The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: I want to discuss a number of important points.

A teacher: What should we do in the eleventh-grade art class?

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly possible to cover the relationship of art to the development of culture, so that the students have a good understanding of that. You could point out why music as we understand it today arose relatively late. What the Greeks called music, and so forth. Do such things. Of course, you should also discuss in detail the things you are now covering from a German literary perspective. Why did landscape painting begin at a particular time? Look at such questions and also at the relationship of art to religion from an artistic perspective.

A religion teacher says something about that.

Dr. Steiner: The teaching of religion should have different emphasis. The emphasis in teaching art should be upon art itself, upon comprehending art. In connection with religion, I think we should work toward achieving a genuine religious attitude. It should be a religious education. In earlier times, there was a strong tendency to bring an intellectual element into religion.

We still need to discuss the eleventh-grade curriculum in more detail. The difficulty lies in our desire to maintain a certain kind of teaching practice, but also in the need to bring the children to the point where they can take their final examinations.

A teacher: I would like to ask about which fundamental areas of art we should undertake in the eighth and ninth grades?

Dr. Steiner: Do Dürer’s work in the eighth grade. I want to think about the ninth grade.

A teacher: I have a suggestion regarding final examinations. Perhaps we should have an Englishman and a Frenchman as teachers for the foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question of money.

A teacher: We need to do more grammar. We are still not meeting the goals of the curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: There is a compromise in the curriculum. If we can achieve the goals of the curriculum as we planned them, we will also find that the students pass their final examinations. We are still not doing everything needed to complete the curriculum.

A teacher: Would it be possible to engage special language teachers?

Dr. Steiner: Language teachers are accustomed to receiving what they presently earn. Suppose someone wanted 1200 Francs. That would be 72000 Marks. I have always considered hiring a Frenchman or an Englishman to be purely a question of money. We are everywhere short of money.

I have been thinking about hiring Miss Mellinger, Miss Bernhardi, and Miss Nägelin as new teachers. I do not know Mr. Rutz well enough to make a binding decision. He has agreed to a trial period. He will be here for a trial period, and then I can decide what to do after I know him better.

What are our financial reserves for the kindergarten? The kindergarten is very desirable. Just think for a moment, though, what it will mean to have four new teachers and compare that with the figures in the Waldorf School Association account. It is now extremely difficult to undertake projects that go beyond absolute necessity. We could open the kindergarten if it would at least carry itself, that is, if there is money for it. The financing from the Waldorf School Association troubles me. In the event it becomes possible to have the kindergarten, we will open it. But we cannot overburden the Waldorf School Association budget with that. We must maintain the kindergarten separately.

There is one thing we need to discuss. I mean here that we need to discuss a situation only so we do not incite all possible opposition. That is the behavior between the sexes. I don’t want to imply that it is so terrible, but it cannot go on without limitation.

I don’t think it is so bad. K.S. appears to be one of the main participants. The girls say the boys are learning this from books or from movies. In any event, we will need to pay attention to it. I do not want to say anything more than that we should be aware of these things and try to get through them in a good way.

What I meant is that we should keep an eye on things and not let them get out of hand. There is not much we can do since we would only be throwing oil into the fire. Altogether, there are only a few children involved. I would, however, prohibit this trashy literature. I would also try to stop the boys from going to the movies, because it ruins their good taste. It certainly is related to the development of good taste.

A teacher: Are there any eurythmy exercises that are good for this age group?

Dr. Steiner: That is something we need to discuss in connection with the curriculum.

A teacher: The tenth-grade handwork will carry over into the eleventh- grade school year.

Dr. Steiner: A few weeks in that regard will not matter.

A music teacher: I would like to ask about learning to play the piano in connection with using both hands.

Dr. Steiner: That is a very correct perception. It is true that it is possible to correct left-handedness quite easily through practicing the piano. That is something we need to keep in mind. We should always correct left-handedness. However, in this connection, we should also take the child’s temperament into account so that melancholics give the right hand preference. You can easily find a tendency with them to play with the left hand. We should emphasize the left hand with the cholerics. With phlegmatics you should see to it that they use both hands in balance, and the same is true for the sanguines. That is what is important.

It would also be an advantage if you tried as much as possible to train the children away from a simply mechanical feeling when playing the piano, but have them learn to feel the keys as such. They should learn to feel the various places on the piano, up and down, right and left, so that they feel the piano itself. It is also a good idea to have them play without any written music, at least at the beginning.

There is a question about the closing ceremony.

Dr. Steiner: On Tuesday, May 30. We could then reopen on Tuesday, June 20.

Experimental psychology could be extended beyond that aspect of the soul that ends with death. We speak about immortality, and we should also speak about premortality.

The essay in Das Goetheanum, “Goethe the Seer and Schiller the Feeler,” is intended for the West.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing we need to take up today is the organization of the school. Then, in the next few evenings we need to look at the pedagogy, particularly in regard to extending the instruction this year and also in regard to the lower grades.

Today, I would like to begin with the eleventh grade, which will be the highest class. I would like to discuss in relation to some of the things I said in the short introductory course at the beginning of the school year, and in relation to what I said about those students when they entered the tenth grade. I said we would have to be especially careful with those children because they are, in a sense, at a difficult age. As I already mentioned to some of you, I could do nothing else other than listen when the tenth grade invited me to meet with them. Since then, I have been able to further develop what I observed at that time and what the children said, and I can now say that I have the impression that the Waldorf School was really not able to cope with that group of children last year. I also have to admit that the situation of this highest class is very troubling for me. Today, we certainly do not need to help foster the opinion that is arising among a small number of people in regard to the Waldorf School. We must, of course, seriously consider how we can learn to cope with students in the upper grades.

There is a great deal we can say about that. I hope that you, the faculty, will express your opinions also, but I would like to say that I have the impression that the children’s relationship to the faculty has not at all taken on a desirable form. The situation is actually such that these specific students do not feel genuinely connected to the school. You could certainly object that some of the children are lazy and disinterested, but I have already taken that into account. It is unimportant to me that there are some lazy children; some are difficult to handle, although I have taken that into account. Nevertheless, I need to say that the school could not cope with the highest grade last year, and that we unquestionably must find a way to correct the results of the previous year, regardless of the personalities involved. It is important that we correct much of what occurred.

The main problem in this class is that the children are not really present during instruction. They have no inner connection to the instruction. In a certain way, they distanced themselves from the material to be learned. Some of the children thought they learned too little in that class, but that is a judgment and children form judgments after they finish puberty. That is a fact. Now that this judgment has arisen, if we want to maintain the good name of the school, we will have to see that this attitude is, in fact, corrected.

If you did not believe that we must make a fundamental correction, I would certainly be troubled by the school organization. The previous tenth grade is causing me much trouble. Now, however, I would like to hear what you have to say about this class so that we can all decide how to proceed. In such things as these, we must speak extremely clearly and be aware matters have gone beyond our control.

A number of teachers discuss the matter.

A teacher: The children do not have the sense of security provided by a strict upbringing, a rigid structure. They have the feeling they are at loose ends.

Dr. Steiner: That is true only of those who have been brought up strictly. Deeper things are taking place here, but, of course, teaching according to various periods of development has the advantage of giving the students guidelines, they have something to hold onto. The feeling of being at loose ends arises from the way you are presenting this. Being at loose ends is a good term for this feeling. There is no real working together, and that is terribly dangerous. That is what I attempted to counteract by having one class teacher for as long as possible. That offers some protection against being at loose ends. But even in those cases where different teachers need to have the class, we should not come to this feeling.

N.G. is one of the most absent-minded children, he is one of the most difficult to handle. He is pulled this way and that.

A teacher: The children know what they should know, but they do not have the will to work independently.

Dr. Steiner: That is a problem that lies with the children, and one that we do not need to discuss. What is important now is how we cope with the children.

We have not taken the things I mentioned about these children at the beginning of the school year sufficiently into account. At that time, I intentionally said, but it was not taken into account, that the children are moving into an age that is really the most difficult. Afterward, it will become easier. This age is the most difficult, and we have not taken that into account.

A teacher says he did not have any difficulties. He had a good relationship with the students.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t mean the personal relationship. What I do mean is the relationship that results from the subject matter and the actual teaching. There is a real difference, and it needs to be clearly stated. The children say to themselves that a teacher is a real nice person, but they do not want to be taught by that teacher. The problem we have here is that an attitude has arisen such that the children do not know what to do with what they are taught.

A teacher: They resisted French.

Dr. Steiner: The children are wondering why they should learn that. They should not have such thoughts.

You also need to be able to cope with the boys. I can imagine going through Cicero and really awakening their enthusiasm. Remember, you have the children at an age when you as the teacher must be much more interested in the material than when you had a lower grade. Think about how you teach when you are enthusiastic about the material yourself. You can’t go wrong if you are enthusiastic about it. You can learn so much yourselves, and then come into the class with enthusiasm. In that case, you cannot miss the mark so easily.

A teacher: They ask, “Why are we learning that? We already did that in the beginning.”

Dr. Steiner: There you can see how little you need to really arouse interest.

A teacher: They want a deportment class.

Dr. Steiner: They like that.

A number of teachers mention there has been a great deal of change in the classes.

Dr. Steiner: That ruined things, all this being pushed about.

What disturbed the children the most was that they asked questions and did not always get an answer.

That is something that begins at this age, and you cannot protect the children from it. They could go to quite different lectures.

A significant problem is that the children do not have enough opportunity to fail and be absurd. They listen to the teacher. There is a great deal of lecturing instead of teaching. They have a tendency, from the very beginning, to judge. When you do not lecture, but instead ask questions so that the children have an opportunity to be corrected, something their souls long for, then that problem does not occur, and they will become more modest. When they say something and are then rebuffed, they will be less pretentious. That is something that you use too little in your teaching.

A teacher: The children want more drawing and painting.

Dr. Steiner: The children in the lower grades paint enough. In the upper grades, they are theoretically past that, at least in the three upper classes. They did not get into working together. They are losing their ability for teamwork. The tenth grade has no firm inner foundation. They were completely at a loss. What I am speaking of is in connection with the main lesson and some of the other things related to it.

A teacher: I was to present meter, poetics, The Niebelungen and Gudrun. There was a bad feeling that came into it because I did not well understand what I needed to teach. I was uncertain with this material.

Dr. Steiner: That is not at all true, my dear professor. I do not believe that was the main problem. I think that the somewhat negative, skeptical attitude of the faculty found its way into the class. There is an attitude that some do not agree with some things, and that is often emphasized. A kind of negative skepticism, a certain reserve of judgment, affects your teaching, particularly when you overemphasize that the “children must believe it.” That is unnecessary when you cover the material thoroughly. That is an expression of one of the intangibles.

The main thing is that if we want to confirm the good name of the Waldorf School, we must do a number of things in connection with this class, since a great deal needs correction. We certainly all need to be clear that the success of the Waldorf School is of highest importance in our hearts, and for that reason, we cannot shy away from a certain kind of forthrightness. I would, therefore, like to propose what I believe is necessary, namely, that we must make changes for this class in a very careful manner. I would ask you not to feel insulted when I say how I believe we need to divide some subjects among you, because other things will depend upon that.

Since it is not possible to do otherwise, we will develop the curriculum in a particular way. I would like to give German literature, history and everything connected with that for the eleventh grade to X. Everything connected with aesthetics and art would be done by Y., who will also do French and English. I have given considerable thought to this, and my suggestions are focused in a specific direction. I cannot get rid of the problems in any other way. I also want Z. to take over mathematics and physics and U. to do natural history and chemistry. Those are the most important subjects, and this is what we simply have to accept as necessary for correcting this class. This division of the classes is important. You will see that there are a number of reasons why I believe it is necessary. The rest of you can follow what we previously agreed upon.

Then there is another question about how we can bring handwork into this class. This class should have that, too, as well as a continuation of what has been done in the technology class. I think we need to include Mrs. Leinhas as our fourth handwork teacher. We also need to be quite clear that this class needs to learn bookbinding, and that they should also study waterwheels and turbines, and also papermaking. All this could be done in technology class. What is clear is that the theme is connected with waterwheels, turbines, and paper factories. We will include medicine in chemistry and natural history. Religion, music, and stenography remain as they were, and surveying will be included with mathematics. Greek and Latin remain, as does shop. Tomorrow, we can begin with mathematics and physics, logarithms and trigonometry. For tomorrow, try to prepare a way of relating the Carnot theorem to the world. Then we also have the languages.

A teacher asks a question about English. The class has read The Tempest.

Dr. Steiner: I would recommend you don’t drop that. Discuss the work with the children regardless of whether one or another knows more or less. Discuss it from what they do know, so that the children have to give an answer and can continue the discussion.

A teacher: We read Corneille’s Le Cid in French.

Dr. Steiner: That could be done in dialog. Prose needs to be read. I do not believe that it is impossible to read Taine, Origines, or the essays. You could also do some work on the philosophy of life, for instance, Voyage en Italie.

Then we have the former ninth grade, now tenth grade. I certainly hope that with this tenth-grade class, we do not repeat the whole story.

A teacher: The children would like to know more about modern literature.

Dr. Steiner: They are still too young for modern German poetry, but you could do Geibel and Marlitt. You could also do C. F. Meyer, but it is still too early for that. They need more maturity to understand Jordan, that is something they can understand only when they get to the twelfth or thirteenth grade. If you go through it like a governess, it is not worth doing. The children need to be sixteen or seventeen before doing Demiurgos. In general, it would be rather misleading to go through the most recent streams in literature with the children. Right now, what is important is what we can do tomorrow. What will you begin with so that you don’t spend all night going in circles of self-destructive skepticism?

French and English, those are things that are important because the children have gotten out of shape there. Won’t you give it a try, Mr. N.?

Natural history and chemistry need to be separated because natural history was done carelessly. That is something we cannot do carelessly. Mineralogy, crystals, botany, cells, and plant taxonomy.

Someone asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: In doing that, we should remember that this class has students who came from outside. We had to treat certain things in a way that took into account what they had previously learned. We need to do natural history and chemistry in the tenth grade.

In the eleventh grade we need to connect medicine with natural history and chemistry, and mechanics and surveying with physics. The eleventh grade should be singing solos in music. Begin with a development of taste, and then go into the critical aspects of music.

The tenth and eleventh grades can remain together in independent religious instruction.

They discuss teaching assignments for the remaining classes and subjects.

Dr. Steiner: Tomorrow, I want to give you a short lecture about pedagogy.

The school inspector received some complaints about discipline in the Waldorf School. Is this some sort of denunciation? This is something we will need to answer.

A teacher: Some of the religion teachers are not punctual, so the children become restless and run around before class.

Dr. Steiner: I can imagine that the children want to skip class. Given that these things have occurred for such a long time, can’t we complain to the school inspector about these religion teachers? We have fallen behind because of this. We should have complained, and then we would be ahead. It is important that we do not ignore these things. If there are other such occurrences, they should be looked at by tomorrow so that we can discuss them.

We need to try a number of things. The things that have happened are only symptoms, but they are symptoms nevertheless. For example, Mr. M. was in Stuttgart. He is in the process of trying to start a school in Norway. However, he heard all kinds of things here and returned to Norway and told people there that people are talking negatively about the Waldorf School. But, nothing he heard is true. He returned to Norway with the information that our work is not careful enough. People everywhere are paying attention to this school, but when people everywhere say that the children are always getting slapped, then we will fall behind in our work. We need to be extremely careful so long as the whole world is looking at the school. In the school, we must keep to the principle that people can complain and do what they want, but we must be correct. I certainly want to be able to say that we are always correct. The Waldorf School needs to be a prime example of an anthroposophical institution.

A teacher: F.S. has declared that he wants to flunk.

Another teacher: He is writing poems about one of his girl classmates.

Dr. Steiner: I thought so. There are some boys there who say to themselves, “We are going to class only because we can find some adventure there. We are not interested in the rest.” We cannot act clumsily. We need to tell him we think he is so capable that we simply cannot flunk him. We must take the risk that this splendid boy leaves us.

A teacher: I have a girl in my first-grade class who can already read.

Dr. Steiner: Let’s talk about that tomorrow.

A comment is made about O.R.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly clear that this R. cannot be other than he is. Due to his environment at home, you cannot assume he will be other than he is. We need to help him. He is one of those whom we did not treat properly in the tenth grade. He’s a sleepyhead, but his father is even more so. Both of his parents are not particularly wide awake.

A teacher: His younger brother, W., is quite awake.

Dr. Steiner: There you have something else. He has other difficulties in his character. Only people who do not want to be disturbed choose such an environment. If you were to put R. out of the class, then you might risk destroying what it is that is asleep in him now and should awaken in him later. I would not throw him out.

I have seen that although we closed later, we did not achieve anything more than we could have achieved by Easter. We have actually lost the time from Easter until now. If we close at Easter next year, none of you will be finished. We are now past the middle of June, and we will have to change our curriculum accordingly.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing we need to consider for the present eleventh grade is literary history. I want to begin by discussing the continuation of what we taught in the tenth grade. What was done there? The Song of the Niebelungs, Gudrun, meter and poetics. I want to include the treatment of meter and poetics for this class in what I yesterday called aesthetics in art instruction. The first thing is to place what is literary in literature in the foreground. That is, you should try to create a bridge from The Song of the Niebelungs and Gudrun to the major works of the middle ages, Parzival, Armer Heinrich, and such things. Primarily, you should try to elicit in the children a complete imaginative picture through a survey of such things, so that the children learn about Parzival and they feel the part they read in the original reflects the whole story.

A Religion teacher: I have already done that.

Dr. Steiner: That does not matter. When you consider the basic principles in connection with the children in the eleventh grade, it would be good to do the Armer Heinrich again. The Parzival tale is the most important, though.

At the same time, you should cover the history of that period, something that, for children of this age, will certainly have an effect upon their view of the present. You should connect it with the present and show the children which historical figures of the past are similar to those of the present. In particular, show them which ones we would expect to be similar and which ones different. In this way, you can bring a certain capacity for judging into the whole thing. That is what you must take into consideration, so that the children can see the nineteenth century as growing out of previous centuries.

You also need to work with this class in aesthetics and art, in meter and poetics, to observe the various styles. You do not need to remain simply with literary style, you can move on further into the styles of other arts, into musical and sculptural styles. I would certainly use the style definitions given by Gottfried Semper for the latter, although they are very abstract, and go on to show the children about other characteristics of style.

You will need to treat trigonometry and analytical geometry as broadly as possible. In descriptive geometry, the children should understand and be able to draw the intersection of a cone and a cylinder.

In physics—this is something I was able to thoroughly try out in my teaching—it is very good for children at this age when you present them with the newest discoveries in physics, for instance, wireless telegraphy and x-rays, including such things as alpha, beta, and gamma rays. These are things you can use to awaken further interest in the children.

There is a question about atomism.

Dr. Steiner: A number of friends have conveyed that feeling to me. You certainly cannot deny that what you yourself are working upon will color your teaching. I believe that you will find the proper nuances if you present this material somewhat historically. I also believe that it would be good to begin the story where all the polemics about structural formulas, both pro and con, begin. Atomism was something different prior to Van’t Hoff ’s chemical symbols. I believe that you need to work through all Kolbe’s polemic against symbolic chemistry, since this polemicizing has, in a sense, placed the entire problem on developments in chemistry. You can show this precisely. You have all said a great deal against atomism, but you have not been able to say as much against it as Kolbe. You can put all this into perspective only when you include the most modern aspects. You need to include the phenomenalism introduced in the work of Pelikan and Kolisko. You would make no impression if you simply mentioned Kolbe’s name. Kolbe said that in order to continue in chemistry, Van’t Hoff mounted the Pegasus he apparently borrowed from the veterinary institute in Berlin. You need to include that.

When you discuss what I just mentioned above, you do not even need to speak about atomism. It is particularly unnecessary when discussing this subject. On the other hand, you could also speak a great deal about alchemy. There you have the opportunity to present far-reaching observations that you may not, however, clothe in vague mysticism. With Marconi’s telegraphy, you can address the connection of the brain with the cosmos through a simple, but exact and broad, presentation of the coherer and then describe the brain as a kind of coherer in connection with the cosmos. In this case, you can illustrate something that occurs materially and then go on to point out that the processes within the brain are only initiated by the physical human being. Here, you have a possibility of awakening a broader perspective.

In chemistry, it is necessary to develop basic chemical concepts such as acid, salt, and base as completely as possible, so that the students then know what an alcohol or an aldehyde is. The more traditional topics, such as separating organic and inorganic chemistry require less attention. I believe that is what we should include in a survey of the material. I do not believe it is correct to develop chemistry on the basis of material. It is better to develop the process and then bring in matter and metals so that during the instruction a feeling arises that matter is simply a static process. The children should have a picture of matter as simply a static process. If you have a piece of sulfur in front of you, what you really have is a static process. If I am standing here, and it is raining hard, then I have a process in which I am included. However, if I look at the cloud from a distance, it appears as an object to me. When I look at certain processes it is as though I were standing in the rain, when I look at sulfur, it is as though I were observing the cloud from a distance. Matter is simply processes that appear petrified.

It is important at this period of life to teach about cells in natural history. That need not be done in such great detail, but you could take characteristic plants from the lowest up to the monocots. Begin at the lowest and go upward. You should also mention the dicots and draw parallels between flowers and mushrooms. Be sure to take into account the mycelium and the formation of spores. When you discuss the formation of stems, you should take the mycelium into account, also. Bring teleology, that is, the relationships of the various parts of a organism, into a reasonable relationship. Be sure to discuss interactive relationships, not just the purely causal. Treat the theory of cells in a cosmological manner.

A teacher asks about zoology.

Dr. Steiner: Zoology? Certainly not in this year. I do not believe it would be good to do too much mineralogy. That is something we can do next year.

Today, the same thing happened. It was quite natural to work toward the human being. I know of no question in natural history that you cannot use as a basis for moving toward the human being.

A teacher: We have done several practical exercises in surveying.

Dr. Steiner: Altitude and distance. I would also like you to create a connection between surveying and geography, so that the children have an exact idea of what a Mercator map is. You should also discuss how the meter was determined in Paris.

In regard to technology, cover waterwheels, turbines, and production of paper. I have to admit I cannot believe you could not get all the boys to participate. You cannot allow opposition to arise.

A teacher: Should we teach spinning and weaving in the technology class?

Dr. Steiner: In principle, the children can already do that. It would be a good idea to introduce them to water turbines and the production of paper. We can return to weaving later. I once mentioned that this is something they need to learn slowly. The children will have a great deal if we can explain to them about the production of paper and how waterwheels and turbines work. They will gain a broader view. They can learn something about geography and the importance of rivers. You could even move into an elementary discussion of economics.

A teacher: In mechanical drawing, I was supposed to take children through screws.

Dr. Steiner: We can leave that for now and come back to it later. In the tenth grade, you should do things as I said.

We also, of course, need to be careful to include a formation of taste in eurythmy and music classes, particularly at this age. This can be done by interweaving things with a judgment of taste. You do not need to begin much new in the way of content, but go on to taste considerations.

We want to have Graf Bothmer for gymnastics. He will certainly do well here. The entire faculty needs to work together in this area. In other things, a sense of taste needs to be brought in.

It would be good if there were a certain amount of harmony in eurythmy. You need to take style into consideration in particular works. If they are studied at the same time in eurythmy, it would be helpful to connect the eurythmy exercises with the style of the poems. You will find that one or another poem is particularly appropriate, and then you will find that there are nuances of style in them. The art teachers can use a poem to illustrate a sonnet. You will find that I took the sonnets from Shakespeare and Hebbel into account in the eurythmy forms. The form is often quite different because it directly relates to the style. The teacher of aesthetics also needs to take that into account.

Marie Steiner: I would recommend Dr. Steiner’s Twelve Moods.

Dr. Steiner: The Twelve Moods were once tested in connection with astrology. They are cosmically connected. That is something you can use both in the teaching of style and in eurythmy. Nearly every syllable is stylized in the tone. You can find an inner stylizing everywhere. These are objective style formations. You can also compose them. The children could learn a great deal if you read them quite objectively. They could be made into a festival for older children.

We now need to turn to the needs of the various classes and teachers.

It is important that you carry on a kind of dialogue when teaching foreign languages. On numerous occasions, Dr. X. told the little children in first grade that he did not understand any German. You could make a connection with that and weave your readings into it. Don’t simply talk to the children, but allow them to speak as much as possible. It was apparent this morning that the children cannot yet do that; you need to be sure to allow the children to speak. They need to have an opportunity to tell about what they have read. This is particularly true in the upper grades where the foreign languages are still behind. The lower classes are much better in languages and it is easier there. The problems in language lie in the upper grades.

Origines de la France Contemporaine is a good book.

A teacher: Could I perhaps do Expansion of England following Shakespeare?

Dr. Steiner: It is important that you bring the children along. The first-grade class enjoyed it a lot.

We have developed the most important principles into a connected whole. Those things that occur in a haphazard fashion are simply due to sloppiness. Sloppiness has entered our work in that we have moved in the direction of doing things more easily. It is important that we take into account that when the children speak in chorus, although it goes well, that is no proof that they can do it individually, since the group spirit also participates. We need to work both ways. Always keep connected to the material so that your words are directly connected with the subject. When we spoke, I noticed that it is good to connect the learning of poems with certain figures of speech in order to make them conventions. If you have done three or four such poems, then you can return to improve the accent. We have already discussed all of these things. The way you are teaching poems now has led to a kind of sloppiness. That is partially because the foreign languages are taking a back seat. They are in a secondary position and the teachers are tired. The other problem is that many seek to avoid proper preparation. You prepare for other things. That is fine if all you want is something mechanical.

I certainly have reason to complain about things. It is not possible for you to prepare in the way you should. We first need to develop what can be fruitful in our methodology, otherwise we would slowly come to teach language such that what we fail to achieve by a better method is much worse than what we could partially achieve by a lesser method. We could easily slip into the calamity that because we do what is better poorly, we cannot keep up with what other schools achieve. In spite of that, I want to be perfectly clear that it is possible within the normal school day to achieve the ideal through rational work so that the children are spared tiring homework. Unfortunately, that is not of interest everywhere. In practice, certain things are still missing, and for that reason, I believe we must initiate a kind of modified homework. We do not want the children doing pages of arithmetic at home. However, we can give them literature and art history problems to solve at home. We should also encourage those who are more industrious and want to do something at home, but we should be clear that we do not want to overburden them. They should not feel they are groaning under the weight of their homework. They need to do it happily, in which case assigning them a task has a genuinely good influence. For instance, you could have them create an equation in the form of a short story, “A lady is asked.…”

There is another thing I find lacking in the teaching, but certainly belongs there, and that is humor. I have taken particular note that humor is missing in the classroom. I do not mean making jokes, but genuine humor. Just as human beings must physically breath, you cannot expect the children to always be taking things in. They must also be able to breathe them out. If you always teach for the whole period in the same tone, it is as though you were to allow the children only to inhale, never to exhale. You must have humor. Humor is the soul’s exhaling. You must bring humor into your teaching. That is something you can find in the most various places. Humor comes from liveliness. You need to bring some liveliness into the class, the children need that in every grade. A little humor! If we only had one period a day, that would be different, but you must bring humor into the classroom.

You misunderstood me in connection with handwork. I had thought you would work things out between yourselves. The women would then have twenty-six hours. Tomorrow, please give me the number of hours per week that each of you can take on. Twenty-six is, of course, too much. We need to see how we can get some more help. Please give me a list of the total number of hours. You can put the tenth- and eleventh-grade classes together.

We must have the remedial class, and you are responsible for teaching it. The tall fellow needs to go into the first grade. That is something we cannot do, of course, but to be consequential, we would have to send one from the eleventh grade back to the first grade.

Concerning religion class in the eleventh grade, continue with the material so that you strengthen the capacity to judge. Become involved in discussions. Until now, you have given a pictorial presentation, but now we need to work toward comprehension of the concepts. You should treat the question of destiny in a religious form. Also the question of sins, and then the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You can begin with pictures and then move into concepts, so that it is a kind of causal perspective.

What did we decide about religion in the eighth and ninth grades?

A teacher: We began with a treatment of the Laocoöns.

Dr. Steiner: It is not necessary to go through everything. I assume you have gone through parts of the St. John gospel. If you do not spend considerable time with it, it is terribly difficult to go through the story of creation, but it is not necessary to do other parts of the Old Testament. I think it would be good if the children knew the New Testament, particularly the stories of the apostles. In particular, the St. Luke gospel.

Concerning Greek and Latin in the eleventh grade: In discussing the readings with the children, we must see to it that they gain an understanding of the mixture of style and grammar, in particular, a comparison of the Greek and Latin sentence structure. You should do that before presenting literary history. You should also develop an entomological understanding of words. You need to emphasize entomology much more in the ancient languages. You should emphasize entomology much more. The first book of Livius is enough. In Greek, you can do readings of your choice.

They discuss the report on O.R. and in particular that he needs to learn something from life.

Dr. Steiner: He is just like his father, but not at all so thoughtless. I have the feeling with Mr. S. that he is really lazy. I would like to have a characterization of his work. I have not seen his drawings. You need to give a concrete picture. The obvious result of Dr. N.’s report would be to gain a “Doctor Life” for the school. Then people could say they should call up “Doctor Life” in order to get to the heart of the matter. I think we should keep him here another year and see what he learns.

There were some errors made in the preparation of the students reports.

Dr. Steiner: That is a deficiency in the seriousness with which the reports were treated. That is terribly sloppy, and something that you must treat seriously. The tendency to make excuses for it only makes things worse. This is really terrible. When such things occur, we are not really working in the Waldorf School. We have no right to speak about reports when we present ourselves to the world in such a sloppy manner. This is really unbelievable. We are slowly creating a situation that no one can take seriously. A report, that is a document! When you make such mistakes in writing, well, I would like to know which company would employ us then. Such things must be based upon a strict and rather mechanical process so that errors are not possible. It should be like clockwork. Such errors should not occur.

I want to end this discussion now. I think it is unbelievable when such documents are created with such an attitude, we cannot discuss that.

Dr. Steiner: I have tried to picture the way our friends in Austria appear to themselves. Everyone has something in a corner of their soul that reveals itself as pre-Maria Theresa. There, people have become educated by becoming “monks.” What we need is that we also become “monks.” Kolisko would have been a Dominican somewhere, Stein a Cistercian, and our dear friend Schubert, a Piarist.

I would like to hear about the things weighing upon your souls. There is, however, one thing I want to say. In teaching religion, you need to bring in all the things we have developed so far. When you teach, you must bring the children into a prayerful attitude, beginning with the lowest grades. You need to slowly develop a strongly prayerful attitude in the children. Children need to find the mood of prayer. We need to carry out “Not my will, but thine be done.” We must raise the children into divine experience. Religious instruction should not appeal simply to pictures, it must be completely oriented toward elevating attitude. You need to teach the children an attitude connected with the Sunday services, and allow them to feel a prayerful mood.

I mentioned to the Protestant teacher that I would like to visit his class. He said that he would need some time to think about it. I will also tell the Catholic teacher the same.

We also make an error here. I noticed it today in the way that the students answered your question about what their religion is. The answers arose out of the feeling that we are still not united within the school. We should be aware that we should take seriously that the Catholic children go to the Catholic priest, and we need to feel among ourselves that this only relates to religious confession and has nothing to do with the remaining instruction. We must certainly maintain that, otherwise an unpedagogical principle will creep into this school. It seems to me necessary that we not teach the Catholic children that they are not welcome here. That was seen in the way that the other children made faces, something that was quite characteristic. That brings disharmony into the school, and we must overcome it. We must seriously undertake allowing each religious confession to exist in its own right. It is much less important to me that the religion teachers perceive themselves as a foreign body here in the school. I don’t think that you trouble yourselves much about the religious instruction of the Catholic and Protestant children. You do not seem to care much about that.

A teacher: The child says, “He doesn’t teach us anything about Jesus.”

Dr. Steiner: All the more reason. For some children that is of still more value. That is really too bad. It is terrible that they need to keep a stiff upper lip. That is often the case, but we have to accept that. It would help if you were to exchange a few words with the Protestant religion teacher. As we were standing in the hallway today, I was wondering when Mr. S. would introduce me to the vicar. He did not do it. This is something intangible and really should not continue.

I do not find that it hurts children to go to Catholic mass. We do nothing wrong when we encourage them. I am not against having the Protestant children develop a desire to attend mass, either. The mass is certainly nothing terrible. It is impersonal and has an effect through its content. You can quite ignore the priest. The mass has a grand effect, but it is more to see the mass than participate in it as a high sacrament. The way the Church does the Missa Solemnis, the mass itself disappears behind all the pomp. The mass has only four parts: the gospel, the offertory, the transubstantiation, and the communion. It is most effective when the priest does it with two servers. We cannot make the Protestant children go to mass, but they would get something from it.

I regret I was unable to visit more classes.

A question is asked about whether W.E. and M.G. should go into the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: The way the situation is now, he is not moving forward and his attitude is damaging the other children. We might be able to carry the girl along. She is simply a burden, but he is difficult. He is always disturbing the other children. Today, he started up again. It would be good for him to go into the remedial class. Everything indicates he needs special attention. He is very nervous and is not moving forward when he is with the other children.

There are some questions about other children.

Dr. Steiner: That is the problem. If you have to do something different with every child in the class, you cannot teach even a class of ten. It is obvious that we will not reach our goals, and that we have not now reached them. That is clear. We cannot even artificially achieve the goals we have set. On the whole, it does not matter whether we achieve the learning goals set in other schools. We must keep to what we decided earlier. In general, it does not matter whether we heed the goals set outside. We must, however, take our own learning goals into account in a special way, much more than we have done.

A teacher questions whether a child should be held back.

Dr. Steiner: We have decided against that.

A teacher: In my class, there was a boy who was absent all the time.

Dr. Steiner: If he was hardly there during the year, it would be good for him. Keeping children back is something we have decided against, and, whenever possible, we should not do it.

We don’t want to bring the Dutchman here, otherwise people will say that our methods are the same as those used for learningdisabled children.

A teacher asks a question about the Sunday service.

Dr. Steiner: We need five services. It is a difficult question about who will do it and where.

A teacher: We need long drapes.

Dr. Steiner: You can do things as they are now. We cannot achieve perfection, so we can do it as it is.

We need more women for the services.

I cannot write the gospel text here. I will try to write a text as quickly as possible.

A question is asked about astronomy in the eighth-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: If the question concerns how to create the proper feeling, that can be achieved through a true picture of the heavens. However, try to do what you did in the lower grades—bring forth a memory of that picture. The children develop a certain respect if you occasionally take them out to see the stars and say what is necessary. It is more difficult to achieve that respect if you place a map before them instead of the stars. Maps deaden respect.

With the Latin course, things are not so bad. There are major differences between the individual children. The disruptive children play a role, but you should avoid them. On the other hand, there are some gaps in what the children can do. The answers they give are appropriate for approximately the eighth or ninth grade. I don’t think you would have gotten such mature answers from the seventh grade. You could expect some of the answers from the ninth grade. The only problem is that there are such tremendous gaps, but they answered with understanding. To go into further detail would take freedom from your teaching. I don’t think we should be so confining.

A teacher asks whether foreign language grammar should be discussed in dialogue. One of the teachers is against that.

Dr. Steiner: You could do it that way. You would not teach the way they do in France. I do not know why using a French phrase would present a difficulty. I think that might even be good, since they would learn more vocabulary. If you do not teach grammar pedantically, but see it as a way of learning to feel the language, then I do not understand how you could complain about it. In speaking of German grammar, we use very little German. We use Latin when we teach grammar. That certainly happens, and it is quite useful. The terminology is such that it cannot be understood if it is translated. I do not want to push the point. What I mean is not that you should teach grammar in French. You should separate out the material taught in class, the conversation. If you find it technically necessary to explain things in German, that is not undesirable. You can do things in the way you think is right.

If you bring the analytical perspective into a picture, that is good. You should always work toward developing a picture, and analysis is part of that picture. A high-school graduate is too oriented toward thinking of “man” as “homo.” That is actually nonsense, since the picture is missing. “Man” derives from the soul of the stream of the generations. “Homo” arises from the physical form of the human being, so that we can say that “man” is incarnated in “homo.” It is just the same as with Adam. If people do not understand the pictures, the soul loses everything. I think that is the sort of thing you should strive for in Latin.

That is what Mrs. X. wanted to do in the days when she had such great plans for the future of Magyar, something quite good for primitive languages. There is a living fact behind the fact that the Englishman says “Mr. Smith” and the Hungarian says, “Tanito Ur.” Namely, “ur”—“the master.” In other words, “the master” speaks this primitive language. There is an entirely different life in it. “Kávéház” is a borrowed word. You arrive at quite different pictures depending upon whether you look at a man from the front or the back. No hour should pass without the child experiencing something pictorially.

A teacher presents a draft reader.

A teacher: We thought it would contain some legends.

Dr. Steiner: You could do that. Why don’t you include them? We need to write a good Jesus legend. This will be a very exciting reading book, and we should discuss these pictures a lot with the children. If you were to print it, I do not think it could be done for less than 20,000 marks. It would have to be very expensive. It is a reading book and would have to cost at least 100 marks.

A teacher: Is it possible to have a period for teaching shop?

Dr. Steiner: We could think about having a period for that, but it would not be possible to include it in the morning. We would have to see if we could leave out some of the foreign language periods and thus gain a period there. That would be a certain relief for the faculty without hurting the instruction. Leaving out a foreign language period would hurt nothing. We could certainly interrupt the foreign languages occasionally. The teaching of foreign languages does not depend upon having every period.

A teacher: How long should such a period be? What grade could we begin with?

Dr. Steiner: We could begin with the ninth grade and do it for two weeks during the language period. It would also be possible to do it every six weeks perhaps and divide it throughout the year.

The teachers asked Dr. Steiner to give a speech at a parent evening.

Dr. Steiner: I could do that if I have enough time. It’s been a terribly long time since the last one. Three or four per year would be best. To have none is really not enough.

A teacher: There will be a pedagogical course in Jena from Sunday to Sunday, October 8-15. We want to ask you to give a cycle of lectures in the evening.

Dr. Steiner: I could give the same themes I presented in Oxford and do it in the mornings. Two lectures in the morning and a discussion in the afternoon.

A teacher: We would also like to ask Mrs. Steiner if she could include two or three eurythmy performances.

Dr. Steiner: Actually, it would be better to include the holidays. We could begin one week earlier and then have the fall holidays. When school is in session, we could not send all the children to Jena. If there were no school, then we could speak with the parents to see if they would agree.

Marie Steiner: If we took the Ariel scenes, we could do twelve performances. However, the children would have to do some show pieces. They could do exercises with the rods and also rhythm. Several things in the same performance.

Dr. Steiner: We certainly cannot send them there simply because of the Ariel scenes. The children could prepare something else. We cannot send them when school is in session and we can send them only if the parents agree.

Marie Steiner: It would have to be something people know. We could do something like a scene with gnomes and fairies, or Olaf Åsteson.

Dr. Steiner: It might be good if we spoke more about the experiences the teachers have had both in their own teaching and as a whole. Perhaps you could extend your Vienna presentation about your own experiences. We would also have to try to overcome the opinion some people have that they already have everything. That is something we need to overcome. It would also be good for someone to speak to the question of how poorly anthroposophy is treated by our contemporaries. It would be very good to speak about that. The Waldorf teachers should speak.

I also believe it would be good if some students spoke about their understanding of the youth movement. They should not be fanatics. They should be reasonable people. Some one-sided people have said things at various anthroposophical meetings. Other people would not get much from them, but on the other hand, we have also experienced some quite good things. The main thing would be to allow some of the younger people to speak.

A teacher: We thought we would all go.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have to plan a school holiday at that time. Is it possible to shorten some of the other holidays? That would be nice if it is possible. We would then begin school on August 29. Quite a number of children would have to go so that the rod exercises are not too sparse. It should be half boys and half girls. Maybe we could also include two or three from Leipzig.

That would be a relief. Right now we always have to use the same people for everything. Something I noticed often was that it was very detrimental that the Waldorf School was overburdened with rushing from one project to another during the past year. If you add up all of the different activities in which some of the Waldorf School teachers participated, then you would see it is quite a bad thing. We cannot even say that it was relieved by the Vienna conference occurring during the school holiday, since a large number of you returned half dead at the beginning of the school year. That is certainly not acceptable, and now we have this course in Jena in the fall.

We need to gradually awaken a feeling here that our relationship to the world should be more open, so that we do not always tend to be defensive, but to draw people in. For example, all the suggestions I made in Vienna to use the conference were pushed aside. In general, the conference in Vienna was a great success from beginning to end. It was the largest we have had and was done in such a way that it could have quite decidedly resulted in major damage had it not been properly followed up. It was undertaken publicly, and we should have no illusions that it has resulted in considerable opposition. The damage that could result if we do not know how to follow it up could be greater than the success.

That is something we cannot do if we encapsulate ourselves, if we do not get new blood. Among the actively working people, we have a strong inbreeding of related souls that will lead to an impossible situation in the long run. We need to expand our circle, but each time someone is mentioned who we have met, and who is something, we reject that person. We must bring in new blood. In general, our movement requires that we not feel that we need to defend ourselves against everyone, but that we welcome people.

I would like to tell you about something. I was told you had invited someone to create a connection to medicine, and that you had begun to speak. In the third sentence, you said to him, “Professor, you are an immoral human being”! That is something I cannot understand. You simply offend them. I think this comes from too much zeal, but we need to find a way to work with people. You cannot work with people if you tell them straight off that they are immoral.

I was in the same situation myself when I wanted to explain the art in Dornach to a famous chemist. He then told me that there are colors of light that really shine. I could have said, “You are an idiot,” but I did not. We offend people too easily. That was his scientific conviction.

We cannot make such announcements in the Threefold News as one I saw there. We need to formulate the announcements that appear there so that people think we are only dilettantes.

It is natural in the anthroposophical realm to have a cooperative working between the Waldorf School and an association of physicians. Teachers from the Waldorf School would have much to say, and such interactions within the anthroposophical movement would result in an all-round improvement. I did not say that the groups should completely fuse together so that people could argue and fight. What I meant was that it is natural that such a symbiosis occurs.

A teacher: We have formed a group of that sort. We meet on Saturdays and give lectures.

Dr. Steiner: Has that significant neighborliness of the Gänsheide and the Kanonenweg been fruitful?6 I haven’t noticed anything. What I said before was meant esoterically and was directed toward every human heart. It must arise naturally. I cannot say that I believe some bureaucratic institution is necessarily positive. Something will result only through a living interaction, not through bureaucracy.

Dr. Steiner: I have called you together to discuss the recent situation that occupies you so much. Otherwise we could have waited a few days. It seems important to me that we do not discuss such things as a specific case. We cannot do that, but instead we need to treat all of these things in this difficult time for us in connection with the anthroposophical movement. We should be careful that it is not used against the anthroposophical movement. We are actually sitting in a glass house and should avoid all such things that can lead to all kinds of opposition to the anthroposophical movement. What is now important is that we gain some clarity about what occurred and how we should judge it.

A group of students from the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades had been involved in some lying, thefts, and drunkenness. One of the students had given another student some injections and attempted to hypnotize her. Upon discovery of what had been occurring, the faculty had discussed the situation with Dr. Steiner in Dornach by telephone. The faculty then questioned the students in detail and sent Dr. Steiner a detailed report. The students involved were temporarily suspended from school.

Dr. Steiner asks about the age of each of the students involved, about which class they were in and about how long they had been in the school. He also asks about the parents and the home environment.

Dr. Steiner: When was the first time that something was said against these children? How did you discover what had been happening?

A teacher: Through the business with the hypnotizing by G.S. One student wanted to speak with me alone and told me that there were things that occurred in S.’s house that we should know about.

Dr. Steiner: In your opinion, had G.S. ever hypnotized anyone?

A teacher: No, at least not completely, although he has often attempted it with various students.

Dr. Steiner: We can hardly assume that if he did not exercise some unfavorable influence, that he could have caused any real harm with those he attempted to hypnotize. There was certainly moral damage, but he did not do things that would cause real damage. In any event, there is not much to be done with this whole hypnotizing business. I had the impression from the report that this whole thing was simply a bunch of dumb tricks that got out of hand due to G.S.’s craziness. Does anybody know anything about this hypnotizing that is more serious?

A detailed report is given about G.S. and his home situation. Among other things, one teacher reports that the boy has been interested in such things since he was ten years old and that his father has some books about such matters. The boy likes to experiment and has made a small laboratory.

Dr. Steiner: Other than the fact that he was very diligent, is there nothing more to say about how G.S. is at school?

A teacher: I used to be quite satisfied with him, but he has slacked off in the last three or four months.

Dr. Steiner: To the extent that G.S. is concerned, the business with the injections seems to be like that of the hypnotizing. We should now take a look at how things are with H.B. From all that I have read, he seems to be a real gang leader and is behind a number of things. It also appears that he was the main motivator in this socalled club. Were you satisfied with him here at school?

A teacher: He did not participate with much interest. He avoided conflicts, but was not really with things.

There is then a detailed discussion about the student.

Dr. Steiner: What does N.G. say to all this? Why was he readmitted to school after he had already left?

A number of teachers report.

Dr. Steiner: Now there is one other thing I would like to know. I had asked Mr. J. about some report or another and he told me about an evening where there was a discussion between the students and teachers. How is it that a student association has a chairman and the teachers met with them and asked the student president to speak? I nearly fell off my chair.

There is a discussion about this.

Dr. Steiner: Now N.G., O.R., U.A., and F.S. have been suspended because they are cutting school. H.B. and S.K. were suspended because of their black-market activities, and G.S. has been expelled. How is it possible that there has been so little contact with the students in these upper grades recently? The lack of contact was what caused these classes to come to me in May. What is happening here?

The discussion I had with them showed me that the teachers no longer had any contact, particularly with the 10th grade. Why is that? Undoubtedly, there is a considerable difference between these classes and the lower grades where there has always been a strong contact between the class teacher and the children. There is a significant difference in the way that the relationship developed toward these 9th- and 10th-grade classes. There is no doubt that these classes have gotten out of the control of the faculty. That evening discussion did not lead to the faculty gaining control over the children. Instead, it is quite clear that the students have taken the helm. To have such discussions!

A number of teachers report about the discussions between the students and faculty.

Dr. Steiner: It must have begun somewhere. Mr. S. has left. Somewhere, there must be a beginning.

The difficulty is that there is a whole group of students that we do not need here at school, but if we throw them out, then the same sort of thing will happen as did earlier. The whole situation will result in a new affair connected with the anthroposophical movement. Of course, the thing with N.G. is not so easy. He must have known that old G. was planning some activities against the anthroposophical movement. He is not really so bright, but he is planning something nevertheless, and that should have been a warning for us to be cautious with regard to N.G. It is certainly a difficult thing for the other students to reject the student association.

N.G. is a rascal, the result of an unbelievable family life. There are a number of cases where the home situation is not good, but this particular situation is one of the worse excesses to be seen in modern social life. He grew up in that and is now psychopathic, totally sick. It is really difficult to decide which one is worse, F.S. or N.G.

I have to admit that it is really a problem that these children did not find it possible to gain a natural connection to the faculty. They had no trust in the faculty. I certainly need to say that in fact these children were not filled with any trust in the faculty.

You will seldom find a boy who is inwardly so torn apart as N.G. is, in spite of the fact that there are today so many children who are torn apart. What you have told me about are simply stupid, boyish tricks, and you certainly know that there are such boys in every school. However, there are certain inner or soul things here but what you have told me about today belongs in the category of things that occur in every school.

There appears to be a misunderstanding of the situation here. You have told me that N.G. and G.S., and perhaps some of the others, have been impertinent and that they asked how it is that people say that there is no anthroposophy in the instruction. How did you understand that? What did you think about all those questions?

A teacher: When N.G. asked about those things, I had the feeling that he wanted to know the truth, but that he also wanted to trip us up.

Dr. Steiner: The situation with N.G. is such that he is now grown up. At the time when he was a small child and learning to speak, he did not hear one true word in his family. His mother is a complete lie, just as his father is. They were totally contradictory, so that N.G. one day when he was quite young, perhaps only seven or eight years old, asked himself, “What is the world, then? My father, who is such a terrible boor, still made it through graduate school. How is that possible?” Now, N.G. is in the school where he also found that all the teachers are boors. He came here and said to himself that it is said that the teachers here at the Waldorf School are not boors, but I want to see for myself if they are boors or not. Everybody told him time and again that there is no Anthroposophy in the instruction. But Anthroposophy is just what he wanted. It would have been just the thing for him as he sought the opportunity to learn about Anthroposophy. He wanted to know why everyone withheld that and he perceived it as an untruth. He then soon left and worked to earn money.

After a long time, N.G. came to me and said, “I don’t know what I should do. I had a great hope that I would become a better human being when I went to the Waldorf School. I rode my bicycle over to Dornach and had a look at the building there. That building made me into a better human being, but I am not getting anywhere. I do not see any difference between good and evil and I see no reason why I should be good now. Why should I not be a person who is intent upon destroying everything?” Now recently since he returned again, something has happened to the boy. Either we should not have accepted him again, or he should have been able to gain some trust in the faculty. He is in a terrible position. Think about what kind of trophy that is for people who gather data against the anthroposophical movement.

I have to admit that as I learned of the situation I thought of it as being one situation at school like many others. You would have to really look for schools where such things do not come up. It is also easy for other schools to cope with such things. For us it is not so easy because we have to really be aware of how the anthroposophical movement is affected by such things. We thus have the choice between removing the student from the school with all justification and publicly, or of coping with such cases. The opinion that the world has about us in such cases needs to come from us.

We need to stop turning people away because of the difficulties they bring, since they become our enemies. A reason for expelling a student is really something quite different from what we now have before us. There is not much that we can do with the information we now have. The things that G.S. has done were really just stupid, boyish pranks and lead to the situation where people could ask what kind of a school this is that would allow the children so much time that they could get drunk.

A teacher: The children have forty-four hours of school per week.

Dr. Steiner: If you look at what you have presented, it would appear as though the children had no time at all to come to school. It is not only the fact that the children do not have any feeling that they are at school, it is also the fact that they do not feel that they are at a school where they cannot do such things.

I think that this is something you should have noticed. Here in the report, you state how G.S. formed a detective club over Christmas. This all occurred outside the school, but was there no effect upon the school? You should certainly be able to notice when there is a student of the sort who would form a detective club.

Now people can say that the children have been thrown out. I was in the 10th and 11th grade classes today, and I think they are quite well-behaved. You should be able to do anything with them.

A teacher: It is now really enjoyable to work with the class.

Dr. Steiner: The 11th-grade class is very upright and you should be able to do anything with them. To what extent has the situation with these children who have left affected the remainder of the class?

A teacher: They are all terribly happy about it.

Dr. Steiner: If you were to ask them, what would they say?

A teacher: They would say that they are happy the others are gone.

Dr. Steiner: The impression I have from all the questioning is that these delinquents did nothing more during the questioning than to lie out of both sides of their mouths, and certainly not much can result from that. It was rather unpleasant for me today to hear the discussion that someone had with one N.G.’s school comrades. What was said points to things that occurred last Christmas. I need to ask if you noticed nothing about all the things that this schoolgirl said.

It is really difficult to find a way to rectify things in this case. What would you do if in six months time one of those members of that clique of clerics were to handle H.B.’s case in the following way? H.B. is an upright student until he went to the Waldorf School. Afterward, he was also quite honorable. It took three years until he began his black-market activities. It is quite clear in this instance that it was not immediately possible to make such an honorable student into something so bad. It took three years of Waldorf School indoctrination—what would you say if that were to be said?

A teacher: I would see no possibility of working with such people in the school.

Dr. Steiner: What was actually the cause of all this? The reason is that contact was lost with the boys and girls. I had thought that after I spoke so seriously and that in some way we should again try to accept N.G. into the school, that a connection would then form with him. There must be some reason that we lost the boy. N.G. has been at school for two years.

A teacher: We could never find the proper relationship to him. I have often had the impression that we place ourselves above the children and not alongside of them.

Dr. Steiner: Why do you say that you have placed yourself above the children? What should have happened is that the children placed you above themselves. That is how things should be. The children should place you above them as a matter of course. That is the only possible proper relationship as then there will no longer be any discussions in which the children tell you that they reject the whole school.

We cannot glue things together again. We must nevertheless remove eight of the children. We cannot mend things in any other way. Nothing else can be done. We need to be able to justify the situation and represent it in such a way that it cannot be used against us. We must have the possibility of treating the situation in such a way that we can justify that we have expelled these eight children. It is really very difficult to cope with this situation. We need some firm ground under our feet, but what is important is that people hear how the situation is with the remainder of the class.

A teacher: The experience has been a relief and a freeing for the children in the 11th grade.

Dr. Steiner: Then we can handle it in the following way. We must come to a decision in the next few days. Tomorrow morning I will have a look at the 11th-grade class and then the tenth. The whole thing is so frustrating. It’s a dead end. It was a major mistake that the situation was handled by individuals. It should have been done with groups. I told that to Mr. R. and in spite of it I received this interrogation report. Just look at this report about S.H. Four-and-a-half pages long. Look at the report and you will see that it was just a joke for her. She said things and then laughed behind her hand. I do not think that she thought for one moment that the teachers stand above her. I need to look at the 10th- and 11th-grade classes.

A teacher: Did I understand you properly that it would be less of a blemish were we to keep the children?

Dr. Steiner: You cannot keep the children, but how can we get out of this? We cannot simply decide to expel them if we have no reasons for doing so. We need to find a reason. There must be some way of stopping a repetition of this. There must be some way of not allowing the children in the upper grades to get out of the faculty’s control, but that has now happened. If there is no will to keep the children under control, then they will get out of our control, especially due to the advantages of our methods. The disadvantage of those methods is that the children become too clever. Laziness occurs in other schools also, but with the understanding common among the students and teachers in those schools, this loss of control does not occur there. The real error lies in the way you have held discussions.

We need to protect ourselves from those people who seek every opportunity—and you cannot imagine how much attention is paid by them—to rid the world of the anthroposophical movement. We need to be able to counter that by avoiding such things in the future. I am not totally convinced that they will not recur. I can only believe that the boys and girls by the time they reach the age of fifteen or sixteen will time and again slip out of the teachers’ hands. We need to undertake something that will give a breath of life throughout the instruction. I don’t want to be preaching, but a breath of life must go through the teaching and into the classes. There is still some breath of life in the lower grades and it could also be in the upper grades. Basically, we have really quite good students here. These two classes made a quite good impression upon me. It is very frustrating when no one understands that the whole thing should be coming from another impulse. It should be impossible that students come to you and say that they reject the whole school. There needs to be some will to change such things.

A teacher: Couldn’t you say some more about that? We are confronted here with our own lack of ability.

Dr. Steiner: There is no will. If you were to concentrate your entire will upon this matter, then things would go differently. From an external perspective, there is a noticeable difference between the lower and upper grade classes. In the lower classes, what occurred with Miss U. occurs often and the children make quite a spectacle so you do not have the feeling that they are asleep. That was really a quite noteworthy example in your class. In the upper grades, the class is asleep. They don’t know anything, not even the simplest things. There was not one person there who knew that there had been the crusades. I understand something different with the idea of being awake. They had no idea at all about how the Crusades began.

We need to have a different kind of will. At a certain point in time, we come out of the proper understanding of the class and fall into simply lecturing. We leave the living connections behind.

Things would have been more understandable had you brought up Jakob Böhme today. You should not bring up so many details that one covers up the other. At 10:00 o’clock there was a whole lot of dictation and questioning. You need to round it out to form a picture and it is the picture that should remain. Had you added Jakob Böhme to everything else today, then they would certainly have been confused. Why is it that when we have three hours one after the other, what is done in the second hour wipes out what was done in the first? In history, you could do an hour and a half of something new and then illuminate it through other things the children have already learned. We need to develop the will to keep the children lively, so that they will have something from all these things when they learn them. That is something that we need to achieve, since otherwise we cannot dare to keep these higher grades. I am not saying all of this simply to complain. The fact is that the class is asleep.

Dr. Steiner: The main reason I called you together today is that we need to continue working with the situation with the ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-grade students. This thing is really a little frustrating. We cannot get around the fact that the whole thing will land on the anthroposophical movement. That is hardly avoidable.

Yesterday, I spoke with the students in the eleventh grade, and I had the impression that they certainly want to be rid of their three comrades, N.G., H.B., and O.R. because they disturb the class. All the students seem to share the opinion that those three disturb the class, and that they cannot be there if the class is to continue as it should. That is what I found out there. However, I still feel there is a thorn in the class, a thorn we can see in the students’ feeling that the Waldorf School should have been able to cope with those children. I think—I hope you will understand me correctly—that feeling will remain with them despite what we do—as one of the students said, “We don’t want those guys here”—a problem will still remain. There will be a thorn in the side of the class. They seem to be unhappy that things went this far, and that, of course, is certainly something we cannot just pass over lightly.

Today, I spoke with U.A. I had the feeling that, although he is the oldest of the whole bunch, there was nothing more to it than that he followed along with the others, and that he himself does not actually know how he became involved with the group. Basically, there is not much to be said against him other than that he drank an awful lot one time. He was certainly terribly drunk. He couldn’t walk and couldn’t stand up. He laid down on a bench and was dragged around and had a terrible hangover the next day. Now, he still has a hangover about the hangover and makes the excuse that it all happened during the holidays. Otherwise, there is not really very much to say against him, and we certainly cannot even discuss expelling him. There can be no discussion of that whatsoever.

We had to expel the three. No doubt this will all be laid at the feet of the anthroposophical movement, and people will hang it around the neck of the anthroposophical movement so that, despite the fact that the boys were here for a longer time, we must now throw them out. The way things now stand, we cannot offer a better justification.

Well, say what you have to say. We did not quite finish our discussion last time, since only some of you said what you wanted. There are certainly others who want to speak. We need to discuss these three students, but we can expel them only by stating that they behaved in such a way during class and directly following that they disturbed the instruction. We also need to state that we cannot allow further disruption of the class because we have to prepare the upper-grades students for their final examinations. We need to present the picture that they made instruction impossible, that they had given passive resistance and laughed at the teachers. That is what became abundantly clear in my meeting with the class yesterday, that those boys did that to a great extent.

Nevertheless, it is still a very difficult thing. Yesterday, I looked at the drawings that X. had them make in descriptive geometry, and I cannot say that the drawings made by these three were any worse than those of the others. It is clear from the drawings that they participated just as much as everyone else, at least in the practical aspects, so that is certainly not a reason for expulsion. The question is whether they really disturbed the class. We need reasons. We can hardly expel them because they have pulled some dumb pranks. The drawings are what is normally called “neat work.”

J.W. spoke with me in her motherly, caring way about the three. She told me that H.B. has gained some interest in mathematics since X. took over class. Someone else said, however, that H.B. had said, concerning X.’s instruction, that it was a pleasant change from what occurred in the other classes. What occurred there did not interest him at all.

Can we really justify the expulsion by saying they made teaching impossible? We cannot keep them any longer. The way things are now, we would disavow the teaching of the class, and that is impossible. Nevertheless, we must somehow justify the decision. There must be some reason the whole class believes they will not move forward if these boys remain.

A teacher: The disturbance is actually outside class. They have attempted to undermine the school work.

Dr. Steiner: We need to substantiate that in a kind of summary of today’s discussion. We need to formulate it. We need to know what happened outside class.

Several teachers report and make proposals for formulating a basis for expulsion.

Dr. Steiner: Aside from the fact that we discussed whether we should use the practices of other schools, no school would expel him as a first consequence. He would get a warning at every other school, and under certain circumstances, a warning would be given upon a second occasion. Since we never gave him a warning, but immediately expelled him, we cannot proceed the way other schools do.

A number of teachers say G.S. was warned. At the public schools, he would have been immediately expelled for such a major breach of discipline.

Dr. Steiner: That is usually not done.

A teacher: That is the practice everywhere.

Dr. Steiner: It would be very difficult to include all three in this case.

A teacher: But the class does not want to work with them any more.

Dr. Steiner: That is the real reason, namely, that the class does not want to work together. That is the real reason. The exception is J.W. She would continue to work with them. She admits they disturbed her, and yet she would continue to work with them. She said that others are just as much at fault that they have become as they are. I cannot help but believe that the problem will remain and that the students, at least J.W., will believe they were not treated properly by the teachers. The question is, whether we can do things that way, that is, whether can we allow the official reason for expulsion to be that the whole class, with one exception, no longer wants to work with them.

A teacher: The girls in the eleventh grade asked to be protected from the improper behavior of those boys.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing in the record of your questioning to substantiate that. When was that?

A teacher: Two and a half weeks ago.

They discuss the case further.

Dr. Steiner: It seems that if you treat the remaining class appropriately, such a thing will not occur again.

It is truly so that we must accept bad influences almost with open eyes, and that people will say we throw students out without even a warning, without one single word. The case involving S. will be difficult for us just for that reason, because we are throwing him out with no prior suspension. Nothing else has happened in the case of S.

A teacher: Y. and I visited the parents and his mother wrote a letter afterward.

Dr. Steiner: (reads the letter aloud) Now we have that, too. Mr. N., don’t think I am trying to meddle in your work. On the morning they were expelled, the students demanded to speak with the teachers at 8:00 o’clock. That was delayed until 11:00, and then they met with you. You told the students not to speak with you as a teacher, but man to man. That created an absolutely impossible situation. By doing that, you give them swollen heads. The students get the feeling they should be heard at every opportunity, but you should speak to them as a teacher. If you put yourself at the same level as the students, you will develop nothing but rowdies who are completely out of your control. If you emphasize that, you will soon become their servants. That is something you should not say.

Two teachers make a report.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t understand the connection. We must understand things, otherwise there is no possibility of forming a judgment. Do you really believe you can still maintain discipline if you speak to the students that way?

Surely you did not justify yourselves to the students? Did you say that to them? Then there is some connection. You can’t do these things. You do not need to tell the boys the opposite, but you cannot allow them to believe that you are just as young as they are. That is impossible. We cannot do that. The children will be caught in delusions of grandeur.

A teacher: We should disavow those teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Be reasonable. We can’t do that. Imagine that we bring the boys back to school tomorrow in a triumphal parade and say to them, be so good as to come back to school. We want to punish your teachers.

A teacher: The children think the teachers were incorrect.

Dr. Steiner: That will usually be the case. That is probably not an exception.

The situation is that we need to decide about future occurrences, and we cannot negotiate that way with the students. If you do, you will continually muddy the differences between teacher and student. Even if only a rumor had been spread that the faculty has that opinion, then we could have said, “What are you thinking about, trying to force us to justify our opinions about you?” You cannot justify your views of the students to the students. That is absolutely out of the question. When it is only social conversation, you can certainly allow them to discuss things with you. However, when things have gone as far as they did, you cannot discuss morality with them. If you do, then the next thing you know, they will demand it.

We can do nothing else but expel them, but we need a sound reason. The unfortunate thing in this case is that after all the things that occurred, you still held negotiations with the boys. I think it was wrong that you went through the questioning reported in these minutes. A number of things came up that should not have. You should have handled the case in the class. There, you could have created the reason that would then have led to expulsion. Individual questioning throws a bad light on the matter. U.A. told me about a lot today. I only spoke with him because I wanted to know positively whether he could remain here in school here or not. I wanted to know if it was possible for the faculty to still work with him. I needed to know that. It is, of course, clear that the faculty can no longer be with the other five. An impossible relationship has developed. I hope that you will not go that far.

N.G. is discussed.

Dr. Steiner: N.G. breaks my heart. He is a victim of the situation at home. He said that he sees no difference between good and bad. He wants to join those people whose goal is the destruction of humanity. He said he will become worse. He would like to know that it is also possible to be good. That is, in general, the content of what he said. I told him he is simply a dumb boy who is incapable of forming an opinion about such things. I made it quite clear to him that I did not speak with him man to man, but treated him like a dumb boy. He was not so bold then, but he did tell me about things. All the pain he has withstood throughout his life is just like the pain he had from his appendix operation. He wants to destroy everything, and from that it is possible to conclude that he also wants to destroy the school. Where possible, I have always tried to help.

There is further discussion about N.G.

A teacher: Would it be better to look into such things in class?

Dr. Steiner: You should at least have brought some disciplinary action through which you could have removed the boys. There is no sense continuing with this second guessing. Of course, you should evaluate the situation in the classroom so that we would have a reason to get rid of the boys, otherwise we run the risk of someone saying that we acted on rumors and that we do not know what really happened.

We can hardly do anything other than say that the class no longer wants to have anything to do with the three boys, and that they behaved toward the faculty such that the faculty could no longer teach them. We can’t do anything else. How else could we justify this? There is nothing more to be done.

A teacher: Could we justify it with things they did outside class?

Dr. Steiner: Even that boy U.A., who is really just a dumb boy, said here in the minutes, and I saw it today also, that he does not want to say anything about the private situation of H.B. There is nothing we can do about that opinion because most of the things mentioned in the minutes of the questioning took place during the holidays. Everyone would say that if we knew what the boys had done, we would have been free to not accept them in school.

Several teachers suggest ways of stating the justification of the expulsions.

Dr. Steiner: That would be true of N.G., H.B., and O.R. The other cases we have to handle in the following way. We could tell U.A. that he can return, but we could give him a warning. If we want to remove S.H., we must be very careful. She is so little known to me and so hard to grasp that I depend completely upon those who know her to phrase it.

A teacher: Would “a conscious and intentional maligning of a teacher” be a reason?

Dr. Steiner: In connection with the three boys, that is adequate. For her, we would have to find some wording that would prevent people from accusing us of anything. We cannot include any characterization. We could say that remarks she has made about the school and faculty make it apparent that we can no longer teach her. It is questionable whether we should use the word “malign.” However, I have nothing against it. We could say, “S.H. has made remarks about the school and the faculty that make it impossible to continue to keep her as a student. These remarks were not only objectively considered, but were admitted to by herself.”

A teacher: That still does not include anything that says the remarks were untrue.

Another teacher: No one would believe her remarks were true.

Dr. Steiner: She could say the school insulted her. I only wanted a phrase that did not include any words that implied we are calling her a liar.

Whether you say “incorrect” or “lied and fabricated” that is all the same. If you want to avoid that problem, though, you cannot add such words. However, I do not want to contradict myself. If you want to include them, go ahead. For me, they indicate that the school feels justified in expelling her since, had she made truthful statements, the school would not have felt justified in doing that.

You could just say that she “made baseless statements.” It is all the same to me. If I say, for instance, that Moritz made statements that caused me to end our friendship, then no one would believe he had said I am the most noble man in the world. If I say I am ending our friendship, that implies that he referred to me as something other than the most noble person.

A teacher asks whether the school should give a progress report to those students who are expelled.

Dr. Steiner: We need to give them such a report only if they demand it. If we do, it should note that they were expelled for disciplinary reasons. Such progress reports are something we should do only when requested. My experience has always been, for example, in the universities, that progress reports were given when people did not fail. I saw a situation once where a student demanded such a report only to annoy the professor. We could write in our letters to the parents that we would provide a progress report if they wanted one. Even in the case of G.S., the report should include the fact that his behavior made it impossible for the faculty to allow him to remain in school. In the future, though, we need to be somewhat more careful.

A teacher: Should we tell the children in the upper grades about this in a formal way?

Dr. Steiner: What do you mean by a “formal way”?

A teacher: We could take them into the eurythmy hall and tell them there.

Dr. Steiner: I think we should leave it to the class teachers to simply tell them. Tell them only about the students in their class.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: We asked Miss Doflein to temporarily take over the main lesson in the second grade.

The fact that we are missing a language teacher is causing major problems. For the moment, we can do nothing about that. We need to see to it that we use all our strength to move forward. Things would be much better if we had just one more teacher.

Dr. Steiner: Is everyone here? We have gathered today because we have a number of things to discuss, and also because Mr. S. believes there are some things he needs to say about the events of the last meeting. I am not certain whether we should do that first.

A teacher: What should we do about the parents of the children who were expelled? We think their progress reports should not include any remarks about the expulsion.

Dr. Steiner: People all over Stuttgart are talking about the school and those rumors will then conclude that the faculty did not have the courage to admit what it had done.

If something like what occurred here came up in another school, it would not be such an affair as we have here. There has been some talk about whether one thing or another corresponds to what is normal in other schools, but this situation could, under certain circumstances, bring the entire Waldorf School into discredit if it is improperly used. You speak as though you did not know Mr. von Gleich exists. If someone were expelled in some other school, no one would care. What I fear is that if we do come to agreement, but handle it the way we are now, we will soon have a repetition.

I did not say he must be removed, but that it is possible that we may have to expel him. The goal of all of the suspensions was to enable us to discuss the matter. When you came to me in Dornach with that pile of unbelievable interrogations, there was nothing more to do. There was nothing more we could do. I said that you should look into the matter, but I did not mean that you should formally interrogate the boys and girls. I wanted the suspensions because I had lost trust.

A teacher: My recollection is that you said the other students must be suspended.

Dr. Steiner: I used the conditional tense: “If G.S. really gave the injections, then it might well be necessary to expel him.” You looked into the matter only afterward.

A teacher: The situation with the injections was completely clear.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that the boys played around. No one knows what he injected. There were some stupid pranks. The reason for the suspension was to be able to look into the matter when I got here. The problem is that the case of G.S. in connection with the others has created these difficulties. The problem that will create difficulties for the school is that the others had to be removed. The difficulty lies in the situation as a whole.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to say something about the lack of contact with the students.

Dr. Steiner: The contact between the faculty and the students in the upper grades has been lost. That is not something new. It was quite clear when the students in the upper grades requested a meeting with me. That fact alone speaks quite clearly about a loss of contact with the students. That is the foundation of the whole problem. As soon as such contact is genuinely present, things like this will no longer occur.

How do you think I could make a decision about such a matter over the phone, when I could not actually look at the situation? At the point when Mr. S. brought me the minutes of the interrogations containing things that should never have been discussed, a genuine conflict between the faculty and the students existed. There was nothing for me to decide, since I could not go so far as to make the students into teachers. The problem was a polarity, teachers or students. That became grotesquely apparent. Things slid so far that the students themselves spoke about the teachers speaking to them differently as teachers and as human beings. There was an open conflict between the faculty and the students, and there was, therefore, no other possibility than to make a decision. All that was left was to find the right words. What I said on the telephone was that you should look into the matter and determine the cause. Instead, you interrogated the students. It is only possible to understand “looking into the matter” as trying to determine what the problem is through observation. My understanding was that the faculty would try to find out what was behind the situation, but holding interrogations was simply impossible. I also do not believe that you held these interrogations before our first telephone conversation.

A teacher: There were no interrogations before the second telephone conversation.

Dr. Steiner: What I said could have only meant that if the suspicion were correct that G.S. had injected a student with morphine or opium, we would have to expel him.

A teacher: When a boy injects someone, it seems to me that that is such bad behavior that there is nothing else to be done other than throw him out.

Another teacher: Could we take that back?

Dr. Steiner: That would harm the movement most. You need to remember the following. I had to speak about the Waldorf School recently. I had to present the Waldorf School to the public as a model school, and in fact, it is broadly seen as such. Those people in Stuttgart who are interested in the Waldorf School need only to ask around, and they hear exactly the opposite. These are the things I am always referring to that arise from our position and make it possible to undermine the anthroposophical movement. The question is whether we want to create something that would help undermine the movement. The anthroposophical movement will not be undermined if we expel some students. It would, however, be undermined if people say things that we cannot counter. I am powerless against things that take place in discussions in which I do not participate. It is impossible for me to speak with the expelled students. There is nothing I can say when things have gone so far that the students have left. Through such events, I cannot speak at all about the school. This occurs just at the time when everyone is talking about the school.

I deeply regret that despite the fact that I have been here, I could not see everything. I did see most things, but not everything. I have to say that some aspects of the teaching in the Waldorf School are really very good and are still maintained in our old exemplary form. I really prefer, as long as it is not otherwise necessary, to say exemplary. However, there are certain points that show that the Waldorf School principles are no longer being carried out. We really need to discuss everything here in our meetings. It is an impossible situation when I come into a class, and the teacher has a book in hand and reads an arithmetic problem out of it, where the question is to compute the sum of the ages of three people and then another question is asked so that the children need to determine the sum of the ages of seven people. We are part of a movement that says that we should do only what is true to reality, and then we ask the children to compute the total ages of a group of people. What result do you expect? There is no reality in that. If such sloppiness happens in the school, then what I presented to you in our seminar course was simply for nothing.

As far as I am concerned, if that were simply one case, I would have said nothing. And if there were simply some points that were not so carefully considered, I would not be leaving with such a heavy heart. I have always tried to stress that the Waldorf School can put you above normal, everyday superficiality, but now the Waldorf School has fallen into the typical Stuttgart system. That is, for me, the most bitter thing that can occur, especially when I have to present the Waldorf School as a model. Somehow, that you have lost contact with one another must lie in the atmosphere here.

I must admit I’m really very concerned. When we founded the Waldorf School, we had to make a kind of declaration that after the students had completed three grades, they would be able to move to another school without difficulty. When I look at what we have achieved in three years—well, we just are not keeping up. It is really impossible for us to keep up.

The school inspector’s report was somewhat depressing for me. From what you told me earlier, I had thought he was ill-willed. But, the report is full of goodwill. I must admit that I found everything he wrote necessary. For example, you are not paying enough attention, so the students are always copying from one another. The things contained in the report are true, and that is so bitter. You gave me the impression he had done everything with ill intent. However, it is actually written in such a way that you can see he did not at all want to harm the school. Of course, he speaks that way when we are totally ruining the children. And of course, the result will be that things that are so good in principle become so bad when they are improperly used. We must use what is good. What we need is a certain kind of enthusiasm, a kind of inner activity, but all this has slowly disappeared. Only the lower grades have some real activity, and that is a terrible spectacle. The dead way of teaching, the indifference with which the instruction is given, the complete lack of spontaneity, must all disappear. Some things are still extraordinarily good, as I said before, but in other places there is a total loss of what should be. We need some life in the classes, real life, and then things will fall into place. You need to be able to go along with things and agree with them if you are to present them publicly, that is no longer possible for me. In many cases, people act as though they did not need to prepare before going into class.

I do not want to imply that is done elsewhere. I say it because no one wants to understand what I have been saying for years, namely, that through the habits of Stuttgart, the anthroposophical movement has been ruined. We were not able to bring forth what we need to care for, the true content of the movement. The Waldorf faculty has completely ignored the need to seek out contact. Now, the Society does not try to contact the teachers, and if you ask why, you are told that they do not want us. That is certainly the greatest criticism and a very bitter pill! Each individual needs to feel that they belong to the Society, but that feeling is no longer present. I always need to call attention to the fact that we have the movement. As long as people did not start things and then lose interest in them after a time, things went well for the movement. However, here in Stuttgart things have been founded where people have lost interest in them, and the Stuttgart system arose in that way. Every clique goes its own way, and now the Waldorf School is also taking on the same characteristic, so that it loses consciousness of its true foundation.

That is why I say it is obvious that this event will have no good end. If it were possible to guarantee that we would again try to work from the Waldorf School principle—if only such a guarantee were present! But, there is no such guarantee. There are always a lot of people who want to visit the Waldorf School. I am always sitting on pins and needles when someone comes and wants to visit. It is possible to discover a great deal when you think about things away from school. I certainly understand how difficult it is to create such classes, but on the other hand, I certainly miss the fire that should be in them. There is no fire, only indifference. There is a kind of being comfortable there. I cannot say that what was intended has in any way actually occurred.

A teacher: ... I want to leave...

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to create resentments. That is not the point. If I thought that nothing else could be done, I would have spoken differently. I am speaking from an assumption that the faculty consists of capable people. I am convinced that the problem lies in the habits of Stuttgart, and that people act with closed ears and closed eyes. They are asleep. I have not accused any teachers, but a sloppiness is moving in. There is no more diligence present. But diligence can be changed, it is simply no longer present.

A teacher: I would like to ask you to tell us what we have missed.

Dr. Steiner: This way of forcing something that has absolutely nothing to do with a mechanism into a mechanized scheme is simply child’s play in contrast to the inner process of it. This way of ignorantly putting all kinds of things together and calling it a picture when it is really not a picture is simply a method of occupying the students for a few hours. I believe it is absolutely impossible to discover an external mechanical scheme for the interaction of things connected with language. What would the children get from it when you draw a figure and then write “noun” and so forth in one corner? That is all an external mechanism that simply makes nonsense of instruction.

I hope that no animosities arise from what I am saying. Actually, our pedagogical discussions have been better than that. This fantasizing is most definitely not real. I was very happy with physical education. We should absolutely support that by finding another gymnastics teacher. The boys have become quite lazy. I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that there are also other impulses. Mr. N. has greatly misunderstood me. I did not claim that anyone was incapable of doing things the way that I would like. The problem is that we need to be colleagues in the movement.

A teacher: I have asked myself if my teaching has become worse.

Dr. Steiner: The problem you have is that you have not always followed the directive to bring what you know anthroposophically into a form you can present to little children. You have lectured the children about anthroposophy when you told them about your subject. You did not transform anthroposophy into a child’s level. That worked in the beginning because you taught with such enormous energy. It must have been closer to your heart two years ago than what you are now teaching, so that you awoke the children through your enthusiasm and fire, whereas now you are no longer really there. You have become lazy and weak, and, thus, you tire the children. Before, your personality was active. You could teach the children because your personality was active. It is possible you slipped into this monotone. The children are not coming along because they have lost their attentiveness. You no longer work with them with the necessary enthusiasm, and now they have fallen asleep. You are not any dumber than you were then, but you could do things better. It is your task to do things better, and not say that you need to be thrown out. I am saying that you are not using your full capacities. I am speaking about your not wanting to, not your not being able to.

(Speaking to a second teacher) You need only round yourself out in some areas and get away from your lecturing tone.

(Speaking to a third teacher) I have already said enough to you.

A teacher asks about more time for French and English since two hours are not sufficient in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: We can do such things only when we have developed them enough that we can allow the children to simply decide in which direction they want to be educated. We cannot increase the number of school hours. The number of school hours has reached a maximum, for both teachers and children. The children are no longer able to concentrate because of the number of hours in the classroom. We need to allow the children to decide. We need to limit Latin and Greek to those students who want to take the final examinations, and those students will also have to limit their other subjects. We already had to limit modern languages for them and allow more teaching time in Greek and Latin.

A teacher: The children come to me for Latin and Greek immediately after shop, eurythmy, and singing. I cannot properly teach them when they are so distracted.

Dr. Steiner: That may be true. Allowing the children to participate in everything cannot continue.

A teacher: We need to differentiate between those going into the humanities and those going on in business. Could we cut the third hour of main lesson short?

Dr. Steiner: Main lesson? That would be difficult. We can certainly not say that any part of the main lesson is superfluous.

A teacher: I wanted to make a similar request for modern languages in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly difficult to discuss moving forward in languages if we do not provide what the children need to have in other areas. In previous years, we did not do enough in those areas.

A teacher: If they have shop, I cannot teach Latin.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question of the class schedule and that needs to be decided by the faculty. You wrote down the class schedule for me. I will go through it to see if there is something we can do based purely upon the schedule. On the other hand, I was startled by how little the children can do. There is no active capacity for doing in the children, not even in the objective subjects. The children know so little about history. In general, the children know too little and can do too little. The problem is that an indifference has crept in, so that the things that are necessary are not done. There is no question of that in the 8b class. You need to be there for only five minutes and you can see that the children can do their arithmetic. This all depends upon the teachers’ being interested in the material. It is readily apparent how well the children in the 8b class can do arithmetic. What they can do, you do not see through examples of how they solve problems. That does not say very much. What you can see is that they were very capable in arithmetic methods. Individual cases prove that, but arithmetic is going poorly nearly everywhere.

(To a class teacher) The children know quite a lot, but you should not leave it to the children to decide when they want to say something, as those who are lazy will not speak up. You need to be careful that no one gets by without answering. Those who did speak knew quite a lot, and the history class went very well.

A teacher asks whether it would be possible to hold evening meetings where the teachers could meet together with students who were free.

Dr. Steiner: That would certainly be good. However, it is important how the teachers behave there. Such meetings must not lead to what occurred previously when the students voted for a student president.

A teacher: I thought more of lectures, music, and such things. Not a discussion.

Dr. Steiner: That might well be good, but it could also lead to a misunderstanding of the relationships.

A teacher wants to have one additional hour for each of the ancient languages.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot increase the amount of school time.

A number of teachers speak about the class schedule and increasing the amount of school time.

Dr. Steiner: An increase in the amount of school time cannot be achieved in an absolute sense. We can only increase the number of hours in one subject by decreasing them in another.

A teacher: The tenth grade has students who have forty-four hours of school per week.

Dr. Steiner: That is why many cannot do anything. I will look at the class schedule.

A teacher asks what to do for those who want a more musical education.

Dr. Steiner: If we begin allowing differences, we will have to have three different areas, the humanities, business, and art. We must look into whether that is possible without a significant increase in the size of the faculty.

A teacher: The students want to be involved in everything.

Dr. Steiner: That is perhaps a question for the faculty, and you should discuss it.

Now, to the things that are not as they should be and that have grown to cause me considerable concern. I am concerned, particularly for the upper grades, that the instruction is tending toward sensationalism. That occurs to the detriment of the liveliness in teaching. They want to have a different sensation every hour. The teaching in the upper grades has developed into a craving for sensations, and that is something that has, in fact, been cultivated. There is too little emphasis upon being able to do, and too much upon simply absorbing. That is sensational for many. When the students have so little inner activity, and they learn to feel responsibility so little, they assume that they can do whatever they want. That is often the attitude. You have copied too much from the university atmosphere. The boys think this is a university, and there is not enough of a genuine school atmosphere.

A teacher: If the students would participate energetically, I could give two hours of languages without becoming tired.

Dr. Steiner: Keeping the class active makes you more tired than when it sleeps.

A teacher asks about finding a new teacher for modern languages.

Dr. Steiner: We have been talking about a teacher for modern languages for quite some time. We could ask Tittmann, but I do not dare do that because we need to economize in every area. Try to imagine where we would get the money if we had no money for the Waldorf School. I would like to see the size of the faculty doubled, but that is not possible.

All this is something that is not directly connected with the difficulties. Most of them lie in attitude and will. For example, we must certainly stop using those cheap and sloppy student editions in our classes.

We can discuss the question of the teaching plan when I return. I would ask that you continue in the present way until the end of October. I hope that by the end of October we can move on to radical changes, but I fear they cannot be made.

A teacher asks about an explanation of the situation with the expelled students that is to appear in Anthroposophy and in the daily newspapers. Not only inaccurate, but also completely fabricated things had been reported publicly as facts.

Dr. Steiner: This explanation would refute what has already been published. The story is really going all around Stuttgart. It is a waste of time to explain things to bureaucrats, but the public should not remain unclear about it. We need to say that people could think what they want about the reasons, but we should energetically counter everything and declare them to be false. We should not forget that our concern here is not simply connected with the school, but is also a matter for the anthroposophical movement. Here I do not mean the Society, since it is asleep. But, we need to give some explanation. That would be the first thing to do. We can certainly not get by without that. When we expel some students, we also need to justify that publicly, otherwise it would just be one more nail in the coffin of the movement. We need to do it without making a big fuss, and we cannot act as though we were defending ourselves. That is why I was so surprised when you sent me the record of the interrogations while I was in Dornach. I found it mortifying to go into a “court procedure” with some students because of some dumb pranks.

A teacher: Would it be possible to write the text now?

Dr. Steiner: Well, you can make proposals. I don’t think it would be so easy to write by simply making proposals now. It needs to be written by someone with all due consideration.

A teacher asks about progress reports for these students.

Dr. Steiner: Progress reports? Giving in to someone like Mrs. X. (a mother who had written a letter to the faculty) is just nonsense. I cannot participate in the discussion because people would then complain that this is the first time they had heard about the situation. The faculty has made the most crass errors. You should have let the parents know earlier. As far as I am concerned, the reports could be phrased so that what the children are like is apparent only from the comments about their deportment, but that would only make things worse. Everyone knows they have been expelled, but then they receive a good report. Most teachers do not know that expulsions occur only rarely.

The best would be if Dr. X. would write these progress reports. Perhaps I could also look at them. Mr. Y. is too closely involved. I don’t think it would be a good idea for those most closely involved to do it. Form a committee of three, and then present me with your plans.

Concerning the parent meeting, you could do that, but without me. They might say things I could not counter, if I hear something I cannot defend. The things I say here, I could not say to the parents. We need to clear the air, and the teachers must take control of the school again. You do not need to talk about the things not going well. I think a meeting with the parents would be a good idea, but you, the faculty, would have to really be there. The things I took exception to earlier are directly connected with this matter. The school needs a new direction. You need to eliminate much of the fooling around. We need to be more serious. How are things with the student Z. who left?

A teacher gives a report.

Dr. Steiner: We need to be firm that he left the second, not the third, grade. Then we must try to show why it only seems that students are not so far along at the end of the second grade. The examples of his work we sent along show that Z. did not progress very far, that he only could write “hors” instead of “horse.” There are many such examples, but they are not particularly significant. Take another example. “He could only add by using his fingers.” That is not so bad. It is clear he could not add the number seven to another number.

The two places that could be dangerous for us lie in the following. The one is that people could claim he could do less than is possible with a calculator. To that, we can say that our goal is to develop the concept of numbers differently. We do not think that is possible with such young children. We will have to go into this business with calculators. The other thing that is dangerous for us is his poor dictation. There, we can simply say that dictation is not really a part of the second grade in our school. The situation is quite tempting for someone with a modern pedagogical understanding. That is how we can most easily be attacked. We will have to defend ourselves against that. We need to energetically and decisively defend ourselves. We need to stop the possibility of being criticized on these two points. We need to ward off this matter with a bitter humor. The report that was sent along makes things more difficult. He got a good report from us. This letter was written with good intent. For example, “I could not develop his knowledge further within the context of my class.” On the other hand, though, it is incomprehensible to a schoolmaster that he could write “horse” as “hors.”

A teacher: We have also received students who could not write.

Dr. Steiner: We should use such facts. If you can prove that, then you should include it. He wrote two-and-a-half typed pages, and then scribbled in some more. We should write just as much. We need to write back to him sarcastically. We need to develop some enthusiasm. We can certainly go that far. You need only look at Goethe’s letters, and you will also find errors of the same caliber. The faculty seems like a lifeless lump to me. You give no sign of having the strength to throw these things back into people’s faces. We need to use such things. The faculty is simply a lifeless lump. You are all sitting on the curule chairs of the Waldorf School, but we must be alive.

We need to use the resources we have. We need to write just as much, not like Mr. X. writes, but with a tone that is well-intended and not attacking.

A teacher: Do I always write such bad letters?

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps it is only this one case that I saw. A teacher asks about a student from out of town who cannot come to school when the weather is bad.

Dr. Steiner: We could give the father a binding answer. We could tell him that if the child lived in Stuttgart, we could, to the extent possible, take over the responsibility. However, when the boy has to make a longer trip, we can hardly be responsible for sending him out into bad weather when that might make him ill. We should tell the father that we understand the boy’s situation. However, we can make no decision other than to say that if the boy does not move into Stuttgart, he should leave the school. We need to take on that responsibility.

A teacher: Some students in the upper grades are taking jobs.

Dr. Steiner: That is no concern of ours if they are good students.

A teacher mentions a letter about a visit of some English teachers.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to accept their visit. However, I hope that by then there is a different atmosphere in the school. They can visit the various classes.

A teacher asks about how to treat colors in art class.

Dr. Steiner: Couldn’t you do what I said to the boys and girls yesterday? What I said today was concerned more with modern history. What I have said specifically about how to treat colors could be the subject of a number of lessons. Perhaps Miss Waller could send it to you from Dornach. I think you could go directly into the practical use of color with this class, so they become aware of what they have done in the lower grades. They should become aware of that. Of course, you must then go into the many things that must be further developed, the things you have begun, so that you also have them draw. I do not mean simply curves. You could also do the same with colors. For example, you could do it just as you did with curves to contrast a rounded and well-delineated blue spot and a curved yellow stroke. You should not do that too early. In the lower grades, the colors should live completely in seeing.

From there, you can go on to comparative anatomy; you could contrast the extremities in front and back. You could contrast the capacity of certain animals for perceiving and feeling with the wagging of a dog’s tail. That is actually the same problem. In that way, you can really get into life, you get into reality. Such things need to be brought into all areas of instruction. For many children, it is as though their heads were filled with pitch—they cannot think. They need to do such things through an inner activity, so that they genuinely participate. You can learn a great deal from the gymnastics class.

Yesterday, the boys were really very clumsy. I mean, they had a natural clumsiness and gymnastics is quite difficult for them. We need a second gymnastics teacher. The most you can teach is fourteen hours of gymnastics. If we had eighteen, we would need a second teacher. Particularly for boys, gymnastics, if it is not done pedantically, as it usually is, but, in fact, becomes a developmental force for the physical body, is really very good with eurythmy. The gymnastics teacher: I begin with the sixth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we need to begin earlier. I would find it not at all bad if Mr. Wolffhügel would see to it that our classrooms are not so plain, but that they had some artistic content also. Our school gives the impression we have no understanding of art.

A teacher: B.B. is in my seventh grade class. Could you give me some advice?

Dr. Steiner: He is in a class too high for what he knows. He is lazy? I think it is just his nature, that he is Swedish, and you will have to accept that he cannot quickly comprehend things. They grasp things slowly, but if you return to such things often, it will be all right. They love to have things repeated. That is perhaps what it is that you are observing with him.

A teacher: He is a clever swindler and a facile liar.

Dr. Steiner: He does not understand. A swindler? That cannot be true. He does the things we have often discussed, but they only indicate that you need to work with him so that he develops some feeling for authority. If he respects someone, as he does Mr. L., then things are all right. What is important is that you repeatedly discuss things with him. He is not at all impertinent. It is important that you put yourself in a position of respect.

A teacher tells about an event.

Dr. Steiner: That was an event connected with a curious concept of law. In a formal sense, it was not right, and he thought the man should be punished. He was preoccupied with that thought for a long time. Sometimes you need to find out about such things from the children and then speak about them and calm them. If such things continue to eat into them, then things will become worse, and that is the case with all of these boys. It is bad when children think the teacher does not see what is right. We cannot be indifferent in that regard. We need to take care that the children do not believe that we judge them unjustly. If they believe that, we should not be surprised if they are impertinent.

A teacher asks about languages in the seventh and eighth grades. A third of the class are beginners and two-thirds are better. The teacher asks if it would be possible to separate the beginners from the more advanced students.

Dr. Steiner: It is miserable that we do not group the children who are at the same stage. Is it so impossible to group them that way? You would need to put the fifth graders in a lower group. It has gradually developed that we are teaching language by grade, and that is a terrible waste of our energy. Couldn’t we teach according to groups and not according to grade?

A teacher: There is a time conflict.

Dr. Steiner: I am always sad that I cannot participate more in such things. I cannot believe it would not be possible. I still think it would be possible to group the students according to their capabilities, and at the same time work within the class schedule. That must certainly be possible if you have the goodwill to do it.

A teacher: It is possible with the seventh and eighth Grades.

Dr. Steiner: I think we could keep the same number of classroom hours. I cannot imagine that we cannot have specific periods for language during the week. Then we could do that.

A teacher: The problem is the religious instruction.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps we could do it if we fixed the languages classes to specific hours during the week.

A teacher asks whether Dr. Steiner had looked at W.A. in the seventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: God! He certainly is disturbed by everything. He has gotten better, and if you ask him sometimes to say good things, he is also happy to do that. He likes some things. It would be a good idea if you gave him more serious things to write in his book. Curative eurythmy would not be much help. He needs to practice very serious things.

A teacher: Have you anything more to say about my class?

Dr. Steiner: In general, your class needs to be more involved with the material. They are not really in it. They are, what, about thirteen- year-old boys and girls. I think, of course, that enlivening arithmetic would do much to awaken them. They are not particularly awake. I do not think that they have a good understanding of what powers and exponents are. Do you do anything explain why they are called powers?

A teacher: I began with growth.

Dr. Steiner: I think you should include something like stories in the arithmetic instruction so that the process becomes clear from within. There are many ways you can do that, but you must always connect them with the material. The methods you have used with the children, where they use their fingers, are nothing more than an external contrivance with no inner connection. It tends toward being only play. If the children do not really concentrate, I do not believe the boys and girls will be able to solve the same equations a year from now that the present eighth-grade class can. It is a question whether they will be able to do that. They are not awake. They are still at the stage of thinking like a calf. In the other seventh-grade class, if we take the children’s abilities into account, they are actually more capable and more awake. Your class is not very awake. On the whole, you have a rather homogeneous class, whereas H.’s class has some who are quite capable and some who are quite dumb. Your class is more homogeneous. It is a very difficult group. You have some gifted children in your 8b class. The 8b class is made up of just about only geniuses. I think in your seventh-grade class there are quite a number who are basically dumb, and I think that you need to pull them out of their lethargy. They are covered with mildew. I am quite sorry I have not had time enough everywhere. Many things would have been easier had we not had these tremendous moral difficulties that have taken so much time. If the masters of pedagogy sitting on top of the mountain really had a more positive attitude toward the pedagogical course, I could have been more effective here. As it was, everything was very difficult. You do not need to get angry if I say that the faculty is like a heavy, dense mass sitting lazily upon their curule chairs, and because of that, we are all being ground up. We have yet to experience the worst opposition.

A teacher: Everything builds up because you are here so seldom.

Dr. Steiner: Then we have to find some way of making the year 975 days long. Recently I’ve been on the road all the time. Since November of 1921, I am almost always traveling. I cannot be here more. Things would go better if Stuttgart cliques don’t gain too strong a hold. The anthroposophical movement should never have expanded beyond what it was in 1914. That is not the right thing to think. The medical group says exactly the same thing. Mr. K., from Hamburg, thinks I need to go to Hamburg. However, I can discuss that question only when I have seen that they have done everything else. The pedagogical course I held contains everything. It only needs to be put into practice. I would never say such terrible things to the medical group if I had seen things progressing there. But they have simply left things aside. It is as though I had never held the seminar here.

A teacher mentions the difficulties that have arisen due to bad living conditions.

Dr. Steiner: Certainly, that has some effect, but there is an objection I could raise if I really wanted to complain. That has nothing to do with the fact that the school is as it is. That has nothing to do with that. It is not my intent to point my finger, I only want to say how things are. It is very difficult. I have said much that sticks in your throat, but it all came from a recognition that things must be different. The fact that, for instance, there really is no contact among you certainly has nothing to do with the problem of your housing. That everyone goes their own way is connected directly with how the school itself is. If anthroposophical life in Stuttgart were more harmonious, that would benefit the school, but recently things have become worse. In a moral sense, everyone is walling themselves off, and we will soon be at a point where we do not know one another. That is something that has become worse over time. What each individual does must affect others and become a strength in the Society. What we need is a joyful recognition and valuation of what is done by each individual, but the goodwill for that is missing. We are missing a joyful and receptive recognition of the achievements of individuals. We are simply ignoring those achievements. You should speak about what is worthy of recognition. The Stuttgart attitude, however, is non-recognition, and that curtails achievement. If I work and nothing happens, I become stymied. Negative judgments are justified only in connection with positive ones, but you have no interest in positive achievements. People become stymied when not one living soul is interested in the work they have done.

To a large extent, the contact between student and teacher has been lost and something else has developed. When there is such disinterest, I have no guarantee that such things as have happened could not be repeated again in the future.

A teacher asks about a permanent class teacher for one of the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: Things were no different before. There was a time when the students just hung on Dr. X. That occurred until a certain time and then stopped.

A teacher: Things have become so fragmented due to the many illnesses.

Dr. Steiner: The catastrophe occurred just at that time when not so many people were away. In general, our students are not bad students. I do not want to overemphasize it, but it seems to me that there is a certain kind of indifference here. Indifference was not so prominent when the teachers had more to do. Since the teachers have had some relief, a kind of indifference has arisen.

There must be some reason factions arise. People are talking about causality, that is, cause and effect. In the world around us, the effects arise from their causes, but here in Stuttgart, the effects arise from no cause at all. There are no causes here, and if you want a cause, there is none. If you try to pin someone down to a cause, that person would give a personal explanation, but you cannot find the cause.

The effects are devastating. We have seen what they are. Due to the Stuttgart attitude, we have here an absolute contradiction of the law of causality. The reasons actually exist, but they are continually disputed so that no one becomes aware of them. We always have effects, but the causes are explained away. If you multiply zero by five, you still have nothing, and I would certainly like to know what value nothing has.

Comments concerning the Pedagogical Youth Conference held October 3 through 15 in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: Had I come here and heard that all these young people are barging in and then not going away, I think I would have seen that was a situation that would have called for some words to slow it down. But, on a particular occasion when I asked why Y. was not here, I was told that people did not think there was any reason he should be here.

I do not intend to make the slightest accusation in that regard, and even if we discussed it further, there would be no reasons for it. The really sad thing about this Stuttgart attitude is that there are effects that have no causes.

You will not readily admit that you do not properly consider the matter if you say they have no trust. On the contrary, we must ask why we have not achieved what is right so that they would have had a more reasonable trust than presently exists? Many things have been neglected. The question for us is how can we win people’s trust. You have simply done nothing to allow a positive cooperation to occur. People have no reason to be distrusting. Things have not gone so far that the question could have been discussed even at a feeling level. The question did not even arise. The young people do not even notice you were there, they did not notice the spirits on top of the mountain. Had someone told me that Y. was difficult to get along with, I would have had a reason, but they said that they had not even thought about it.

The result is not that young people have no trust, but that they are given no opportunity to develop it. The great masters on the mountain are simply not there. People did not know you were there. They did not know that there was a Union for Independent Cultural Life.

A teacher: X. is among those who did not want to know that such a union exists.

Dr. Steiner: That is an effect. People would have found a way, but no one did anything to help them.

It is not good to fall into this Stuttgart attitude. I would like to see that you take the lack of cause more seriously in the future. This is a serious thing, as otherwise it will really be too late to get the situation under control.

Dr. Steiner: What is now weighing upon my soul is the class schedule. It cannot remain as it has been. I very much regret it was not possible for me to see and hear more of the school. However, during the relatively long period when I was at the school nearly every day, I got a certain impression. This class schedule cannot remain as it is because it causes too much fragmentation and dispersion of our efforts and is, therefore, not rational. Of course, we can make a change only after we are clear about the direction of the change. For if today’s meeting is to be really fruitful, you must say everything you have to say about the subject. I do not mean you should speak only about the class schedule, as that will be the final result. What we need is for each individual member to completely say what he or she has to say. Let us begin with that.

A teacher wants more weeks for mathematics and physics in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do that without bringing it into harmony with everything else. We first need an overview of modern languages in the various classes, as that definitely cannot remain as it is and everything else is connected with that.

A teacher wants to divide modern language instruction in the 8b class. A colleague would take the beginners and the class teacher the more advanced students.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot divide the classes in just any way we want. We can do that only if we approach the problem radically, so that we form groups according to ability. That is something we need to do, otherwise we will have an endless extension of the class schedule. The class schedule has taken on an impossible form. Only if we base our pedagogical methods entirely upon the development and understanding of human beings, can we achieve what is possible. It is easier to ruin what is good than it is to turn around what is bad. The bad is not so far away as its counterpart. It is certainly true, don’t you agree, that the class schedule is a monstrosity?

A teacher wants to have Greek and Latin class immediately after main lesson in the higher grades and to have it for two periods.

Dr. Steiner: That would be good, particularly if you gave it some color. You could handle the more formal things in one period and in the other, reading. In that case, it would be better to have two hours, one after the other.

It is not possible to maintain Greek and Latin unless we allow the children to decide, beginning at some grade, whether they wish to have French and English or Greek and Latin. That is something we need to do. We need to work toward enabling the children to pass their final examinations. We can’t do that other than by allowing them and their parents to decide whether they want to have Greek and Latin or French and English. Since we begin French and English in the first grade, there is no doubt we can offer some repetition of it for those older children who want Greek and Latin, if they desire that. Nevertheless, we must undertake this division.

A teacher: In what grade would this division occur?

Dr. Steiner: The desire to take Greek and Latin is the same as the desire to take the final examinations. The way things are today, we would have hardly any reason to offer Greek and Latin in the normal way, if we did not have students who want to work toward their final examinations and who also should have the benefits of the Waldorf School method.

A teacher: The students need French because it is included in the examination.

Dr. Steiner: Since we start teaching languages at the very beginning of elementary school, it would be sad if we could not repeat some of the instruction at a higher grade for those students who need to have Greek and Latin. We need to determine what we can eliminate from review. We cannot continue with things the way they are now. The class schedule is a monster and pedagogically incorrect.

A teacher proposes forming a group of beginners and a group of more advanced students for all the seventh and eighth grades. The way they are now grouped for modern language instruction, not much progress can be made.

Dr. Steiner: Elsewhere you find that the less capable children are left behind in the higher grades. You find that even in the elementary schools. Since we do not do that, we need to find another way. You will always have children who are more capable together with other children who are less capable. Those children who are unable to do the work disturb the class because they are bored. We must be somewhat more organized in our work. The first thing we can say is that they begin Greek and Latin in the fifth grade and that goes on to the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. Therefore, in the fifth and sixth grades, we must have all four languages, or at least Latin [and the modern languages]. That is how it must remain. Beginning in the seventh grade, and for all the following grades, those who have decided to take Latin and Greek as their main language and French only as a review will not be able to participate in handwork. They cannot take English then.

In the fifth and sixth grades there will be English and French and Latin or Greek as an elective. In the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades, they will only have a review of French, and those who do not take Latin and Greek will have their regular instruction in French and English.

Many teachers say that two hours is not enough for foreign language in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: That is why it would be good to group the classes. Of course, we cannot put those children who have absolutely no French or English together with those who wish to take the final examinations. But, what we are talking about are elementary school children, and they don’t take final examinations. So, where is the problem?

A teacher proposes a way of forming groups.

Dr. Steiner: That will not change anything for those taking Greek and Latin. Beginning in the seventh grade, the French review will take the place of handwork. Under these circumstances it must be possible for those who take Greek and Latin to have those classes immediately after main lesson.

A teacher: Couldn’t we wait until eighth grade to begin that?

Dr. Steiner: If we remain with the same number of class hours, then five years is certainly not too few for Greek and Latin. Since we will be using the handwork time for a review of French, we could offer more French for those students taking Latin and Greek. We could drop English in the seventh grade. However, if we offer an English class through the first six grades, then I would like to know how anyone could claim that the children would not learn enough English. If we teach English from the first through sixth grades, how could that possibly be too little? At most, the children might forget some things, but they will certainly not have learned too little if they have had English for six years. Normally, English is not taught more than six years. It is not more progressive to teach it from the age of twelve to sixteen. Then, it is more difficult than for the smaller children. If we teach it with some fire, if the instruction does not fall asleep, six years will be enough. That is the best time for it. They no longer have Latin, it would be only one year more at an unfavorable time.

A teacher: Could we offer a review of English?

Dr. Steiner: There could be at best a desire, for some occult or non-occult reason. That is something we could determine for the children. Such things could be done. However, we must first bring the class schedule into an acceptable form. We can do that only when we do not overfill it.

A teacher: A review of French would require many more hours for the students.

Dr. Steiner: That is not necessarily so. We would take the French periods from handwork. We would considerably limit the handwork class. We cannot continue to allow handwork to be as extensive as we have, because the class schedule would then become monstrous. We need to significantly decrease the amount of handwork instruction.

A teacher: Should we keep the same number of hours for Greek and Latin?

Dr. Steiner: For now we would remain with four periods per week. Now we should look at things from another perspective. If we want to bring the Latin and Greek classes into order, then we need to look at them differently. We could say that those students who have Latin and Greek in grades seven through eleven also have main lesson, and then Latin and Greek.

The next thing we need to look at is music. What is the situation there?

The music teacher: They have instruction in singing, choir, and orchestra, but not everyone comes to orchestra.

Dr. Steiner: Is that also in the morning? Couldn’t we reorganize the class schedule so that those children who have Latin and Greek would have main lesson from 8:00 until 10:00 or 11:00? Then they would have Latin and Greek four days a week directly afterward, or twice a week for two periods. In that case, we could take some time from other subjects in the morning. What would be the situation then? Could you teach more singing and eurythmy in the morning?

A eurythmy teacher: I would like to have the morning.

Dr. Steiner: You would not need to teach one hour of eurythmy and then an hour of tone eurythmy. It would be better to teach two hours of eurythmy, otherwise we will get lost. We need to be firmer in our plan. We need to get rid of this haphazard, whimsical way of working.

We would then have two hours of eurythmy, four hours of Latin and Greek, and also main lesson. Then we have voice and music. We still have the possibility of choir and orchestra. The music teacher: I have the feeling that the ninth grade needs more instruction in musical theory.

Dr. Steiner: I do not think it would be too much if you were to do that. We still have the problem of choir. That is something you should do separately. It would be possible to do singing in the mornings, and choir and orchestra in the afternoon. Thus, in the morning we would have main lesson, Latin and Greek, eurythmy, and voice. In the afternoon, we would have choir and orchestra. Those who have French and English should learn that while the others are learning Latin and Greek, so that things remain together. Handwork and gymnastics could be in the afternoon for the higher grades. In this way, we can create a class schedule.

If possible, we should teach gymnastics in the afternoon. Gymnastics is not exactly a time for resting. It is not good to group gymnastics with the other subjects. We could have two classes in the gym at the same time. I need to speak with the gymnastics teachers about the method. I have only made brief mention of that. In gymnastics, it is always possible to do the exercises so that two large groups can be formed. Recently, it was quite good to have gymnastics outside. It was clear that the boys cannot really control their bodies, that their arms dangle. The boys’ control of their bodies has clearly suffered from having had no gymnastics for three years. We cannot deny that.

When they have some free time, the children in the upper grades should perhaps find some work for themselves. We still have the question of religious instruction to consider and also shop. These are all things that need to be done in the afternoon. Art can also be done in the afternoon.

A teacher: The children have asked if they are required to learn stenography.

Dr. Steiner: There are a number of reasons why it should be required. Stenography only begins in the tenth grade. We could change things so that they have stenography for one period a week in the afternoons, but it would be required. It would be quite good if the children learned stenography.

The shop teacher: We wanted to teach shop in blocks, but the afternoons would not be enough.

Dr. Steiner: We need to see how things go with a proper plan. This has become urgent, and we must do that first. We will probably need a second teacher for that class, but we will have to have it in the afternoon.

The shop teacher: I do not want to drop the block approach. It has been very effective.

Dr. Steiner: You will find a way to continue instruction in blocks. If we do things so that main lesson comes first, then Latin and Greek second, and eurythmy and voice third, and that we do the other subjects in the afternoon, we can divide our time. We can put stenography where it fits. In connection with the other things, I think we could achieve our ideals so that main lesson is in the first two hours. Then I would certainly follow that with languages from 10:00 until 12:00. That does not fill every day, so we can also consider something else. The Independent Religious Instruction does not cause any difficulties in connection with the class schedule. It is still possible, with the exception of religious instruction, to have main lesson, languages, voice, and eurythmy in the morning for the lower grades.

The easiest thing would be to have handwork class in the afternoon, but it might be possible to exchange voice with eurythmy, so that the children do not have the same teacher every afternoon, although I do not think that would be the best thing to do. How many hours of handwork do we have? We have nineteen classes, so how many hours is that? If we have to divide classes, they should at least be in the same period. Then, it would not affect the class schedule. Because things are divided in a completely arbitrary way, without thought, we have an arbitrary class schedule. If eighth grade is divided, the same teacher should teach both sections. The class schedule has no firm contours.

A eurythmy teacher: We have divided nearly all the classes.

Dr. Steiner: We should hold the divided classes at the same time, otherwise the children will not be occupied. If the language teachers do not see that, we will be here all night long. If we divide a class in a subject, the children still need to have it at the same time. Any changes in the class schedule must be made in a meeting where I am present. Of course, we can relax things where there is a justifiable need, but we certainly cannot form the whole school irrationally. Do we really have to divide things so much? A eurythmy teacher: The classes are too large. It is hardly possible to work when there are more than thirty-two children.

Dr. Steiner: We need to divide them among the various teachers, but to hold the classes at the same time. Just give the other teachers the students they would like to have, and so forth. That can certainly be done, but it does need to be done. We are gaining a bad name because we are moving away from the spirit of the curriculum because of the class schedule.

What are you doing in orthopedic eurythmy? Is that also in the afternoon? I just wanted to know. It would be better to call it “eurythmic orthopedics” [curative eurythmy]. “Orthopedic eurythmy” has a little taste of “fallen angel” to it. Contradictio in adjecto [a contradiction in terms].

Now we have thirty-eight hours of handwork. The divided classes have to be given at the same time. That would be sixty-two hours. Why would it not be possible to stay with our plan? They need to be divided among four afternoons. These sixty-two hours could certainly be done in four afternoons.

A teacher: We can only do sixteen hours per afternoon.

Dr. Steiner: I only wanted to know how many hours we have and that is sixty-two. We could have four hours each of the four afternoons. In the best case, that would be sixteen hours, or forty-eight. We need to save fourteen hours. In order to do that, in the future we will have to teach the first four classes for two hours, one after the other, and for the remaining classes, one hour. We need to limit things somehow. We would then have twenty-two hours for the four lower grades. How many groups are there in the fifth through eleventh-grade classes? That would be twenty-one hours so that we now have forty-three hours. That is absolutely possible.

Those who want more time for practice could do that as an elective. If it is acceptable to the parents, we could add an elective. What happens in these handwork classes is a kind of recreation. They need to do the least there. The fact that there are schools that have four periods of handwork is a situation impossible for us. We’re not holding a school for girls here. If we were to go into such things, then it would be impossible for us to make a class schedule. We need to keep to an orderly schedule, so it is better when we don’t give in to such things. There is also a desire to have three times as many eurythmy periods, but we can only divide things upon an objective basis. No one would say that more would not be learned in two periods than in one. Even though there is an hour too little of handwork class, for arithmetic, we only have a quarter of the time that we need. It is just as justifiable to say that we need four times as much time for arithmetic as it is to say that we have one period too little for handwork. We could not give the children what they need to be human beings if we used that argument for everything. It is not used in connection with arithmetic. You could gain some time in the handwork class if you were to present it more efficiently and the children learn that they do not need a complete period to do everything. They could also use an extra half-hour in arithmetic. Our instruction needs to be efficient, as I said at the beginning.

Now I think that we have covered all the subjects.

A teacher: One of the religion groups needs to be put into the afternoon, since otherwise we would need one more teacher for religion.

Dr. Steiner: The number of teachers that the faculty can provide for teaching religion has been reached, partially because of time. We do not have anyone in Stuttgart.

A younger teacher: I would like to give that class.

Dr. Steiner: You would need to be here longer. You cannot do that. Perhaps it would be possible later if you still feel called to do it. For now, you have not been in Stuttgart and in the school long enough. It would not be possible.

(Speaking to Miss Röschl) If you did not already have seventeen hours, I would ask you to do it, but I am afraid to do so because of your hours.

(Speaking to another teacher) I was so dissatisfied with your instruction that I cannot take on the responsibility for it. You’ll have to excuse me, but after the disappointment you gave me, I just spoke bluntly, but after I observed your instruction, I really cannot take over the responsibility. Teaching religion is a very responsible position.

A teacher: I would like to give a class in religion.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps in five years, if you work diligently until then. You need to live into such things. You cannot go into them without taking on the full responsibility. Imagine what it would mean if religious life were to flame up in you. Religious life needs to be kindled, and that can occur in many ways. How about you, Mr. Wolffhügel?

A teacher: I don’t think that is possible.

Dr. Steiner: I think you would be able to find your way to it. I need to be objective about this, and I think I could take on the responsibility if you and Mr. Baumann were to do it.

A teacher: I would need to prepare for both classes.

Dr. Steiner: Much preparation is necessary, as well as enthusiasm. I think that Mr. Wolffhügel is anxious in regard to the services. The religion class is something that needs to fit you, but the way you understand teaching, I think it would. My only question is whether you would be overburdened.

It would be best if it were somebody from school, but it can be somebody from outside. It is sad that it cannot be one of us. It is also strange that no one feels called to do this. I certainly value Dr. E. very highly for scientific things, but I would never give him a class in religion. No, I would not do that, but he is quite aware of how highly I value him.

It is difficult for Dr. R. (a theologian outside the school) who cannot even handle his own children. One who actually needs to be handled with the best level of pedagogy is beaten. If the boy remains in the school there for a half year, he will be ruined for life. The teacher beats him. His mother went to the teacher and wanted to speak with him. She began by saying to the teacher, “I do not want to speak to you as a teacher, but as a mother to another human being.” He replied with, “I will not allow you to speak to me as a human being.” She then went to the school director and told him about that. He told her, “Well, if you want to speak to a teacher in our school as a human being, then you cannot expect to be treated in any other way since that is a personal affront.”

That reminds me of something that happened once with a Russian woman at the German-Belgian border. She was returning from London to St. Petersburg. She got through Holland and at the German border she wanted to act like a Russian. The border control officer came to her and said that she would have to take her luggage down and she asked, “It’s so heavy, could you perhaps help me?” He replied with, “Help? Who do you think I am? Do you think I am a human being? I am a royal Prussian official and not a human being. If you were to go down to the market place, I would certainly offer to help you and carry your luggage, but here I am a royal Prussian official and I cannot help you get it down.”

Mr. Boy would be quite good, but he has not been here long enough to give religion instruction. You need to have been in anthroposophy longer in order to give the Independent Religious Instruction.

Who is speaking here in Stuttgart? H. would have the spirit and everything, but he does not have the temperament to be a teacher. He is also unknown among the anthroposophists. The groups are very large and we need to group them differently until we find someone. Today, it would only be beating our heads against the wall. What we see here are the symptoms of our overall difficulties. Now that we have all these institutions, the Waldorf School and the Association for Independent Cultural Life, we are in a situation where we actually need experts. We need experts in various areas. What is important in teaching is that the right person be at the right place. Under certain circumstances, seen purely externally, the teaching might not even look very good, but the personality as such is extremely important in this kind of teaching. There might be someone among the physicians. I could immediately accept that young man, N. There are also some among the theologians that I could easily trust to do this. I would never give G. a teaching position. Someone who writes such bad articles is certainly not destined to be a good Waldorf teacher.

A teacher: He has some good qualities.

Dr. Steiner: I met him recently. He is a nice young man, but he can’t do anything. There is no subject in which he could become a teacher. He knows really nothing about any subject, and that is the problem. He could never take over teaching a class, nor can he do something in any of the higher grades.

A teacher: He thinks that he will be coming to the Waldorf School as a teacher.

Dr. Steiner: No one would claim that he would become a Waldorf teacher if, when he is asked about what he can do, he replies German literary history.

A teacher: He misunderstood.

Dr. Steiner: His plan to go to Freies Geistesleben arose only after I had turned him down. I only told him that there is nothing available until Easter. I did not say that something would be available for him afterward. It would not be possible to say less. We will have to find another way.

A teacher: If I am to now change the class schedule, a change in the distribution of the teachers will not be necessary except for the consequences in regard to the parallel groups, will it?

Dr. Steiner: A change in the faculty will not be necessary if we do not decide to group things in languages differently than we already have. All the language classes could be at the same time, but they would be distributed on different days. We will have to have all the language classes at the same time, but not every class will have language from 10:00 until 11:00 every day.

There are two possibilities: either we will have language class for the whole school on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:00 until 12:00. We will have, for instance in the second grade, six hours of languages, thus, there are three days with two hours of language each day. They would be from 10:00 until 12:00 and would be held in the regular classroom. Right now, Mrs. E. has five other language periods in other classes on Monday through Saturday. It would still be possible to have just as many classes of language, but with other groups of students. We could do the main lesson as such from the first through eleventh grades, but now we would be able to group the students differently. Then, we would only have the same number of language classes, but they would be divided differently. It would not be possible to carry out such a radical change pedantically, and you would still have two or three weaker students.

A teacher: We would have to have an overview of which students that would be. We need to make a list divided into three levels.

Dr. Steiner: For the time we can leave it as it is. That is something we cannot do now. That can only be done at a time when I can be here for a few days. For now, you need to continue so that the language instruction remains with the same teachers.

The remaining voice lessons can be done in the afternoon. You can still give stenography from 12:00 until 1:00. The main thing is that we generally remain with what we have discussed, that the main instruction be given between 8:00 and 12:00. That is all there is now concerning the class schedule.

Are there any questions that have come up in regard to the things that were decided? That is the reason why we are here together.

There is a further question in connection with dividing a class for language instruction.

Dr. Steiner: We do not want to extend these divisions as they are ruining the organization of the school.

A teacher: Both classes have French at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: I do not wish to continue this division. I would like to hire Tittmann if we had enough money.

If we can get the proper control over the situation, that would bring about a major change. We must gain a fundamental control over the situation. A strong change will have an effect upon the main subjects, even upon the children’s attitude. The children will see that they need to take a number of things seriously. We will not be able to change that if we do not have a firm class schedule. It might be good if some of you who were interested would sketch the class schedule.

There is something else that I would like to come back to and that I am really very sad about, namely, K.F. We cannot do as we had planned. He is coming back. He is collapsing. He is getting sleepier, paralyzed.

Several teachers talk about K.F. and that he is falling behind.

Dr. Steiner: The problem is physiological. I would like to come back to my proposal that we put him in the other class because I think he would be shaken up a little there. We do not need to cure the metabolic residues that are causing the depression. He is a good and kind boy, but he cannot act differently. I do not expect very much of him. I do not think he will want to take Latin and Greek, and in particular I want Mr. X. to work with him. I am doing this not because I believe that he should [not] come back to you (the present class teacher), but because I believe that because of his metabolism, he needs this pedagogically. If you really want to have him with you, I would not take him away, but I would like to try it.

I would prefer if he had only men for teachers. Today, his father told me how he gets around his mother. He is really quite clever. I would like him to have only men as teachers and that he is not taught by a woman during the two periods he has in the morning. On the other hand, I also do not want to break your heart. The class teacher: I like him so much.

Dr. Steiner: Nevertheless, I would like to have him taught by someone else. If you do not want to let him go, well, that is your right, and I will bow to it. However, if we can find some means of helping him pedagogically, then we should do that.

The class teacher: I will send him to the other class on Monday.

Dr. Steiner: The change is something important for the boy, and you will get used to it.

The class teacher: I have had him for three years now.

Dr. Steiner: That is just it. I think the boy needs a change. I have known him for a long time, since he was born. His entire person is deteriorating. It is a continuous deterioration that is quite shocking. For that reason, I would like to do something that is important for him at this decisive moment. He is in danger of going insane.

(Speaking to the new class teacher) You need to work with him. You should not allow him to be undisturbed in any period. Shake him up. You need to work with the boy so that his attention is artificially aroused, as otherwise he will further deteriorate. He needs to know why he is coming into the other class and to understand that we want the change so that he will pull himself together. You need to make it clear to him in the same way as someone who finds himself in a foreign location. It needs to be a significant event for him. He has these things from his mother, but more strongly. The things that live in the bodies of the parents move into the souls of the descendants, particularly such illnesses that are connected with the residues of the metabolism. They lead to the formation of small tumors. I do not dare to tell how dangerous that is. It is a very dangerous thing. His sister has the same astral type as he.

The school inspector will look at the remedial class. He will also look at the handwork class, but there we have less to fear than when he goes into the remedial class. He will not understand anything about crocheting. He is well intentioned and would like to give a good report. He is certainly well intentioned toward the school. He has the same opinions as Abderhalden about the fact that there is so much dust in the gymnasium and for that reason gymnastics is unhealthy.

I have also given some consideration to arithmetic in the various classes. I would like you to arrange the instruction so that you continue to teach new material in blocks, but that there are two half hours of arithmetic review in the normal main lesson. That is something we need to do everywhere, including the upper grades.

A teacher asks whether the mathematics teacher should also give the review classes for the upper grades, when another teacher teaches the main lesson.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t see why that would be necessary. If the faculty is an organism as I have always thought, then I see no reason for that. Why shouldn’t the teacher who is giving chemistry also give the review? You need to know what every one of you is doing. If all the teachers know what the others are doing, then that will not be necessary. I do not see why we should go into a subject teacher system. I think it is desirable that you can do that. I once had a mathematics teacher who did not recognize one single plant when we went on a school excursion. He knew a lot about mathematics and physics, but had no understanding of anything else. He didn’t know anything except Bohemian, German, physics and mathematics.

These are things we need to do. We need to come to a point where the teaching of mathematics is as it is in the eighth grade. That is what I have to say about the classes I have seen.

You see, we need to emphasize that the children can do something, that they actually learn, and that emphasis is almost entirely missing. You pay too little attention to that. In the upper grades, you have fallen into lecturing, and the instruction is mere sensationalism. They listen, but they don’t work inwardly, and for that reason cannot do enough. That is something that is becoming apparent in the little continuation school in Dornach. Those boys and girls are quite interested in what is presented, but they cannot do it. In other areas, too, we should be careful that they know something and remember it. You can often see it in the way they behave during the Socratic method, which is often not done very well. From the way they behave, you can see they have not properly taken what they are learning into their souls. For that to happen, you must have much greater interest and understanding for the echo the class reflects back to you. That is especially true for the higher grades. The fourth grade already shows a lack of inner participation. They need to participate inwardly. Don’t you also feel the children are learning too little? Tell me what you think. What is the problem in your opinion?

A teacher: We have talked a lot about this, but it is not so easy to break a habit.

Dr. Steiner: On the one hand, you lecture too much, but there is also another important problem. When you develop something in the class through the Socratic method, you fall prey to an illusion. You ask obvious or unimportant questions. The majority of your questions are unimportant. You do not tell the class what they need to learn and then reverse the teaching so that five minutes later, you ask them to tell you about it. You only ask obvious questions. It is important that you turn the instruction around during the period, so that the same thing appears several times in various forms and the students then have to participate in it. You also fail to introduce things that point back to earlier times in a way that would eliminate obvious or trivial questions. In truth, you have not overcome lecturing. Often, you have the illusion that you have overcome it, but you simply continue to lecture and ask trivial questions. You must eliminate this triviality and not give into illusions.

A teacher asks about dividing the classes for art.

Dr. Steiner: We want to do that next year. I have to admit I am somewhat against dividing music classes, but we will need to do it if we want more artistic development to occur. Perhaps in the twelfth grade we could institute an artistic-humanistic and business- oriented division. It is really too early to do that now. It would be wonderful to have an artistic middle school, but of course, the leaders would have to be artists. That is not something we can do at the drop of a hat, but we should keep the division of the school in mind.

A teacher asks about vertical and slanting handwriting styles.

Dr. Steiner: As long as people continue to write with the right hand, it is not desirable to use vertical handwriting. Vertical handwriting is unnatural for the human organism. Handwriting does not need to lie on the line, but it does need to give an artistic impression. Vertical handwriting does not give an artistic impression. I once explained that there are two ways of writing. In the one case, there are people who write automatically and do not use their eyes. They make their body into a mechanism and write directly from their wrists. Penmanship trains this kind of writing. I once knew a man who had to make the letters from a circle when he wrote. He went around in circles. Then there is also artistic writing, where you write with your eyes, and the hand is simply the organ that carries it out. It is not possible to develop vertical handwriting mechanically from the wrist. It would always be slanted handwriting, and thus, vertical handwriting is justifiable as an artistic method. This involves a judgment of taste, but it does not meet an aesthetic requirement. It is never beautiful and always looks unnatural, and for that reason is never justified. There is no real reason for vertical handwriting.

A teacher: I have children who are used to writing vertically. Why should they write at a low angle?

Dr. Steiner: You can’t accomplish such a thing by simply saying, “I will now teach slanted handwriting.” You cannot do that. You can only work toward no longer having any children who write vertically, but in the upper grades, you cannot pressure them too much.

A teacher: K.L. in my fourth-grade class writes vertically.

Dr. Steiner: With him, you could try to get him to gradually use a more slanted handwriting, so that the lines are not vertical, but the whole of his writing is artistically vertical.

A teacher: In my fourth-grade class, I do writing exercises while teaching natural history.

Dr. Steiner: You can do that. You should just make sure you do not contradict the block instruction, but keep it as a continuous exercise. It is the same as with arithmetic.

A teacher: Should I continue giving handwriting instruction in my first-grade class when I am teaching arithmetic?

Dr. Steiner: We will have to look at that.

It is, of course, desirable that you try to get the children to learn to write themselves. From our perspective, they should be able to write at least a little when they are about eight years old. We need to remember that we must bring them to where they would be in a normal elementary school.

A teacher: I have an English girl in my 6b class who does not understand German.

Dr. Steiner: You need to make her parents aware that they need to bear the consequences. Of course, you will need to allow her time to learn German.

A teacher: She has been here since September.

Dr. Steiner: She could not learn enough German in six weeks, but she should be past that by spring. You need to tell them that they will have to bear the consequences, but there is no reason why we should not accept children who cannot speak German.

A teacher asks about reading material for the fourth grade and about fairy tales.

Dr. Steiner: It would be a good idea if the Waldorf teachers would work on creating decent textbooks that reflect our pedagogical principles. I would not like to see the current textbooks in the classroom. It would be somewhat destructive to put such reading books in the classes. There are, of course, collections that are really not too bad. One such collection is by a Mr. Richter. It is a collection of sagas. It is neither trivial nor beyond the children’s grasp. Even in Grimm’s fairy tales, you always have to be selective, as there are some that are not appropriate for school.

A teacher mentions a book of sagas.

Dr. Steiner: What do you know about the things in it? If it contains Gerhardt the Good, then it is good. That is something you can use appropriately for the fourth grade. It even has some good remarks for teachers. Gerhardt the Good is wonderful reading material for that age. I discussed it from an anthroposophical perspective in a lecture in Dornach.

A teacher: The children also enjoy ballads.

Dr. Steiner: We need to make a good collection of ballads, otherwise people will think Wildenbruch is a poet. Some people say that there is a poet, Wildenbruch.

A teacher: Could we also use the book of legends in the third grade?

Dr. Steiner: You will need to tell them. In fourth grade they can read it themselves. In the third grade, let them read it only after you have told it.

A teacher asks about reading material for the fifth grade.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing that has not been made boring. Try a few of the Greek sagas by Niebuhr. His book is not very new, but perhaps the best. Maybe a little too long, but well written.

A teacher: K.P. in the fourth grade is growing weak.

Dr. Steiner: Since when? Who had him earlier? In such things, we need to help him therapeutically. An iron cure, as I described this morning, could be given to him with the help of his parents. You don’t need to say anything more than that he is suffering from a hidden form of weak blood, and that he should take an iron cure. The school doctor should take over the problem. In that way, it can be properly overcome.

You always need to be clear about the case. Concerning K.P., use the kind of iron you get when you make an extract of chamomile root. There, you have iron in a proper balance with sulfur, calcium, and potassium. There is iron in the root of the chamomile. Do it that way. Do not use a tea, but make an extract by boiling the root.

A teacher asks about a girl in the tenth grade who is often absent because school is too strenuous for her.

Dr. Steiner: That is an illness in the soul. You should give her belladonna.

A teacher: Would a calming curative eurythmy exercise be good?

Dr. Steiner: You could do that to support the effects of the belladonna. Do you do curative eurythmy exercises with the children?

A teacher asks about a student in the 2b class.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him through curative eurythmy, according to the principles that have been given for people who cannot walk.

A teacher: P.U. should also go into the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him as someone who cannot stand up. He is trying to keep himself from falling.

A teacher: P.Z. in the 4b class causes disturbances and makes unnecessary remarks.

Dr. Steiner: Aside from treating him through curative eurythmy, perhaps you could retell something he does, and in the course of telling it, you make it absurd. Try to include a similar remark in a story, where someone who makes such a remark gets totally soaked or something else happens. He should not immediately recognize what you want. You can interest him in such things. With such boys, it often happens that they have irregular brain function for a time, and that the astral body is not properly connected to the brain. Such children are then taken over by a little demon. That lasts for only a short period, but you have to do something about it. You could work with him through curative eurythmy in the same way as with someone who cannot walk. There is more discussion about Z. who has left.

Dr. Steiner: This is actually interesting. He actually falls into a short, rhythmically pathological state. He suddenly writes two lines sloppily and the remainder of the time is quite orderly. One, two, three, four, five words written orderly, and before, one word sloppily. Then, orderly again. The boy is not quite normal, that is the problem. He lacks attentiveness. He can do more than he shows, and you can see that from his handwriting. It would be a good idea if you were to write that his handwriting shows he can do more, but due to lapses in attention, he does things sporadically and worse than he needs to do them. These are like little epileptic fits that then pass.

A teacher speaks about D. in the second grade who feels he cannot do anything about it when he misbehaves.

Dr. Steiner: You should pay attention to him until he is nine years old. Until then, you need to treat him very lovingly. Perhaps you could have him do a number of symmetry exercises, so that he recognizes that he is making errors in writing. Afterward, he will become better.

If there is nothing more, we can close the meeting. I would like to again ask you to remember the difficulty we have gotten into and discussed, and also to take into account that we must not make a fiasco of the Waldorf School. That would be a terrible blow.

We need to take our work very seriously. Everyone is looking at us. We need to do things as seriously as possible. I am convinced that the more we return to the perspective of the first and second seminar courses, the better we can bring the true spirit into our work. I held the second course in order to bring the spirit into the Waldorf School. We need to take that up again so that the proper spirit is here. We may not allow ourselves to go. We certainly must bring fire into our teaching. We must have enthusiasm. That is absolutely necessary, but often lacking. We must do that, otherwise, with our method that depends so much upon the individuality of the teacher, it will be far too easy to fall into a way of working counter to our principles. The school inspector said that with normal teaching methods, average people can be teachers, but with our methods, we need geniuses. I do not think that is necessarily true, but there is something to it. So much depends upon the individual teacher, and we must emphasize and support the individuality of the teacher. The children are not participating enough because we are not bringing sufficient fire into the classroom. There is often a kind of playful element in the instruction that playfully occupies the children, but it is playful in the worst sense. Every teacher should have deep satisfaction upon entering the classroom. Basically, the students in the higher grades are not all that bad.

Have you heard anything about the explanation concerning the expelled students?

He thinks that our methods have brought us so far that we have thrown out a large number of anthroposophical children. This is really a terrible thing. I was actually surprised it was not received with bitterness, and that is what is really bitter, namely, that it was perceived that way. This is something we need to understand from the perspective of the anthroposophical movement. The way you came to me with this terrible document, there is really no difference in this treatment and what some narrow-minded bureaucrat would do. It’s that you really don’t put your soul in it, you lack fire.

A teacher: G.W.A. thought it was unjustified.

Dr. Steiner: You should speak with her, otherwise you will lose more contact with the students. It is so strange that there is so little contact between teachers and students in the upper grades. There is also none in the religion class.

A teacher: People are not satisfied with the explanation printed in the newspaper.

Dr. Steiner: People are speaking about this everywhere in the most detrimental manner. The situation is known everywhere and is being turned into a weapon. There is a whole organization forming around this. The situation is a weapon that can be well forged. Perhaps something like a parent evening would be a way we could make our standpoint clear. We need to find some way of defending the school.

There is really no enthusiasm for the anthroposophical movement. There is no feeling for how it is affected; things are simply accepted with indifference. Within a very short time things have occurred that can cause members to hang the movement, due to a lack of feeling of responsibility.

I held a course for theologians that they promised to treat as a secret. But every day, they write things in letters and, in order to save postage, they give it to someone else to carry across the border where it could easily be taken.

Someone gives information to Dr. S., who carries it only from the clinic to the laboratory, but only a few days later, Kully publishes it in his newspaper in Arlesheim. The movement is being led to the gallows by its own members due to their lack of responsibility. There is so little feeling for responsibility, and that is a very bitter thing.

That has been the case since things became public, and the anthroposophical movement ceased to be an expression of things carried privately in the heart. As soon as things came into the anthroposophical movement that required professionals, something like a kind of mildew grew upon the vitality of the movement. At the moment you put yourself upon a curule chair, enthusiasm wanes.

The faculty needs to publicly justify the expulsion of the students. In spite of the fact that I asked that they only be suspended, things progressed to the point that there was nothing else to be done other than what was done. All contact had been lost. The students were enraged. The situation was grossly mishandled. All this is expressed occultly in the symptoms.

A teacher asks about the justification.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot use the names of the students, but somehow we need to counter what is now being formed as a weapon against us. I thought there would be an opportunity to somehow defend the standpoint of the teachers. You need to look for opportunities where you can say such things.

The cause of the whole uproar was that things were turned around to look as though the teachers had spread some sort of lies about the students. This is connected with the formation of the Students’ Club, and the students felt themselves disparaged. In fact, one such disparagement was added by X. Everything has been stated as though the teachers have done something damaging to the children. It is strange that not all the students are aware of this. It seems impossible that this is not better known. Do the students go around blindfolded? I do not think that is praiseworthy. If these things are not known, the beautiful things will also not be known. I have to admit that in a way this whole affair seems a little strange to me. Basically, it is a symptom of sleepiness.

A teacher: I tried to schedule all the language classes for the same time. However, it was not possible because there are not enough language teachers. I then tried to do that at least for groups of classes. There were also other things that were not possible.

Dr. Steiner: Have you discussed the schedule? It would be desirable not to change teachers for the individual classes. We need to see if we really need Tittmann here as a new teacher. That would be reasonable if we want to unburden the present faculty.

(Dr. Steiner looks at the completed schedule.) The first thing is that the schedule must be correct. Miss D. gave English in class 3b, and Mr. N. gave French. If N. were to take French here, would that be a problem here? This schedule is not comprehensible the way it is, you can’t find your way in it. You get dizzy. If only people knew what they were doing. We need some room to write notes. It would be best if language class directly followed main lesson. The main thing is that in general, language instruction should be given from 10:00 until 12:00.

On Monday, language class for the first through fifth grades from 10:00 until 11:00. It would not be good to assign the classes to different teachers. Changing teachers would not now be possible. So, now we have languages on Monday from 10:00 until 11:00. That would be every day, Monday through Saturday from 10:00 until 11:00. That can stay as it is. What you need to realize is how it will be now. Mr. N. also has the 7a class. How much French and English do we have in 7a? One hour each on Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 until 12:00. We need a class schedule for the present situation. That would work. We need to take the present situation into account. What I’m asking is, is there a list of what is now happening? (Dr. Steiner takes a piece of paper and writes the names of all the teachers on it.) Now I want you to write down where you are teaching. It is hard to believe we are holding a meeting about the best class schedule. A teacher makes some other suggestions.

Dr. Steiner: I just said it is not desirable to change the teachers for the classes.

A teacher: We also talked about arranging the language classes so that we can move the children around.

Dr. Steiner: We could do that later. For now, I only want to see if it is at all possible to hold the language classes in the morning and, when possible, directly after main lesson. We will be able to see that after we put everything together. I see no reason why a division into groups would not be possible if we do it right after main lesson. I do not know why that would not be possible. Dr. Steiner then takes the list of teachers and goes through the language classes in detail, class for class, in order to see whether languages can all be taught at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: We should divide them into groups. We need to begin somewhere. In general, the result will be that, with the exception of Latin and in some of the higher grades, the division into groups would be according to class. The majority of the students will remain with their class. We can achieve our goal by making the group the class. There can be only a small number of children who would need to move from one group to another.

A teacher: It will be difficult to find a plan that is not somewhat arbitrary.

Dr. Steiner: I am clear that I do not know what is happening.

A teacher: Perhaps we could ask you to give some guidelines.

Dr. Steiner: First, foreign languages should be taught immediately after main lesson when possible. Second, the language teachers should, in general, remain with their present groups. Third, after we have accomplished that for the foreign languages, the subjects we previously discussed should be taught in the morning, also. We would not need anything more than a division of things. Now, it makes no difference whatsoever whether it is classes or groups. We can use groups if we can do that. The lower grades have the least need for other groups. Of course, we have a problem when the Protestant and Catholic ministers cannot come at another time. We have fourteen teachers for English and French. There are nineteen classes, so each teacher would have seven periods. I am against overburdening the teachers and in favor of getting an additional language teacher. However, aside from that, it would be inefficient to divide the language classes into so many groups. That all came about because there was a desire to divide the languages by class. Pedagogically, there is no reason to hold to that principle past the third grade. Until that time, I admit that the main lesson teacher should also have the students for foreign languages. But there is no need to strictly follow that later.

A teacher: Partly, the question concerned grouping students according to their knowledge.

Dr. Steiner: We have too many class groups for modern languages. We do not need to have so many.

A teacher: The students in the eleventh grade want a middle certificate, and for that reason need complete instruction in English and French. Only three or four students would remain in Greek if they had to give up French and English.

Dr. Steiner: That is a radical change from when the students want to pass the humanistic examinations.

A teacher: Most of them do not want to give up modern languages.

There is a discussion about the different kinds of final examinations. There must be some clarity about which ones the students want.

Dr. Steiner: That was not the original perspective of the Waldorf School. The ancient languages were included to the extent necessary for inner reasons. Now the situation has changed, since the students want to take final examinations. We have tried to take that perspective into account in Greek and Latin by preparing the students for their final examination. We spoke about dividing things and that those taking Greek and Latin also want French, and that those taking English and French could also take Latin. That was our perspective.

A teacher: We need to know only whether the student wants to take the humanistic or the business final examination. Both would be possible through a division in our curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: I would go still further. I would say that for those students who want to take the humanistic examination, we can certainly have Latin and Greek in the morning. We could have it as part of main lesson, and we could give the classes in natural science at a later time.

A teacher: There is not much interest in Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The parents would have to decide whether the students are to take the humanistic examination.

A teacher: If there are only four or five students, should we still give Greek for them?

Dr. Steiner: Occasionally, there is the situation when a teacher works only for a few students.

A teacher: There seems to be a desire for the Middle School examination. Would it be responsible of us to allow them to leave school without English, like it is at the college prep high schools?

Dr. Steiner: We could take that responsibility if we had students who wanted to take the final examinations.

A number of teachers talk about the difficulties of dividing the students. Some students want to learn Greek, but they do not intend to take the humanistic examinations.

Dr. Steiner: We could have saved ourselves this whole discussion. We began with the assumption that we could not continue Greek and Latin in the present way simply because it is not possible to prepare the students for their final examinations. Today, though, the discussion is that there is no need at all to prepare them for that examination. We began with the assumption that we needed this terrible Greek and Latin in our curriculum so that some students who have sufficient talent might eventually be able to pass their final examinations. As I said, I thought that would be possible. Then you said it is not possible without undertaking some changes. Now, it seems that its not at all necessary to offer Latin and Greek for the examination.

What we need here is some sort of compromise. Until now, the opinion was that it was absolutely necessary to provide what a number of students would need to pass their humanities examinations in spite of the fact that for their age, they are insufficiently prepared. From that standpoint, we wanted to include Greek and Latin in the best possible way.

A teacher: The students do not want to give up English.

Dr. Steiner: Those who want to take the humanities examination will have to drop English. If they do not want to drop English, they will not be able to take the humanities examination.

Are there really only four or five who want to take the humanities examination? If we want to continue Greek, we must arrange things so that those four or five can take their examinations.

Two things are interwoven here: the requirements for the examination and whether we want to provide an opportunity for the children to learn Greek. Latin is not so important to me. We could arrange the division so that the children begin Latin and Greek together in the sixth grade and continue into the seventh, but that in the eighth grade and afterward, we have a division so that those who decide later would no longer have Greek. They would have had it, however, in the sixth and seventh grades. What is important is that what we provide is pedagogically sound. Until the end of the seventh grade, we would try to provide so much Greek as we believe is pedagogically necessary. A split would then occur in the eighth grade, and they could choose. Those who choose the humanistic direction would no longer have English, and those who decide to go in the Middle School direction would no longer have Greek.

A number of teachers raise objections to dividing the class too early.

Dr. Steiner: Then we could do it this way. Greek until the end of the eighth grade and Latin and Greek together would be required in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. But some students might drop these subjects if their parents find them unimportant. Our general goal was to teach what people think is necessary. No one would think that students must decide at the age of ten whether they should have one subject or not. We would divide the ninth grade into either Greek or English, and at that time we would separate the Latin and Greek class. I think we would come back to the basic Waldorf School principle of giving Greek and Latin in the fifth through eighth grades, along with modern languages, and that there would be a division only in the last grades. And then the children would not be prepared for final examinations!

If we use that principle, we need to say firmly that if you want English, you can’t have Greek, but you will have Latin. Greek can conflict with English, all kinds of conflicts could arise.

There is nothing else to do other than move away from having the eleventh-grade main lesson in the first two hours of the day. We will have to have the main lesson at a later time.

There is no school that completely takes into account both the eminently important pedagogical principle of having these two periods one after another, and also preparation for the examination. That is something I have seen in English schools. Everywhere, subjects arbitrarily follow one after the other. Sometimes it is really grotesque.

We need to schedule modern languages so that we can group the children. That will be possible only if you were to—in London, when they had the election there, people had a similar line of thought. On election day the students at Oxford got together and publicized that a Mr. Bohok had been elected with twelve million votes. That was published everywhere. The city council gathered to congratulate him, but there was no such man. It is just like your class schedule—Tittmann does not exist. They even made a mannequin there. There was quite an uproar about it in England.

We said we wanted to have voice and eurythmy lessons in the morning, but we did not want to be pedantic about that. In that case, of course, we can form groups, and in the event we can form a group only at the cost of having some voice lessons in the afternoon, that is what we will do. (Speaking to a Latin and Greek teacher) How many hours do you have?

A teacher: Seventeen.

Dr. Steiner: You have one too many. You should not have more than sixteen hours in Greek and Latin. For the more scientific subjects in the higher grades, where experiments are done, you could have twenty hours. That is not possible in subjects that require real concentration.

A teacher: Perhaps we need to have some of the shop classes in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have a mess in our class schedule again. It would certainly be desirable if we could have a different perspective. That is what is so difficult, you always bring this schematic bureaucratic perspective to the fore, and put the really important things on the back burner. This kind of thinking really has no content. I would need to have both the teaching plan and the meeting plan in front of me. They should have been here today. The problem is that we moved the division of the classes up to the ninth grade.

I once considered work on a class schedule as the opposite of pedantic. If we had it, we could see which class had which subject at what time. We would know where all the classes are, and that each class had such a schedule. From those two things, we could see where we are. We would have nineteen sheets from which we could see that one class has this and from a different sheet we could see that at the same time, one or another class is doing something else. If you have to do something like this occasionally, you can accept that you might have a light fainting spell. But when you have to spend a whole evening on it, you become dizzy. Imagine how simple it would be if I had one schedule for each class and a timetable from which I could see that this or that class is here from two until four.

The problem is that we are not doing what would actually be right, namely that we do not consider the elementary school alone, but recognize that the language teachers move throughout the different grades. If we were to make a radical change, which is not the case, and some teachers would only work in the upper grades, and those who worked there would not work in the lower grades, it would be easier. The whole problem has become quite difficult since we have lost a language teacher because he took over a class. It is really a problem that we are missing one language teacher.

Is there a student here by the name of D.L.? Is there some problem with him? Why did you write a letter?

A teacher: He caused an explosion in the physics room. We gave him a warning and wrote his mother.

Dr. Steiner: There shouldn’t be anything in the physics room that could cause an explosion. It is, in any event, troubling that something like that could occur. I once knew of a student in an upper grade who poisoned himself because the chemistry teacher was not paying attention to things. In any event, you should have left it at giving the student a warning. You should not have written anything. You never think how difficult it is when I have to fight against these things, and that people say, “That’s quite some leadership when a ten-year-old is allowed to create an explosion.” Do you think you can still do that, considering the situation we are now in? It is horrible how people think only about how they can protect themselves, but never about what the school looks like publicly. This is really astonishing. His mother is really a nice woman, but you need only imagine what kind of an impression it would make upon her to learn her boy caused an explosion. Everyone she tells this to would say, “Don’t send you child to the Waldorf School.” That is obvious. We cannot have many such occurrences.

Always feel responsible. Didn’t you think about how it would affect the school? If you provide the material for an explosion, then any boy would cause problems. I do not want to ask who was responsible for this, but someone must have left the material there. It was in the physics and laboratory rooms. The doors need to be locked.

A teacher: No one should be in the physics room when a teacher is not there.

Dr. Steiner: Thus, the room was not locked up?

A teacher: The error was that the student had permission to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand why the laboratory is not locked. This is a really beautiful situation. Explosives and poisons are kept in the laboratory, but it is not locked so the students have easy access to them. It is quite apparent that it is not sufficient to agree that students should not be in there. It is also clear that no laboratory teacher was there when the boy was. These kinds of things are always happening.

A teacher: It was my fault. I allowed him to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: But we must have principles in such things! Then we could say that a teacher was there, and the boy did it during that time. That would show that the teacher would have to be fired. When such things happen, we have a fear that something more will happen.

(Replying to an objection) It is horrible that that word could be used here. Who cares what happens in Buxtehude? It’s still worse that it could be said here. That is no position to take. Such things simply must not occur here.

The gymnastics teacher talks about holding class outdoors. Problems could arise for the school because the students catch cold.

Dr. Steiner: If there are such complaints, we can do nothing more than wait until we have a gymnasium.

A teacher asks whether they should yield to the parents.

Dr. Steiner: The parents want their children to be here with us. In individual cases, we will have to give in to the desire of the parents. There is nothing more we can do than wait until the gymnasium is complete. It is disgruntling that it is always being put off. In the first grade, there is a boy in the first row in the corner, R.R. He needs some curative eurythmy exercises. He needs to consciously do the movements he now does for a longer period and at a much slower speed. Have him walk and pay attention to how fast he moves, and then have him do it half as fast. If he takes twenty paces in five seconds, then have him take twenty paces in ten seconds. He needs to consciously hold back. He needs to do some curative eurythmy, then these exercises, then curative eurythmy again.

You also have that boy in the yellow jacket, E.T. That is a medical problem. He could certainly do the “A, E, I exercise.” Also, he should eat some eggs that are not completely cooked. He needs to develop protein strength. In many cases, it is possible to know what we need to do to heal something. People cannot say something untrue about us if what we say needs to be done cannot be done. We need to take up a collection so the boy can have two eggs a day, at least four times in a week. He would need eight eggs. The Cologne News costs twenty-five marks, but it does not have the same nutritional value.

The school doctor asks a question concerning medicine. He needs to see quite a number of students.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to speak about the principles. That is hardly possible before Christmas. Our English visitors will come on the eighth or ninth of January and be here for a week. If only we could at least have gymnastics then! Perhaps I could speak about medical questions in that connection. Now, we have to speak about individual students. In the future, I would like to handle that in principle. In every class, there are undernourished children. The children in the first grade were born in 1915. The health of the children born in 1914 has suffered some. That was a shock. Now we have those who are undernourished. People should have seen this coming in 1916. The war went on too long. I would like to give a basic overview of this topic, the basis of school health.

A teacher: A mother is complaining that her children do not sleep enough.

Dr. Steiner: You need to ask when the children go to bed. She should try having them go to bed a half-hour later. Concerning K.P. in the 4b class.

Dr. Steiner: He is anemic. The boy does not have enough metabolic residues. Due to the tea, he has used more of himself inwardly, and now he needs a strengthening diet. Before, he looked bad because of the bad food, and that is having an effect now. Try to get him some bread every day. If you give him malt for fourteen days, he would get used to it, and then it would be difficult to feed him normally. It would be better to give him a good piece of bread. It is quite clear that he is undernourished. In curative eurythmy, he could do the bright vowels, A, E, and I. A comment about E.V.M. in the 3b class who has headaches.

Dr. Steiner: We can easily help that through the diet. Give her some cooked cranberries every day for three weeks.

An eighth-grade teacher: Twenty-five children will be leaving at Easter, but they have not really reached the goals of elementary school. Perhaps we should take them aside and teach them the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: I would agree with that. Do it. It would also be nice if Graf Bothmer could help you.

A teacher asks about W.S. in the tenth grade. Her thyroid glands are not functioning properly.

Dr. Steiner: I once said something about this. She was in a eurythmy performance and looked as though she would not be able to complete it. The way she seems now, I think that we need to give her a preparation: 0.5% agaric (extract of amanita muscaria), then 5% berberis vulgaris, the juice of the fruit, and a little hyoscyamus niger (henbane). Thus, this berberis vulgaris 5%, 0.5% agaric, a homeopathic amount of hyoscyamus niger, 5X. There is a danger that her glands might degenerate because there is something wrong toward the back of her head.

A teacher asks about two students in the seventh grade who are misbehaving.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to do anything because the problem can be traced back to an abnormal growth of the meninges. It is difficult to do anything. It is too bad that our physicians do not pay more attention to such special cases. There is hardly anything more we can do other than have one of the doctors from the Therapeutic Institute come up here every week and really undertake some systematic exercises. Otherwise, we would have to put them into an institution. These are problems with the meninges. You could try to get them more interested in school.

A teacher: I cannot teach the seventh grade properly. I have too much to do for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to be patient until we have an additional person. I do not think you should allow your courage to wane. Things went quite well recently, particularly in that subject. The children were really interested in the perspective that you presented. I would not want you to get depressed.

A teacher asks about some particularly weak children.

Dr. Steiner: Try to include them more during class. Call upon them more often so that they remain attentive.

A teacher asks about a performance by the children in Holland.

Dr. Steiner: I only meant that you should agree upon the age of the students. We cannot drag ten-year-old children to The Hague. The very young children cannot go, only those children about whom we can say it would be responsible. Otherwise, there is nothing to say against it.

A teacher presents a request for a seminar.

Dr. Steiner: If we were to hold such a course, it would be much more reasonable if you formulated your questions and uncertainties during your meetings. Perhaps you could find two dozen pedagogical questions that would provide the basic content and theme. You already know what needs to be said. You have not studied the seminar sufficiently. It is not reflected in the way school is being held. Occasionally, one thing or another occurs, but in general, it is not visible. I would like to give such a course, but you must have specific questions. The course would include a number of things I have already addressed.

A teacher asks about the Oberufer Christmas play and whether Dr. Steiner could help.

Dr. Steiner: I cannot help you since I have not been at the rehearsals. My wife told me about it. The story is this: We were sent something from Brietkopf and Härtel that X. had printed. It states that the rights of performance are reserved. X., who knew the plays here, published the things he stole from us. People are used to such things from social parasites. He may have gone secretly to Schröer’s heirs. The Malatitsch family in Oberufer has the performance rights. Schröer bought the printing rights in 1858. I always assumed we would present it publicly before it was stolen from us. People have often asked me to publish it, but I did not think it would be responsible today. Today, the text would have to be completely revised from beginning to end. I would not have taken the responsibility of publishing something like that without a careful revision. I think it is silly to perform Brietkopf’s text. Most of the things I corrected during the rehearsals in Dornach. I made a number of important corrections, but people are like that.

A teacher asks about parents who pay no tuition.

Dr. Steiner: Why don’t you send somebody to them. We need to do this kind of work efficiently. There would be an impossible amount of work if the school association had three thousand members. We should send the secretary of the school association.

A teacher asks whether children whose parents do not want to pay should remain at the school.

Dr. Steiner: It may be that their parents do not know how to write. The school association has a secretary, and he certainly does not have much to do. Nothing is being done to increase membership.

I wish there was as much enthusiasm for the school as there is for the performance. People’s attention is diverted from the teaching. If the children were to perform something, it would not be so dangerous. I think it would be best to let it go, otherwise, you will get even deeper into the problem.

I have not really said anything against the performance. I actually believe that the better the performance is, the worse it will be for the school. I think you are as enthusiastic about it as a roly poly is about standing up.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to hear everything about the class schedule.

The new class schedule is described. All of the foreign language classes are in the morning. There were no changes in personnel. Once, a language class had to be moved from 12:00 until 1:00. An attempt was made to group the students. A few times Latin and Greek had to be put after eurythmy, but otherwise the language class immediately followed main lesson.

Dr. Steiner: You will have to do it that way if nothing else is possible.

A teacher: I would prefer having the 4a language class in the afternoon instead of from 12:00 until 1:00.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will do it in the afternoon.

A teacher: Is that true otherwise?

Dr. Steiner: When the respective teachers demand it. It is important that the teachers agree.

The religious instruction is described. Voice instruction is always in the morning. Eurythmy, mostly. All the handwork and shop classes are in the afternoon as well as gymnastics, but Wednesday afternoon had to be used also. If Wednesday afternoons are to be held free, then gymnastics and some of the shop classes would have to be in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against having some things at the end of the morning under certain circumstances. It is, of course, not good when the children move from the practical into the completely theoretical. We should try to keep a Wednesday free. Gymnastics should also not be done before the theoretical periods. It was badly scheduled on Wednesday only because the gymnastics teacher was excluded from the meeting.

A teacher: The parents have arranged a number of things under the assumption that Wednesday is free.

Dr. Steiner: Surely we can get the parents to choose another day. The teachers need to be able to come to the faculty meetings. That is important. The teachers could meet on Saturday. There is too much to do. Let us try to keep Wednesday afternoon. I think it is best if we do gymnastics in the afternoon.

A teacher: We carried out the division between the humanistic and business courses of study.

Dr. Steiner: Then this class schedule is possible, and we will see if it is satisfactory.

A teacher: I would like to teach foreign languages in my first-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, that is possible. That is how it should have been from the beginning.

The fourth-grade teacher would like a fourth period of foreign language.

Dr. Steiner: We carefully considered the number of hours, but we should allow you to decide. It needs to be something that is not required.

I think, if everyone is satisfied with it, we could actually begin with the class schedule. It would be nice if you could start on Thursday, December 7. Then, on Saturday, when I can look at things again, everything will be under way.

They present the individual class schedules.

Dr. Steiner: The first grade only has class once in the afternoon. 2a and 2b, as well. 3a is only on Monday afternoon. 3b, only Tuesday afternoon. The same is true of the 4a and 4b classes. 5a has class on three afternoons, two of which are the Catholic religion class. 5b also has handwork and eurythmy on two afternoons. 6a, three afternoon classes. That is not too much. For the time being, only the teachers are carrying too much.

Dr. Steiner goes through the list with the teachers, determines how many hours each teaches, and how many hours beyond a reasonable limit each is teaching. He assumes that each teacher should teach sixteen to seventeen hours per week. Thus, for example, N., who teaches twenty hours, is teaching three to four hours too many.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have determined that. In normal life, the teachers would demand extra pay for these hours. However, I think we should try to get an additional language teacher. I would also like an additional gymnastics teacher.

A teacher asks whether the provisional plan for decreasing the teaching load should be tried.

Dr. Steiner: Y. already has too many hours. We could do that only if we could find some trade. If, for example, you, Miss Z., would take over one of the religion classes, then Y. could trade. Make the change with whoever appears most burdened. Mrs. W. has the greatest tendency to give up time. We will wait until Tittmann comes to answer the question of V.

V. defends himself.

Dr. Steiner: There are also inner reasons. You should be happy we expect more of you. You are more robust. I think you are quite strong. You certainly must admit that you are more robust than Mrs. W. We will see that we get Tittmann here as soon as possible.

A teacher: The class teachers have asked if they could teach gymnastics to their own classes.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against that if it does not become a burden. I certainly see no reason why two classes cannot have gymnastics with their teachers in the same room. That would, in fact, be quite good, if it is possible, because we would then achieve a pedagogical goal. We need to remove nervousness from our teaching. If we cannot do that, it would be a sign of nervousness. Actually, we should see it as an ideal that we could teach mathematics in one corner, French in another, astronomy and eurythmy in the others, so that the children have to pay more attention to their own work.

A teacher: That is also relevant for eurythmy?

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy if you could do it, because it is pedagogically valuable. teachers would, of course, need to be able to get along with each other.

A teacher: The religion teachers would like to keep the room they have had for the Sunday services. It should be used only for that.

Dr. Steiner: I agree. What is important in these Sunday services is the attitude among those present. We can best achieve that by maintaining that arrangement.

A teacher: Should Miss R. and Mr. W. hold the services?

Dr. Steiner: They should both celebrate the sacraments. That is an obvious condition for the independent religious instruction. I would like to say something more. Experience has shown that the Independent Religious Instruction consists not only in what we teach during religion class, not only what we teach through feeling, but that a certain relationship needs to develop between the religion teacher and the student. You can develop that through the celebration of a sacrament. If someone else does the service, then, for the student who receives the sacrament from someone else, a large part of the intangibles necessary for teaching religion are missing between the students and the religion teacher. The reverse is also true. If someone gives the sacrament without teaching religion, that person falls into a difficult position that can hardly be justified. It is easier to justify teaching religion without leading a service than it is to justify leading a service without teaching religion. Through the service, we bring religious instruction out of empty theory. It is based upon a relationship between the religion teacher and the students. As I have said in connection with the sacrament, you should decide.

A teacher: I did not understand that.

Dr. Steiner: Now that we have completed things, in selecting a teacher for religion my first question is if he or she can lead the Sunday service. You might have the wrong impression. If the question is which one of you here do I think is appropriate, then I could reply, “Only those who I think are appropriate to give the service.” Many people could teach religion, but the giving of the sacraments can hardly be done by anyone other than the two whom I mentioned. You should not be angry that I am speaking quite straightforwardly in this connection, but each of you should know what I think of your capabilities, at least for now. That may change, though.

The children need to become mature enough. This nonsense with a special confirmation class needs to stop. They should attend the Youth Service when they have reached a certain level of maturity, but that maturity cannot be taught. They will simply reach it, and for that reason, we should not have any special confirmation class. Only the person giving religious instruction should hold the Youth Service.

A teacher asks about the decorations in the service room.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to think about that. I think it would be nice to have a harmonium. We want to be careful about how we develop the service. There is not much to say about the text except that the Gospels are still missing. There is still much we can do in connection with music and also paintings. In contrast, though, there is something else we need to consider, namely, the participation of the faculty.

There are two sides to the question. There is the very real question of whether things are moving too rapidly here. The services permeated by a religious renewal have the possibility of becoming something quite great. On the other hand, I hear in town among those who are working on this religious renewal that a religious community of a hundred members consists only of anthroposophists who are forming a sect. You see, there is a danger connected with all this. It is already present. I also hear that, “Those members who have not yet joined are being pressured.” The religious renewal was intended for those outside the Society. You need to be clear that such things have two sides, and that the primary thing is that our anthroposophical friends, both inside the school and outside, need to see that their mission is to straighten out people who are falling into an erroneous path. Those things connected with the most noble intent also have the greatest dangers. This is something that must be taken seriously. Before this religious renewal has withstood the test whether it is true and proper, we can certainly not say that we should respect someone who does not attend less than someone who does.

It would be best if we create a service for the children that has a great deal of warmth and heart, if we did everything possible to create an attitude that is serious without being oppressive, but on the other hand, to keep it as simple as possible.

A teacher: We have thought about some questions we would like to ask you. The question arose in connection with teaching foreign language about the musical/language and the sculptural/ painting streams. They were often mentioned in the course.

Dr. Steiner: There are also a number of references to that in that short cycle of four lectures on pedagogy that I gave in September of 1920.

You will forgive me if I mention that, but I believe it contains everything you need to come to more concrete actions.

Concerning teaching modern languages—if you use the same methods, the effects upon the child will compensate each other, since the child’s head dies through French to the same extent as the child’s metabolism is enlivened through English. The difficulty arises, and this is something that just occurred to me, when you remove English for some of the children. Socially, that is unnatural. It should not happen, but there is nothing more we can do. We cannot have both English and the ancient languages. But, particularly during the present stages of their development, these two languages compensate one another unbelievably well. Take, for example, Mr. B’s French class today. He developed something extremely important for the more quiet listeners. The French language is in a process of eliminating all the “S’s”. It would not be proper to say Aisne (An). You can hear the “s”. But, during the Battle of the Marne, it was referred to only as “An”. In English, many suffixes are moving toward removing an “s.” When you use the same methods, these are completely compensating, particularly during the ages of nine and ten. Otherwise, it is best to do as little French grammar as possible. In contrast, it is good you emphasize the grammatical aspect of English around the age of eleven or twelve. I will discuss that in more detail later, but for now I wanted only to make a preliminary mention of it in order to hear from you how things are going.

A question is asked about the stages of language teaching.

Dr. Steiner: There are stages. It would be interesting to look at this question in connection with other things. I intend to write an essay about Deinhardt’s book about the basic elements of aesthetic principles in instruction. Of course, these things are overemphasized by Deinhardt as well as Schiller, but it is easy to discuss them. It would be good to mention the publisher at the same time. Perhaps one of the faculty members could write a critique of the book in relation to Schiller. You are not familiar with the book? It is difficult to read. Steffen was asked to write an introduction to this book, but he found it terribly boring. That is only because of his long sentences. An Austrian can understand having such long sentences in a book. Sometimes you have to stand on your head in order to understand such sentences, but Steffen does not like that.

A teacher: We assumed such things would result in a textbook.

Dr. Steiner: That would be a good idea.

A teacher asks about how to ask questions using the Socratic method.

Dr. Steiner: There is something about that in my lecture cycles.

A teacher asks about having English as an elective in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: That would be possible.

A teacher asks a question about mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to explain that if you would try to use such things in a non-pedantic way. You should remember that such rules are always flexible, so they must never become pedantic. Particularly concerning spatial questions, it is always bad when things become too rigid.

Dr. Steiner: You need to understand the small bones within the ear, the hammer, stirrup, the oval window, the anvil, as small limbs, as arms or legs that touch the eardrum. A sense of touch enters the understanding of tone. The spiral, which is filled with liquid, is a metamorphosed intestine of the ear. A feeling for tone lives in it. What you carry within you as an understanding of language is active within the eustachian tubes that support the will to understand. Tone is primarily held in the three semicircular canals. They act as a memory for tone. Each sense is actually an entire human being.

I often say such things as a paradigm in order to animate people like Baumann and Schwebsch to get to work and write a book about all their experiences. They said such things this morning. You only need to be more specific and things will seem plausible to them. Dr. Steiner is asked to open the new school building after Christmas.

Dr. Steiner: That is difficult, since not all the classes will be moving in. Quite a number will remain in the temporary buildings, so if we make this a particular celebration, those children staying in the temporary buildings will feel they are not as good as those moving into the new building. We need to consider the effects of a special ceremony upon those children remaining in the temporary buildings. It would be a different question if we were to open a new hall, such as a gymnasium. However, if we were to do this, it would fill the whole building with an inner disturbance.

I want to characterize Leisegang as a philosopher, a caricature of a philosopher. He is just a windbag. What he is as a philosopher is complete nonsense. You can do this in a pedantic way: What are the characteristics of a philosopher? A philosopher needs a firm foundation under his feet, but all his assumptions are incorrect. You could actually prove that he, in fact, has no real foundation.

If you proceed that way in philosophy, that is what happens. I do not know of any profession where such a person would belong. He certainly could not make jokes in the newspaper because he doesn’t have enough of a sense of humor.