great-grandfather’s hand, and so on. If they were now all standing together side by side, which would be Henry I, which number in the row would have stood face to face with the Magyars around the year 926? It would be the twenty-seventh in the row.” I would demonstrate this very clearly in a pictorial way. After giving the children this concrete image of how long ago it was, I would present a graphic description of the migrations of the Magyars. I would tell them about the Magyars’ invasion of Europe at that time, how they broke in with such ferocity that everyone had to flee before them, even the little children in their cradles, who had to be carried up to the mountaintops, and how then the onrushing Magyars burned the villages and forests. Give them a vivid picture of this Magyar onset.

It was then described how Henry, knowing he had been able to resist the Magyars in fortified Goslar, resolved to build fortified towns, and in this way it come about that numerous towns were founded.

RUDOLF STEINER: Here again, could you not present this more in connection with the whole history of civilization? It is only a garbled historical legend to say that Henry founded these towns. All these tenth century towns were built on their original foundations—that is, the markets—before then. But what helped them to expand was the migration of the neighboring people into the towns in order to defend themselves more easily against the Magyars’ assaults, and for this reason they fortified these places. The main reasons for building these towns were more economic in nature. Henry had very little part in all this.

I ask you to be truly graphic in your descriptions, to make everything really alive, so that the children get vivid pictures in their minds, and the whole course of events stands out clearly before them. You must stimulate their imagination and use methods such as those I mentioned when I showed you how to make time more real. Nothing is actually gained by knowing the year that something occurred—for example, the battle of Zama; but by using the imagination, by knowing that, if they held hands with all the generations back to Charles the Great, the time of their thirtieth ancestor, the children would get a truly graphic, concrete idea of time. This point of time then grows much closer to you—it really does—when you know that Charles the Great is there with your thirtieth ancestor.

Question: Wouldn’t it also be good when presenting historical descriptions to dwell on the difference in thought and feeling of the people of those times?

RUDOLF STEINER: Yes. I have always pointed this out in my lectures and elsewhere. Most of all, when speaking of the great change that occurred around the fifteenth century, you should make it very clear that there was a great difference between the perception, feeling, and thought of people before and after this time. Lamprecht too (whom I do not however especially recommend) is careful to describe a completely different kind of thinking, perceiving, and feeling in people before this time.³ The documents concerning this point have not yet been consulted at all.

In studying the books written on cultural history you must, above all, develop a certain perceptive faculty; with this you can properly assess all the different things related by historians, whether commonplace or of greater importance, and so gain a truer picture of human history.

Rudolf Steiner recommended for the teachers’ library Buckle’s History of Civilization in England and Lecky’s History of Rationalism in Europe.

RUDOLF STEINER: From these books you can learn the proper methods of studying the history of human progress. With Lamprecht only his earlier work would be suitable, but even much of this is distorted and subjective. If you have not acquired this instinct for the real forces at work in history, you will be in danger of falling into the stupidity and amateurism of a “Wildenbruch” for example;⁴ he imagined that the stories of emperors and kings and the family brawls between Louis the Pious and his sons were important events in human history.

Gustav Freytag’s Stories from Ancient German History are very good;⁵ but you must beware of being influenced too much by this rather smug type of history book (written for the unsophisticated). The time has come now when we must get out of a kind of thinking and feeling that belonged to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Mention was made of Houston Stuart Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.⁶

RUDOLF STEINER: With regard to Chamberlain also you must try to develop the correct instinct. For one part of clever writing you get three parts of bad, unwholesome stuff. He has some very good things to say, but you must read it all yourselves and form your own judgements. The historical accounts of Buckle and Lecky are better.⁷ Chamberlain is more one of these “gentlemen in a dinner jacket.” He is rather a vain person and cannot be accepted as an authority, although many of his observations are correct. And the way he ended up was not particularly nice—I mean his lawsuit with the “Frankfurter Zeitung.”

Kautsky’s writings were mentioned.⁸

RUDOLF STEINER: Well yes, but as a rule you must assume that the opposite of what he says is true! From modern socialists you can get good material in the way of facts, as long as you do not allow yourselves to be deceived by the theories that color all their descriptions. Mehring too presents us with rather a peculiar picture;⁹ because at first, when he was himself a progressive Liberal, he inveighed against the Social Democrats in his book on Social Democracy; but later when he had gone over to the Social Democrats he said exactly the same things about the Liberals!

An introduction was presented on the fundamental ideas in mathematical geography for twelve-year-old children, with observations on the sunrise and the ecliptic.

RUDOLF STEINER: After taking the children out for observations, it would be very good to let them draw what they had observed; you would have to make sure there is a certain parallel between the drawing and what the children saw outside. It is advisable not to have them do too much line drawing. It is very important to teach these things, but if you include too much you will reach the point where the children can no longer understand what you are saying. You can relate it also to geography and geometry.

When you have developed the idea of the ecliptic and of the coordinates, that is about as far as you should go.

Someone else developed the same theme—that is, sunrise and sunset—for the younger children, and tried to explain the path of the Sun and planets in a diagrammatic drawing.

RUDOLF STEINER: This viewpoint will gradually lose more and more of its meaning, because what has been said until now about these movements is not quite correct. In reality it is a case of a movement like this (lemniscatory screw-movement):

Here, for example, [in position 1] we have the Sun; here are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and here are Venus, Mercury, and Earth. Now they all move in the direction indicated [spiral line], moving ahead one behind the other, so that when the Sun has progressed to the second position we have Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars here, and we have Venus, Mercury, and Earth over there. Now the Sun continues to revolve and progresses to here [position 3]. This creates the illusion that Earth revolves round the Sun. The truth is that the Sun goes ahead, and the Earth creeps continually after it.

The ancient Egyptian civilization was described.

RUDOLF STEINER: It is most important to explain to the children that Egyptian art was based on a completely different method of representing nature. The ancient Egyptians lacked the power of seeing things in perspective. They painted the face from the side and the body from the front. You may certainly explain this to the children, especially the Egyptian concept of painting. Then you must point out how Egyptian drawing and painting was related to their view of natural history—how, for example, they portrayed men with animal heads and so on.

In ancient times the habit of comparing people with the animals was very common. You could then point out to the children what is present in seed form, as it were, within every human face, which children can still see to a certain extent.¹⁰ The Egyptians still perceived this affinity of the human physiognomy with animals; they were still at this childlike stage of perception.

Question: What should one really tell children about the building of the Egyptian pyramids?

RUDOLF STEINER: It is of course extraordinarily important for children too that you should gradually try to present them with what is true rather than what is false. In reality the pyramids were places of initiation, and this is where you reach the point of giving the children an idea of the higher Egyptian education, which was initiation at the same time. You must tell them something about what happened within the pyramids. Religious services were conducted there, just as today they are conducted in churches, except that their services led to knowledge of the universe. Ancient Egyptians learned through being shown, in solemn ritual, what comes about in the universe and in human evolution. Religious exercises and instruction were the same; it was really such that instruction and religious services were the very same thing.

Someone described the work of the Egyptians on the pyramids and obelisks, and said that several millions of people must have been needed to transport the gigantic blocks of stone, to shape them, and to set them in place. We must ask ourselves how it was possible at all, with the technical means available at that time, to move these great heavy blocks of limestone and granite and to set them in place.

RUDOLF STEINER: Yes, but you only give the children a true picture when you tell them: If people were to do this work with the physical strength of the present day, two and a half times as many people would be necessary. The fact is that the Egyptians had two and a half times the physical strength that people have today; this is true, at least, of those who worked on the pyramids and so on. There were also, of course, those who were not so strong.

Question: Would it be good to include Egyptian mythology?

RUDOLF STEINER: Unless you can present Egyptian mythology in its true form, it should be omitted. But in the Waldorf school, if you want to go into this subject at all, it would be a very good plan to introduce the children to the ideas of Egyptian mythology that are true, and are well known to you.¹¹

• 1. Karl Eugen Dühring (1833–1921), German positivist philosopher and economist. Wrote Kapital und Arbeit (Capital and Labor), and Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie (Logic and Epistemological Theory).
• 2. This could as well apply to speaking of “America” in regard to events and places prior to the time of Columbus and the European settlers.
• 3. Karl Gottfried Lamprecht (1856–1915), historian who developed the theory that history is social-psychological rather than political.
• 4. Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845–1909), German writer, author of Spartacus.
• 5. Gustav Freytag (1816–1895), German writer, promoter of German liberalism and the middle class. His books included a series of six historical novels.
• 6. Houston Stuart Chamberlain (1855–1927), British publicist, naturalized German citizen. Wrote on the superiority of the Western Aryan race.
• 7. Probably refers to Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862), English historian, who wrote the incomplete History of Civilization in England. William Edward Hartpole Lecky 1838–1903), Irish historian who wrote on modern European history.
• 8. Karl Johann Kautsky (1854–1938), German Marxist theorist, journalist, and secretary to Friedrich Engels in London, he opposed Bolshevism and the Russian revolution.
• 9. Franz Mehring (1846–1919), German Socialist historian and journalist.
• 10. See The Foundations of Human Experience, lecture 9.
• 11. See Rudolf Steiner, Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1990.

Speech Exercises:

Slinging slanging a swindler
the wounding fooled a victor vexed
The wounding fooled a swindler
slinging slanging vexed

March smarten ten
clap rigging rockets
Crackling plopping lynxes
fling from forward forth

Crackling plopping lynxes
fling from forward forth
March smarten ten
clap rigging rockets

RUDOLF STEINER: With this exercise you should share the recitation, like a relay race, coming in quickly one after the other. One begins, points to another to carry on, and so on.

Someone spoke about the ellipse, the hyperbola, the circle, the lemniscate, and the conception of geometrical loci. At the same time he mentioned how the lemniscate (Cassini curve) can take on the form III, in the diagram, where the one branch of the curve leaves space and enters space again as the other branch.

RUDOLF STEINER: This has an inner organic correlate. The two parts have the same relation to each other as the pineal gland to the heart. The one branch is situated in the head—the pineal gland, the other lies in the breast—the heart. Only the pineal gland is more weakly developed, the heart is stronger.

Someone spoke on a historical theme—the migrations of various peoples.

RUDOLF STEINER: The causes assigned to such migrations very often depend on the explanations of historical facts. As to the actual migrations—for example, the march of the Goths—at the root of the matter, you will find that the Romans had the money and the Germanic peoples had none, and at every frontier there was a tendency among the Germanic peoples to try to acquire Roman money one way or another. Because of this, they became mercenaries and the like. Whole legions of the Germanic peoples entered into Roman hire. The migration of the people was an economic matter. This was the only thing that made the spread of Christianity possible, but the migrations as such began, nevertheless, with the avarice of the Germanic peoples who wanted to acquire Roman money. The Romans of course were also impoverished by this. This was already the case as early as the march of the Cimbri. The Cimbri were told that the Romans had money, whereas they themselves were poor. This had a powerful effect on the Cimbri. “We want gold,” they cried, “Roman gold!”

There are still various race strata—even Celtic traces. Today there are definite echoes of the Celtic language—for example, at the sources of the Danube, Brig and Breg, Brigach, and Brege, and wherever you find the suffix ach in the place names such as Unterach, Dornach, and so on. Ach comes from a word meaning a “small stream” (related to aqua), and points to a Celtic origin. “Ill,” too, and other syllables remind us of the old Celtic language. The Germanic language subsequently overlaid the Celtic.

[Rudolf Steiner referred to the contrast between Arians and Athanasians.¹]

There is something connected with the history of these migrations that is very important to explain to the children—that is, that it was very different for the migrating peoples to come into districts that were already fully developed agriculturally. In the case of the Germanic peoples, such as the Goths in Spain and Italy, they found that all the land was being cultivated already. The Goths and other ethnic groups arrived but soon disappeared. They became absorbed by the other nations who were there before them. The Franks, on the other hand, preferred to go to the West, and arrived in districts not yet fully claimed for agriculture, and they continued to exist as Franks. Nothing remained of the Goths who settled where the land was all already owned. The Franks were able to preserve their nationality because they had migrated into untilled areas. That is a very important historical law. You can refer to this law again later in relation to the configuration of North America. There, it is true that the Red Indians were almost exterminated, but it was also true, nevertheless, that people could migrate into uncultivated districts.

It is also important to explain the difference between such things as, for example, the France of Charles the Great and the state of a later time. If you are unaware of this difference, you cannot cross the Rubicon of the fifteenth century. The empire of Charles the Great was not yet a state. How was it for the Merovingians? Initially they were no more than large-scale landowners. The only thing that mattered to them was civil law. As time passed, this product of the old Germanic conditions of ownership became the Roman idea of “rights,” whereby those who were merely administrators gradually acquired power. And so, by degrees, property went to the administrative authorities, the public officials, and the state arose only when these authorities became the ruling power later. The state, therefore, originated through the claims of the administration. The “count nobility” arose as the antithesis of “prince nobility.” The word Graf (count) has the same origin as “graphologist” or “scribe.” It is derived from graphein, to write. The “count” is the Roman scribe, the administrator, whereas the “prince nobility,” originally the warrior nobility, is still associated with bravery, heroism, and similar qualities. The prince (Fürst) is “first,” the foremost one. And so this transition from Fürst to Graf (prince to count) marked the rise of the concept of “state.” This can of course be made very clear by using examples such as these.

Someone described how he would introduce the spread of Christianity among the Germanic peoples.

RUDOLF STEINER: Arian Christianity, expressed in practical life, is very similar to later Protestantism, except that it was less abstract and more concrete. During the first and second centuries the Mithras cult was very widespread among Roman soldiers on the Rhine and the Danube, especially among the officers. In what is now Alsace and elsewhere, Thor, Wotan, and Saxnot were worshipped as the three principal gods of the ancient Germanic people, and the old Germanic religious rites and ceremonies were used.²

We could describe many scenes that demonstrate how the little churches were built in Alsace and the Black Forest by the Roman clerics. “We want to do this or that for Odin” sang the men. The women sang, “Christ came for those who do nothing by themselves.” This trick was actually used to spread Christianity—that by doing nothing one could achieve salvation.

Eiche (the oak), in the old Germanic cult-language, designates the priest of Donar. During the time of Boniface it was still considered very important that the formulas were still known. Boniface knew how to gain possession of some of these formulas; he knew the magic word, but the priest of Donar no longer knew it. Boniface, through his higher power, felled the priest of Donar—the “Donar-oak”—by means of his “axe,” the magic word. The priest died of grief; he perished through the “fire from Heaven.” These are images of imagination. Several generations later this was all transformed into the well-known picture.

You must learn to “read” pictures of this kind, and thus through learning to teach, and through teaching to learn.

Boniface romanized Germanic Christianity. Charles the Great’s biography was written by Eginhard, and Eginhard is a flatterer.

Music teaching was spoken about.

RUDOLF STEINER: Those who are less advanced in music should at least be present when you teach the more advanced students, even if they do not take part and merely listen. You can always separate them later as a last resort. There will be many other subjects in which the situation will be just as bad, in which it will be impossible for the more advanced students to work with those who are backward. This will not happen as often if we keep trying to find the right methods. But due to a variety of circumstances, such things are not obvious now. When you really teach according to our principles you will discover that the difficulties, usually unnoticed, will appear not only in music lessons, but in other subjects as well—for example, in drawing and painting. You will find it very difficult to help some of the children in artistic work, and also in the plastic arts, in modeling.

Here, too, you should try not to be too quick to separate the children, but try to wait until they can no longer work together.

,em>Someone spoke about teaching poetry in French and English [foreign language] lessons.

RUDOLF STEINER: We must stay strictly with speaking a certain amount of English and French with the children right from the beginning—not according to old-fashioned methods, but so that they learn to appreciate both languages and get a feeling for the right expressions in each.

When a student in the second, third, or fourth grade breaks down over recitation, you must help in a kind and gentle way, so that the child trusts you and doesn’t lose courage. The child’s good will must also be aroused for such tasks.

The lyric-epic element in poetry is suitable for children between twelve and fifteen years of age, for example, ballads or outstanding passages from historical writings, good prose extracts, and selected scenes from plays.

Then in the fourth grade we begin Latin, and in the sixth grade Greek for those who want it, and in this way they can get a three-year course. If we could enlarge the school we would begin Latin and Greek together. We shall have to see how we can manage to relieve children who are learning Latin and Greek of some of their German. This can be done very easily, because much of the grammar can be dealt with in Latin and Greek, which would otherwise come into the German lessons. There can also be various other ways.

C was pronounced “K” in old Latin; and in medieval Latin, which was a spoken language, it was C as in “cease.” The ancient Romans had many dialects in their empire. We can call Cicero “Sisero” because in the Middle Ages it was still pronounced like that. We can’t speak of what is “right” in pronunciation because it is something quite conventional. The method of teaching classical languages can be similarly constructed; here, however, with the exception of what I referred to this morning,³ it is usually possible to use the normal contemporary curricula, because they originated in the best educational periods of the Middle Ages, and they still contain much that has pedagogical value for teaching Latin and Greek. Today’s curricula still copy from the old, which makes good sense.

You should avoid one thing, however: the use of the little doggerel verses composed for memorizing the rules of grammar. To the people of today they seem rather childish, and when they are translated into German they are just too clumsy. You must try to avoid these, but otherwise such methods are not at all bad.

Sculpting should begin before the ninth year. With sculpture too, you should work from the forms—spheres first, then other forms, and so on.

Someone asked whether reports should be provided.

RUDOLF STEINER: As long as children remain in the same school, what is the purpose of writing reports? Provide them when they leave school. Constant reports are not vitally important to education. Remarks about various individual subjects could be given freely and without any specific form.

Necessary communication with the parents is in some cases also a kind of grading, but that cannot be entirely avoided. It may also prove necessary, for example, for a pupil to stay in the same grade and repeat the year’s work (something we should naturally handle somewhat differently than is usual); this may be necessary occasionally, but in our way of teaching it should be avoided whenever possible. Let’s make it our practice to correct our students so that they are really helped by the correction.

In arithmetic, for example, if we do not stress what the child cannot do, but instead work with the student so that in the end the child can do it—following the opposite of the principle used until now—then “being unable” to do something will not play the large role it now does. Thus in our whole teaching, the passion for passing judgment that teachers acquire by marking grades for the children every day in a notebook should be transformed into an effort to help the children over and over, every moment. Do away with all your grades and placements. If there is something that the student cannot do, the teachers should give themselves the bad mark as well as the pupil, because they have not yet succeeded in teaching the student how to do it.

Reports have a place, as I have said, as communication with the parents and to meet the demand of the outside world; in this sense we must follow the usual custom. I don’t need to enlarge on this, but in school we must make it felt that reports are very insignificant to us. We must spread this feeling throughout the school so that it becomes a kind of moral atmosphere.

You now have a picture of the school, because we have been through the whole range of subjects, with one exception; we still have to speak about how to incorporate technical subjects into school. We have not spoken of this yet, merely because there was no one there to do the work. I refer to needlework, which must still be included in some way. This must be considered, but until now there was no one who could do it. Of course it will also be necessary to consider the practical organization of the school; I must speak with you about who should teach the various classes, whether certain lessons should be given in the morning or afternoon, and so on. This must be discussed before we begin teaching. Tomorrow will be the opening festival, and then we will find time, either tomorrow or the day after, to discuss what remains concerning the practical distribution of work. We will have a final conference for this purpose where those most intimately concerned will be present. I shall then also have more to say about the opening ceremony.

• 1. Athanasian refers to the doctrine of Saint Athanasius, or Athanasius the Great (c. 293–373), who was a Greek theologian and prelate in Egypt. Throughout his life he opposed Arianism and became known as the “Father of Orthodoxy.” He was exiled three times by Roman emperors for his stand; he wrote Four Orations against the Arians but not the Athanasian Creed (written after the fifth century), which espouses his teachings on the Trinity. The Arian doctrine, on the other hand, has to do with Arius (c. 250–336), also a Greek ecclesiastic in Alexandria, who taught a Neoplatonic doctrine that God is alone and unknowable, the creator of every being, including the Christ. Emperor Constantine I formed the Council of Nicaea in 325 to declare Arianism a heresy.
• 2. This is a reference to Steiner’s lectures on the history of the Middle Ages, given in the Workers’ College in Berlin between October 18 and December 20, 1904 Geschichte des Mittelalters bis zu den großen Erfindungen und Entdeckungen (GA 51).
• 3. See morning lecture pp. 189–190.

My dear friends, it would still be possible, of course, to present many more details from the field of general pedagogy. However, since we are always forced in such cases to conclude prematurely, we will use the remaining time this morning to take our general discussions of education over into an outline of instructional goals for the individual grades. In our general pedagogical studies, we have been trying to acquire the right point of view for dividing up the subject matter with regard to the development of the growing human being. We must always remember the necessity of consolidating our instruction in the way that I demonstrated. For example, we can proceed from mineralogy to geography or use ethnological characteristics to link history and geography when we deal with cultural history in a spiritual way. Bearing in mind this possibility of proceeding from one subject to another, let’s go through the subject matter we want to present to our young charges and divide it into individual categories.

The first thing we need to consider when we welcome children into the first grade is to find appropriate stories to tell them and for them to tell back to us. In the telling and retelling of fairy tales, legends, and accounts of outer realities, we are cultivating the children’s speech, forming a bridge between the local dialect and educated conversational speech. By making sure the children speak correctly, we are also laying a foundation for correct writing.

Parallel to such telling and retelling, we introduce the children to a certain visual language of forms. We have them draw simple round and angular shapes simply for the sake of the forms. As already mentioned, we do not do this for the sake of imitating some external object, but simply for the sake of the forms themselves. Also, we do not hesitate to link this drawing to simple painting, placing the colors next to each other so that the children get a feeling for what it means to place red next to green, next to yellow, and so on.

On the basis of what we achieve through this, we will be able to introduce the children to writing in the way that we have already considered from the perspective of educational theory. The natural way to go about it would be to make a gradual transition from form drawing to the Latin alphabet. Whenever we are in a position to introduce the Latin alphabet first, we should certainly do so, and then proceed from the Latin alphabet to German script. After the children have learned to read and write simple handwritten words, we make the transition to printed letters, taking the Latin alphabet first, of course, and following it up with the German.¹

If we proceed rationally, we will get far enough in the first grade so that the children will be able to write simple things that we say to them or that they compose themselves. If we stick to simple things, the children will also be able to read them. Of course we don’t need to aim at having the children achieve any degree of accomplishment in this first year. It would be completely wrong to expect that. The point is simply that, during the first grade, we should get the children to the point where they no longer confront the printed word as a total unknown, so to speak, and are able to take the initiative to write some simple things. This should be our goal with regard to language instruction, if I may put it like that.

We will be helped in this by what we are going to consider next—namely the elasticity and adaptability that the children’s speech organs can gain from instruction in singing. Without our making a special point of it, they will develop a greater sensitivity to long and short vowels, voiced or voiceless sounds, and so on. Even though this may not be our intention in teaching music, the children will be introduced nonetheless to an auditory understanding of what the instrument of the voice produces in music—in a simple way at first, so that they can get ... well, of course it’s impossible to get an overview of sounds, so I would actually have to invent a word and say: so that they can get an “overhearing” of it. By “overhearing” I mean that they really experience inwardly the single thing among the many, so that they are not overwhelmed by things as they perceive them.

In addition to this we must add something that can stimulate the children’s thinking when we tell them about things that are close at hand, things that will later appear in a more structured form in geography and science. We explain such things and introduce them to the children’s understanding by relating them to things that are already familiar—to familiar animals, plants, and soil formations, or to local mountains, creeks, or meadows. Schools call this “local history,” but the purpose is to bring about a certain awakening in the children with regard to their surroundings; a soul awakening, so that they learn to really connect with their surroundings.

At the beginning of the second grade, we will continue with the telling and retelling of stories and try to develop this further. Then the children can be brought gradually to the point of writing down the stories we tell them. After they have had some practice in writing down what they hear, we can also have them write short descriptions of what we’ve told them about the animals, plants, meadows, and woods in the surroundings.

During the first grade it would be important not to touch on issues of grammar, and so on, to any great extent. In the second grade, however, we should teach the children the concepts of what a noun is, what an adjective is, and what a verb is. We should then connect this simply and graphically to a discussion of how sentences are constructed. With regard to descriptions, to thoughtfully describing their surroundings, we continue with what the children began in the first grade.

The third grade is essentially a continuation of the second with regard to speaking, reading, writing, and many other things. We will continue to increase the children’s ability to write about what they see and read. Now we also try to summon up in them a conscious feeling for sounds that are short, long, drawn out, and so on. It is good to cultivate a feeling for articulating speech and for the general structure of language when the children are in third grade—that is, around the age of eight.² At this point, we attempt to convey an understanding of the different types of words and of the components and construction of a sentence—that is, of how punctuation marks such as commas and periods and so on are incorporated into a sentence.

Once again, with regard to telling and retelling, the fourth grade is a continuation of the third. When we take up short poems in the first and second grade, it’s good to make a point of allowing the children to experience the rhythm, rhyme, and meter instinctively, and to wait to make them aware of the poem’s inner structure--that is, everything that relates to its inner beauty—until the third and fourth grades.

At that point, however, we try to lead everything the children have learned about writing descriptions and retelling stories in writing over into composing letters of all kinds. Then we try to awaken in the children a clear understanding of the tenses, of everything expressed by the various transformations of a verb. At around age nine, the children should acquire the concepts for what they need in this regard; they should get a feeling for it, so that they don’t say “The man ran” when they should have said “The man has run”—that is, that they don’t confuse the past tense with the present perfect. Children should get a feeling for when it is proper to say “He stood” rather than “He has stood,” and other similar things that have to do with transformations in what a verb expresses. In the same way, we attempt to teach the children to feel instinctively the relationship between a preposition and its object. We should always make sure to help them get a feeling for when to use “on” instead of “at,” and so on. Children who are going on ten should practice shaping their native language and should experience it as a malleable element.

In the fifth grade, it is important to review and expand on what we did in the fourth grade, and, from that point on, it is important to take into account the difference between active and passive verb forms. We also begin asking children of this particular age not only to reproduce freely what they have seen and heard, but also to quote what they have heard and read and to use quotation marks appropriately. We try to give the children a great deal of spoken practice in distinguishing between conveying their own opinions and conveying those of others. Through their writing assignments, we also try to arouse a keen distinction between what they themselves have thought, seen, and so forth, and what they communicate about what others have said. In this context, we again try to perfect their use of punctuation. Letter writing is also developed further.

In the sixth grade, of course we review and continue what we did in the fifth. In addition, we now try to give the children a strong feeling for the subjunctive mood. We use as many examples as possible in speaking about these things so that the children learn to distinguish between what can be stated as fact and what needs to be expressed in the subjunctive. When we have the children practice speaking, we make a special point of not allowing any mistakes in the use of the subjunctive, so that they assimilate a strong feeling for this inner dimension of the language. A child is supposed to say, “I am taking care that my little sister learn [subjunctive] how to walk,” and not, “I am taking care that my little sister learns to walk.”³

We now make the transition from personal letters to simple, concrete business compositions dealing with things the children have already learned about elsewhere. Even as early as the third grade we can extend what we say about the meadows and woods and so on to business relationships, so that later on the subject matter is already available for composing simple business letters.

In the seventh grade, we will again have to continue with what we did in the sixth grade, but now we also attempt to have the children develop an appropriate and flexible grasp of how to express wishing, astonishment, admiration, and so on in how they speak. We try to teach the children to form sentences in accordance with the inner configuration of these feelings. However, we do not need to mutilate poems or anything else in order to demonstrate how someone or other structured a sentence to express wishing. We approach it directly by having the children themselves express wishes and shape their sentences accordingly. We then have them express admiration and form the sentences accordingly, or help them to construct the sentences. To further educate their ability to see the inner flexibility of language, we then compare their wishing sentences to their admiring ones.

What has been presented in science will already have enabled the children to compose simple characterizations of the wolf, the lion, or the bee, let’s say. At this stage, alongside such exercises, which are directed more toward the universally human element in education, we must especially foster the children’s ability to formulate practical matters of business. The teacher must be concerned with finding out about practical business matters and getting them into the student’s heads in some sensible fashion.

In the eighth grade, it will be important to teach the children to have a coherent understanding of longer pieces of prose or poetry; thus, at this stage we will read a drama and an epic with the children, always keeping in mind what I said before: All the explanations and interpretations precede the actual reading of the piece, so that the reading is always the conclusion of what we do with the material. In particular, however, the practical business element in language instruction must not be disregarded in the eighth grade.

It will be important that we make it possible for children who have reached the fourth grade to choose to learn Latin. Meanwhile, we will have already introduced French and English [as foreign languages] in a very simple fashion as soon as the children have entered school.

When the children are in the fourth grade, we introduce them to Latin by having them listen to it, and we ask them to repeat little conversations as they gradually gain the ability to do so. We should certainly begin with speaking the language for the children to hear; in terms of speaking, we will attempt to achieve through listening what is usually accomplished in the first year of Latin instruction. We will then take this further according to the indications I gave in the lectures on educational theory, to the point where our eighth-grade graduates will have a mastery of Latin that corresponds to what is ordinarily taught in the fourth year of high school. In other words, our fourth graders must accomplish approximately what is usually taught in the first year of high school and our fifth and sixth graders what is usually taught in the second and third years respectively; the remainder of the time can be spent on what is usually taught in the fourth year.

Parallel to this we will continue with French and English [as foreign language] instruction, taking into account what we heard in the theoretical portion of these lectures.

We will also allow those who choose to study the Greek language to begin doing so. Here too, we proceed in the manner we heard about in the theoretical portion. Specifically, we attempt again to develop the writing of Greek letters on the basis of form drawing. It will be of great benefit to those who now choose to learn Greek to use a different set of letters to repeat the initial process of deriving writing from drawing.

Well, you have seen how we make free use of familiar things from the immediate surroundings for our independent instruction in general knowledge. In the third grade, when the children are going on nine, it is quite possible for this instruction to provide them with an idea of how mortar is mixed, for instance—I can only choose a few examples—and how it is used in building houses. They can also have an idea of how manuring and tilling are done, and of what rye and wheat look like. To put it briefly, in a very free way we allow the children to delve into the elements of their immediate surroundings that they are capable of understanding.

In the fourth grade we make the transition from this type of instruction to speaking about what belongs to recent history, still in a very free way. For example, we can tell the children how it happened that grapes came to be cultivated locally (if in fact that is the case), or how orchards were introduced or how one or the other industry appeared, and other similar things. Then, too, we draw on the geography of the local region, beginning with what is most readily available, as I have already described.

In the fifth grade, we make every effort to begin to introduce the children to real historical concepts. With fifth graders, we need not hesitate at all to teach the children about the cultures of Asian peoples and of the Greeks. Our fear of taking the children back into ancient times has occurred only because people in our day and age do not have the ability to develop concepts appropriate to these bygone times. However, if we constantly appeal to their feelings, it is easy enough to help ten- and eleven-year-olds develop an understanding of the Greeks and Asian peoples.

Parallel to this, as I showed you earlier, in geography we begin to teach the children also about soil formations and everything that is economically related to them, dealing first with the specific part of the Earth’s surface that is most readily available.

Greek and Roman history and its aftereffects (until the beginning of the fifteenth century) belong to the sixth grade. In geography we continue with what we did in the fifth grade, taking a different part of the Earth and then linking its climatic conditions to astronomical conditions, examples of which we experienced yesterday afternoon.

In the seventh grade, it is important to get the children to understand how the modern life of humanity dawned in the fifteenth century, and we then describe the situation in Europe and so on up to about the beginning of the seventeenth century. This is one of the most important historical periods, and we must cover it with great care and attention. Indeed, it is even more important than the time immediately following it. In geography, we continue with the study of astronomical conditions and begin to cover the spiritual and cultural circumstances of Earth’s inhabitants, of the various ethnic groups, but always in connection with what the children have already learned about material cultural circumstances—that is, economic circumstances—during their first two years of geography lessons.

In the eighth grade, we try to bring the children right up to the present in history, including a thorough consideration of cultural history. Most of what is included in history, as it is ordinarily taught, will only be mentioned in passing. It is much more important for children to experience how the steam engine, the mechanized loom, and so on have transformed the Earth than it is for them to learn at too young an age about such curiosities as the corrections made to the Emser Depesche.⁴ The things our history books contain are the least important as far as the education of children is concerned. Even great figures in history, such as Charlemagne, should basically be covered only in passing. You will need to do a lot of what I told you yesterday about aids to guiding abstract concepts of time over into something concrete. Indeed, we must do a very great deal of it.

Now I probably do not need to tell you that even the subjects we have discussed so far will help the children develop an awareness of the spirit that permeates everything present in the world, an awareness that the spirit lives in our language, in the geographical elements covering the Earth, and in the flow of history. When we try to sense the living spirit in everything, we will also find the proper enthusiasm for conveying this living spirit to our students.

Whenever we do this, we will learn to compensate our students for what the religious denominations have been doing to humanity since the beginning of the modern era. These religious denominations, which have never made the free development of the individual a priority, have cultivated materialism from various angles. When it is not permissible to use the entire content of the world to teach people that the spirit is active, religious instruction becomes a breeding ground for materialism. The various religious denominations have made it their task to eliminate all mention of spirit and soul from any other form of instruction because they want to keep that privilege for themselves. Meanwhile the reality of these things has dried up as far as the religious denominations are concerned, and so what is presented in religious instruction consists merely of sentimental clichés and figures of speech. All the clichés that are now so terribly apparent everywhere are actually due more to religious culture than to international culture, because nowadays the emptiest clichés, which human instincts then carry over into outer life, are being promoted by the religious denominations. Certainly ordinary life also creates many clichés, but the greatest sinners in this respect are the religious denominations.

It remains to be seen, my dear friends, how religious instruction—which I will not even touch on in these discussions, because that will be the task of the congregations in question—will affect other types of instruction here in our Waldorf school. For now religious instruction is a space that must be left blank; these hours will simply be given over to the religion teachers to do whatever they choose. It goes without saying that they are not going to listen to us. They will listen to their church’s constitution, or to their church gazette or that of the parochial school administration. We will fulfill our obligations in this respect, but we will also quietly continue to fulfill our obligation to summon up the spirit for our children in all the other subjects.

• 1. Steiner is referring here to the fact that the German language at that time was written in Fraktur, a specifically Germanic style of print and handwriting, rather than in the Latin, or Roman, alphabet now universally used for Western European languages.—TRANS.
• 2. The German translates literally as “in their eighth or ninth year” and is sometimes mistranslated in English as “eight or nine years old”; thus references to beginning school in “the seventh year” can be taken to mean that “children shouldn’t go to school until they are seven.” What Steiner said, however, was “in the seventh year of their life—that is, “six-going-on-seven.”—TRANS.
• 3. These distinctions are not as readily detected in current English. In Steiner’s example, the difference is between lerne and lernt; the first is perhaps closest to the process of learning (not yet fact), the second to having learned (fact).
• 4. Emser Depesche: An incident that touched off the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Bismark publicized an abridged and misleading version of a telegram (known as the “Ems Dispatch”), and the effect of this action was to feed the fury of the opposing parties in France and Prussia.