Faculty Meetings

with Rudolf Steiner

VOLUME 1

[VIII/1]

FOUNDATIONS OF WALDORF EDUCATION

R U D O L F S T E I N E R

Faculty Meetings

with Rudolf Steiner

1919 –1922

V O L U M E 1

Translated by Robert Lathe & Nancy Parsons Whittaker

Anthroposophic Press

The publisher wishes to acknowledge the inspiration and support of Connie and Robert Dulaney

❖ ❖ ❖

This text is a translation of Konferenzen mit den Lehrern der Freien Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, from vol. 1 and vol. 2 (GA 300a, 300b), published by Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland, 1975. Translated by Robert Lathe and Nancy Parsons Whittaker.

Copyright © Anthroposophic Press, 1998

Introduction © Betty Staley, 1998

Published by Anthroposophic Press

3390 Route 9, Hudson, NY 12534

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Steiner, Rudolf, 1861–1925.

[Konferenzen mit den Lehrern der Freien Waldorfschule in Stuttgart.

English]

Faculty meetings with Rudolf Steiner / Rudolf Steiner ; translated by Robert Lathe & Nancy Parsons Whittaker.

p. cm. — (Foundations of Waldorf education ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: v. 1. 1919–1922 — v. 2. 1922–1924.

ISBN 0-88010-458-9 (set). — ISBN 0-88010-421-X (v. 1 : pbk.). — ISBN 0-88010-452-X (v. 2 : pbk.)

1. Freie Waldorfschule. 2. Freie Waldorfschule—Faculty. 3. Steiner, Rudolf, 1861–1925. 4. Waldorf method of education. 5. Anthroposophy.

I. Title. II. Series.

LF3195.S834S84 1998

371.39—dc21 98-29827

CIP

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publishers, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface .… .. .. .. .. .. .… .. .. .. .. .. .… . .. .… .. .. .. .. .. .. . ix Introduction by Betty Staley…. .. .. .… . .. .… .. .. .. .. .. .… xiii Publisher’s Note …. .… .. .. .. .. .. .. … …. .… .. .. .. .. .. .. xxxvii FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

First School Year : September 16, 1919 to July 24, 1920

Meetings from September 8, 1919 to July 31, 1920

Monday, September 8, 1919 .… …… .… .… .… .… .… … . 1

Thursday, September 25, 1919 .… … …… .… .… .… .… . 5

Friday, September 26, 1919 .… … … .… .… .… .… .… … 38

Monday, December 22, 1919 … … …… .… .… .… .… … 56

Tuesday, December 23, 1919 … … …… .… .… .… .… … 59

Thursday, January 1, 1920 .… … . .… .… .… .… .… .… .. 61

Saturday, March 6, 1920 .… … … … .… .… .… .… .… .. 64

Monday, March 8, 1920 .… … … .… .… .… .… .… .… . 66

Sunday, March 14, 1920 .… … … … .… .… .… .… .… .. 70

Wednesday, June 9, 1920 … … …… .… .… .… .… … … 72

Saturday, June 12, 1920 … … … .… .… .… .… .… … … 77

Wednesday, June 14, 1920 … . .… .… .… .… .… .… … . . 83

Wednesday, June 23, 1920 .… … … . .… .… .… .… .… . 105

Saturday, July 24, 1920 .… …… … …… .… .… .… .… 113

Thursday, July 29, 1920 .… … … .… .… .… .… .… .… 136 Friday, July 30, 1920 .… … .… .… … … … . .… .… .… 149 Saturday, July 31, 1920 …………………………………………………………. 157 Second School Year : September 20, 1920 to June 11, 1921 Meetings from September 21, 1920 to May 26, 1921

Tuesday, September 21, 1920 … … …… .… .… .… .… .. 161

Wednesday, September 22, 1920 .… … …… .… .… .… .. 171

Monday, November 15, 1920 … … …… .… .… .… .… . 194

Monday, November 22, 1920 … … …… .… .… .… .… ..204

Sunday, January 16, 1921 .… … … …… .… .… .… .… 217

Wednesday, March 23, 1921 .… …… .… .… .… .… .… . 237

Thursday, May 26, 1921 .… … … … .… .… .… .… .… 243

Third School Year : June 18, 1921 to May 30, 1922

Meetings from June 16, 1921 to May 10, 1922

Thursday, June 16, 1921 … … … .… .… .… .… .… … . . 258

Friday, June 17, 1921 … .… … …… .… .… .… .… … . . 264

Sunday, September 11, 1921 … … …… .… .… .… .. .… 282

Wednesday, November 16, 1921 … …… .… .… .… .. .… 291

Saturday, January, 14, 1922 … … . .… .… .… … . .… … 307

Wednesday, March 15, 1922 .… …… .… .… .… .… .… . 314

Friday, April 28, 1922 .… … … … …… .… .… .… .… 330

Wednesday, May 10, 1922 .… … . .… .… .… .… .… .… 343

Fourth School Year : June 18, 1921 to March 24, 1922

Meetings from June 20, 1921 to June 22, 1922

Tuesday, June 20, 1922 .… … … … . .… .… .… .… .… 347

Wednesday, June 21, 1922 .… … … . .… .… .… .… .… . 357

Thursday, June 22, 1922 .… … … … .… .… .… .… .… 367

[CONTINUED IN VOLUME 2]

Fourth School Year : June 18, 1921 to March 24, 1922

Meetings from October 4, 1922 to March 8, 1923

Fifth School Year : April 24, 1923 to April 7, 1924

Meetings from March 30, 1923 to March 27, 1924

Sixth School Year : April 30, 1924 to March 30, 1925

Meetings from April 9, 1924 to September 3, 1924

Bibliography

Index

viii

FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

Preface to the 1975 German Edition

Erich Gabert and Hans Rudolf Niederhäuser

As leader of the Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner held seventy meetings with the faculty. The first meeting, on September 8, 1919, was one day after the festive opening of the school, and the final meeting took place September 3, 1924. Except for September 25

and 26, 1919, there was no stenographer. Most of what we have today from these meetings we owe to Dr. Karl Schubert’s note taking. Only short notes exist from the period before he joined the faculty in the summer of 1920. As the faculty grew, more and more members took notes that add to those of Schubert.

Since discussions can never be recorded as completely or precisely as lectures can be, the notes all have a very fragmented quality. The editors’ task was to position the fragments so that they support one another, thus giving the most complete picture as possible. The reader will need to participate actively in making a truly living picture from this information. The exact text is often uncertain. Only when Rudolf Steiner gave a longer, connected perspective, or when several sets of notes exist, can we view the text as relatively authentic.

The first copies of the meeting notes were given to Waldorf teachers beginning in the 1930s. Those booklets have long been out of print. The same is true of the issues of Menschenschule (volumes 20–30, 1946–1956) in which the majority of the conference notes were printed. Newly discovered notes were included in the second edition of 1962, which in particular expanded the extremely short notes from the meetings of September 8, 1919, December 1919, and March 1920. Until recently, only Emil Molt’s

x

FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

memoirs suggested that Steiner gave a speech to the participants of the pedagogical seminar founding the Waldorf School on the evening prior to the course. There were, however, no known notes. Now the notes of several participants enable us to reconstruct the speech, so that we can at least get an impression of the content and general mood.

As in past editions, we have rendered the names of the teachers and students unrecognizable. Although we cannot always separate pedagogical significance from the individual, the importance of this publication is for understanding general principles in terms of specific occurrences. Only where Steiner mentions a teacher or praises a teacher have we given the name.

We carefully compared the text with all original material and corrected the present edition where necessary. Wherever possible, we included additional remarks by the faculty; therefore, this edition reads more like a conversation.

Unlike Steiner’s lectures, the meetings had no inner structure.

He delivers a longer speech or presentation only occasionally—for example, when he speaks of the curriculum for the newly formed high school. Mostly, the meetings consist of a series of unconnected questions arising from the daily life of the school.

Other questions lead to lively discussions. In the latter case, the participants often mention things that came up earlier in the same meeting, so that Steiner’s remarks may appear scattered.

Nevertheless, there do seem to be several general themes.

Consequently, in this edition as in previous editions, we have brought together within each meeting remarks concerning a specific topic—for example, remarks about foreign languages.

The meetings were a lively continuation of the faculty’s education, and they form an important addition to Steiner’s foundation courses presented before and after the opening of the Waldorf School. These discussions cannot be comprehended without an understanding of those courses. The often fragmentary details given here become clear and meaningful only when considered within the entire context. The publication of these

meetings makes visible some of the life and internal history of the Waldorf School under Steiner’s leadership.

The Waldorf School was not created as an ideal, completely thought-out school program; rather, in an exemplary way, Steiner showed in detail how a school organism—and schools in general—must necessarily arise from the capacities of the people involved, and from the conditions of the time and place according to the needs of an independent cultural life.

Thus, despite all the difficulties of the notes, the present text still provides some experience of the spirit of the first Waldorf school. Perhaps it will touch the reader’s soul so that it creates some of the living forces of the Waldorf pedagogy.

Erich Gabert

Hans Rudolf Niederhäuser

xii

FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

Introduction

Since the first Waldorf school was founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919, the Waldorf educational movement has grown to include more than seven hundred schools in over fifty countries. Waldorf schools exist in rural areas, cities, suburbs, small towns, a kibbutz, and inner city neighborhoods. In addition, Waldorf education has inspired initiatives in state schools, in refugee camps, in day-care centers, homeless shelters, and in juvenile prisons. In 1994, the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) honored Waldorf education with a special exhibition for its contributions to the world. The establishment of the Independent Waldorf School may one day be regarded as one of the most significant initiatives of the twentieth century.

The establishment of the Waldorf school not only answered an educational need of our times but was a deed of spiritual proportions. Rudolf Steiner spoke at the founding of the school: It is our duty to be aware of the importance of our task. This we shall achieve when we realize that this school is to become the bearer of quite a special impulse. And so, first of all, we must direct our thoughts toward the consciousness that something special is to be borne into the world through this education. Such a realization will come about when we no longer view this act of founding the school as an ordinary, everyday event but as a festive act in the ordering of the world.”1

1 . Rudolf Steiner, quoted by Caroline von Heydebrand.

The Historical Context of the First Waldorf School The establishment of the first Waldorf school occurred within a particular historical context. With the end of World War I, the situation in Europe was unstable. Germany had collapsed and revolution had begun. In Russia the Revolution and the civil war that followed was tearing the country apart as power was redistributed. The call was out to workers everywhere to join forces to overthrow the bourgeois system and embrace Marxism.

At first, American President Woodrow Wilson remained neutral in the European conflict, and then tried to make “peace at any price.”

Finally, he brought Americans into the war to “make the world safe for democracy.” As an idea, his idea of self-determination of nations sounded fine, but it was not rooted in the realities of the extreme nationalism present in Europe. Representatives of various European countries used the peace process as an opportunity to advance their country’s political gains, while keeping Germany blockaded. The situation in Germany worsened as the country suffered defeat and monumental inflation; people began to look for a scapegoat for a lost war, millions of unemployed, and widespread disorganization. Anything could happen.

This was the environment into which Steiner introduced his ideas on social threefolding, with the hope that it would bring about a new social order. He had already written his “Call to the German People and the Civilized World” in February, 1919. It was circulated by means of flyers and newspapers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. His book Towards Social Renewal was published in April that year. The Union for the ThreefoIding of the Social Organism was begun, which generated a great deal of enthusiasm among some European statesmen. It eventually included almost sixty local groups in Germany and attracted many people who otherwise had no connection with anthroposophy. Steiner lectured to many large audiences on the subject. At the same time, though there was extensive interest, his ideas threatened the established

power of entrepreneurs, trade unions, and state officials, and it evoked much opposition. The time was not yet right for a new kind of Germany, with a social order that respected the rights and beliefs of each individual.

Central to the ideas of a threefold social order is the dignity of the human being and a new relationship of culture to the economy and the political sphere. The day of the centralized state, with its power over the other branches of public life, was to end. A new relationship was needed that would anchor cultural life in individual freedom; so that free initiatives could arise, economic life would be based on associations of producers and consumers, who would in freedom be able to support human community; and political life would recognize fundamental human rights under the law. Steiner saw that if major changes in this direction were not taken, violent solutions would be sought to doom the old system, as was already happening in Russia. Under the threefold social order the spiritual-cultural domain of education would be freed from state control; the power of the state in education would be limited and placed in the hands of teachers’ associations. Parents would choose the schools they wanted for their children. When the impulse for threefolding society could not be realized, the Waldorf School kept alive the seed that had been planted there.

Although most of the early Waldorf schools were established in Europe, the impulse behind them is a universal impulse that meets the needs of children of our times.

The Teachers’ Meetings

The contents of these faculty meetings were compiled from notes taken by Dr. Karl Schubert and by other teachers. Steiner assumed that the teachers were familiar with the three foundation courses he gave in August 1919.2 The first group of teachers had attended the courses, and teachers who subsequently joined the faculty studied them.

By reading the faculty meetings chronologically we can observe the dynamic process between the teachers and Steiner during the seventy meetings from 1919 to 1924. Waldorf education did not spring into being fully formed. The teachers and Steiner discussed the needs of particular students, the relationship between the school and the WaldorfAstoria Company, the regulations of the state of Wurttemberg, personnel matters, and issues of curricula and pedagogy. Steiner sat in the classrooms and observed the teachers and children. He was able to contribute comments from the perspective of both the spiritual and the practical.

As we follow these meetings one by one, we gain access to Steiner the man, who encounters the joys and sorrows of everyday life. We come to know varied aspects of his personality as expressed in his special relationship with the teachers—his warmth and support; his enthusiasm, frustration, and disappointment; and his sense of humor, joy, and stern expectations.

Not only were these years difficult because of political events, but also events within the Anthroposophical Society between 1919

and 1924 created tremendous stress for Steiner. In addition to his concerns with the Waldorf School, he was involved in the internal and external difficulties of the Anthroposophical Society—attacks on the Society, frictions between older and younger members, construction of the first Goetheanum and the fire that destroyed it, reorganization of the Anthroposophical Society, criticism that was heaped on him personally, and ever increasing demands on his time. Most of all, one can feel the pressures and difficulties he experienced in trying to bring spiritual impulses into a materialistic time. Despite all the problems, the Waldorf School held a special place in Steiner’s heart, and he came to the teachers’ meetings with deep interest and warmth.

2. Published as The Foundations of Human Experience (previously translated as The Study of Man), Practical Advice to Teachers, and Discussions with Teachers.

The Relationship between the Waldorf School and the State In Germany the state exerted a strong controlling force on education. Private schools were uncommon, and the State Department of Education placed the state in the position of supreme authority. Following the German Revolution of 1918, which shook up the old state, the new leadership was more open to new ideas and initiatives; nevertheless, they were not ready to make basic changes. In 1919 the Movement for Threefolding demanded a clear separation of the school system from the state.

However, this was impossible, and the founders of the Waldorf School had to negotiate approval for a new school.

Three main compromises had to be made:

1. The Board of Education had to approve the school.

2. Teachers’ credentials had to be recognized officially before theywould be allowed to teach. However, they did not have to pass the state teaching exam. Each teacher had to provide a detailed biography and have a personal interview at the ministry. All the teachers at the Independent Waldorf School were approved. Later, all of the teachers were required to have a state teaching certificate.

3. The curriculum could be independent of state control.

Thecompromise proposal was that the students at the Waldorf school would have to achieve learning goals of public school by the end of third, sixth, and eighth grades. The regulation stated that private schools could be approved officially only if they did not lag behind public schools in learning goals, facilities, and teacher training. Private elementary schools were discouraged.

The Elementary School Law was passed in April 1920, which required that all children attend public elementary schools for the first three grades, and later four. All private elementary schools were to be disbanded.

The authorities notified the Waldorf School that they would have to close the lower classes (December 31, 1920). 2 The Waldorf School obtained approval to open one more first grade for the school year 1921–1922, but the four lower grades were not allowed to accept any more children than were already enrolled (240).

After Steiner’s death, in 1926 School Inspector Hartlieb made an intense investigation and provided a favorable assessment. The ministry recognized the school as having special pedagogical value and removed the limitation.

Steiner mentioned before he died that there had been a smal window of opportunity for the school’s establishment and its first years. He commented that the school could not have begun in the few years after 1919.

The Relationship between the Independent Waldorf School and the WaldorfAstoria Company

One of the misunderstandings in the Waldorf movement involves the relationship between the Independent Waldorf School and the WaldorfAstoria Company. It is often implied that the WaldorfAstoria Company supported the Waldorf School, and therefore children were able to attend the school tuition free. This is held up as an example of Steiner’s intention in the threefolding of society.

Emil Molt, the General Director of the WaldorfAstoria Cigarette Company, had heard Steiner speak already in 1903 and was impressed by the practicality of certain exercises for concentration. In 1918, when Molt listened to Steiner’s description of the underlying causes of events and social needs, he was moved deeply. Thus, in 1919, he shared his dream to establish a school for his workers’ children. When he asked Steiner if he would help,

2 . Dates in parentheses refer to the faculty meetings.

Steiner indicated positively if four conditions were met. First, the school must be open to all children, not just the children of employees. Second, the school must be based on a unified twelveyear curriculum rather than on a curriculum that segregated children over eleven years of age into those going on to university and those going into the trades. Third, girls and boys would be educated together. Fourth, the teachers, who carry the daily responsibility for educating the children, would be free to teach and run the school free of government or economic control.

Molt gained support of the Workers’ Council for the project, but the board of directors and stockholders who learned about it after the fact were not supportive. They tolerated it as Molt’s pet project. Molt purchased the restaurant that became the home for the school. (He is sometimes referred to as the owner of the company, but in fact he had controlling shares in the company only briefly.) For a brief time the WaldorfAstoria Cigarette Factory supported the school, realizing one of the goals of the Threefold Social Order. The actual economic situation was that tuition and materials were free for all children of the workers; a “Waldorf” child was any child who had any near relative in the company.”

At the beginning the school was an economic and legal extension of the WaldorfAstoria Cigarette Company; Molt employed the teachers and paid their salaries. Tensions developed among the teachers in relationship to Molt, however, as they felt dependent on the company. At the same time the percentage of Waldorf children in the school decreased from approximately seventy-five percent the first year, to fifty percent the second year, to even fewer Waldorf students the third year. The Waldorf School charged tuition for “non-Waldorf” children according to the parents’ own estimate. To collect and administer the money, the Association for the Independent Waldorf School (The Waldorf School Association) was formed in May, 1920. The board of directors of the company had no interest in sponsoring the school,

and Molt tried to elicit contributions toward the school expenses without much success. With the establishment of the Waldorf Association, a legal separation was complete. The Association took over the ownership of the school buildings and property, and set up a board of directors of the Waldorf School Association.

Tensions continued, however. The faculty had not understood that Molt had founded the school as a private person, not as the company’s general director. Steiner made it very clear to the teachers that Molt was the school’s protector and a selfless helper who donated his personal funds on behalf of the school, and that he was not there to exert the company’s power over them.

Gradually, the teachers understood this and came to appreciate Emil Molt’s unique relationship with the school. When the WaldorfAstoria Cigarette Company was bought out, Molt included a passage in the sales contract that, for at least ten years, the company would pay the same amount to the school as tuition had been for the Waldorf children.

The Economic Basis of the Independent Waldorf School As described, the company paid the Waldorf children’s tuition during the school’s early years. The amount of tuition that the school could rely on from the company decreased along with the declining percentage of Waldorf children. Parents paid tuition according to what they thought they could afford, and patrons were sought who were able to pay tuition for the poorer parents.

Since Rudolf Steiner was determined to accept children who could not pay tuition, they had to emphasize their attempts to obtain public donations. He had hoped a World Waldorf Association would be able to raise funds for the school, but this did not happen. Each school has since established its own Waldorf School Association to help with its funding.

A shortage of funds was a serious problem, and it occupied the agendas of many meetings. The Goetheanum was being built at

the same time in Switzerland and was also in need of funds.

Contributions were not forthcoming from anthroposophists in other cities, who were unable to see the Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart as worthy of their donations. Thus, the enrollment grew but was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in support. Steiner often commented on the need to reduce teaching loads, increase salaries, and add facilities, but there was not enough money. At one point the school day started at 9

a.m., because there wasn’t enough money to light and heat the school for the extra hour. This meant some children were getting home as late as 7 p.m. (December 9, 1923).

Steiner had intended that all teachers keep their teaching schedule to 16–18 hours (December 5, 1922, May 25, 1923). In 1919 he was hoping teachers’ schedules could be 12 hours plus preparation time. By 1920, however, he stated that 18 hours would be normal. He figured two to three hours preparation for each class, which was more than a 48-hour week. He continuously commented that the teachers did not have time for proper preparation, and this showed in the classes. The reason their loads were higher was due strictly to finances. The financial situation, as a source of frustration and anxiety, remained precarious and was never resolved, although Steiner tried to involve the teachers and the Waldorf School Association in fund-raising.

Rudolf Steiner’s hope that the economic sphere of society would support the cultural life was not realized. We can say that only a few places in the world have realized this ideal, and funding for Waldorf schools largely continues to be a serious and controversial issue.

The Growth of the Independent Waldorf School 1919–1924

School year

Students Teachers Classes 1919-1920

256

12–14

8

1920-1921

420

19

11

1921-1922

540

30

15

1922-1923

640

37

19

1923-1924

687

39

21

1924-1925

784

47

23

The first year started with great enthusiasm as teachers set out to implement the new pedagogy. The curriculum was planned in greater detail, adding handwork and shop. Basic administrative aspects such as reports and student promotion were considered.

The second year saw the addition of the ninth grade. Issues that preoccupied the teachers included spiritual independence of the school especially in relation to the WaldorfAstoria Cigarette factory, the integration of new teachers, pressure from state regulations, and financial concerns.

The third year brought more focus on problems with specific children, greater detail about subjects and methods, and concerns over a lack of connection between certain teachers and students.

Practical subjects such as spinning, weaving, hygiene, first aid, surveying, technical drawing, and shorthand were added to the curriculum.

The fourth year was characterized by a solemn mood as tensions among the teachers arose and some became indifferent toward their classes. Steiner worked hard to lift the mood with special contributions for their consideration. Student problems, and difficulties caused by the way teachers handled them, led to a feeling of depression. Steiner emphasized the need for more interaction between the teachers and high school students. The eleventh grade was added to the school.

The fifth year saw the mood lift. With the addition of the twelfth grade, the teachers’ primary task was to deal with the state and the outside requirements—specifically final exams.

During the sixth year a thirteenth grade was added as an exam year, which allowed the full twelve-grade Waldorf curriculum to be kept intact. There were compromises, however, in order to accommodate the exams. Steiner encouraged the teachers to

intensify their interest in the children and to deepen their understanding of the child and the curriculum.

The teachers looked forward to a course Steiner had planned about the moral aspects of education and teaching, but he was unable to give it due to illness.

Interest in the work of the Independent Waldorf School led to the formation of new Waldorf schools in Germany as well as in England, Holland, and, in 1928, the United States. It was the Waldorf schools outside Germany that preserved Waldorf pedagogy when the German government banned the schools in the 1930s.

The Organization of the Independent Waldorf School The organization of the school formed gradually during those four years. It has often been said that Waldorf schools are “faculty run.” The translation of the term Selbstverwaltung, however, is much closer to “self-administered.” There are many misunderstandings around this issue, and a study of these faculty meetings could help Waldorf teachers to understand what form the school assumed under Steiner’s guidance.

During the first year, 1919–1920, the school was organized as follows: Rudolf Steiner, director; Karl Stockmeyer, administrator (indicated but not verified); and Emil Molt, the patron who provided most of the funds, either personally or indirectly through the WaldorfAstoria Cigarette Company. A bookkeeper employed by the company kept the account books.

Over the next four years an organization developed that included clear roles for administrator, administrative committee, internal faculty (or “college of teachers”), external faculty, and board of directors. Steiner assumed the role of director until his death.

As director of the school, Steiner stated that his position was not based on power but on the “free will and confidence of the

teachers” (September 22, 1920). He interviewed prospective teachers and reported his recommendations to the faculty. Hiring and firing were basically accomplished by him.

Initially, the administrator took care of many issues in the school. When the administrative committee was formed in 1923, however, Steiner said the administrator would retain responsibility for the economic and technical things, business and custodial work.

Teachers and staff were not members of the board of directors at first, but later a permanent representative of the faculty and the chief administrator of the administrative committee each had a seat on the board of directors.

Early discussions and decisions were carried out with all the full-time teachers, but on July 30, 1920 a distinction was made between an inner faculty of class teachers and some older specialty teachers and an extended faculty. The inner faculty seems to be what came to be called the “college of teachers,” or Collegium. The faculty meetings from July 1920 on appear to be inner faculty meetings.

They discussed personnel issues and made decisions relating to the daily life of the school. In other schools these decisions would have been made by a principal. Sometimes Steiner came to the meetings with a proposal, but the teachers modified it or rejected it. Steiner was able to be flexible because he was clear that the faculty had to make the decisions they would live by. When the faculty had difficulty coming to a decision, Steiner used secret ballot and parliamentary procedure. In principle the teachers had complete freedom in how they taught, but not in things connected with administration of the school.

In January 1923, an administrative committee was established with three teachers who rotated administrative duties on a biweekly basis for two months. The committee would represent the school internally and to the outside world. The administrative committee carried out the administrative function on behalf of the faculty.

Internally:

1. Prepare and take minutes for faculty meetings.

2. Name specific faculty members for specific areas, i.e., thequestion of student boarding, decorations for the classrooms.

3. Prepare and oversee a yard supervisory schedule.

4. Assign classrooms.

5. Supervise the use of school rooms for events by outsiders.

Externally:

1. Correspondence and communications with school

officialsand the Department of Education.

2. Enrollment issues (introductions, meeting the parents, followup, tests, graduation reports).

3. Yearly reports.

4. Visitors.

5. Public relations—working against laws that affect the school.

6. Gathering information about salaries and administering

particular donations (January 31, 1923).

The Key Requirement: The Administrative Body Should Arise from the Will of the Faculty

The main role of the teachers was teaching in the classroom.

Steiner was emphatic that the teachers have independence in their own teaching. The actual how of teaching was up to them, without government interference or dictates. The what was spelled out by Steiner in broad strokes. The teachers had to meet the compromise agreement with the Department of Education concerning the goals of state school third, sixth, and ninth grades. The teachers’

administrative duties were clearly involved with pedagogy, not with “running” the school, nor with the physical plant, the finances, salaries, hiring and firing, fund-raising, and so on.

The faculty meeting agendas resemble many teachers’ meetings today. Yet there were two major differences. Since this was the first Waldorf school, everything was new, and Steiner was there directing the school, giving it as much time as he could. One can feel the warmth and respect the teachers felt each time he was able to attend the meetings. They rose to their “best selves” and were able to achieve significant steps in developing the school.

Occasionally he had to take the reigns and make decisions that the faculty had been unable to resolve.

Through reading about the struggles, we come to see the basic principles Steiner was trying to uphold as the true gift of Waldorf education to humanity. These include:

1. independence from the state in developing the curriculum

2. educating boys and girls together

3. the ability of all children to attend who wished to do so 4. freedom of the teacher in the classroom

5. school self-administration

6. an education that would develop capacities needed for the future

7. an understanding of the child’s development of spirit, soul, and body

One becomes very aware that Steiner was determined to keep the school from becoming a bourgeois prep school—one based on abstract, intellectual knowledge—and that he intended to create a practical curriculum anchored in real life. The craft curriculum was particularly important, because it introduced the students to practical life. Yet he was also very clear that the school needed to prepare the students for university entrance.

He always tried to lift the teachers to the ideals that had called them to their work in the Waldorf school. Anyone who thinks nostalgically that all was harmonious and idyllic need only read these proceedings to see the difficulties that arose over recalcitrant

students, expulsions, lack of money, poor decisions, parent issues, inadequate teaching, and lazy, uninspiring teachers. There were also creative heartfelt, enthusiastic teaching and matters of children dropping out or being required to leave the school.

Steiner was discouraged at times by the antagonisms among teachers, which he addressed directly. “The Waldorf school can prosper only when the faculty is in harmony. It is impossible for everyone to find everyone else sympathetic, but this is a personal question and does not belong in the faculty…. The only question is that of trust” (January 23, 1923).

At times he expressed concern that the children were not learning enough and that certain classes were undisciplined. He was clear that the school’s responsibility was to educate the children so that they could transfer to another school if they wished.

Steiner’s confidence in the teachers increased, and his comments from 1923 on are much more positive. Nevertheless, he continued to be concerned about the interactions among them.

Pedagogical Issues

In addition to helping awaken us to insight into the early years of Waldorf education, these faculty meetings can help us gain perspective on some of the key questions confronting modern Waldorf educators: What are the essential principles of Waldorf pedagogy presented by Steiner as an education for our time? To what degree do the indications for the Waldorf school relate specifically to schools in Germany—to the fact that the children were German—and to what degree were the indications intended to be applied universally? How was Waldorf education shaped by the particular teachers who participated in the early years of the Waldorf school? How far can Waldorf education adapt to other situations and countries and still be considered Waldorf schools?

And finally, how do we identify and address the numerous myths in circulation about the nature of Waldorf education?

The Development of the Curriculum

The main impression given by the faculty meetings is that the curriculum was not a fixed recipe but an ongoing dialogue between Steiner and the teachers. The lower school curriculum had been presented in lectures in 1919, thus, the faculty meetings offered an opportunity for teachers to ask specific questions. Many of the curriculum discussions centered around teaching foreign languages. As the high school grades were added each year, the curriculum for the high school was presented in the faculty meetings of 1920–1924. These meetings offer the high school teachers substantial indications in almost every subject area. The general direction of the subject is suggested, as well as specific aspects that should be taught. These faculty meetings offer the most direct guidelines from Steiner himself on training high school teachers.

The question has been raised, especially in America, about whether or not the Waldorf curriculum is Eurocentric. In reading the faculty meetings, it becomes clear that the curriculum was answering two different needs. The general thrust of the curriculum is universal. Subjects such as geology, mathematics, physics, music, woodworking shop, foreign languages, and handwork relate to students anywhere. History and literature curricula have elements that are both local and universal. In discussing the ninth grade, for example, Steiner says, “It is important that you cover the history of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries…. In teaching about these centuries, the goal would be that the students understand the present, don’t you agree?… Take the nineteenth century as a confluence of the histories of various peoples…. There is a great deal of material in those lectures you can expand upon by bringing

in literature from everywhere” (November 15, 1920). On the other hand, he speaks of literature with an awareness that the exams will cover German literature, and he expects the students to study that material. “We need to see to it that the students learn the things they may be asked” (April 24, 1923). The curriculum thus focused on German writers, historians, language, and so on.

As Steiner reflected on developing the curriculum, he often commented on what is effective and what is not. For example, Steiner comments, “The Austrian college preparatory high schools were exemplary. When you think of Leo Thun [Minister of Culture, 1848–1860] and 1854, their curriculum was the very best imaginable” (November 15, 1920). Essentially, he expected the school to produce students who were well educated. He wanted students who are connected with the contemporary world. On June 17, 1921 he said, “If only stenography had never been created! But now that it exists, people cannot live without it, just like the telephone.” We can compare that to the use of computers today.

When teachers asked for more hours for handwork or eurythmy, Steiner was practical: “There are schools with four periods for handwork but this situation is not possible for us…. If we were to do such things, it would be impossible for us to create a class schedule…. There is also a desire to have three times as many eurythmy periods, but we can divide things based only on objectivity…. Even though we are an hour short for handwork class, we only have a quarter of the time we need for arithmetic….

We must be efficient in our instruction, as I said at the beginning”

(October 28, 1922).

Foreign Language Grouping

A myth has been passed down through the years that children should always be kept together and that there should be no

grouping. It is evident from many of Steiner’s comments that this was not his intention.

He commented that keeping all the students in the foreign language classes grouped according to their grade level was causing frustration for the children who had been in the same class for years. Children in a particular grade (for example, the fourth grade) had different capacities or experiences, either because some of the children were new to the school and had no previous experience in the language while others had been learning the foreign language for several years, or because the children had various levels of ability. Each time the teachers would start over again or review work taught in the past, some children would lose interest in the foreign language.

Steiner advised mixed groupings between several grades, but this did not happen, because teachers claimed it was too difficult to schedule. Steiner was not at the school often enough to see that this change would take place and to have the teachers accept it. He addressed this again on May 3, 1923 when he said that the teacher had to test the children to determine their capacities for grouping children in foreign languages.

Specialization

Another myth has been perpetuated that, in Waldorf schools, the children do everything together and do not specialize. When a teacher mentioned that a student wanted a more musical education, Steiner responded, “If we begin allowing differences, we will need three different areas—the humanities, business, and art. We will have to see if that is possible without a significant increase in the size of the faculty” (October 15, 1922). In discussing preparation for the examinations, he said children should be prepared for what they wanted to do even if at times the classes were very small. “If only one child is there for Greek or Latin, that one child needs to be taught” (June 16, 1921).

He also thought that children could be recognized for special work as long as it didn’t get out of hand. He commented that each child should receive an atlas upon graduation. “Perhaps we could even do these things as awards for good work. A larger more beautiful book for those who have done well, something smaller for those who have done less, and for those who were lazy, perhaps only a map” (September 25, 1919).

In the upper grades students who want to develop themselves musically need more time for practice. He suggested they be excused from those classes that could stiffen their fingers. “We could change the curriculum for individuals…. What provides human education should remain, otherwise you can specialize”

(May 26, 1921). He clearly considered handwork part of human education. When new boys came into the school they didn’t want to be in handwork with girls. Steiner insisted handwork was not an elective, but the boys and girls could have different activities beginning in eighth or ninth grade (December 9, 1922). “If we do not prepare [the students] for the examinations, we would eventually close the last four grades. Parents would not send their children” (May 3, 1923). Steiner’s flexibility concerning students, their individual needs, and the curriculum may have been far greater than some Waldorf schools are willing to consider today.

Homework in a Waldorf School

Although Steiner did not want the younger children to have the load of homework that the German university preparatory schools gave in the lower school, it is also clear he expected the children to have homework. His comments on homework focused mostly trying to inspire the students to do it on their own, making certain that the teachers collected and reviewed any homework that was assigned, so that homework would be meaningful rather than merely busywork, and making sure that the teachers weren’t all assigning homework at the same time. If one selectively chose

some of Steiner’s comments, it could lead to the belief that he simply wanted homework to be voluntary; but this is not supported when considering the totality of his remarks. He usually distinguished between homework for children in the lower grades and those in upper grades. When he addressed the issue concerning the students in the upper classes he was very specific: “If the children do not do this homework, you could keep the lazy ones after noon and threaten them. This could occur often”

(December 22, 1919). This seems harsh, but we don’t know what he means when he says “threaten them.” Does this mean they would be threatened to stay after school every time their homework isn’t done? This seems similar to the lunchtime study halls or afterschool homework sessions required by schools today.

On the other side of the issue, a teacher asked about homework and how to possibly get through all the material. Steiner answered, “You should present homework as voluntary work and not as a requirement. In other words, ‘Who wants to do this?’” (January 1, 1920).

On September 11, 1921 another teacher commented, “I think it would be good if we gave the children homework. It is certainly clear in this case that the children should do some problems at home.” Steiner responded, “You should never give children homework unless you know they will return with the problems solved, and that they have done them with zeal.”

In addition to the issue of homework, he commented on the difference of teaching the various ages. In discussing the eleventh grade on June 21, 1922 Steiner suggested the teachers should continue with the material so that they strengthen the students’

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.”

Textbooks in a Waldorf School

It is often said by Waldorf teachers that there should be no textbooks in a Waldorf school. In various instances in the faculty meetings Steiner recommends a particular textbook, states that most textbooks are inferior, questions whether the teachers couldn’t write their own, and suggests that the class needs a textbook to unite all the students. “I have nothing against using a textbook, but all of them are bad…. Look for a textbook, and show it to me when I come back” (September 11, 1921).

Concern for the Individual Child

When one reads the faculty meetings chronologically and carefully, it becomes clear that Steiner responded to each situation spontaneously. It is difficult to make dictums out of his comments.

Words such as “never” and “always” do not fit with Steiner’s recommendations. Therefore, it behooves us to abide by the guideline to consider each situation carefully, taking into account the particular children, teacher, and problem. Teachers need to develop inner capacities of perception and judgment, which they can then bring to each situation. Taking refuge in such statements as “Rudolf Steiner said,” does not serve the aims of Waldorf education.

As a final note I call to the reader’s attention Steiner’s concern for each student. He recognized that the relationship between the teacher and student was very influential in the student’s moral development. Although such close connections were not typical of the day, his comments anticipate the advice of our contemporary psychological approach to teenagers. He said, “We need to have more contact with the students in the upper grades.

At that age students cannot stand going through a whole morning of class without any personal contact. They want you to be interested in them personally” (July 31, 1923).

He was disappointed that the teachers’ schedules did not allow time for the necessary connection that would affect a student’s self-image. On July 15,1924 Steiner commented: We can hardly change [our relationship with the students]

while the faculty is overworked to such a degree that personal relationships with the children do not really arise as they should, in which a moral and soul development is achieved along with that of the intellect and spirit. Beginning in the eighth grade, the faculty’s moral influence on students is largely lacking. And outside the class there is also a lack of the kind of contact that should exist between the students and teachers. Thus, in terms of morals, whenever eighth grade students have certain tendencies, they are left too much on their own. We do not speak of our students as we might if we had closer contact with them.

The letter you wrote to me about R. is the result of your classroom relationship. Nothing appeared in it that would indicate a personal relationship with the students. It was also quite clear from your verbal reports today that you have no real contact with the students. I can certainly see that there is not enough time and that teachers are overworked; on the other hand, it is an objective fact that things have been this way for a long time. What we are missing is something that should certainly occur through the attitude of the Waldorf school pedagogy; an exact psychological picture of the students should live within the teachers, but a detailed psychological picture of the students does not live in the teachers’ souls. I don’t know how your development of this student psychology in recent faculty meetings compares with how it might have developed in meetings with me. You could have given some of the students in the higher grades special attention here. I don’t know how much you do this when you meet by yourselves, but what exists is certainly not what it should be.

Now we have these three children—N.N., S.Z., and W.R.

There was a slight limitation in N.N.’s mental capacities, which could have been remedied through energetic, more extended psychological treatment. Whenever we spoke about N., I said that if he were treated in such a way that he developed some trust, he could come to a teacher when he was in need and relate to the teacher as he would to a father. That would have improved the situation. My impression is that you did not do that; thus, N.N., who would otherwise have been easy to treat, did not in fact develop the deep love for a teacher that might have enabled him to improve…. The only thing that can help is that a close relationship is formed with a teacher so that the student feels especially drawn to that teacher. (July 15, 1924) Cautionary Note concerning the Faculty Meetings Because the faculty meetings were recorded in the form of notes, some statements may be misleading. Indeed, some of the statements attributed to Steiner may not have been said at all.

Therefore, we need to be extra careful in using them to justify one or another positions.

Another aspect of the faculty meetings is that they were not intended to be made public. In most Waldorf school faculty meetings, teachers explore issues, raise questions, agree or disagree with one another, state positions, and consider new ways to educate children more effectively. These meetings between the teachers and Rudolf Steiner were held behind closed doors, so to speak. Comments were made in this intimate setting and not meant to be repeated. Thus, taken out of context, some comments can lead to misunderstanding.

There are a few comments that are very confusing to me, and I frankly do not understand what Steiner meant by them. We do not know if they were actually said, if they were misquoted, or if they are correct. I recently had the experience in which I told a group of teachers and parents that as Waldorf educators we need to do a

better job explaining to parents why Waldorf high schools emphasize the thinking aspect of students. The next day, a parent commented that she was not sure she wanted to enroll her son in the particular Waldorf high school, because I had said that the Waldorf high school does not do a good job of teaching students how to think. Luckily, I had her comment reflected to me, and I was able to have a conversation with her. We cleared up the misunderstanding, and she was very relieved. Unfortunately, we do not have the opportunity to do something similar with Rudolf Steiner’s statements.

During the faculty meeting of February 14, 1923, he speaks about the French language and about immigration, of “moving black people” to Europe. Before I can judge the comment, I would need to understand it, and I am not able to do so. Either missing sentences would have to be included or the context would have to be clearer before I could know what to say about it. During the faculty meeting of June 9, 1920, Steiner comments about Allah and Mohammedan culture. It is a comment that would need much more elaboration for me to understand whether he is being negative or just explaining his point of view. He also comments during the same meeting about the difference between Catholic and Lutheran religious instruction. I take these as his personal opinions, not as categorical statements.

What is far more important, in my opinion, is to take the full body of Steiner’s work as his general commentary and to set aside the few comments that either seem confusing, lacking in full explanation, or inappropriate in our time. What is most important is that we, as human beings striving to bring Waldorf education into being, honor the spirit of each child we teach, and to seek the positive contribution each group offers to world evolution.

There is always a danger that any worldview or philosophy may become frozen at the time in which it arose, that each word spoken by its founder becomes fixed as orthodoxy, and thus dogma and heresies arise. Waldorf education is as vulnerable to such

tendencies as any body of knowledge and insight. By reading the faculty meetings, we can gain a certain amount of perspective.

Despite the shortcomings of the faculty meeting notes, they offer a tremendous help to Waldorf educators in allowing an experience of participation in one of the great educational achievements of the twentieth century. It also becomes clear that we are only beginning Waldorf education. Through these meetings we can grasp the legacy that Steiner left to Waldorf teachers. The call is out for us to deepen our perceptions, our inner life, our awareness of our students and colleagues, and our relationship to the spiritual beings that stand behind Waldorf education. When we understand and participate in the intention behind Waldorf education—freedom for individual thinking, heart-warmed community sharing, and active will in the world, we may be able to carry a vision into the twenty-first century. May we be worthy of it.

Betty Staley

Publisher’s Note

Publisher’s Note

The eight hundred pages of Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner represent something unique, even among the bewilderingly different kinds of works (more than 350 in number) published under the name of Rudolf Steiner. These include the written works— books authored and published by Rudolf Steiner in his lifetime; the transcripts, based on stenographic reports, of public lectures given by Rudolf Steiner; and finally, the transcripts, based either on stenographic reports or sometimes just auditor’s notes, of “private” talks given to larger or smaller (and sometimes very small) groups or subgroups of members of the Anthroposophical Society (before 1913, the Theosophical Society). In addition to these three kinds of works, Steiner also wrote journal and magazine articles, contributed to collections, gave written esoteric instruction, wrote letters, and kept voluminous notebooks. Although Steiner initially intended only the written works for publication, very early on in his teaching career, to forestall the dissemination of pirated versions of his lectures, he began to oversee the printing of stenographic transcripts, even going through some of those that were published in his lifetime. However, he could only do this for a very small sample. For the rest, the Nachlassverwaltung in Dornach, Switzerland, has, with minimum resources, done a tremendous job of editing and comparing different manuscript transcriptions.

Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner is something else again. The volume contains, as the title suggests, a record (more or less) of five years of faculty meetings. Thus it consists, as such meetings usually

do, mostly of responses to unconnected questions arising from the life of the school. Sometimes the discussion is lively; sometimes it is dull; sometimes the issues addressed are hair-raising and critical; sometimes they are more routine and operational. Throughout, however, we are able to watch Rudolf Steiner in action in a unique way while, at the same time, witnessing the extraordinary birth and development of a new pedagogical adventure: Waldorf education.

All this is shown very organically and interwoven with the personalities and capacities of those involved and with the particular conditions of the time and the place.

Rudolf Steiner addresses the questions as they arise. Except on two occasions, no stenographer was present. What we have today is based on participants’ notes—above all, those of Karl Schubert who joined the faculty in the summer of 1920. Before that, only brief notes were taken; whereas, after that, following Dr. Schubert’s example, other faculty members began to take notes. The text, which remains fragmentary, is compiled of all these elements. As it is stated in the preface to the German edition: “Only when Rudolf Steiner gave a longer, connected perspective or when several sets of notes exist can we view the text as relatively authentic.”

Readers are forewarned to expect a very full, unpredictable, unrehearsed, spontaneous reading experience. Faculty Meetings is astonishing in its richness, its vitality, its variety. The scope and wisdom of Rudolf Steiner’s comments, the enormous range of his knowledge, and, above all, perhaps, his amazing ability to create a living, culture-transforming, truth-bearing institution, the first Waldorf school, is overwhelming. However fragmentary it may be, we really have here the closest thing to a living portrait of Steiner, the man of action. All of which is to say that despite the shortcomings of this record, Faculty Meetings is, from many points of view, a most valuable document.

It is also, in some sense, a dangerous one. For much of the period, Rudolf Steiner and the anthroposophical movement were under attack from without and in crisis within. New Years’ Eve 1922/23, the Goetheanum, the anthroposophical headquarters in

Publisher’s Note

Switzerland, went up in flames. Germany herself tottered on the edge of an abyss. Following the Treaty of Versailles, the pain of national humiliation exhausted itself in failed revolutions, opening the way to National Socialism. Social and economic chaos ruled. The children suffered from congenital malnutrition. Groups of “ruffians” roamed the streets. In a word, it was a wild time, and Rudolf Steiner is often acting under great pressure. Much here if not taken in context can be misunderstood and misrepresented. As publishers, we have debated whether to publish the book and whether to publish it whole. We have decided to publish it because we believe that it represents a valuable resource both for those interested in the history of Waldorf education and for those interested in Rudolf Steiner. We have no doubt that both of these, Waldorf education and Rudolf Steiner, represent vitally important impulses for a healthy human future in the next millennium.

Understanding both of these, making what they have to offer our own, so that we, in turn, may serve our culture and our fellow human beings, will mean coming to know and learning to read Rudolf Steiner in a new, twenty-first century way. With this in our minds and hearts, we publish this extraordinary record as it stands in German.

xl

FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

September 8, 1919

Monday, September 8, 1919, 10:00 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: We will begin school at 8:00 a.m. During the period from November 15 through February 15, I suggest we begin at 8:30 a.m.

The class teachers will be:

Class 1 Miss von Mirbach

Class 2 Pastor Geyer

Class 3 Miss Lang

Class 4 Mrs. Koegel

Class 5 Dr. von Heydebrand

Class 6 Mr. Oehlschlegel

Classes 7 & 8 Dr. Treichler and Mr. Stockmeyer In addition, Dr. Stein, Mr. Hahn, and Mr. and Mrs. Baumann will also be teaching.

The religion, singing, and music classes will be in the afternoon from 2:00 until 3:30. Eurythmy will also be in the afternoon.

Therefore, the afternoon schedule will be:

2:00-3:30 Music

3:30-4:00 Recess

4:00-5:00 Religion

5:00-6:00 Eurythmy and Gymnastics

6:00 Dismissal

There will be no school on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.

Therefore, the teaching schedule will be as follows:

2:00-3:30 p.m.

4:00-5:00 p.m. 5:00-6:00 p.m.

Singing & Music Religion

Eurythmy

Monday

Grades 7 & 8

Grades 7 & 8

Grades 1& 2

Tuesday

Grades 5 & 6

Grades 5 & 6

Grades 3 & 4

Wednesday

Thursday

Grades 3 & 4

3rd & 4th Grade Grades 5 & 6

Friday

Grades 1 & 2

Grades 1 & 2

Grades 7 & 8

Saturday

The teachers can decide the number of hours.3 We will give religion instruction in reverse order of the classes. It is good for the teachers to have the youngest children just before Sunday. Thus, on Thursday and Friday we will have religion for the four lowest classes at 4:00 in the afternoon.

In the first, second, and third grades, we will have only eurythmy; in the fourth through eighth grades, we will also have gymnastics.

The gymnastics teachers will observe during eurythmy; the eurythmy teachers will observe during gymnastics.

Now we come to the morning schedule.4

Grade 1:

Mon.

Wed.

Fri. 8:00-10:00 a.m.

Main

Lesson

Tues.

Thur. Sat. 10:15-12:15

Grade 2:

Tues.

Thur.

Sat. 8:00-10:00 a.m.

Main

Lesson

Mon.

Wed.

Fri. 10:15-12:15

In the first three-quarters of the year, we should go through everything in a connected manner. That is, we will take the subjects one-quarter of the year5 at a time according to choice. In the last quarter of the year, we can separate the various subjects and alternate them as a repetition.6 We can separate the subjects only during the repetition. The remainder of the time we will always take one subject at a time, for instance, telling fairy tales and then reading.

Third grade Monday–Saturday 8:00-10:00 a.m. with the class teacher.

3 . The reference to “the number of hours” is unclear.

4 . The original intent at the time of this meeting was to have two school sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon due to a lack of space. Instead, school was opened a week later after all the rooms were usable. — TRANS.

5 . See Discussion 1, August 21, 1919, in Discussions with Teachers (List no. 6).

6 . The repetition or recapitulation lessons earlier in the year were done only rarely.

Twelve hours is sufficient for the teacher. That will be an eighthour work day, including preparation.

Fourth grade is the same as the third grade.

September 8, 1919

Grade 5:

Mon.

Wed.

Fri.

8-10 a.m. Main

Tues.

Thur.

Sat.

10:15-

Lesson

12:15

Grade 6:

Tues.

Thur.

Sat.

8-10 a.m. Main

Mon.

Wed.

Fri.

10:15-

Lesson

12:15

In the 7th and 8th grades, the teachers will alternate.

Grade 7:

Teacher 1 Mon.

Wed.

Fri.

8-10 a.m.

Teacher 2 Tues.

Thur.

Sat.

8-10 a.m.

Grade 8:

Teacher 1 Tues.

Thur.

Sat.

8-10 a.m.

Teacher 2 Mon.

Wed.

Fri.

8-10 a.m.

Languages:

The first grade has a class of English and French every day, either before or after Main Lesson depending upon whether Main Lesson begins at 8 or 10:15. We may eventually have to do that in the afternoon, but if possible, we should teach it in the morning.

The second grade is the same as the 1st.

The third grade also has a class of English or French every day.

The same is true for the fourth grade. However, in addition, they will have two hours of Latin every day in the afternoon, except for Wednesday and Friday. Thus, they will have eight hours of Latin per week. If possible, we should do this in the morning.

[ Dr. Steiner later changed this so that both Latin and Greek began in the fifth grade. Refer to the discussion on July 20, 1920.]

The fifth grade is like the fourth grade.

In the sixth and seventh grades, we will add Greek. Thus, beginning in the sixth grade, we will drop three of the English/

French classes and teach 1½ hours of Latin and 1½ hours of Greek instead.

All language instruction shall occur between recesses.

Dr. von Heydebrand will teach English in the 1st and 2nd grades, and Mr. Oehlschlegel will teach the remaining classes. Mr. Hahn will teach French in the first through third grades and Dr. Treichler, grades four through eight. Pastor Geyer will teach Latin in the fourth and possibly fifth grades, and Dr. Treichler, the sixth grade. Dr.

Treichler will also teach Greek.

Dr. Stein will replace Miss Mirbach during the period of her absence, and perhaps he can also assist Dr. Treichler in Latin for three or four weeks, until about the middle of October.

We can give handwork to an extent, or perhaps we can fit it into the afternoons.

The anthroposophical instruction, that is, the independent religious instruction, can be given by the class teachers. However, we should wait until September 23 to begin that.

I will be in Dresden from September 18 to 21, but will return on the 23rd. We will certainly have much to discuss then, and you can ask everything at that time. However, on the 26th I must again leave.

A teacher asks about equipment for physics.

Dr. Steiner: We will purchase teaching aids as we need them.

However, you should let us know four weeks ahead of time.

A teacher asks a question about teaching physics.

Dr. Steiner: You must differentiate between percussive, plucked, and bowed tones through monochords.

[ Dr. Steiner mentions two books commonly used in Austria for teaching Latin and Greek. There is also some discussion about fairy tales, sagas, and stories, as well as history, in connection with the teachers’ library. A discussion of the Free Waldorf School Association and unified elementary and secondary schools follows. ]

Dr. Steiner: The meetings are free republican discussions. Each person is sovereign in them. Every teacher should keep a small journal.

Thursday, September, 25, 1919, 8:30 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: Today I want you to summarize all your experiences of the last ten days and then we will discuss what is necessary.

Stockmeyer (the school administrator) reports: We began instruction on September 16, and Mr. Molt gave a short speech to the students.

We had to somewhat change the class schedule we had discussed because the Lutheran and Catholic religion teachers were not available at the times we had set. We also had to combine some classes. In addition, we needed to include a short recess of five minutes in the period from 8-10 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we can do that, but what happens during that period must remain the free decision of the teacher.

A teacher: During the language classes in the upper grades, it became apparent that some children had absolutely no knowledge of foreign languages. For that reason, at least for now, we must give three hours of English and three hours of French instead of the 1½ hours of each that we had planned. We also had to create a beginners’ class as well as one for more advanced students.

Dr. Steiner: What are you teaching in the eighth grade?

A teacher: The computation of interest. I plan to go on to the computation of discounts and exchanges.

Dr. Steiner: The two seventh-and eighth-grade teachers must remain in constant contact so that when one teacher leaves the class, he brings things to a kind of conclusion. When he returns, he then leads the class through a repetition. In the past few days,

have you been able to determine how much the students already know?

A teacher: I was able to make an approximation.

Dr. Steiner: With your small class that certainly would have been possible, but hardly for the other teachers. Certainly, we can try to make it possible for you to change classes an average of once a week, but we must be careful that the exchange takes place only when you finish a topic.

A teacher: The seventh grade knows very little history.

Dr. Steiner: You will probably need to begin something like history from the very beginning in each class, since none of the students will have a proper knowledge of history. The children have probably learned what is common knowledge, but, as I have mentioned in the past, it is unlikely that any of them have a genuine understanding of history. Therefore, you must begin from the beginning in each class.

A teacher: Many parents have been unable to decide whether they should send their children to the independent religious instruction or the Lutheran or Catholic. Many of them wrote both in the questionnaire, since they want their children confirmed for family reasons.

Dr. Steiner: Here we must be firm. It’s either the one or the other.

We will need to speak about this question more at a later time.

A teacher: An economic question has arisen: Should those students who are paying tuition also purchase their own books? The factory takes care of all of these things for its children, but it could happen that children sit next to one another and one has a book he or she must return and the other a book he or she can keep. This would emphasize class differences.

Dr. Steiner: Clearly we can’t do things in that way, that some children buy their books and then keep them. The only thing we can do is raise the tuition by the amount of the cost of books and supplies, but, in general, we should keep things as they are with the other children. Therefore, all children should return their books.

A teacher: Should we extend that to such things as notebooks? That is common practice here in Stuttgart. Also, how should we handle the question of atlases and compasses?

Dr. Steiner: Of course, the best thing would be to purchase a supply of notebooks and such for each class. The children would then need to go to the teacher when they fill one notebook in order to obtain a new one. We could thus keep track of the fact that one child uses more notebooks than others. We should therefore see that there is a supply of notebooks and that the teacher gives them to the children as needed.

For compasses and other such items, problems arise if we simply allow the children to decide what to buy. Those children with more money will, of course, buy better things, and that is a real calamity. It might be a good idea if all such tools, including things for handwork, belong to the school and the children only use them.

As for atlases, I would suggest the following. We should start a fund for such things and handle the atlases used during the year in much the same way as the other supplies. However, each child should receive an atlas upon graduation.7 It would certainly be very nice if the children received something at graduation. Perhaps we could even do these things as awards for good work. A larger more beautiful book for those who have done well, something smaller for those who have done less, and for those who were lazy, perhaps only a map. That is certainly something we could do; however, we shouldn’t let it get out of hand.

7 . This proposal regarding graduation was not carried out.

A teacher: How should we handle the question of books for religious instruction? Until now, instructional materials were provided, but according to the new Constitution, 8 that will probably no longer be so. We thought the children would purchase those books themselves and would pay the ministers directly for their teaching.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against doing it that way. However, I think that we should investigate how other schools are handling that, so that everything can move smoothly, at least this year. In the future, we must find our own way of working, but at least for this year, we should do it like the other schools. We need to act in accordance with the public schools. If they do not require the purchase of religion books and separate payment for instruction, we must wait until they do. It would certainly be helpful if we could say we are doing what the public schools are doing.

A teacher: Should we use the secondary schools as our model?

Dr. Steiner: No, we should pay more attention to the elementary schools.

A teacher: Nothing is settled there yet.

Dr. Steiner: True. However, I would do what is common in the elementary schools, since the socialist government will not change much at first, but will just leave everything the way it has been. The government will make laws, but allow everything to stay the same.

A teacher: It seems advisable to keep track of what we teach in each class. But, of course, we should not do it the normal way. We should make the entries so that each teacher can orient him-or herself with the work of the other teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but if we do that in an orderly manner, we will need time, and that will leave time for the children to simply play

8 . The Constitution of the German Republic, the “Weimar Republic.”

around. When you are with the children as a teacher, you should not be doing anything else. What I mean is that you are not really in the classroom if you are doing something not directly connected with the children. When you enter the classroom, you should be with the children until you leave, and you should not give the children any opportunity to chatter or misbehave by not being present, for instance, by making entries in a record book or such things.

It would be much better to take care of these things among ourselves. Of course, I am assuming that the class teachers do not get into arguments about that, but respect one another and discuss the subject. If a teacher works with one class, then that teacher will also discuss matters with the others who teach that class. Each teacher will make his or her entries outside of the instructional period. Nothing, absolutely nothing that does not directly interact with the children can occur during class time.

A teacher: Perhaps we could do that during the recesses.

Dr. Steiner: Why do we actually need to enter things? First, we must enter them, then someone else must read them. That is time lost for interacting with the students.

A teacher: Shouldn’t we also record when a student is absent?

Dr. Steiner: No, that is actually something we also do not need.9

A teacher: If a child is absent for a longer time, we will have to inquire as to what the problem is.

Dr. Steiner: In the context of our not very large classes, we can do that orally with the children. We can ask who is absent and simply take note of it in our journals. That is something that we can do.

We will enter that into the children’s reports, namely, how many

9 . This had to be done later to maintain a record of student absences.

times a child was absent, but we certainly do not need a class journal for that.

A teacher: I had to stop the children from climbing the chestnut trees, but we want to have as few rules as possible.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we certainly need to be clear that we do not have a bunch of angels at this school, but that should not stop us from pursuing our ideas and ideals. Such things should not lead us to think that we cannot reach what we have set as our goals. We must always be clear that we are pursuing the intentions set forth in the seminar. Of course, how much we cannot achieve is another question that we must particularly address from time to time.

Today, we have only just begun, and all we can do is take note of how strongly social climbing has broken out.

However, there is something else that I would ask you to be aware of. That is, that we, as the faculty—what others do with the children is a separate thing—do not attempt to bring out into the public things that really concern only our school. I have been back only a few hours, and I have heard so much gossip about who got a slap and so forth. All of that gossip is going beyond all bounds, and I really found it very disturbing. We do not really need to concern ourselves when things seep out the cracks. We certainly have thick enough skins for that. But on the other hand, we clearly do not need to help it along. We should be quiet about how we handle things in the school, that is, we should maintain a kind of school confidentiality. We should not speak to people outside the school, except for the parents who come to us with questions, and in that case, only about their children, so that gossip has no opportunity to arise. There are people who like to talk about such things because of their own desire for sensationalism. However, it poisons our entire undertaking for things to become mere gossip.

This is something that is particularly true here in Stuttgart since there is so much gossip within anthroposophical circles. That

gossip causes great harm, and I encounter it in the most disgusting forms. Those of us on the faculty should in no way support it.

A teacher: In some cases, we may need to put less capable children back a grade. Or should we recommend tutoring for these children?

Dr. Steiner: Putting children back a grade is difficult in the lower grades. However, it is easier in the upper grades. If it is at all possible, we should not put children back at all in the first two grades.

Specific cases are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: We should actually never recommend tutoring. We can recommend tutoring only when the parents approach us when they have heard of bad results. As teachers, we will not offer tutoring. That is something we do not do. It would be better to place a child in a lower grade.

A teacher speaks about two children in the fourth grade who have difficulty learning.

Dr. Steiner: You should place these children at the front of the class, close to the teacher, without concern for their temperaments, so that the teacher can keep an eye on them. You can keep disruptive children under control only if you put them in a corner, or right up at the front, or way in the back of the class, so that they have few neighboring children, that is, no one in front or behind them.

A teacher: Sometimes children do not see well. I know of some children who are falling behind only because they are farsighted and no one has taken that into account.

Dr. Steiner: An attentive teacher will observe organic problems in children such as shortsightedness or deafness. It is difficult to have a medical examination for everything. Such examinations should occur only when the teachers recommend them.

When conventional school physicians perform the examinations, we easily come into problems of understanding. For now we want to avoid the visits of a school physician, since Dr.

Noll is not presently here.10 It would be different if he were.

Physicians unknown to the school would only cause us difficulties.

The physician should, of course, act as an advisor to the teacher, and the teacher should be able to turn to the physician with trust when he or she notices something with the children.

With children who have learning difficulties, it often happens that suddenly something changes in them, and they show quite sudden improvement. I will visit the school tomorrow morning and will look at some of the children then, particularly those who are having difficulty.

A teacher: My fifth-grade class is very large, and the children are quite different from one another. It is very difficult to teach them all together and particularly difficult to keep them quiet.

Dr. Steiner: With a class as large as that, you must gradually attempt to treat the class as a choir and not allow anyone to be unoccupied.

Thus, try to teach the class as a whole. That is why we did that whole long thing with the temperaments.11

That children are more or less gifted often results from purely physical differences. Children often express only what they have within themselves, and it would be unjust not to allow the children who are at the proper age for that class (ten to eleven years old) to come along. There will always be some who are weak in one subject or another. That problem often stops suddenly. Children drag such problems along through childhood until a certain grade, and when the light goes on, they suddenly shed the problem. For

10 . Dr. Ludwig Noll, M.D. (1872–1930), a student of Steiner with a practice in Kassel; he attended the basic pedagogical course in August/September 1919 and was active at the Waldorf School for a time.

11 . See Discussions with Teachers, Discussions 1–5.

that reason, we cannot simply leave children behind. We must certainly overcome particularly the difficulties with gifted and slow children.

Of course, if we become convinced that they have not achieved the goal of the previous grade, we must put them back. However, I certainly want you to take note that we should not treat such children as slow learners. If you have children who did not really achieve the goals set for the previous grade, then you need to put them back. However, you must do that very soon.

You can never see from one subject whether the child has reached the teaching goals or not. You may never judge the children according to one subject alone. Putting children back a grade must occur within the first quarter of the school year. The teachers must, of course, have seen the students’ earlier school reports. However, I would ask you to recognize that we may not return to the common teaching schedule simply in order to judge a student more quickly. We should always complete a block, even though it may take somewhat longer, before a judgment is possible.

In deciding to put a child back, we should always examine each individual case carefully. We dare not do something rash. We should certainly not do anything of that nature unthinkingly, but only after a thorough examination and, then, do only what we can justify.

Concerning the question of putting back a child who did not accomplish the goals of the previous school, I should also add that you should, of course, speak with the parents. The parents need to be in agreement. Naturally, you may not tell the parents that their child is stupid. You will need to be able to show them that their child did not achieve what he or she needed at the previous school, in spite of what the school report says. You must be able to prove that. You must show that it was a defect of the previous school, and not of the child.

A teacher: Can we also put children ahead a class? In the seventh grade I have two children who apparently would fit well in the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I would look at their report cards. If you think it is responsible to do so, you can certainly do it. I have nothing against putting children ahead a grade. That can even have a positive effect upon the class into which the children come.

A teacher: That would certainly not be desirable in the seventh grade. Now we can educate them for two years, but if we put them ahead a grade, for only one.

Dr. Steiner: Just because we put the children ahead does not mean that we cannot educate them for two years. We will simply not graduate them, but instead keep them here and allow them to do the eighth grade again. When children reach the age of graduation in the seventh grade, the parents simply take them away. However, the education here is not as pedantic, so each year there is a considerable difference. Next year, we will have just as many bright children as this year, so it would actually be quite good if we were to have children who are in the last grade now, in next year’s last grade, also.

It is certainly clear that this first year will be difficult, especially for the faculty. That certainly weighs upon my soul. Everything depends upon the faculty. Whether we can realize our ideals depends upon you. It is really important that we learn.

A teacher: In the sixth grade I have a very untalented child. He does not disturb my teaching, and I have even seen that his presence in the class is advantageous for the other children. I would like to try to keep the him in the class.

Dr. Steiner: If the child does not disturb the others, and if you believe you can achieve something with him, then I certainly think you should keep him in your class. There is always a disturbance when we move children around, so it is better to keep them where

they are. We can even make use of certain differences, as we discussed in detail.

A teacher: In the eighth grade, I have a boy who is melancholic and somewhat behind. I would like to put him in the seventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: You need to do that by working with the child so that he wants to be put back. You should speak with him so that you direct his will in that direction and he asks for it himself. Don’t simply put him back abruptly.

A teacher: There are large differences in the children in seventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: In the seventh and eighth grades, it will be very good if you can keep the children from losing their feeling for authority.

That is what they need most. You can best achieve that by going into things with the children very cautiously, but under no circumstances giving in. Thus, you should not appear pedantic to the children, you should not appear as one who presents your own pet ideas. You must appear to give in to the children, but in reality don’t do that under any circumstance. The way you treat the children is particularly important in the seventh and eighth grades.

You may never give in for even one minute, for the children can then go out and laugh at you. The children should, in a sense, be jealous (if I may use that expression, but I don’t mean that in the normal sense of jealousy), so that they defend their teacher and are happy they have that teacher. You can cultivate that even in the rowdiest children. You can slowly develop the children’s desire to defend their teacher simply because he or she is their teacher.

A teacher: Is it correct that we should refrain from presenting the written language in the foreign language classes, even when the children can already write, so that they first become accustomed to the pronunciation?

Dr. Steiner: In foreign languages, you should certainly put off writing as long as possible. That is quite important.

A teacher: We have only just begun and the children are already losing their desire for spoken exercises. Can we enliven our teaching through stories in the mother tongue [German]?

Dr. Steiner: That would certainly be good. However, if you need to use something from the mother tongue, then you certainly need to try to connect it to something in the foreign language, to bring the foreign language into it in some way. You can create material for teaching when you do something like that. That would be the proper thing to do. You could also bring short poems or songs in the foreign language, and little stories. In the language classes we need to pay less attention to the grades as such, but rather group the children more according to their ability.

A teacher: I think that an hour and a half of music and an hour and a half of eurythmy per week is too little.

Dr. Steiner: That is really a question of available space. Later, we will be able to do what is needed.

A teacher: The children in my sixth-grade class need to sing more, but I cannot sing with them because I am so unmusical. Could I select some of the more musical children to sing a song?

Dr. Steiner: That’s just what we should do. You can do that most easily if you give the children something they can handle independently. You certainly do not need to be very musical in order to allow children to sing. The children could learn the songs during singing class and then practice them by singing at the beginning or end of the period.

A teacher: I let the children sing, but they are quite awkward. I would like to gather the more musically gifted children into a special singing class where they can do more difficult things.

Dr. Steiner: It would certainly not violate the Constitution if we eventually formed choirs out of the four upper classes and the four lower classes, perhaps as Sunday choirs. Through something like that, we can bring the children together more than through other things. However, we should not promote any false ambitions. We want to keep that out of our teaching. Ambition may be connected only with the subject, not with the person. Taking the four upper classes together and the four lower classes would be good because the children’s voices are somewhat different. Otherwise, this is not a question of the classes themselves. When you teach them, you must treat them as one class. In teaching music, we must also strictly adhere to what we already know about the periods of life.

We must strictly take into consideration the inner structure of the period that begins about age nine, and the one that begins at about age twelve. However, for the choirs we could eventually use for Sunday services, we can certainly combine the four younger classes and the four older classes.

A teacher: We have seen that eurythmy is moving forward only very slowly.

Dr. Steiner: At first, you should strongly connect everything with music. You should take care to develop the very first exercises out of music. Of course, you should not neglect the other part, either, particularly in the higher grades.

We now need to speak a little bit about the independent religious instruction. You need to tell the children that if they want the independent religious instruction, they must choose it. Thus, the independent religious instruction will simply be a third class alongside the other two. In any case, we may not have any unclear mixing of things. Those who are to have the independent religious instruction can certainly be put together according to grades, for instance, the lower four and the upper four grades. Any one of us could give that instruction. How many children want that instruction?

A teacher: Up to now, there are sixty, fifty-six of whom are children of anthroposophists. The numbers will certainly change since many people wanted to have both.

Dr. Steiner: We will not mix things together. We are not advocating that instruction, but only attempting to meet the desires. My advice would be for the child to take instruction in the family religion. We can leave those children who are not taking any religious instruction alone, but we can certainly inquire as to why they should not have any. We should attempt to determine that in each case. In doing so, we may be able to bring one or another to take instruction in the family religion or possibly to come to the anthroposophic instruction. We should certainly do something there, since we do not want to just allow children to grow up without any religious instruction at all.

A teacher: Should the class teacher give the independent religious instruction?

Dr. Steiner: Certainly, one of us can take it over, but it does not need to be the children’s own class teacher. We would not want someone unknown to us to do it. We should remain within the circle of our faculty.

With sixty children altogether, we would have approximately thirty children in each group if we take the four upper and four lower classes together. I will give you a lesson plan later. We need to do this instruction very carefully.

In the younger group, we must omit everything related to reincarnation and karma. We can deal with that only in the second group, but there we must address it. From ten years of age on, we should go through those things. It is particularly important in this instruction that we pay attention to the student’s own activity from the very beginning. We should not just speak of reincarnation and karma theoretically, but practically.

As the children approach age seven, they undergo a kind of retrospection of all the events that took place before their birth.

They often tell of the most curious things, things that are quite pictorial, about that earlier state. For example, and this is something that is not unusual but rather is typical, the children come and say, “I came into the world through a funnel that expanded.” They describe how they came into the world. You can allow them to describe these things as you work with them and take care of them so that they can bring them into consciousness.

That is very good, but we must avoid convincing the children of things. We need to bring out only what they say themselves, and we should do that. That is part of the instruction.

In the sense of yesterday’s public lecture, we can also enliven this instruction.12 It would certainly be very beautiful if we did not turn this into a school for a particular viewpoint, if we took the pure understanding of the human being as a basis and through it, enlivened our pedagogy at every moment. My essay that will appear in the next “Waldorf News” goes just in that direction. It is called “The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School.”13 What I have written is, in general, a summary for the public of everything we learned in the seminar. I ask that you consider it an ideal.

For each group, an hour and a half of religious instruction per week, that is, two three-quarter hour classes, is sufficient. It would be particularly nice if we could do that on Sundays, but it is hardly possible. We could also make the children familiar with the weekly verses in this instruction.14

A teacher: Aren’t they too difficult?

Dr. Steiner: We must never see anything as too difficult for children.

Their importance lies not in understanding the thoughts, but in how the thoughts follow one another. I would certainly like to

12 . The reference is to Steiner’s lecture on August 24, 1919, “The Intent of the Waldorf School” in The Spirit of the Waldorf School.

13 . Published in The Spirit of the Waldorf School.

14 . See The Calendar of the Soul.

know what could be more difficult for children than the Lord’s Prayer. People only think it is easier than the verses in the Calendar of the Soul. Then there’s the Apostles’ Creed! The reason people are so against the Apostles’ Creed is only because no one really understands it, otherwise they would not oppose it. It contains only things that are obvious, but human beings are not so far developed before age twenty-seven that they can understand it, and afterward, they no longer learn anything from life. The discussions about the creed15 are childish. It contains nothing that people could not decide for themselves. You can take up the weekly verses with the children before class.

A teacher: Wouldn’t it be good if we had the children do a morning prayer?

Dr. Steiner: That is something we could do. I have already looked into it, and will have something to say about it tomorrow. We also need to speak about a prayer. I ask only one thing of you. You see, in such things everything depends upon the external appearances.

Never call a verse a prayer, call it an opening verse before school.

Avoid allowing anyone to hear you, as a faculty member, using the word “prayer.” In doing that, you will have overcome a good part of the prejudice that this is an anthroposophical thing. Most of our sins we bring about through words. People do not stop using words that damage us. You would not believe everything I had to endure to stop people from calling Towards Social Renewal,16 a pamphlet. It absolutely is a book, it only looks like a pamphlet. It is a book! I simply can’t get people to say, “the book.” They say, “the pamphlet,” and that has a certain meaning. The word is not unnecessary. Those are the things that are really important.

Anthroposophists are, however, precisely the people who least

15 . Rudolf Steiner is probably referring to the negotiations at earlier Catholic Church Councils.

16 . See Towards Social Renewal.

allow themselves to be contained. You simply can’t get through to them. Other people simply believe in authority. That is what I meant when I said that the anthroposophists are obstinate, and you can’t get through to them, even when it is justified!

A teacher: My fifth-grade class is noisy and uncontrolled, particularly during the foreign language period. They think French sentences are jokes.

Dr. Steiner: The proper thing to do would be to look at the joke and learn from it. You should always take jokes into account, but with humor. However, the children must behave. They must be quiet at your command. You must be able to get them quiet with a look. You must seek to maintain contact from the beginning to the end of the period. Even though it is tiring, you must maintain the contact between the teacher and the student under all circumstances. We gain nothing through external discipline. All you can do is accept the problem and then work from that.

Your greatest difficulty is your thin voice. You need to train your voice a little and learn to speak in a lower tone and not squeal and shriek. It would be a shame if you were not to train your voice so that some bass also came into it. You need some deeper tones.

A teacher: Who should teach Latin?

Dr. Steiner: That is a question for the faculty. For the time, I would suggest that Pastor Geyer and Dr. Stein teach Latin. It is too much for one person.

A teacher: How should we begin history?

Dr. Steiner: In almost every class, you will need to begin history from the beginning. You should limit yourself to teaching only what is necessary. If, for example, in the eighth grade, you find it necessary to begin from the very beginning, then attempt to create a picture of the entire human development with only a few, short

examples. In the eighth grade, you would need to go through the entire history of the world as we understand it.

That is also true for physics. In natural history, it is very much easier to allow the children to use what they have already learned and enliven it. This is one of those subjects affected by the deficiencies we discussed. These subjects are introduced after the age of twelve when the capacity for judgment begins. In the subjects just described, we can use much of what the children have learned, even if it is a nuisance.

A teacher: In Greek history, we could emphasize cultural history and the sagas and leave out the political portion, for instance, the Persian Wars.

Dr. Steiner: You can handle the Persian Wars by including them within the cultural history. In general, you can handle wars as a part of cultural history for the older periods, though they have become steadily more unpleasant. You can consider the Persian Wars a symptom of cultural history.

A teacher: What occurred nationally is less important?

Dr. Steiner: No, for example, the way money arose.

A teacher: Can we study the Constitution briefly?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but you will need to explain the spirit of the Lycurgian Constitution, for example, and also the difference between the Athenians and the Spartans.

A teacher: Standard textbooks present Roman constitutionalism.

Dr. Steiner: Textbooks treat that in detail, but often incorrectly. The Romans did not have a constitution, but they knew not only the Twelve Laws by heart, but also a large number of books of law.

The children will get an incorrect picture if you do not describe the Romans as a people of law who were aware of themselves as such. That is something textbooks present in a boring way, but we

must awaken in the children the picture that in Rome all Romans were experts in law and could count the laws on their fingers. The Twelve Laws were taught at that time like multiplication is now.

A teacher: We would like to meet every week to discuss pedagogical questions so that what each of us achieves, the others can take advantage of.

Dr. Steiner: That would be very good and is something that I would joyfully greet, only you need to hold your meeting in a republican form.

A teacher: How far may we go with disciplining the children?

Dr. Steiner: That is something that is, of course, very individual. It would certainly be best if you had little need to discipline the children. You can avoid discipline. Under certain circumstances it may be necessary to spank a child, but you can certainly attempt to achieve the ideal of avoiding that. You should have the perspective that as the teacher, you are in control, not the child. In spite of that,

I have to admit that there are rowdies, but also that punishment will not improve misbehavior. That will become better only when you slowly create a different tone in the classroom. The children who misbehave will slowly change if the tone in the classroom is good. In any event, you should try not to go too far with punishment.

A teacher: To alleviate the lack of educational material, would it be possible to form an organization and ask the anthroposophists to provide us with books and so forth that they have? We really should have everything available on the subject of anthroposophy.

Dr. Steiner: We are planning to do something in that direction by organizing the teachers who are members of the Society.17 We

17 . This organization existed only a short time.

are planning to take everything available in anthroposophy and make it in some way available for public education and for education in general. Perhaps it would be possible to connect with the organization of teachers already within the Anthroposophical Society.

A teacher: We also need a living understanding about the various areas of economics. I thought that perhaps within the Waldorf School, we could lay a foundation for a future economic science.

Dr. Steiner: In that case, we would need to determine who would oversee the different areas. There are people who have a sense for such things and who are also really practical experts. That is, we would need to find people who do not simply lecture about it, but who are really practical and have a sense for what we want to do.

Such people must exist, and they must bring the individual branches of social science together. I think we could achieve a great deal in that direction if we undertook it properly. However, you have a great deal to do during this first year, and you cannot spread yourselves too thin. That is something you will have to allow others to take care of, and we must create an organization for that. It must exclude all fanaticism and monkeying around and must be down to Earth. We need people who live in the practicalities of life.

A teacher: Mr. van Leer has already written that he is ready to undertake this.12

Dr. Steiner: Yes, he could certainly help. A plan could be worked out about how to do this in general. People such as Mr. van Leer and Mr. Molt and also others who live in the practicalities of economic life know how to focus on such questions and how to work with them. The faculty would perhaps not be able to achieve as much as when we turn directly to experts. This is something that might be possible in connection with the efforts of the cultural committee. Yes, we should certainly discuss all of this.

A teacher: In geology class, how can we create a connection between geology and the Akasha Chronicle?

Dr. Steiner: Well, it would be good to teach the children about the formation of the geological strata by first giving them an understanding of how the Alps arose. You could then begin with the Alps and extend your instruction to the entire complex—the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians, the Altai Mountains, and so forth—all of which are a wave. You should make the entirety of the wave clear to the children. Then there is another wave that goes from North to South America. Thus you would have one wave to the Altai Mountains, to the Asian mountains running from west to east and another in the western part of the Americas going from North to South America, that is, another wave from north to south. That second wave is perpendicular to the first.

Western Alps

12. Emanuel Josef van Leer, Chairman of the Board of Directors for Weleda.

We can begin with these elements and then add the vegetation and animals to them. We would then study only the western part of Europe and the American East Coast, the flora and fauna, and the strata there. From that we can go on to develop an idea about the connections between the eastern part of America and the western part of Europe, and that the basin of the Atlantic Ocean and the west coast of Europe are simply sunken land. From there, we can attempt to show the children in a natural way how that land rhythmically moves up and down, that is, we can begin with the idea of a rhythm. We can show that the British Isles have risen and

sunk four times and thus follow the path of geology back to the concept of ancient Atlantis.

America Europe

We can then continue by trying to have the children imagine how different it was when the one was below and the other above.

We can begin with the idea that the British Isles rose and sank four times. That is something that is simple to determine from the geological strata. Thus, we attempt to connect all of these things, but we should not be afraid to speak about the Atlantean land with the children. We should not skip that. We can also connect all this to history. The only thing is, you will need to disavow normal geology since the Atlantean catastrophe occurred in the seventh or eighth millennium.

The Ice Age is the Atlantean catastrophe. The Early, Middle and Late Ice Ages are nothing more than what occurred in Europe while Atlantis sank. That all occurred at the same time, that is, in the seventh or eighth millennium.

A teacher: I found some articles about geology in Pierer’s Encyclopedia. We would like to know which articles are actually from you.

Dr. Steiner: I wrote these articles, but in putting together the encyclopedia there were actually two editors. It is possible that something else was stuck in, so I cannot guarantee anything specifically. The articles about basalt, alluvium, geological formations, and the Ice Age are all from me. I did not write the article about Darwinism, nor the one about alchemy. I only wrote about geology and mineralogy and that only to a particular letter.

The entries up to and including ‘G’ are from me, but beginning with ‘H,’ I no longer had the time.

A teacher: It is difficult to find the connections before the Ice Age.

How are we to bring what conventional science says into alignment with what spiritual science says?

Dr. Steiner: You can find points of connection in the cycles. In the Quaternary Period you will find the first and second mammals, and you simply need to add to that what is valid concerning human beings. You can certainly bring that into alignment. You can create a parallel between the Quaternary Period and Atlantis, and easily bring the Tertiary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian Period. That is how you can bring in the Tertiary Period. There, you have the older amphibians and reptiles. The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.

A teacher: But there are still the fire breathers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, those beasts, they did breathe fire, the Archaeopteryx, for example.

A teacher: You mean that animals whose bones we see today in museums still breathed fire?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Tertiary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants. What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Tertiary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together. We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would actually be the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.

[ Remarks by the German editor: In the previous paragraphs, there appear to be stenographic errors. The text is in itself contradictory, and it is not consistent with the articles mentioned and the table in Pierer’s Encyclopedia nor with Dr. Steiner’s remarks made in the following faculty meeting (Sept. 26, 1919).

The error appears explainable by the fact that Dr. Steiner referred to a table that the stenographer did not have. Therefore, the editor suggests the following changes in the text. The changes are underlined: You can find points of connection in the cycles. In the Tertiary Period you will find the first and second mammals, and you simply need to add to that what is valid concerning human beings. You can certainly bring that into alignment. You can create a parallel between the Tertiary Period and Atlantis, and easily bring the Secondary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian Period. That is how you can bring in the Secondary Period. There, you have the older amphibians and reptiles. The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.

Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Secondary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants.

What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Secondary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together. We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would be actually the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.]

A teacher: How do we take into account what we have learned about what occurred within the Earth? We can find almost nothing about that in conventional science.

Dr. Steiner: Conventional geology really concerns only the uppermost strata. Those strata that go to the center of the Earth have nothing to do with geology.

A teacher: Can we teach the children about those strata? We certainly need to mention the uppermost strata.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, focus upon those strata. You can do that with a chart of the strata, but certainly never without the children

knowing something about the types of rocks. The children need to know about what kinds of rocks there are. In explaining that, you should begin from above and then go deeper, because then you can more easily explain what breaks through.

A teacher: I am having trouble with the law of conservation of energy in thermodynamics.

Dr. Steiner: Why are you having difficulties? You must endeavor to gradually bring these things into what Goethe called “archetypal phenomena.” That is, to treat them only as phenomena. You can certainly not treat the law of conservation of energy as was done previously: It is only a hypothesis, not a law. And there is another thing. You can teach about the spectrum. That is a phenomenon.

But people treat the law of conservation of energy as a philosophical law. We should treat the mechanical equivalent of heat in a different way. It is a phenomenon. Now, why shouldn’t we remain strictly within phenomenology? Today, people create such laws about things that are actually phenomena. It is simply nonsense that people call something like the law of gravity, a law.

Such things are phenomena, not laws. You will find that you can keep such socalled laws entirely out of physics by transforming them into phenomena and grouping them as primary and secondary phenomena. If you described the socalled laws of Atwood’s gravitational machine when you teach about gravity, they are actually phenomena and not laws.

A teacher: Then we would have to approach the subject without basing it upon the law of gravity. For example, we could begin from the constant of acceleration and then develop the law of gravity, but treat it as a fact, not a law.

Dr. Steiner: Simply draw it since you have no gravitational machine.

In the first second, it drops so much, in the second, so much, in the third, and so on. From that you will find a numerical series and

out of that you can develop what people call a law, but is actually only a phenomenon.

A teacher: Then we shouldn’t speak about gravity at all?

Dr. Steiner: It would be wonderful if you could stop speaking about gravity. You can certainly achieve speaking of it only as a phenomenon. The best would be if you considered gravity only as a word.

A teacher: Is that true also for electrical forces?

Dr. Steiner: Today, you can certainly speak about electricity without speaking about forces. You can remain strictly within the realm of phenomena. You can come as far as the theory of ions and electrons without speaking of anything other than phenomena.

Pedagogically, that would be very important to do.

A teacher: It is very difficult to get along without forces when we discuss the systems of measurement, the CGS system (centimeter, gram, second), which we have to teach in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: What does that have to do with forces? If you compute the exchange of one for the other, you can do it.

A teacher: Then, perhaps, we would have to replace the word “force” with something else.

Dr. Steiner: As soon as it is clear to the students that force is nothing more than the product of mass and acceleration, that is, when they understand that it is not a metaphysical concept, and that we should always treat it phenomenologically, then you can speak of forces.

A teacher: Would you say something more about the planetary movements?18 You have often mentioned it, but we don’t really

18 . See Discussion 14 in Discussions with Teachers.

have a clear understanding about the true movement of the planets and the Sun.

Dr. Steiner: In reality, it is like this [Dr. Steiner demonstrates with a drawing]. Now you simply need to imagine how that continues in a helix. Everything else is only apparent movement. The helical line continues into cosmic space. Therefore, it is not that the planets move around the Sun, but that these three, Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, follow the Sun, and these three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, precede it. Thus, when the Earth is here and this is the Sun, the Earth follows along. But we look at the Sun from here, and so it appears as though the Earth goes around it, whereas it is actually only following. The Earth follows the Sun.

The incline is the same as what we normally call the angle of declination. If you take the angle you obtain when you measure the ecliptic angle, then you will see that. So it is not a spiral, but a helix.

It does not exist in a plane, but in space.

A teacher: How does the axis of the Earth relate to this movement?

Dr. Steiner: If the Earth were here, the axis of the Earth would be a tangent. The angle is 23.5×. The angle that encloses the helix is the same as when you take the North Pole and make this lemniscate as the path of a star near the North Pole. That is something I had to assume, since you apparently obtain a lemniscate if you extend this line. It is actually not present because the North Pole remains fixed, that is the celestial North Pole.

Celestial Pole

Sun

Jupiter

Mars

Mercury Venus

Tangent

Earth

Saturn

A teacher: Wasn’t there a special configuration in 1413?

Dr. Steiner: I already mentioned that today. Namely, if you begin about seven thousand years before 1413, you will see that the angle of the Earth’s axis has shrunk, that is, it is the smallest angle. It then becomes larger, then again smaller. In this way, a lemniscate is formed, and thus the angle of the Earth was null for a time. That was the Atlantean catastrophe. At that time, there were no differences in the length of the day relative to the time of year.

A teacher: Why should the celestial pole, which is in reality nothing other than the point toward which the Earth’s axis is directed, remain constant? It should certainly change over the course of years.

Dr. Steiner: That happens because the movement of the Earth’s axis describes a cone, a double cone whose movement is continuously balanced by the movement of the Earth’s axis. If you always had the axis of the Earth parallel to you, then the celestial pole would describe a lemniscate, but it remains stationary. That is because the movement of the Earth’s axis in a double cone is balanced by the movement of the celestial pole in a lemniscate. Thus, it is balanced.

A teacher: I had changed my perspective to the one you described regarding the movement of the Earth’s axis. I said to myself, The point in the heavens that remains fixed must seem to move over the course of the centuries. It would be, I thought, a movement like a lemniscate, and, therefore, not simply a circle in the heavens during a Platonic year.

Dr. Steiner: It is modified because this line, the axis of the helix, is not really a straight line, but a curve. It only approximates a straight line. In reality, a circle is also described here. We are concerned with a helix that is connected with a circle.

A teacher: How is it possible to relate all this to the Galilean principle of relativity? That is, to the fact that we cannot determine any movement in space absolutely.

Dr. Steiner: What does that mean?

A teacher: That means that we cannot speak of any absolute movement in space. We cannot say that one body remains still in space, but instead must say that it moves. It is all only relative, so we can only know that one body changes its relationship to another.

Dr. Steiner: Actually, that is true only so long as we do not extend our observations into what occurs within the respective body. It’s true, isn’t it, that when you have two people moving relative to one another, and you observe things spatially from a perspective

outside of the people (it is unimportant what occurs in an absolute sense), you will have only the relationships of the movement.

However, it does make a difference to the people: Running two meters is different from running three. That principle is, therefore, only valid for an outside observer. The moment the observer is within, as we are as earthly beings, that is, as soon as the observation includes inner changes, then all of that stops. The moment we observe in such a way that we can make an absolute determination of the changes in the different periods of the Earth, one following the other, then all of that stops.

For that reason, I have strongly emphasized that the human being today is so different from the human being of the Greek period. We cannot speak of a principle of relativity there. The same is true of a railway train; the cars of an express train wear out faster than those on the milk run. If you look at the inner state, then the relativity principle ceases. Einstein’s principle of relativity arose out of unreal thinking. He asked what would occur if someone began to move away at the speed of light and then returned; this and that would occur. I would ask what would happen to a clock if it were to move away with the speed of light? That is unreal thinking. It has no connection to anything. It considers only spatial relationships, something possible since Galileo. Galileo himself did not distort things so much, but by overemphasizing the theory of relativity, we can now bring up such things.

A teacher: It is certainly curious in connection with light that at the speed of light you cannot determine your movement relative to the source of light.

Dr. Steiner: One of Lorentz’s experiments.19 Read about it; what Lorentz concludes is interesting, but theoretical.20 You do not have to accept that there are only relative differences. You can use absolute mechanics. Probably you did not take all of those compulsive ideas into account. The difference is simply nothing else than what occurs if you take a tube with very thin and elastic walls. If you had fluid within it at the top and the bottom and also in between, then there would exist between these two fluids the same relationship that Lorentz derives for light. You need to have those compulsive interpretations if you want to accept these things.

You certainly know the prime example: You are moving in a train faster than the speed of sound and shoot a cannon as the train moves. 21 You hear the shot once in Freiburg, twice in Karlsruhe, and three times in Frankfurt. If you then move faster than the speed of sound, you would first hear the three shots in Frankfurt, then afterward, the two in Karlsruhe, then after that, one shot in Freiburg. You can speculate about such things, but they have no reality because you cannot move faster than the speed of sound.22

A teacher: Could we demonstrate what you said about astronomy through the spiral movements of plants? Is there some means of proving that through plants?

19 . Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928); Dutch mathematician and physicist.

Nobel Prize winner.

20 . The text probably should read, “how Lorentz then continues is interesting, but theoretical.”

21 . Example of relativity theory (see also the meeting on April 30, 1924); the stenogram actually says, “You are moving in a train at normal speed.” We have changed it to be consistent with the example that follows. — TRANS.

22 . At this time, the accepted viewpoint was that it was physically impossible to move faster than the speed of sound. — TRANS.

Dr. Steiner: What means would you need? Plants themselves are that means. You need only connect the pistil to the movements of the Moon and the stigma to those of the Sun. As soon as you relate the pistil to the Moon’s movements and the stigma to those of the Sun, you will get the rest. You will find in the spiral movements of the plant an imitation of the relative relationship between the movements of the Sun and the movements of the Moon. You can then continue. It is complicated and you will need to construct it.

At first, the pistil appears not to move. It moves inwardly in the spiral. You must turn these around, since that is relative. The pistil belongs to the line of the stem, and the stigma to the spiral movement. However, because it is so difficult to describe further, I think it is something you could not use in school. This is a question of further development of understanding.

A teacher: Can we derive the spiral movements of the Sun and the Earth from astronomically known facts?

Dr. Steiner: Why not? Just as you can teach people today about the Copernican theory.23 The whole thing is based upon the joke made concerning the three Copernican laws, when they teach only the first two and leave out the third. If you bring into consideration the third, then you will come to what I have spoken of, namely, that you will have a simple spiral around the Sun. Copernicus did that. You need only look at his third law. You need only take his book, De Revolutionibus Corporum Coelestium (On the orbits of heavenly bodies) and actually look at the three laws instead of only the first two. People take only the first two, but they do not coincide with the movements we actually see. Then people add to it Bessel’s socalled corrective functions. People don’t see the stars as Copernicus described them. You need to turn the telescope, but

23 . Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1941) formulated his third law as “The Earth’s axis describes the surface of a cone whose axis points in the direction of the ecliptic pole in the course of 26,000 years.”

people turn it according to Bessel’s functions. If you exclude those functions, you will get what is right.

Today, you can’t do that, though, because you would be called crazy. It is really child’s play to learn it and to call what is taught today nonsense. You need only to throw out Bessel’s functions and take Copernicus’s third law into account.

A teacher: Couldn’t that be published?

Dr. Steiner: Johannes Schlaf began that by taking a point on Jupiter that did not coincide with the course of the Copernican system.24

People attacked him and said he was crazy.

There is nothing anyone can do against such brute force. If we can achieve the goals of the Cultural Commission, then we will have some free room. Things are worse than people think when a professor in Tübingen can make “true character” out of “commodity character.”25 The public simply refuses to recognize that our entire school system is corrupt. That recognition is something that must become common, that we must do away with our universities and the higher schools must go. We now must replace them with something very different. That is a real foundation.

It is impossible to do anything with those people. I spoke in Dresden at the college. I also spoke at the Dresden Schopenhauer Society.26 Afterward, the professors there just talked nonsense.

They could not understand one single idea. One stood up and said that he had to state what the differences were between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and anthroposophy. I said I found that unnecessary. Anthroposophy has the same relationship to

24 . Johannes Schlaf (1862–1941), poet and writer who attempted to discredit the Copernican viewpoint.

25 . In German, “true character” ( wahren Charakter) sounds identical to “commodity character” ( Warencharakter). —TRANS.

26 . Refer to Riddles of Philosophy, vol. 2, “Modern Man and His World Conception.”

philosophy as the crown of a tree to its roots, and the difference between the root and the crown of a tree is obvious. Someone can come along and say he finds it necessary to state that there is a difference between the root and the crown, and I have nothing to say other than that. These people can’t keep any thoughts straight.

Modern philosophy is all nonsense. In much of what it brings, there is some truth, but there is so much nonsense connected with it that, in the end, only nonsense results. You know of Richert’s “Theory of Value,” don’t you?27 The small amount that exists as the good core of philosophy at a university, you can find discussed in my book Riddles of Philosophy.

The thing with the “true character” reminds me of something else. I have found people in the Society who don’t know what a union is. As I have often said, such things occur. If we can work objectively in the Cultural Commission, then we could replace all of these terrible goings on with reason, and everything would be better. Then we could also teach astronomy reasonably. But now we are unable to do anything against that brute force. In the Cultural Commission, we can do what should have been done from the beginning, namely, undertake the cultural program and work toward bringing the whole school system under control. We created the Waldorf School as an example, but it can do nothing to counteract brute force. The Cultural Commission would have the task of reforming the entire system of education. If we only had ten million marks, we could extend the Waldorf School. That these ten million marks are missing is only a “small hindrance.”

It is very important to me that you do not allow the children’s behavior and such to upset you. You should not imagine that you will have angels in the school. You will be unable to do many things because you lack the school supplies you need. In spite of that, we want to strictly adhere to what we have set out to do and

27 . See Steiner’s lecture of September 20, 1919, unpublished.

not allow ourselves to be deterred from doing it as well as possible in order to achieve our goals.

It is, therefore, very important that in practice you separate what is possible to do under the current circumstances from what will give you the strength to prevail. We must hold to our belief that we can achieve our ideals. You can do it, only it will not be immediately visible.

Friday, September 26, 1919, 4:00 p.m.

[ The meeting began with a discussion of some children Dr. Steiner had observed that morning. ]

Dr. Steiner: E. E. must be morally raised. He is a Bolshevik.

A teacher who was substituting in the first grade poses a question.

Dr. Steiner: You should develop reading from pictorial writing. You should develop the forms from the artistic activity.

A teacher suggests beginning the morning with the Lord’s Prayer.

Dr. Steiner: It would be nice to begin instruction with the Lord’s Prayer28 and then go on to the verses I will give you. For the four lower grades I would ask that you say the verse in the following way:

The Sun with loving light

Makes bright for me each day; The

soul with spirit power

Gives strength unto my limbs;

28 . When in October 1923 Rudolf Steiner visited Marth Häbler’s new fifth-grade class, he recommended that the children say the Lord’s Prayer in addition to the morning verse. See Marth Häbler’s, “Rudolf Steiner in einen Waldorfschulklasse”

(Rudolf Steiner in a Waldorf school classroom), Erziehungskunst, vol. 16, pp. 358-

361.

In sunlight shining clear

I reverence, O God,

The strength of humankind,

That thou so graciously

Hast planted in my soul,

That I with all my might May

love to work and learn.

From Thee come light and strength,

To Thee rise love and thanks.29

29 . Prayers for Parents and Children, p. 45.

The children must feel that as I have spoken it. First they should learn the words, but then you will have to gradually make the difference between the inner and outer clear to them.

The Sun with loving light

Makes bright for me each day; The

soul with spirit power

Gives strength unto my limbs;

The first part, that the Sun makes each day bright, we observe, and the other part, that it affects the limbs, we feel in the soul.

What lies in this portion is the spiritsoul and the physical body.

In sunlight shining clear

I reverence, O God,

The strength of humankind,

That thou so graciously

Hast planted in my soul, That

I with all my might

May love to work and learn.

Here we give honor to both. We then turn to one and then the other.

From Thee come light and strength (the Sun), To Thee rise love and thanks (from within).

This is how I think the children should feel it, namely, the divine in light and in the soul.

You need to attempt to speak it with the children in chorus, with the feeling of the way I recited it. At first, the children will learn only the words, so that they have the words, the tempo, and the rhythm. Later, you can begin to explain it with something like, “Now we want to see what this actually means.” Thus, first they must learn it, then you explain it. Don’t explain it first, and also, do not put so much emphasis upon the children learning it from memory. They will eventually learn it through repetition. They will be able to read it directly from your lips. Even though it may not

go well for a long time, four weeks or more, it will go better later.

The older children can write it down, but you must allow the younger ones to learn it slowly. Don’t demand that they learn it by heart! It would be nice if they write it down, since then they will have it in their own handwriting. I will give you the verse for the four higher classes tomorrow.

[ The verse for the four higher grades was:]

I look into the world;

In which the Sun shines,

In which the stars sparkle,

In which the stones lie,

The living plants are growing,

The animals are feeling,

In which the soul of man

Gives dwelling for the spirit;

I look into the soul

Which lives within myself.

God’s spirit weaves in light

Of Sun and human soul,

In world of space, without, In

depths of soul, within.

God’s spirit, ‘tis to Thee

I turn myself in prayer,

That strength and blessing grow

In me, to learn and work.30

[ The texts of the verses are exactly as Dr. Steiner dictated them according to the handwritten notes. It is unclear whether he said, “loving light” (liebes Licht) or “light of love” (Liebeslicht). ]

30 . Prayers for Parents and Children, p. 47.

[ Lesson plan for the independent anthroposophical religious instruction for children:]

Dr. Steiner: We should give this instruction in two stages. If you want to go into anthroposophical instruction with a religious goal, then you must certainly take the concept of religion much more seriously than usual. General y, all kinds of worldviews that do not belong there mix into religion and the concept of religion. Thus, the religious tradition brings things from one age over into another, and we do not want to continue to develop that. It retains views from an older perspective alongside more developed views of the world. These things appeared in a grotesque form during the age of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Modern apologies justify such things—something quite humorous. The Catholic Church gets around it by saying that at that time the Copernican view of the world was not recognized, the Church itself forbade it. Thus, Galileo could not have supported that world perspective. I do not wish to go into that now, but I mention it only to show you that we really must take religion seriously when we address it anthroposophically.

It is true that anthroposophy is a worldview, and we certainly do not want to bring that into our school. On the other hand, we must certainly develop the religious feeling that worldview can give to the human soul when the parents expressly ask us to give it to the children. Particularly when we begin with anthroposophy, we dare not develop anything inappropriate, certainly not develop anything too early. We will, therefore, have two stages. First, we will take all the children in the lower four grades, and then those in the upper four grades.

In the lower four grades, we will attempt to discuss the things and processes in the human environment, so that a feeling arises in the children that spirit lives in nature. We can consider such things as my previous examples. We can, for instance, give the children the idea of the soul. Of course, the children first need to

learn to understand the idea of life in general. You can teach the children about life if you direct their attention to the fact that people are first small and then they grow, become old, get white hair, wrinkles, and so forth. Thus, you tell them about the seriousness of the course of human life31 and acquaint them with the seriousness of the fact of death, something the children already know.

Therefore, you need to discuss what occurs in the human soul during the changes between sleeping and waking. You can certainly go into such things with even the youngest children in the first group. Discuss how waking and sleeping look, how the soul rests, how the human being rests during sleep, and so forth. Then, tell the children how the soul permeates the body when it awakens and indicate to them that there is a will that causes their limbs to move. Make them aware that the body provides the soul with senses through which they can see and hear and so forth. You can give them such things as proof that the spiritual is active in the physical. Those are things you can discuss with the children.

You must completely avoid any kind of superficial teaching.

Thus, in anthroposophical religious instruction we can certainly not use the kind of teaching that asks questions such as, Why do we find cork on a tree? with the resulting reply, So that we can make champagne corks. God created cork in order to cork bottles.

This sort of idea, that something exists in nature simply because human intent exists, is poison. That is certainly something we may not develop. Therefore, don’t bring any of these silly causal ideas into nature.

To the same extent, we may not use any of the ideas people so love to use to prove that spirit exists because something unknown exists. People always say, That is something we cannot know, and, therefore, that is a revelation of the spirit. Instead of gaining a

31 . See Rudolf Steiner, “Speech at the Beginning of the Third School Year,” in Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School.

feeling that we can know of the spirit and that the spirit reveals itself in matter, these ideas direct people toward thinking that when we cannot explain something, that proves the existence of the divine. Thus, you will need to strictly avoid superficial teaching and the idea of wonders, that is, that wonders prove divine activity.

In contrast, it is important that we develop imaginative pictures through which we can show the supersensible through nature. For example, I have often mentioned that we should speak to the children about the butterfly’s cocoon and how the butterfly comes out of the cocoon. I have said that we can explain the concept of the immortal soul to the children by saying that, although human beings die, their souls go from them like an invisible butterfly emerging from the cocoon. Such a picture is, however, only effective when you believe it yourself, that is, when you believe the picture of the butterfly creeping out of the cocoon is a symbol for immortality planted into nature by divine powers. You need to believe that yourselves, otherwise the children will not believe it.

You need to arouse the children’s interest in such things. They will be particularly effective for the children where you can show how a being can live in many forms, how an original form can take on many individual forms. In religious instruction, it is important that you pay attention to the feeling and not the worldview. For example, you can take a poem about the metamorphosis of plants and animals32 and use it religiously. However, you must use the feelings that go from line to line. You can consider nature that way until the end of the fourth grade. There, you must always work toward the picture that human beings with all our thinking and doing live within the cosmos. You must also give the children the picture that God lives in what lives in us. Time and again you should come back to such pictures, how the divine lives in a tree leaf, in the Sun, in clouds, and in rivers. You should also show how God lives in the bloodstream, in the heart, in what we feel and

32 . Goethe’s poems in the section, “God and Man.”

what we think. Thus, you should develop a picture of the human being filled with the divine.

During these years, you should also emphasize the picture that human beings, because they are an image of God and a revelation of God, should be good. Human beings who are not good hurt God. From a religious perspective, human beings do not exist in the world for their own sake, but as revelations of the divine. You can express that by saying that people do not exist just for their own sake, but “to glorify God.” Here, “to glorify” means “to reveal.” Thus, in reality, it is not “glory to God in the highest,” but “reveal the gods in the highest.” Thus, we can understand the idea that people exist to glorify God as meaning that people exist in order to express the divine through their deeds and feelings. If someone does something bad, something impious and unkind, then that person does something that belittles God and distorts God into something ugly.

You should always bring in these ideas. At this age you should use the thought that God lives in the human being. In the lower grades, I would certainly abstain from teaching any Christology, but just awaken a feeling for God the Father out of nature and natural occurrences. I would try to connect all our discussions about Old Testament themes, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and so forth, to that feeling, at least insofar as they are useful, and they are if you treat them properly. That is the first stage of religious instruction.

In the second stage, that is, the four upper grades, we need to discuss the concepts of fate and human destiny with the children.

Thus, we need to give the children a picture of destiny so that they truly feel that human beings have a destiny. It is important to teach the child the difference between a simple chance occurrence and destiny. Thus, you will need to go through the concept of destiny with the children. You cannot use definitions to explain when something destined occurs or when something occurs only by chance. You can, however, perhaps explain it through examples.

What I mean is that when something happens to me, if I feel that the event is in some way something I sought, then that is destiny.

If I do not have the feeling that it was something I sought, but have a particularly strong feeling that it overcame me, surprised me, and that I can learn a great deal for the future from it, then that is a chance event. You need to gradually teach the children about something they can experience only through feeling, namely the difference between finished karma and arising or developing karma. You need to gradually teach children about the questions of fate in the sense of karmic questions.

You can find more about the differences in feeling in my book Theosophy. For the newest edition, I rewrote the chapter, “Reincarnation and Karma,” where I discuss this question. There, I tried to show how you can feel the difference. You can certainly make it clear to the children that there are actually two kinds of occurrences. In the one case, you feel that you sought it. For example, when you meet someone, you usually feel that you sought that person. In the other case, when you are involved in a natural event, you have the feeling you can learn something from it for the future. If something happens to you because of some other person, that is usually a case of fulfilled karma. Even such things as the fact that we find ourselves together in this faculty at the Waldorf School are fulfilled karma. We find ourselves here because we sought each other. We cannot comprehend that through definitions, only through feeling. You will need to speak with the children about all kinds of fates, perhaps in stories where the question of fate plays a role. You can even repeat many of the fairy tales in which questions of fate play a role. You can also find historical examples where you can show how an individual’s fate was fulfilled. You should discuss the question of fate, therefore, to indicate the seriousness of life from that perspective.

I also want you to understand what is really religious in an anthroposophical sense. In the sense of anthroposophy, what is religious is connected with feeling, with those feelings for the

world, for the spirit, and for life that our perspective of the world can give us. The worldview itself is something for the head, but religion always arises out of the entire human being. For that reason, religion connected with a specific church is not actually religious. It is important that the entire human being, particularly the feeling and will, lives in religion. That part of religion that includes a worldview is really only there to exemplify or support or deepen the feeling and strengthen the will. What should flow from religion is what enables the human being to grow beyond what past events and earthly things can give to deepen feeling and strengthen will.

Following the questions of destiny, you will need to discuss the differences between what we inherit from our parents and what we bring into our lives from previous earthly lives. In this second stage of religious instruction, we bring in previous earthly lives and everything else that can help provide a reasoned or feeling comprehension that people live repeated earthly lives.

You should also certainly include the fact that human beings raise themselves to the divine in three stages. Thus, after you have given the children an idea of destiny, you then slowly teach them about heredity and repeated earthly lives through stories. You can then proceed to the three stages of the divine.

The first of these stages is that of the angels, something available for each individual personally. You can explain that every individual human being is led from life to life by his or her own personal genius. Thus, this personal divinity that leads human beings is the first thing to discuss.

In the second step, you attempt to explain that there are higher gods, the archangels. (Here you gradually come into something you can observe in history and geography.) These archangels exist to guide whole groups of human beings, that is, the various peoples and such. You must teach this clearly so that the children can learn to differentiate between the god spoken of by Protestantism, for instance, who is actually only an angel, and an

archangel, who is higher than anything that ever arises in the Protestant religious teachings.

In the third stage, you teach the children about the concept of a time spirit, a divine being who rules over periods of time. Here, you will connect religion with history.

Only when you have taught the children all that can you go on, at about the twelfth grade, to—well, we can’t do that yet, we will just do two stages. The children can certainly hear things they will understand only later. After you have taught the children about these three stages, you can go on to the actual Christology by dividing cosmic evolution into two parts: the pre-Christian, which was really a preparation, and the Christian, which is the fulfillment.

Here, the concept that the divine is revealed through Christ, “in the fullness of time,” must play a major role.

Only then will we go on to the Gospels. Until then, to the extent that we need stories to explain the concepts of angel, archangel, and time spirit, we will use the Old Testament. For example, we can use the Old Testament story of what appeared before Moses33

to explain to the children the appearance of a new time spirit, in contrast to the previous one before the revelation to Moses. We can then also explain that a new time spirit entered during the sixth century B.C. Thus, we first use the Old Testament. When we then go on to Christology, having presented it as being preceded by a long period of preparation, we can go on to the Gospels. We can attempt to present the individual parts and show that the fourfoldedness of the Gospels is something natural by saying that just as a tree needs to be photographed from four sides for everything to be properly seen, in the same way the four Gospels present four points of view. You take the Gospel of Matthew and then Mark, Luke, and John and emphasize them such that the children will always feel that. Always place the main emphasis upon the differences in feeling.

33 . This is the story of Moses and the Burning Bush.

Thus, we now have the teaching content of the second stage.

The general tenor of the first stage is to bring to developing human beings everything that the wisdom of the divine in nature can provide. In the second stage, the human being no longer recognizes the divine through wisdom, but through the effects of love. That is the tenor, the leitmotif in both stages.

A teacher: Should we have the children learn verses?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, at first primarily from the Old Testament and then later from the New Testament. The verses contained in prayer books are often trivial, therefore, you should use verses from the Bible and also those verses we have in anthroposophy. In anthroposophy, we have many verses34 you can use well in this anthroposophical religious instruction.

A teacher: Should we teach the Ten Commandments?

Dr. Steiner: The Ten Commandments are, of course, in the Old Testament, but you should make their seriousness clear. I have always emphasized that the Ten Commandments state that we should not speak the name of God in vain. This is something that nearly every preacher overdoes since they continually speak vainly of Christ. Of course, this is something we must deepen in the feeling. We should not give religious instruction as a confession of faith, but as a deepening of feeling. The Apostles’ Creed as such is not important, only what we feel in the Creed. It is not our belief in God the Father, in God the Son, and in God the Holy Spirit, but what we feel in relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What is important is that in the depths of our soul, we feel that it is an illness not to know God, that it is a misfortune not to know Christ and that not to know the Holy Spirit is a limitation of the human soul.

34 . See Truth Wrought Words.

A teacher: Should we teach the children about historical things, for instance, the path of the Zarathustra being up to the revelation of Christianity, or the story of the two Jesus children?

Dr. Steiner: You should close the religious instruction by teaching the children about these connections but, of course, very carefully.

The first stage is clearly more nature religion, the second, more historical religion.

A teacher: Then we should certainly avoid teaching about functionality in natural history? Schmeil’s guidelines for botany and zoology are teleological.

Dr. Steiner: With regard to books, I would ask that you consider them only as a source of factual information. You can assume that we should avoid the methods described in them, and also the viewpoints. We really must do everything new. We should completely avoid the books that are filled with the horrible attitude we can characterize with statements such as “God created cork in order to cork champagne bottles.” For us, such books exist only to inform us of facts. The same is true for history. All the judgments made in them are no less garbage, and in natural history that is certainly true.

In my opinion it would not be so bad if we used Brehm, for example, if such things are to be up-to-date. Brehm avoids such trivial things, though he is a little narrow-minded. It would be a good idea to copy out such things and use stories as a basis.

Perhaps, that would be the best thing to do. The old edition of Brehm is pretty boring. We cannot use the new edition written recently by someone else.

In general, you can assume all school books written after 1885

are worthless. Since that time, all pedagogy has regressed in the most terrible way and simply landed in clichés.

A teacher: How should we proceed with human natural history?

How should we start that in the fourth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Concerning human beings you will find nearly everything somewhere in my lecture cycles. You will find nearly everything there somewhere. You also have what I presented in the seminar course. You need only modify it for school. The main thing is that you hold to the facts, also the psychological and spiritual facts. You can first take up the human being by presenting the formation of the skeleton. There, you can certainly be confident. Then go on to the muscles and the glands. You can teach the children about will by presenting the muscles and about thinking by presenting the nerves. Hold to what you know from anthroposophy. You must not allow yourselves to be led astray through the mechanical presentation of modern textbooks. You really don’t need anything at the forefront of science for the fourth grade, so perhaps it is better to take an older description and work with that. As I said, all of the things since the 1880s have become really bad, but you will find starting points everywhere in my lectures.

A teacher: I put together a table of geological formations based on what you said yesterday.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, you should never pedantically draw parallels.

When you go on to the primeval forms, to the original mountains, you have the polar period. The Paleozoic corresponds to the Hyperborean, but you may not take the individual animal forms pedantically. Then you have the Mesozoic, which generally corresponds to Lemuria. And then the first and second levels of mammals, or the Cenozoic, that is, the Atlantean age. The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago.

You can draw parallels from these five periods, the primitive, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, the Cenozoic, and the Anthropozoic.

A teacher: You once said that normally the branching off of fish and birds is not properly presented, for example, by Haeckel.

Dr. Steiner: The branching off of fish is usually put back into the Devonian period.

A teacher: How did human beings look at that time?

Dr. Steiner: In very primitive times, human beings consisted almost entirely of etheric substance. They lived among other things but had as yet no density. The human being became more dense during the Hyperborean period. Only those animal forms that had precipitated out, lived. Human beings lived also with no less strength. They had, in fact, a tremendous strength. But they had no substance that could remain, so there are no human remains.

They lived during all those periods but only gained an external density during the Cenozoic period. If you recall how I describe the Lemurian period, it was almost an etheric landscape.

Everything was there, but there are no geological remains. You will want to take into account that the human being existed through all five periods. The human being was everywhere. Here in the first period ( Dr. Steiner points to the table), “primitive form,” there is actually nothing else present except the human being. There are only minor remains. There the Eozoic Canadensa is actually more of a formation, something created as a form that is not a real animal. Here in the Hyperborean/Paleozoic period, animals begin to occur, but in forms that later no longer exist. Here in the Lemurian/Mesozoic period, the plant realm arises, and here in the Cenozoic period, Atlantis, the mineral realm arises, actually already in the last period, in these two earlier periods already (in the last two sub-races of the Lemurian period).

A teacher: Did human beings exist with their head, chest, and limb aspects at that time?

Dr. Steiner: The human being was similar to a centaur, an extremely animal-like lower body and a humanized head.

A teacher: I almost have the impression that it was a combination, a symbiosis, of three beings.

Dr. Steiner: So it is, also.

A teacher: How is it possible that there are the remains of plants in coal?

Dr. Steiner: Those are not plant remains. What appears to be the remains of plants actually arose because the wind encountered quite particular obstacles. Suppose, for instance, the wind was blowing and created something like plant forms that were preserved somewhat like the footsteps of animals (Hyperborean period). That is a kind of plant crystallization, a crystallization into plantlike forms.

A teacher: The trees didn’t exist?

Dr. Steiner: No, they existed as tree forms. The entire flora of the coal age was not physically present. Imagine a forest present only in its etheric form and that thus resists the wind in a particular way.

Through that, stalactite-like forms emerge. What resulted is not the remains of plants, but forms that arise simply due to the circumstances brought about by elemental activity. Those are not genuine remains. You cannot say it was like it was in Atlantis.

There, things remained and to an extent also at the end of the Lemurian period, but as to the carbon period, we cannot say that there are any plant remains. There were only the remains of animals, but primarily animals that we can compare with the form of our head.

A teacher: When did the human being then stand upright? I don’t see a firm point of time.

Dr. Steiner: It is not a good idea to cling to these pictures too closely, since some races stood upright earlier and others later. It is not possible to give a specific time. That is how things are in reality.

A teacher: If the pistil is related to the Moon and the stigma to the Sun, then how do they show the movement of the Sun and Moon?

Dr. Steiner: You must imagine it in the following way ( Dr. Steiner draws). The stigma goes upward, that would be the path of the Sun, and the pistil moves around it, and there you have the path of the Moon. Here we have the picture of the Sun and Earth path as I drew it yesterday. The Moon moves around the Earth. That is in the pistil ( Dr. Steiner demonstrates with the drawing). It appears that way because the path of the Moon goes around also, of course, but in relationship, not in a straight line. The path of the Sun is the stigma.

This circle is a copy of the helix I drew yesterday. It is also a helix.

Flower

Sun path

in the stigma

Pollen container

Sun path

Moon path

Stigma

Sun-Comet path

A teacher: You have told us that the temperaments have to do with predominance of the various bodies. In GA 129, you said that the physical body predominates over the etheric, the etheric over the astral, and the I over the astral. Is there a connection with the temperaments here? In GA 134,35 you mention a figure that gives the proper relationship of the bodies.

Dr. Steiner: That gives the relationship of the forces.

35 . See Wonders of the World and The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit.

A teacher: Is there a further relationship to the temperaments?

Dr. Steiner: None other than what I presented in the seminar.

A teacher: You have said that melancholy arises due to a predominance of the physical body. Is that a predominance of the physical body over the etheric?

Dr. Steiner: No, it is a predominance over all the other bodies.

A question arises about parent evenings.

Dr. Steiner: We should have them, but it would be better if they were not too often, since otherwise the parents’ interest would lessen, and they would no longer come. We should arrange things so that the parents actually come. If we have such meetings too often, they would see them as burdensome. Particularly in regard to school activities, we should not do anything we cannot complete. We should undertake only those things that can really happen. I think it would be good to have three parent days per year. I would also suggest that we do this festively, that we print cards and send them to all of the parents.

Perhaps we could arrange it so that the first such meeting is at the beginning of the school year. It would be more a courtesy, so that we can again make contact with the parents. Then we could have a parent evening in the middle of the year and again one at the end. These latter two would be more important, whereas the first, more of a courtesy. We could have the children recite something, do some eurythmy, and so forth.

We can also have parent conferences. They would be good. You will probably find that the parents generally have little interest in them, except for the anthroposophical parents.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to say something about the popularization of spiritual science, particularly in connection with the afternoon courses for the workers [at the Goetheanum].

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is important to keep the proper attitude in connection with that popularization. In general, I am not in favor of popularizing by making things trivial. In my opinion, we should first use Theosophy as a basis and attempt to determine from case to case what a particular audience understands easily, or only with difficulty. You will see that the last edition of Theosophy has a number of hints about how you can use its contents for teaching.

I would then go on to discussing some sections of How to Know Higher Worlds, but I would never intend to try to make people into clairvoyants. We should only inform them about the clairvoyant path so that they understand how it is possible to arrive at those truths. We should leave them with the feeling that it is possible with normal common sense to understand and know about how to comprehend those things. You can also treat The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity in a popular way. 36 There you have three books that you can use for a popular presentation.

Generally, you will need to arrange things according to the audience.

Several children are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: The most important thing is that there is always contact, that the teacher and students together form a true whole. That has happened in nearly all of the classes in a very beautiful and positive way. I am quite happy about what has happened.

I can tell you that even though I may not be here, I will certainly think much about this school. It’s true, isn’t it, that we must all be permeated with the thoughts:

First, of the seriousness of our undertaking. What we are now doing is tremendously important.

Second, we need to comprehend our responsibility toward anthroposophy as well as the social movement.

36 . Theosophy; How to Know Higher Worlds; and The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity.

And, third, something that we as anthroposophists must particularly observe, namely, our responsibility toward the gods.

Among the faculty, we must certainly carry within us the knowledge that we are not here for our own sakes, but to carry out the divine cosmic plan. We should always remember that when we do something, we are actually carrying out the intentions of the gods, that we are, in a certain sense, the means by which that streaming down from above will go out into the world. We dare not for one moment lose the feeling of the seriousness and dignity of our work.

You should feel that dignity, that seriousness, that responsibility. I will approach you with such thoughts. We will meet one another through such thoughts.

We should take that up as our feeling for today and, in that thought, part again for a time, but spiritually meet with one another to receive the strength for this truly great work.

Monday, December 22, 1919, 9:00 a.m.

The teachers took turns providing afternoon child care. A teacher asks a question about what they should do with the children.

Dr. Steiner: The children should enjoy themselves. You can allow them to play, or they could also put on a play or do their homework. In afterschool care, you should be a child yourself and make the children laugh. The children should do something other than their normal school activities. They only need to feel that someone is there when they need something. It is particularly valuable when the children tell of their experiences. You should interest yourselves in them. It is helpful for children when they can speak freely. You can also let them make pottery.

A teacher: The faculty would like to have a school festival on the first Monday of each month, since that day is generally free in the Stuttgart area [no school on those days]. We have already had such festivals on November 3 and December 1.

Dr. Steiner: It would be better to have monthly festivals on Thursday. Monday is a humdrum day, and there are inner reasons for favoring Thursdays. As Jupiter’s day, Thursday is most appropriate. The monthly festival should recall the significance of the month in a way similar to the Calendar of the Soul. But, we can use the verses from the Twelve Moods only for the seventh and eighth grades, at best.

A teacher reports about teaching the first grade.

Dr. Steiner: It is not good to draw with pencils. You should try to use watercolors, but crayons are also useful.

The stories should not be too long. Short, precise and easily comprehended stories are preferable in the lower grades. The main thing is that what you tell remains with the children. You should

December 22, 1919

make sure that the children do not immediately forget anything you go through with them. They should not learn through repetition, but remember things immediately through the first presentation.

A teacher reports about the second grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should begin with division right away. If some children are having difficulty with grammar, you should have patience.

A teacher reports about her third grade. She has introduced voluntary arithmetic problems as a will exercise.

Dr. Steiner: It is important to keep the children active. Their progress in foreign languages is very good; it has been very successful. The more we succeed in keeping the children active, the greater will be our success. I should also mention eurythmy in connection with foreign languages. Every vowel lies between two others; between “ah” and “ee” there lies the right hand forward and the left back. Do it according to the sound, not according to the letter.

[ German editor’s comment: From the perspective of eurythmy, Dr. Steiner may have meant the following: Every vowel lies between two others. For example, the English “i” lies between the German “a” (ah) and “i” (ee), with the gesture, the right hand forward, the left, back.1 Go according to how the vowel sounds, not according to how the letter is written. ] A teacher speaks about the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: They are particularly untalented. A.S. [a child] is a little feebleminded. She cannot pay attention. E.E., the Bolshevik, has gotten better. He has an abnormality in the meninges, that is, an abnormal development of the head and meninges. He has twitchy cramps. Perhaps that is due to an injury at birth because of the use of forceps [see sketch], or perhaps he

1. The name of the German letter i is pronounced “ee.” However, the sound of i is almost always pronounced like the short i in the English word is. The only words in the German language we are aware of where i is pronounced ‘ee’ are not of German origin. — TRANS.

inherited it. His etheric body is shut out. You should divert his fantasy through humor.

G.R. has a different situation in regard to his supersensible aspects because he is missing a leg. In such crippled children, the life of the soul is too spiritual. You should awaken his interest for things spiritually difficult for the soul. Direct him there and bring back his soul qualities.

A teacher speaks about the fifth grade.

Dr. Steiner: The children love their teacher, but at the same time are terribly rambunctious. Try to be more independent of them. Also, in foreign languages, you should teach reading by way of writing.

A teacher speaks about the sixth grade.

Dr. Steiner: The children can better learn to think and feel through eurythmy and vice versa. You could allow A.B. to do some of the sentences contained in the teachers’ speech exercises in eurythmy.

You will need to help E.H. by telling deeply moving stories.

A teacher complains that the children in the upper classes are lazy and unmotivated.

Dr. Steiner: If the children do not do their homework, you could keep the lazy ones after noon and threaten them that this could occur often.

A teacher asks about some children in the seventh and eighth grades.

Dr. Steiner: The children in the seventh and eighth grades are talented. G.L., the one with the blue ribbons, is very flirtatious. It is better not to name names, to turn around and not name her and not to watch. But you should be certain that she knows you mean her.

Praise does not make the children ambitious. You may not omit praise and criticism. Criticism, given as a joke, is very effective. The child will remember it.

A teacher speaks about eurythmy and music.

Tuesday, December 23, 1919

Tuesday, December 23, 1919, 4:00 p.m.

A teacher who took over the seventh and eighth grades in the fall reports about teaching the humanities.

Dr. Steiner: You should begin by developing an outline of Roman history and then, from the general character, go into the details.

There is no particular reason to go into everything, for instance, the history of the Lucretians. In Rome, much more occurred than what has been handed down, and there is really no reason to tell about everything that has been handed down by chance.

A teacher: Who were the Etruscans?

Dr. Steiner: The Etruscans were a southern Celtic element, a branch of the Celts transplanted in the south.

A teacher asks about books on Oriental history.

Dr. Steiner: Well, there are the chapters about Babylonian and Assyrian history by Stahl and Hugo Winkler in Helmolt’s Weltgeschichte [World History], and also the things written by Friedrich Delitzsch, for example, his Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens (History of Babylonia and Assyria) .

A teacher: What is Baal?

Dr. Steiner: Baal was originally a Sun god.

A teacher speaks about the practical subjects in the seventh and eighth grades.

A teacher reports about teaching Latin.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to direct the children’s attention away from the linguistic aspects and toward the meaning, toward the subject itself. There is too little personal contact with the students.

A teacher reports about shop class.

Dr. Steiner: We should learn what we want to teach, for example, how to bind books or to make shoes. We should not bring too much in from outside.

On Friday, December 26 at 9:00 a.m., those children in the first through fourth grades who are causing the teachers difficulties in some ways are to be called in for a “discussion” and on Monday, December 29 at 9:00 a.m., there will be another such meeting for children from the fifth through eighth grades. A list is made of those children.37

Two teachers report about the independent religious instruction.

Dr. Steiner: In the independent religious instruction, you could try to bring in something imaginative, mythical religious pictures, for example, the story of Mithras as a picture of how we overcome our lower nature. You could use such pictures to bring something to the fore, that is, to integrate mythical stories pictorially.

A teacher asks about reports.

Dr. Steiner: We must first determine what we have to do [to meet the state requirements]. We can give two reports, one in the middle of the year, as an interim report, and one at the end of the school year. To the extent allowable by the regulations, we should speak about the student only in general terms. We should describe the student and only when there is something of particular note in a subject, should we mention that. We should carefully formulate

37 . There are no notes of these discussions. Steiner speaks of them, however, in lecture 6 of The Renewal of Education.

everything, so that in moving to the higher grades, there is as little differentiation as possible.

When the student goes to another school, we must report everything that the new school requires.

Thursday, January 1, 1920

Thursday, January 1, 1920, 2:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Today, we will primarily discuss the problem children we spoke with.

We will need to look at M.H. often. We will have to ask E.S.

many things.

We can give some of the children in the fourth grade specific exercises, for instance, E.E. could learn the phrase, “People gain strength for life through learning.” You could allow him to say this each morning in the course of the first period. F.R. could learn, “I will pay attention to my words and thoughts,” and A.S. could learn, “I will pay attention to my words and deeds.”

We should have H.A. in the fifth grade do complicated drawings, for instance, a line that snakes about and comes back to its own beginning. He could also draw eurythmy forms. He should learn the phrase, “It is written in my heart to learn to pay attention and to become industrious.”

You will need to force T.E. in the seventh grade to follow very exactly and slowly. She should hear exactly and slowly what you say to her. That should have a different tempo than her own fragmented thinking. Think a sentence together with her, “I will think with you.” Only think it twice as slowly as she does.

O.R., in eighth grade, is sleepy. He is a kind of soul-earthworm.

That kind of sleepiness arises because people pass things by and pay no attention to them. He shouldn’t play any pranks on anyone, nor disturb anyone’s attention.

In regard to the slow thinking in the third grade, you could take a phrase like, “The tree becomes green,” and turn it around to “Green becomes the tree,” and so forth so that they learn to turn their thinking around quickly.

My general impression is that, in spite of all of the obstacles, you should maintain the courage to continue your teaching.

Although there is not much time left in this year, we still have much to do.

There is some discussion of afterschool care.

Dr. Steiner: The children should avoid comparing their teachers.

You should pay attention to the children’s physical symmetry and asymmetry and seek what lies parallel in their souls. To do that, you must know each child’s peculiarities well. There is something called “flame symmetry,” that is, how things interact through harmonious motions.38 Ellicot first noticed it and did some work with it. What the teacher thinks affects the child when the teacher is really present. The main thing is that you take an interest in each child.

A teacher asks about how to get through all the material and about homework.

Dr. Steiner: You should present homework as voluntary work, not as a requirement. In other words, “Who wants to do this?” A teacher asks about a reading book.

Dr. Steiner: In the reading lesson, not all of the children need to read. You can bring some material and hand it around, allowing the children to read it, but not all need do so. However, the children should read as little as possible about things they do not understand very well. The teachers are reading aloud to the

38 . See lecture 8 in Light: the First Scientific Course. In one of Steiner’s notebooks, there is the remark “2 clock = Ellicot,” apparently in connection with the two clocks mentioned in the lecture.

children too much. You should read nothing to the children that you do not know right into each word through your preparation.

A teacher asks about modeling.

Dr. Steiner: You could use a column seen from a particular perspective as an example, but you should not make the children Thursday, January 1, 1920

slavishly imitate it. You need to get the children to observe, but allow them to change their work.

A teacher: How far should I go in history before turning to something else? In the seventh grade, I have gotten as far as the end of the Caesars in Roman history, and in the eighth grade, I am at the Punic Wars.

Dr. Steiner: Make an effort to get to Christianity and then do two months of German. Do Goethe and Schiller in the eighth grade.

[ Dr. Steiner tells an anecdote about a child who is asked, “Who are Goethe and Schiller?” The child replies, “Oh, those are the two statues sitting on the piano at home.” ]

You should teach German history differently in the eighth grade than in the seventh.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: The teachers should write essays for The Social Future. 39

They should tell about their pedagogical experiences, in particular, of the children’s feelings. Modern pedagogical literature is absolutely worthless before Dittes. 40 However, through such writings, we can make it more human.

39 . Social Zukunft, nos. 5-7 (1919), “Erzihungskunst.”

40 . Friedrich Dittes (1829–1896) along with Pestalozzi and Diesterweg actually promoted an independent form of public education.

A teacher: Should we form a ninth grade next year?

Dr. Steiner: A ninth grade is certainly desirable. The school regulations no longer apply then, and we can be quite free. The ninth grade will arise spontaneously out of the results of the eighth grade.

Saturday, March 6, 1920, 4:00 p.m.

Mr. Oehlschlegel was in America and his teaching responsibilities had to be divided among the others.

Dr. Steiner: Dr. Kolisko will take over the main lesson in the sixth grade. Mr. Hahn will take over the advanced classes in independent religious instruction. Since, with the language classes in the third and fifth grades, he will have a total of twenty-five hours, he needs some relief. Eighteen hours would be a normal amount. Miss Lang will take over the English and French classes for her third grade.

In the fifth grade, Dr. von Heydebrand will teach French, and Dr.

Kolisko, English. Mrs. Koegel will take over English for her fourth grade and Dr. Kolisko, the remaining English instruction until summer vacation.

Questions are asked regarding how to arrange the Sunday services and the music in them.

Dr. Steiner: The Sunday services are only for those children taking the independent religious instruction. They offer a replacement for the children and parents who are not members of any church. The services should close with something musical, in particular, something instrumental. We should offer refreshments for invited guests only when I am here.

A teacher reports about a student in the fifth grade who left the independent religious instruction and returned to the Catholic instruction.

Dr. Steiner: We should avoid allowing the children to leave the independent religious instruction. However, we will need to accept that the minister giving the Lutheran instruction is leaving.

A question is asked about the eurythmy instruction.

Saturday, March 6, 1920

Dr. Steiner: Eurythmy is obligatory. The children must participate.

Those who do not participate in eurythmy will be removed from the school. We can form a eurythmy faculty that will take care of advertising eurythmy and the eurythmy courses for people outside the school.

A teacher: Should the gardening class continue to be voluntary?

Dr. Steiner: The gardening class is an obligatory part of the education.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: The general rule at the school is that those children with many unexcused absences will be removed from the school.

A teacher complains about the presentation of ethics.

Dr. Steiner: We shouldn’t teach anything abstract, but teach the children respect.

The children should not raise their hands so much.

We will have to allow the state medical examinations.

A teacher: Should we set up a continuing education school for those children graduating from the eighth grade at Easter?

Dr. Steiner: We could call it a “School of Life for Older Children,”

and we could call the kindergarten, “preschool.”

Monday, March 8, 1920, 3:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We still have four months ahead of us after having finished five.

A teacher reports about mathematics and science instruction in the seventh and eighth grades.

Dr. Steiner: In eighth grade optics, you should teach only about refraction (lenses) and the spectrum. In teaching thermodynamics, teach only melting (thermometer), boiling, and the sources of heat.

Then go into magnetism only briefly. In electricity, you will need to teach about static electricity. In mechanics, the lever and incline plane; and in aerodynamics, the lifting forces and air pressure. In chemistry, you should cover burning and how substances combine and separate. In the seventh grade, you should discuss optics and magnetism in more detail than in the eighth grade. You also need to cover the mechanics of solid bodies.

A teacher reports about the humanities in the seventh and eighth grades. There is a discussion about Goethe’s biography and also his Poetry and Truth, as well as Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters.

Dr. Steiner: I would recommend Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Thoughts on the philosophy of human history] , in which he presents the human being as a summation of all the other natural realms. World History should continue right up until the present.

A teacher speaks about the sixth grade.

A teacher speaks about the fifth grade. Much of the subject matter has not yet been taught.

Monday, March 8, 1920

Dr. Steiner: It is better to omit some material than to hurry. In teaching about human beings and animals, you should discuss the brain, the senses, the nerves, the muscles, and so forth.

A teacher asks about Latin letters and German grammar in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: If you are to teach Latin handwriting,41 it is perhaps better to first develop German handwriting out of drawings and then develop characteristic Latin letters from the drawings.

You can create sentences from poems, but do it in a kind way, don’t do it pedantically.

Two teachers speak about the second and third grades.

A teacher speaks about the first grade. E.S. has not returned since being deloused. Another question is asked regarding how to introduce letters.

Dr. Steiner: It would be best to first create the forms of the letters pictorially, and then to gradually move into the letters themselves.

In general, you should concentrate.

A teacher reports about music and eurythmy, also tone eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: We could send a flyer about the school regulations to all the parents every four weeks saying that eurythmy is a required class.

A teacher reports about foreign language instruction.

Dr. Steiner: In Latin, and in the languages generally, you should not have the children translate, but only freely speak about the content, about the meaning, so that you can see that they have understood.

Otherwise, you would adversely affect the meaning of language.

In the upper grades, you will also need to teach the children something about the vowel shifts, thus coming back to the standpoint of English.

You should always pay strict attention that you teach the class, not just individuals. If one child occupies you for a longer period, then you should now and then ask questions of the others to keep them awake. Treat the class like a chorus.

41 . It was still common in 1919 to teach the German cursive forms first and then the Latin form. This was reversed in the 1920s.

A teacher reports about the instruction in social understanding.

Dr. Steiner: In the seventh and eighth grades, you could give them what is in Towards Social Renewal.

A teacher asks about the emotionally disturbed children.

Dr. Steiner: The remedial class is for those who have significant learning barriers. Those children are not in the normal class, and Dr. Schubert teaches them separately every day during that time.

A.B. has a strong tendency toward dementia praecox.42

E.G. is disturbingly restless. You must often reprimand him, as otherwise he could develop dementia praecox by the age of fifteen.

We have seven or eight children like that in the school.

A teacher reports about a student who stole something.

Dr. Steiner: With children who steal, it is good to have them remember scenes they experienced earlier. You should have them imagine things they experienced years before, for instance, with seven-year-olds, experiences they had when they were five, or with ten-year-olds, experiences they had when they were seven. You should also have them recall experiences from two weeks before.

Monday, March 8, 1920

Things will then become better quickly. If you do nothing, these problems will become larger and develop into kleptomania.

In such cases, things that solidify the will are particularly effective, and recalling things that go back weeks, months, or years is particularly effective in firming the will.

42 . The term, dementia praecox “is best replaced with schizophrenia since it is not always associated with dementia nor always occurring in the young. It has been characterized as a ‘dream state,’ a psychosis represented by a dreaming mind in a sleeping body, the latter being easily aroused but not the former.” Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, 11th ed., F.A. Davis Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1970.—TRANS.

In cases of kleptomania, it is also good to punish the children by having them sit for a quarter of an hour and hold their feet or toes with their hands. From the perspective of strengthening the will, that is something you can do against kleptomania.

There are also children who cannot remember, who on the next day can no longer remember what they did the day before. In that case, you must strengthen their capacity to remember by having them recall things in reverse order.

You still have the children say those phrases I once gave you as prayers for them, don’t you? “People gain strength for life through learning,” “I will pay attention to my thoughts and deeds” or “…

and words.”

You can hardly strengthen memory other than by attempting to have the children imagine something backward, for instance, “the father reads in the book,” turned around to, “book the in reads father the,” so that they have a pictorial image of that. Or you can have them say the numbers 4, 6, 7, 3 in reverse order, 3, 7, 6, 4. Or perhaps the hardness scale, back and forth.

You also do not need to shy away from having the children repeat little poems that they have said word for word backward.

They can also say the speech exercise backward. That is a technique you can use when memory is so weak.

There is some discussion about the scientific work done in the research institute.

Dr. Steiner: You should not dissipate your strengths. You should have friendly and neighborly relations with Dr. Rudolf Maier’s research institute.

FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

Sunday, March 14, 1920, 6:00 p.m.

There are complaints about the lack of discipline in the school.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Baumann will give a class once a week about tact and morality, about essential tact and living habits, so that the children will realize that one thing is acceptable and another is misbehavior. The children’s thoughts should evoke a feeling for authority. That class will not be connected with the other instruction, but included in the afternoon classes.

There is further discussion about stealing.

Dr. Steiner: If we pay too much attention to individuals, that will undermine all discipline. In my opinion, with regard to stealing, we should not need to look at individual cases. We should, instead, arrange things so that the children avoid it.

A teacher: Should we arrange an Easter festival or a Festival for Youth for the children without a religious confession? Perhaps a spring festival?

Dr. Steiner: We can include the independent religious instruction students of the four upper grades in the celebration.

[ German editor’s comment: The discussion here is not about the present Celebration for Youth, which was first initiated by Dr. Steiner at Easter in 1921. ]

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to put the boys and girls together.

A teacher asks about the class for the emotionally disturbed children.

Dr. Steiner: We will include about ten children in the class for emotionally disturbed children that Dr. Schubert will give.

Sunday, March 14, 1920

The children to be included in this class are discussed. The children A.S. and A.B. are mentioned several times.

Dr. Steiner: You will have to work with the children individually in this class. There is not much else that will be different, except that you will have to do everything more slowly.

A teacher: Should we have the children study Goethe’s “Heathrose”? It seems too erotic.

Dr. Steiner: “Heathrose” is not an erotic poem, but “I went into the forest …” certainly is.

A teacher: What should we do with the children in the continuation school?

Dr. Steiner: The main thing would be to concentrate upon practical and artistic subjects. The children should learn about practical things in life, about agriculture, commerce, industry, and trade.

They should learn about the basic principles of business and accounting, and also continue their artistic, musical, and literature studies. Mr. Strakosch will take over that task. The children must learn to consider life as a school. You can remind them that from now on they will be taught by life. However, we should not rob them of their destiny.

Wednesday, June 9, 1920, 4:00 –7:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: The teachers will understand their students better because each teacher will remain with his or her class. We must continue to work in this direction and use those things we discussed in the teachers’ seminar. When you can properly judge a

child’s temperament, everything will come of itself. You should work toward reflecting the child’s temperament in the sound of your voice when you call the child.

The year-end report and a brochure are discussed. 43

Dr. Steiner: We should include something about the layout and plan of the school, as well as the curriculum, in the yearly report. We should also include something about the students and where they came from: 161 from elementary schools, 50 from middle schools, 64 from secondary schools, 12 beginning students—altogether, 287. And we should say something about the students’ religious affiliations.

Include something about the many volumes in the teachers’

library. Also, the collections and displays, but we should not discuss the individual collections, only provide a summary.

Mention the students’ library, also.

Say something about eurythmy as a new subject. I would ask Mr. Baumann to report about that. We can also include something about handwork classes, perhaps including some remarks about the lack of industriousness. However, we should emphasize what is of lasting value.

The history of the school year should receive special treatment.

Begin with the brochure. Later, however, we will replace the brochure with a report by a faculty member. For the present, we can simply include the brochure.

Wednesday, June 9, 1920

Each of you who wants to can write an autobiography to include in the yearly report. We should also have a description of each teacher, for example, what the teacher did before becoming a teacher. We can also include eulogies for those who died in the past year.

43 . The year-end report for the first year was not completed. Later, there was a “Report on the First Two School Years, 1919–1920 and 1920–1921.”

Often, we bring out things too strongly that belong behind the scenes.

A teacher remarks that Dr. Steiner’s leadership of the school should be emphasized.

Dr. Steiner: You can mention my courses and lectures as well as those that the teachers have given. We should also say something about the lecture series sponsored by the WaldorfAstoria factory, although those lectures have less connection with the school than with the adult education school. Give a history of that school along with a list of lectures the teachers have held there. In fact, we should say something about the general educational activities at the factory. Mention also the activities and lectures by the teachers in the independent apprenticeship school, as well as the courses for social understanding given for young people. Say something about the archive also.44

We need to have a separate section about the preparatory instruction for the Youth Festival. Actually, we need to discuss the activities of the Lutheran, Catholic and independent religious classes, but if we cannot have a special section for each of the religions, we should leave it out.

All the classes were then discussed. All the teachers gave a report about what they did in the course of the school year, how far they came, and what the state of the class was.

First, two teachers spoke about the main lessons in the first and second grades, and then a teacher spoke of the main lesson and foreign language in the third grade.

Dr. Steiner: In the foreign languages, you should not rely upon a dictionary and should not translate. You should also avoid giving the children the text in German. The best thing is to read the

44 . An “Archive of Goetheanism” was set up in a school room and contained copies of Steiner’s books and lectures and books on Goetheanism by other authors.

foreign language text first, and then to tell the children the content in your own words.

There is so much dust on the desks and dirt in the classrooms!

The teachers should collect information about psychological aspects, sort of an almanac about psychological abnormalities.45 It would be an almanac in a broad sense. From a spiritual scientific perspective, these things are quite obvious. You can talk about them, since many things have actually occurred.

Something interesting occurred today in the eighth grade. What was the boy’s name? He writes exactly like you do, Dr. Stein. He imitates your handwriting exactly. That is certainly an interesting thing. If someone has straight hair, he will learn the handwriting of the teachers. A child with curly hair would not have done that.

A teacher reports about the fourth grade. The children did not know anything about grammar, asking what it was.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if, at the end of the main lesson, you had the children remember in reverse order everything they did that morning.

A teacher: What did you mean by the psychological “almanac”?

Dr. Steiner: It would be a collection for the faculty, and could be very important. You could include all kinds of interesting things.

If you think about it, you can immediately find a barrelful of such things. Each teacher can take note of all the things observed. For the higher grades, you should provide information about what the children did not know when they came to us. You should describe the things the children were missing. If you could put that together for the first yearly report, I would be very grateful.

Wednesday, June 9, 1920

That the children asked, for instance, “What is German grammar?” is culturally significant. You should record

45 . This was not done.

observations of the children who entered the Waldorf School. You should note what the children forgot and what kinds of misbehavior they had. Then include things about the instruction.

At the end of the collection, we could state that it is obvious that we did not completely realize our intentions with each of the grades in the course of the year, but only generally.

Two teachers report about the fifth and sixth grades.

Dr. Steiner: The children in the sixth grade write unbelievably horribly. They are really happy when they can write “lucky” with two “k”s. It is more important that they can write business letters and learn algebra than that they can spell “lucky” with two “k”s.

A teacher reports about the humanities in the seventh and eighth grades. It is difficult to complete the material for history. The children don’t know anything more than what they learned in religion class.

Dr. Steiner: In 1890, I went to the Goethe Archive in Weimar. The director, Mr. Suphan, had two boys and one of my tasks was to teach them. In that way, I gained some insight into the schools in Berlin. I have to admit that although history was well taught in Austria, you couldn’t detect that those children had learned any of it in Germany. Their textbooks contained nothing about it. There were thirty pages of introductory information from Adam to the Hohenzollern, then the history of the Hohenzollerns began. That is true of all Germany; there is really nothing appropriate in middle school history classes.

A teacher asks about Allah.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to describe that supersensible being.

Mohammedism is the first manifestation of Ahriman, the first Ahrimanic revelation following the Mystery of Golgotha.

Mohammed’s god, Allah, Eloha, is an Ahrimanic imitation or pale reflection of the Elohim, but comprehended monotheistically.

Mohammed always refers to them as a unity. The Mohammedan culture is Ahrimanic, but the Islamic attitude is Luciferic.

A teacher: In the Templar records, a being by the name of Bafomet appears often. What is that?

Dr. Steiner: Bafomet is a being of the Ahrimanic world who appears to people when they are being tortured. That happens really cleverly, since they then bring a lot of visions back with them when they return to consciousness.

In 869 A.D., there was the Filioque Argument. History books say nothing about this, but you can read about it in Harnak’s “Dogmengeschichte” (History of dogma).46

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: The Catholic religious instruction is much further ahead, the Lutheran, very limited.

Compared to other biographies, the one on Goethe by the Jesuit priest Baumgartner is quite well written, though he complains a lot.47 Everything else is simply rubbish. The biography of Goethe by the Englishman Lewes is poor.48 Swiss folk calendar.49

A teacher reports about the instruction in natural sciences in the 7th and eighth grades.

Dr. Steiner: You can interrupt the natural science instruction at any point.

The meeting continued on Saturday, June 12, 1920 at 3:00 p.m.

46 . Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), “Dogmengeschichte” (History of dogma), in Grundruß der theologischen Wissenschaften (Outline of theology), vol. 3, part 4

(1905).

47 . Alexander Baumgartner (1841–1910), Goethes Leben und Werke 1885–1886

(Goethe’s life and work 1885–1886).

48 . George Henry Lewes (1817–1878), Life and Works of Goethe (1855).

49 . The specific calendar is not known. A folk calendar is an almanac similar to The Farmer’s Almanac in the United States. — TRANS.

Saturday, June 12, 1920, 3:00 p.m.

A brochure and yearly report are mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: What is the purpose of all this advertising?

A teacher: We are going to send it to all interested people.

Dr. Steiner: Then, is it an invitation? In that case, everything you have shown me is much too long. It will not be effective. If you want every potential member of the Waldorf School Association to read it, you should condense it into half a page. What you have here is a small book.

A teacher: I don’t think it is so thick.

Dr. Steiner: Think about Dr. Stein’s manuscript. It’s already thirty printed pages. It is too long and too academic. It’s more like a report to another faculty. It is directed more to pedagogical experts than to people who might want to join the Association. You should direct it to everyone interested in the school. They would never read so much. You did not mention this perspective last time. We always looked at the brochure from the standpoint of public relations.

This brochure could serve only to replace the usual academic presentation. There have always been formal presentations and something like this could provide a general presentation of the school. We could, for instance, describe the facilities and buildings and then go on to describe the pedagogy of the school and the individual subjects.

A teacher: We especially need material for the parents who want to send their children to us.

Dr. Steiner: That’s true. For such parents, we could summarize all the material we already have. For example, there is some good material in the Waldorf News.50 None of that, however, can replace a brochure that should be no longer than eight printed pages.

There should be thousands of members, and we need to give them a short summary.

A teacher: That would not preclude also having a yearly report.

Dr. Steiner: You must remember how little interest people have in things. Today, people read in a peculiar way.

It’s true, isn’t it, that a magazine article is different. However, if you want to make something clear to someone and hope they will become a member and pay fifty marks, you don’t need to go into all the details. You need only give a broad outline. This brochure would be different. It would contain a request for payment of some amount. But, the yearly report might be more like what I would call a history of the school. There, we can include everything individual teachers put together. The reports need not be short.

All reports can be long. If the brochure brings in a lot of money, Mr. Molt will surely provide some for the yearly report. All that is a question of republicanism. The number of names it mentions would make the yearly report effective. We should, however, consider whether we should strive for uniformity. One person may write pedantically and report about what happened each month.

Another might write, at least from what I have seen, about things I could do only in five hundred years. ( Speaking to Dr. Stein) You wrote this so quickly that you could also write the others.

Dr. Steiner is asked to write something also.

50 . Printed: 1) “Lecture to Workers in the WaldorfAstoria Company,” April 23, 1919, GA 330, in Education as a Force for Social Change; 2) “Speech at the School Opening” in Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School; 3) “The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School,” in The Renewal of Education.

Dr. Steiner: That is rather difficult. If I were to write even three pages, I would have to report about things I have experienced, and that could be unpleasant for some. If I were to write it as a teacher, I would tend to write it differently than the brochure. The brochure should contain our intent, what we will improve each year. In the report, we should show what we accomplished and what we did not accomplish. There, the difference between reality and the brochure would be apparent. If I wrote something, I would, of course, keep it in that vein. It will put people out of shape afterward, but I can write the three pages.

A teacher reports about his remedial class with nine children.

Two teachers report about teaching foreign language in the first grade.

Dr. Steiner: The earlier you begin, the more easily children learn foreign languages and the better their pronunciation. Beginning at seven, the ability to learn languages decreases with age. Thus, we must begin early. Speaking in chorus is good, since language is a social element. It is always easier to speak in chorus than individually.

Two teachers report about the classes in Latin and Greek. There are two classes for Latin, but in the lower class, there are only two boys. The upper class is talented and industrious.

Dr. Steiner: There is good progress in the foreign languages.

A teacher reports about the kindergarten with thirty-three children. She asks if the children should do cut work in the kindergarten.

Dr. Steiner: If you undertake such artistic activities with the children, you will notice that some have talent for them. There will not be many, and the others you will have to push. Those things, when they are pretty, are pretty. They are little works of art. I would allow a child to work in that way only if I saw that he or she has a tendency in that direction. I would not introduce it to the children in general.

You should begin painting with watercolors.

You mean cutting things out and pasting them? If you see that one or another child has a talent for silhouettes, you could allow that. I would not fool around, don’t do that. You can probably work best with the children you have when you have them do meaningful things with simple objects. Anything! You should try to discover what interests the children. There are children, particularly girls, who can make a doll out of any handkerchief.

The doll’s write letters and then pass them on. You could be the postman or the post office. Do sensible things with simple objects.

When the change of teeth begins, the children enter the stage when they want to imagine things, for instance that one thing is a rabbit and another is a dog. Sensible things that the child dreams into. The principle of play is that until the change of teeth, the child imitates sensible things, dolls and puppets. With boys, it is puppets, with girls, dolls. Perhaps they could have a large puppet with a small one alongside. These need only be a couple pieces of wood. At age seven, you can bring the children into a circle or ring, and they can imagine something. Two could be a house, and the others go around and live in it. In that game, the children are there themselves.

With musical children, you can play something else, perhaps something that would support their musical talent. You should help unmusical children develop their musical capacities through dance and eurythmy. You need to be inventive. You can do al these things, but you need to be inventive, because otherwise everything becomes stereotyped. Later, it is easier because you can connect with things in the school.

A teacher explains how she conveyed the consonants in eurythmy by working with the growth of plants.2

Dr. Steiner: That is very nice. The children do not differ much. You do not have many who are untalented nor many who are gifted.

They are average children. Also, you have few choleric or strongly

melancholic temperaments. Those children are mostly phlegmatic or sanguine. All that plays a role since you do not have all four temperaments.

You can get the phlegmatic children moving only if you try to work with the more difficult consonants. For the sanguine children, work with the easier consonants. Do the r and s with the phlegmatic children, and with the sanguine children, do the consonants that only hint of movement, d and t. If we have other temperaments in the next years, we can try more things. It is curious that those children who do not accomplish much in the classroom can do a great deal in eurythmy. The progress is good, but I would like to see you take more notice of what progresses.

Our task is to see that we speak more to the children about what we bring from the teaching material, that we look more toward training thinking and feeling. For example, in arithmetic we should make clear to the students that with minus five, they have five less than they owe to someone. You need to speak with them very precisely.

It is often good to drift off the subject. You then notice that the children are not so perfect in their essays. It’s true, isn’t it, that the children who are more talented in their heads write good essays, and those who are more talented in their bodies are good in eurythmy. You should try to balance that through conversation.

When you talk with children, if you speak about something practical and go into it deeply, you turn their attention away from the head.

A teacher asks how to handle the present perfect tense.

Dr. Steiner: I would speak with the children about various parallels between the past and the complete. What is a perfect person, a

2. Elisabeth Baumann wrote in the “Report on the First Two School Years, 1919– 1920 and 1920–1921,” “Convey the consonants in pictures so the child experiences and feels the processes of nature. The younger children learn this—

for example, through the growth and dying of plants. First, the flower is hidden deep in the Earth; that is b. Then it grows up through the Earth; that is m In d, the plant breaks out into the light growing from flower to flower, which is then l. The children are in the process and thus through their feeling will come to love the sounds.”

perfect table? I would speak about the connections between what is complete and finished and the perfect present tense. Then I would discuss the imperfect tense where you still are in the process of completion.

If I had had time today, I would have gone through the children’s reading material in the present perfect. Of course, you can’t translate every sentence that way, but that would bring some life into it. Eurythmy also brings life into the development of the head. There is much you can do between the lines. I already said today that I can understand how you might not like to drift off the subject. That is something we can consider an ideal, namely to bring other things in. For example, today I wanted to tease your children in the third grade with “hurtig toch.”51 In that way, you could expand their thinking. That means “express train.” That is what I mean by doing things with children between the lines.

The eurythmy room is discussed.

Dr. Steiner: I was never lucky enough that someone promised that room to me. Frau Steiner would prefer to have simply the field and a roof above it. Although you can awaken the most beautiful physical capacities in children through eurythmy, they can also feel all the terrible effects of the room, and that makes them so tired.

We all know of the beautiful eurythmy hall, but someone forgot to make the ventilation large enough, so that we can’t use it. For eurythmy, we need a large, well-ventilated hall. Everything we have

51 . The Norwegian term for “express train.” Steiner would have made a pun by saying “hurtig toch” quickly, which sounds like “hör’ dich doch”—German for “Listen to yourself,” or “Listen to how you sound.” Steiner lectured in Norway before the war and returned to lecture there in 1921. — TRANS.

had until now is unsatisfactory for a eurythmy hall. We have only a substitute. Eurythmy rooms need particularly good ventilation.

We have to build the Eurythmeum.52

52 . The Eurythmeum was built in 1922.

Wednesday, June 14, 1920, 3:00 –5:30 p.m.

9:30 p.m.–12:45 a.m.

A teacher reports about the independent religious instruction in the beginning and intermediate classes. They discussed verses from the mystery plays and “Cherubinischen Wandersmann” (Cherubic wanderer).53

Dr. Steiner: It is important that you don’t ignore the children’s level of feeling. Can you give a concrete example?

A teacher: In the upper class, I had the children recite, “Let me peacefully act in you.…”

Dr. Steiner: Do you think the children can work with that? Yes, then you can continue with it.

A teacher: Perhaps we could divide the courses.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly true. I think that if we divided the beginning class in two and left the upper class as it is, things would go well in all three groups.

That is, grades 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9.

A teacher reports that he had used three hours for the preparatory instruction for the Youth Festival.

Dr. Steiner: Isn’t that too much for the students? How many are there?

A teacher: Twenty-six.

53 . A poem by Angelus Silesius (pseudonym for Johannes Scheffler, 1624–1677).

Dr. Steiner: It will be difficult to say anything until we have seen a real success. It is certainly good to try that. If it is not successful, then we will need to see how we can do it differently.

A teacher reports about the course in social understanding. There were two hours per week in the sixth through eighth grades, and also some for fifth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, the age from eleven to fifteen is difficult, but this is a separate class.

A teacher: We are also visiting factories.

Dr. Steiner: If you do this really livingly, make it lively, and connect it with all the questions about life that arise at that age, then things will work. I would try to see if the children have too much to do, and then try to connect things to life concretely wherever possible.

I believe the children may be overworked now, and that will, of course, certainly come out in some odd place. It would be a good idea not to have eight hours on one day.

I don’t understand why it is necessary to spend three hours preparing for the Youth Festival. Why wasn’t one hour sufficient?

In such questions, the amount of time is not so important as the time available for them. It would, perhaps, be better if we could limit those things we can definitely limit. We could do that for those children attending the Youth Festival54 by dropping the independent religious instruction as such and connecting it with the preparation for the Youth Festival.

A question is asked about who may attend the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly a problem. We had never thought that anyone other than the parents would attend. Of course, having begun in one way, it is difficult to set a limit. How should we do that? Why did you admit people who are not parents at the school?

If we allow K. in, there is no reason we should send other members

54 . Held for the first time on Palm Sunday, 1921.

away. Where does that begin and where does it end? It’s mostly people who think this is just one more tea party. We have also had other disturbances by people from outside the school being at the school. The thing that disturbed me most was that people who have absolutely nothing to do with the school became involved in discipline. I certainly have nothing against strictly limiting the admission to the services to the parents, no siblings and no tea parties. We did not create that service for that. Now there are no limits. We should admit only the parents or those whom the faculty recognizes as moral guardians.

A teacher asks again about an older member in connection with the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: She should stay away. You need to make that clear to her in an appropriate way. That is the problem. The moment we allow someone in who has no child, it becomes difficult to draw the line. Where we need to make exceptions is in the Anthroposophical Society, or we simply leave it as it is.

A teacher: That has been impossible to do.

Dr. Steiner: The exceptions should perhaps only be for once or twice, but they grow.

A teacher: It should not be strictly a school affair. It is separate from the school.

Dr. Steiner: We hold the Sunday services within the context of the school. They are a part of the school in just the same way as, for instance, a class for a particular craft would be. That would also be something special that would be within the school, but not a part of the school. We can do things only in that way, otherwise we will have all these problems. I was recently asked if we could arrange to have a Sunday service in H. for their anthroposophical youth.

At the present, when we are under attack from every direction, that is total nonsense. There are already such areas of attack, such as

when Mr. L. stands up and conducts a service for the anthroposophical children. He has already received permission to observe our service. I would certainly deny any association with a Sunday service outside the school. It only makes sense if there are a number of children receiving religious instruction from an anthroposophical basis and there is a Sunday service in our school for these children. Thus, we would never admit someone from outside the school.

A teacher: Then we should leave it that way.

Dr. Steiner: We could leave things that way, but there are exceptions. It is difficult to understand how we could turn someone away when we say that Mrs. G. said they could come.

Then we would have to turn away Mr. Leinhas, but he is a member of the Waldorf School Association. Eventually this will become a kind of right and will include everything connected to the school in any way.

A teacher: Can we include the wives of faculty members?

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we cannot admit them. If they have no children, they also have no right to it.

A teacher reports about the deportment lessons. An attempt was made to teach the children a soul diet. The children brought all kinds of gossip into school.

Dr. Steiner: It is unavoidable that the anthroposophical children hear things at home. That is not dangerous as long as the parents are reasonable. The healthy attitude of the parents will keep the children from becoming too wild, even though those things may go in deeply. The things we have often had to struggle against, such as those you mentioned about O.R. may arise because the parents talk about silly things.

You will have noticed that the instruction is bearing fruit. I would mention that particularly in critical cases, you have had good success with stories that have a particular moral. If you are certain

a child has a specific kind of misbehavior, then you can think of a story in which that type of misbehavior becomes absurd. Even with very young children, you can rid them of their greed for sweets and such if the mother tells a story that makes that behavior absurd. If you think of something along the lines of the dog who goes over the bridge with meat in his mouth, that strongly affects the child and has a lasting effect.55 That is particularly true if you allow some time to go by between the misbehavior and telling the story. Generally, you can achieve more when the child has slept, and you return to the subject the next day. To take up the behavior immediately after it occurred is the worst thing. That sounds very theosophical, but it is also quite true.

It would also be a good idea if we, as the entire faculty, could take up individual children, or groups of children, who are a source of concern and speak about them. That seems to me to be something very desirable. It requires only that we give some interest to it.

This morning I asked about P.I. He has disappeared. You remember that his father had told me certain complaints he had.

It would be a good idea if we could compare what is happening with the boy to what the father is complaining about. The father appears to be a rather useless complainer, always blaming things. I will talk with the boy. It seems to me that the father always complains and picks up small things that bother the boy. Then he expands them into fantasies so that the boy does things the father suggests. The boy certainly does not know what he wants to do.

That is a major problem in every school because it is so difficult to keep everything under control. Precisely in such questions, we

55 . This refers to one of Aesop’s fables. A dog carrying a piece of meat in its mouth crosses a bridge and sees its reflection in the water. The dog thinks it is another dog with a larger piece of meat and snaps at it, thus allowing its own meat to fall into the water to be swept away. As a result, the dog then had none.

must have complete clarity within the faculty about the individual students.

Some things are very interesting when you look at the statistics in detail. I have looked at all the classes. It is striking to me that there are very few children lacking in talent and also few who are gifted, but there are a large number of average children. One sign of that is that they are all making good progress. I always want to differentiate between progress as such and the content of the progress. It is possible that some things have not gone forward, but the tempo is good.

In the fourth grade, there are actually only two slow children and three who are not really moving along. However, the others, at least according to their writing, are sufficiently talented children.

It is possible that there may be a number of pranksters, but those whom we have called such are actually gifted pranksters. That certainly hits the nail on the head.

All that relates to something else. When we raise the general level of morality, then things will even out. A characteristic of the Waldorf School students is that they are terribly jealous about their teachers. They only like their own teacher, and that is the one who does things right. That is certainly the case. But, on the other hand, although that has its good side, it also has a darker side. The main thing is not to pay too much attention to it. You shouldn’t feel flattered when you hear such things. That is readily apparent during class when Mr. A. is no longer a human being. The children see him almost as a saint.

Why shouldn’t the children laugh? That is more in keeping with the school. If you know anything, you will know the most important people were pranksters. If you connect that with life, you will see it has another aspect.

It would be good if they were not so loud. The fourth grade is terribly loud. But, we should not take these things so seriously.

Morally, it is very significant if you have changed a child’s obtrusive characteristic. For instance, if you can achieve that the fourth grade

is not so loud, or if you can break B.Ch.’s habit of throwing his school bag ahead of him. If you can change such an obvious characteristic, regardless of whether you view that as good or bad behavior. It has great moral significance if you can break the boys in the fourth grade from all that terrible yelling. I would say it is a question of general didactic efficiency, how far the speaking in chorus goes. If you develop it too little, the social attitude suffers.

That is formed through speaking in chorus. If you go too far, the capacity to comprehend will suffer because that has a strongly suggestive force. When they speak as a group, the children will be able to do things they otherwise have no idea of. It is the same as with a mob in the street. The younger they are, the more they can fool you. It is a good idea to randomly request them to do the same thing again individually, so that each has to pay attention to what the other says. When you are telling a story, you can give some sentences and then let the children continue. You should do things I have done, for instance, when I said, “You there, in the middle row at the left end, continue on,” “You there in the corner, continue,” so that they have to pay attention and that you can make the children move along with you. Speaking in chorus too much leads to laziness. The tendency to shout in music confirms that.

Particularly in the fourth grade, you should pay attention to the intangibles. I am speaking of the very real intangibles that exist in the tension within the entire class. For example, there is the ratio between the number of girls and boys. I don’t mean you have to change that. You need to take life as it is, but you should at least try to pay some attention to such things. If I am not mistaken, in the fourth grade there is the highest ratio of boys to girls. It occurs to me that the physiognomy of the class is related to the ratio of boys to girls. In Miss Lang’s case, the situation is different. You should pay attention to such things. In Miss Lang’s class, there are significantly fewer boys than girls. Today, there were certainly twice as many boys in the fourth grade, twenty-five boys and

eleven girls. In the sixth grade, there are twelve boys and nineteen girls. That is something you should certainly pay attention to, don’t you agree? The fifth grade is interesting for its balance.

Today there were twenty-five to twenty-five. ( Speaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) Today was certainly a good opportunity, because you had brought some very interesting material to the class. That is the proper way to bring anthroposophy. Such things are what we should pay attention to.

A teacher: I believe I have perceived a relationship between the phlegmatic children and a deep voice, the sanguine children and a middle tone, and a higher voice with the cholerics. Is that correct?

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly true with the first two. The question regarding the higher voices is rather interesting. In general, it is true that phlegmatics have lower voices and the melancholic and sanguine children, middle tones. The sanguine children are among the highest voices. The choleric children spread out over all three.

There must be some particular reason. Do you thing that tenors are mostly choleric? Certainly on the stage. The choleric element spreads out everywhere.

A teacher: How can we have such differing opinions about the temperament of a child?

Dr. Steiner: We cannot solve that question mathematically. We can certainly not speak in that way. In judging cases that lie near a boundary, it is possible that one person has one view and another, another view. We do not need to mathematically resolve them. The situation is such that when we see and understand a child in one way or another, we already intend to treat it in a particular way. In the end, the manner of treating something arises from an interaction. Don’t think you should discuss it.

There is a further question about temperaments.

Dr. Steiner: The choleric temperament becomes immediately annoyed by and angry about anything that interrupts its activity.

When it is in a rhythmic experience, it becomes vexed and angry, but it will also become angry if it is involved in another experience and is disturbed. That is because rhythm inwardly connects with all of human nature. It is certainly the case that rhythm is more connected with human nature than anything else and that a strong rhythm lies at the base of cholerics, a rhythm that is usually somewhat defective. We can see that Napoleon was a choleric. In his case, the inner rhythm was compressed. With Napoleon you will find, on the one side, something that tended to grow larger than he grew. He remained a half-pint. His etheric body was larger than his physical body, and thus his organs were so compressed that all rhythmical things were shoved together and continuously disturbed one another. Since such a choleric temperament is based upon a continuous shortening of the rhythm, it lives within itself.

A teacher: Can we say that one sense predominates in such a temperament?

Dr. Steiner: In cholerics, you will probably generally find an abnormally developed sense of balance (Libra) and an external display of that in the ear canal through an autopsy. The experience of rhythm, the sense of balance and sense of movement, the interaction of these, rhythmic experience. In sanguines (Virgo), in connection with the sense of balance and sense of movement, the sense of movement predominates. In the same way, in melancholics (Leo) the sense of life predominates and in phlegmatics (Cancer) the sense of touch predominates physiologically because the touch bodies are embedded in small fat pads. That is physiologically demonstrable.

Now, it is not so that the touch bodies transmit sense impressions. What occurs is a reflex action, just like when you compress a rubber ball and allow it to spring back. The little warts

are there to transmit it to the I, to transmit the impression in the etheric body to the I. That is the case with each of the senses.

A report is given about the eurythmy instruction.

Dr. Steiner: The enthusiasm for eurythmy is somewhat theoretical.

We always have the desire for the Eurythmeum before us, but we do not have enough rooms. If we did more tone eurythmy, we would want to have someone who played the piano. That might be necessary. We have until now done relatively little tone eurythmy. Miss X. started a children’s tone eurythmy group in Dornach and has been very successful with it. One thing we should take note of is that except for those older children who are more talented, the younger children more easily learn eurythmy, that is, they more easily develop their grace through it so that in fact eurythmy has been quite fruitful. With the older children, it is more difficult because they don’t want to get used to properly springing up, but the younger children learn it quite gracefully. It would never occur to people that having the younger children spread their legs is something ugly. It is certainly not ugly, but I am convinced that would never occur to them.

A teacher reports about gymnastics. Some children are cutting the class.

Dr. Steiner: We certainly have to ask if those children are avoiding gymnastics, or if they only want to sneak away to fool around.

A teacher: M.T. is very graceful in eurythmy, but outside he is clumsy.

Dr. Steiner: Just in his case, I can imagine he is avoiding things in order to do something else.

A teacher: He is lazy.

Dr. Steiner: Since he is fooling around so much, he is certainly very active. He is a very good boy.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: In my opinion, it is very good that O.N. copies the writing. You can see that in marriages where the husband often writes like the wife or vice versa.

There is a report about working in the garden and shop class. There are difficulties with some children who are unsocial and lagging and don’t want to help each other.

Dr. Steiner: Are there many? We can hardly do anything else than put all of them together, give them a certain area so they are ashamed when they don’t get anything done. They need something that would be obviously complete so that they will be ashamed of themselves when they finish only a quarter. But not a hint of ambition. What I said does not count upon ambition, but upon shame. We could also form a group that looks at what they have done in the presence of the children and brings some dissatisfaction to expression. I think that if Mrs. Molt and Mr.

Hahn were called upon to look at what he did, then M.T. would certainly decide to work in order not to cause any words of displeasure. Another method would be that you take those children and keep them close to you during class, but that is difficult to do. We must make them feel ashamed when they do not finish. I would not arouse the feeling of ambition, but of shame.

A teacher asks if it might be possible to form a bookbinding shop.56

Dr. Steiner: I am not certain if that is consistent with the school.

Bookbinding is something normally contained in the curriculum for the continuing education school. We could, however, try binding. Is there someone here who could take up such a course for the continuing education school? One or two perhaps, since we can certainly develop bookbinding as an artistic craft. We had

56 . This was made for the eleventh grade class in 1922.

no transition from those beautiful old volumes, which are slowly disappearing, to these monstrous modern volumes. The things made now are mostly just trash. It is always intriguing to accomplish something through artistic craft. What are made today are really not books. We should make books again. That is something that falls within the realm of the crafts in the continuing education school.

As such, it is a simple job, but we certainly could accomplish something. Of course, we will need to master the technique. That would give the children something to improve upon. I mean, for instance, when it comes to gold leafing, there is certainly much that can be improved. What they need to learn is relatively simple, though. It is simply practice.

A teacher: I am not certain I could take that over.

Dr. Steiner: This is a question we must discuss in connection with the continuing education school.

A teacher: Should I give a few lessons in my class?

Dr. Steiner: Then we would come into the question of subject teachers. That is something we must avoid as long as we can. As long as someone is there who can do it properly, then that will do.

A teacher: Two periods a week for handwork are not enough. Could we increase the number of hours?

Dr. Steiner: I notice that there is considerable ability in the handwork class. As soon as the Waldorf School Association provides us with many millions, we will be able to have many rooms and employ many teachers. Now we can hardly add more work time. We must accomplish everything else by dividing classes. Two hours per week should be sufficient. We must divide the classes and then that is only one hour.

A teacher: Should we take the boys and girls separately?

Dr. Steiner: I would not do that. I would prefer to begin by dividing the whole class into two halves. You let the boys do things other than knit in handwork, don’t you? The girls, of course, also.

Nevertheless, I would not do it. I would not begin separating the boys and the girls. We need to find another solution.

A teacher: Should the preschool be like a kindergarten?

Dr. Steiner: The children have not started school yet. We cannot begin teaching them any subjects. You should occupy them with play. Certainly, they should play games. You can also tell stories in such a way that you are not teaching. But, definitely do not make any scholastic demands. Don’t expect them to be able to retell everything. I don’t think there is any need for an actual teaching goal there. We need to try to determine how we can best occupy the children. A teaching goal is not necessary. What you would do is play games, tell stories, and solve little riddles.

I would also not pedantically limit things. I would keep the children there until the parents pick them up. If possible, we could have them the whole day. If that is possible, why not? You could also try some eurythmy with them, but don’t spoil them. They shouldn’t be spoiled by anything else, either. As I said, the main thing is that you mother the children. Don’t be frivolous with them. You would not want to do anything academic with them.

You can essentially do what you want.

In playing, the children show the same form as they will when they find their way into life. Children who play slowly will also be slow at the age of twenty and think slowly about all their experiences. Children who are superficial in play will also be superficial later. Children who say that they want to break open their toys to see what they look like inside will later become philosophers. That is the kind of thinking that overcomes the problems of life. In play, you can certainly do very much. You can urge a child who tends to play slowly, to play more quickly. You simply give that child games where some quickness is necessary.

There is a question about speaking in chorus.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that. You can also tell fairy tales.

There are many fairy tales you should not tell to six-year-olds. I don’t mean the sort of things that the Ethical Culture Association wants to eliminate, but the stories that are simply too complicated.

I would not have the little children repeat the tales. However, if they want to tell something themselves, then listen to it. That is something you will have to wait on and see what happens. A teacher asks about student reports.

Dr. Steiner: We spoke about that already. You will need to emphasize some things, but not pedantically. You should try to have a little bit of personal history at the beginning, and then go into each child individually. For instance, you could write something like, “E. reads well and speaks interestingly,” and such things, so that you create the text yourself. You create a sentence freely written in which you emphasize what is otherwise simply a subject. You may need to speak about all subjects, but perhaps not.

I would print the report form so that it has only the heading, “Independent Waldorf School, Yearly Report for …” and then leave room for you to write.

Each of you will describe a student in your own way. If more than one teacher has had the child, then each should write something. It would, however, be preferable if the various statements were not too contradictory. For example, one of you says, “He reads quite well,” and another says something that supports that. The best is that the class teacher begins the description of the child and the others go from there. It certainly will not do if the class teacher writes, “He is an excellent boy,” and then someone else writes, “He is really a terror.” You will have to put things together.

A teacher asks about the reports from the religion teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Well, they will have to write their two cents worth, also.

We must also include the religion teachers. Here, they will have to control themselves, or they won’t be able to write anything.

A teacher: Do we need to have the parents sign the reports?

Dr. Steiner: I would simply have an introduction that says that those parents who want to have their children return the following year should sign the report. If the children are not returning, then we don’t need to do anything, but if they are, the parents should sign it. We made it through without any midyear reports. Do the parents want a midyear report?

Yes, the children will simply report and bring their report cards.

They will receive them again at the end of the year when the report is already a booklet. It can certainly be a booklet, but perforated.

Suppose at the beginning a child is not very good, then you could write a criticism. Perhaps later the child is better and would want to have the previous report removed. The booklet can be perforated.

Then you can write something that is not praise. You cannot give these two children reports that say their writing was very good, but you could phrase it in a way that describes how well the child writes without criticism. With little M., I would write, “He has not accomplished more than copying simple words. He often adds unnecessary strokes to the letters.” Describe the children.

Another question is asked.

Dr. Steiner: We hold the child back. I would only differentiate between those moving on to the next class, and those we have determined will go into the remedial class if they return. I don’t want to keep children back. In the case of these two children, they came only after Christmas. Now that we have the remedial class, it is possible to place those children who will be unable to meet the goals of the class into the remedial class; for example, those who are slow learners. It is not a good idea to begin failing the

others. We should have held them back when they began school.

It would certainly be preferable not to fail children. I don’t see how we could do that. In your class, there are at most three others who might be held back, aside from those two who we could place in the remedial class. For now, you will have to bring them along by not excessively praising them, but also not criticizing. Simply state that they have not quite reached the goals of the class. It was our responsibility to place the children in the proper classes when they entered the school. It would not be wise to fail them. It is important that we discuss H. and how we will treat her. We had to put her in the third grade; after we promised that, we had to put her there. In general, we should not keep the children the entire year, especially those who come from other schools, and then let them fail. But, now they are in this situation. The children we need to carry along are really not so bad, but we should never put a child into a class that is too advanced.

A teacher: How should we place children from other schools?

Should we go according to their age, or is there some other way?

Dr. Steiner: In the future, when the children come at the age of six and go through all the grades, then this will no longer happen. For now, we must attempt to put the children in the grade that is appropriate for them, both according to their age and to their ability.

A teacher asks if a child can be placed in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t think that is possible. Particularly in the first grade you should not go too far in separating children into the remedial class. I have seen the child, and you are right. But, on the other hand, not so very much is lost if a child still writes poorly in the first grade. If we can do it, it would be very good for all of the

children like that if we could do the exercises I discussed previously with you.57

If you have her do something like this ( Dr. Steiner indicates an exercise) : Reach your right hand over your head and grasp your left ear. Or perhaps you could have her draw things like a spiral going inward, a spiral going to the right, and another to the left. Then she will gain much. You need exercises that cause the children to enter more into thinking.

Then we have writing. There are some who write very poorly, and quite a number who are really first class. The children will not improve much when you want to make them learn to write better by improving their writing. You need to improve their dexterity; then they will learn to write better.

I don’t think you will be able to accomplish much with your efforts at improving bad handwriting simply by improving the writing. You should attempt to make the children better in form drawing. If they would learn to play the piano, their writing would improve. It is certainly a truism that this really poor handwriting first started when children’s toys became so extraordinarily materialistic. It is terrible that such a large number of toys are construction sets. They really are not toys at all because they are atomistic. If a child has a simple forge, then the child should learn to use it. I wish that children had toys that moved. This is all contained in Education of the Child. The toys today are terrible, and for that reason the children learn no dexterity and write poorly.

It would be enough, though we can’t do this at school, if we had those children who write poorly with their hands, draw simple forms with their feet.58 That has an effect upon the hand. They could draw small circles or semicircles or triangles with their feet.

They should put a pencil between their toes and draw circles. That is something that is not easy to do, but very interesting. It is

57 . See the meeting of December 23, 1919.

58 . Steiner tells how he did this as a child in a lecture of April 12, 1924, GA 353.

difficult to learn, but interesting to do. I think it would be interesting also to have them hold a stick with their toes and make figures in the sand outside. That has a strong effect upon the hands. You could have children pick up a handkerchief with their feet, rather than with their hands. That also has a strong effect.

Now, I wouldn’t suggest that they should eat with their feet. You really shouldn’t do this with everything. You should try to work indirectly upon improving handwriting, developing dexterity in drawing and making forms. Try to have them draw complicated symmetrical forms. ( Speaking to Mr. Baumann) Giving them a beat is good for developing reasoned and logical forms.

A teacher asks about writing with the left hand.

Dr. Steiner: In general, you will find that those children who have spiritual tendencies can write without difficulty as they will, leftor right-handed. Children who are materialistically oriented will become addled by writing with both hands. There is a reason for right-handedness. In this materialistic age, children who are lefthanded will become idiotic if they alternately use both hands.

That is a very questionable thing to do in those circumstances that involve reasoning, but there is no problem in drawing. You can allow them to draw with either hand.

A teacher asks if they can tell fairy tales where bloody things occur.

Dr. Steiner: If the intent of the fairy tale is that the blood portrays blood, then that is inartistic. The significant point in a fairy tale is whether it is tasteful or not. No harm is done if there is blood in it. I once mentioned to a mother that if she absolutely avoided mentioning blood when she told her children fairy tales, they would become too tender. Later, they would faint when seeing a drop of blood. That is a deficiency in life. You shouldn’t make children incapable of facing life by setting up such a rule.

A teacher asks about L.G. in the third grade. She is nervous and stutters.

Dr. Steiner: It would help if you made up some exercises. I am uncertain whether we have any sentence exercises with k and p.59You should have her do those and walk at the same time, and then she would also be able to say those sentences. It would also be a good idea for her to do k and p in eurythmy. However, don’t take such things too seriously because they usually disappear later in life.

A teacher asks about E.M. in the fifth grade, who also stutters.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, didn’t you present her to me before? I must have seen her. You will need to know what the problem is, whether it is organic or lying in the soul. It could be either. If it is a problem in the soul, then you could have her do specially formulated sentences. If it is an organic problem, then you would need to do something else. I will need to take a look at her tomorrow.

A teacher asks about A.W. in the fifth grade. He adds titles to his name and underlines “I.”

Dr. Steiner: That is a criminal type. He might become a forger. He has a clear tendency toward criminality. He can write much better.

Clearly a criminal type. You will need to undertake a corrective action with his soul. You will have to force him to do three ( not recorded), one after the other. I will take a look at him tomorrow.

His father is infantile.

A teacher asks about a closing ceremony.

Dr. Steiner: I would make the closing ceremony such that, assuming I will be there, I would speak, then Mr. Molt, and then all of the teachers. We should make a kind of symphony of what we have to say to the children. There should be no student presentations.

They can do that in the last monthly festival. We could review the past school year and then look toward a summer vacation that will

59 . This refers to the exercises discussed on August 26, 1919, in GA 295.

awaken hope, then give a preview of the next school year. That is what I think.

A teacher mentions a woman who intends to make a film about the Waldorf School and threefolding.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t have any idea what to do here. If, for example, someone wants to photograph the buildings, that will certainly hurt nothing. There is nothing wrong with that. If she wants to make a film publicizing the Waldorf School, we would have nothing against showing that publicly, since it is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is that the Waldorf School be properly run. We are not responsible for what she photographs anymore than you are responsible for what occurs if you are walking along the street and someone offers you a ride. We can tell her we will do what we can do, but there is nothing we can do. She may want to photograph the eurythmy lessons. I did that in Dornach, but it was not very good. That is a technical question. I don’t think much will come of it. She wants to film the threefolding? I was thinking, why shouldn’t the film contrast something good with something bad? We certainly can have no influence if she creates a scene in the film where two people speak about the Waldorf School, but we do not need to let her into the classrooms. She can certainly not demand that we allow her to photograph anything more than a public eurythmy performance by the children. Since she wants to publicize eurythmy, that would be her contribution to the members’ work. It is rather senseless if she wants to film the classes. She could film any school, there is nothing particular to see. She could, for example, record that terrible yelling in the fourth grade.

It would certainly not be proper to suppress offhandedly, due to false modesty, somebody who wants to publicize threefolding and the school. It would be better if we could hinder everything that is tasteless, but, due to false modesty, I would be hesitant to hinder anything. We have much interest in making the school as

perfect as possible, but there is certainly nothing to be gained by preventing someone from photographing it. If she had set up and filmed my lecture, what could I have done against that?

A question is asked regarding the trip to Dornach for the First Class of the Anthroposophical University of Spiritual Science (Sept. 26–Oct.

16, 1920).

Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, those things are not so easy. We want to have a course this fall where various people present lectures. We have invited Stein and Stockmeyer, and it would, of course, have been nice if many could come. But, finding lodging in Dornach is just as difficult as in Stuttgart. It is not so easy to invite people, the exchange problems, and so forth.60 It is, however, possible, if the exchange problems are resolved by then, that we could find room for a number of people. My desire is that everyone coming from the Entente will pay for two others coming from Central Europe.61However, that does not need to be too cozy. We could do it as we did for the physicians’ course, that would be possible.62

However, you need to remember that we don’t have rich people in Dornach and Basel.

A teacher remarks that there are also difficulties in obtaining a visa.

Dr. Steiner: Generally, when people travel to Switzerland for vacation, they can obtain a visa. You only need to be careful that you are not going for another reason. You cannot travel in Switzerland in order to earn money. We are treated terribly there.

Now they allow people to move there so that they will pay taxes.

Otherwise, you cannot. We are being hit very hard. That is one of the major problems we have with the Goetheanum. If there is not

60 . There was runaway inflation in Germany at this time.

61 . The Entente was formed by England and France and represented the winning side of World War I. — TRANS.

62 . See Spiritual Science and Medicine.

another attitude toward the Goetheanum, people outside Switzerland will soon be unable to visit it.

There was some discussion about reproductions of the paintings in the cupola of the Goetheanum.

Dr. Steiner: What was painted in color in the cupola needs to be understood from the colors. If you reproduced it photographically, you could achieve something only if you enlarged it to the same size as in the cupola. It is just not something we can reproduce simply. The less the pictures correspond to those in the cupola, the better it is. Black and white only hints at something. It cries for color. I would never agree with those inartistic reproductions.

They are only surrogates. I do not want to have any color photographs of the cupola paintings. The reproductions should not stand by themselves. I want to handle that so that what is not important is what is given.

It is the same with the glass windows. If you attempted to achieve something through reproductions, I would be against it.

You should not attempt to reproduce such things exactly. It is not desirable that you reproduce a piece of music through some deceptively imitative phonograph record. I do not want that. I do not want to have a modern, technical human being. The way these paintings appear in the reproductions never reproduces them. The reproductions contain only what is novel, not what is important.

You then have a feeling that this or that color must be there. That reminds me of something you can find in The Education of the Child—namely that you should not give children beautifully made dolls, but only those made from a handkerchief.

Wednesday, June 23, 1920, 2:45–5:00 p.m.

A teacher asks if the school should set up a public first-aid station since bandages and so forth would then be cheaper.63

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

I had thought that there would be a number of questions. As I already said, we have generally made great progress. In the first year it was apparent that you struggled with the subject matter, but you made progress in all areas. What is important though, is what kind of progress you made and that in the coming years we work more with those ideas that are consistent with and related to the Waldorf School. I believe that progress lies in what the students have learned, as well as what the teachers have slowly discovered about how to treat the students. Everything has progressed, even the pranksters. The pranksters have become strong pranksters, but that doesn’t hurt anything. That is simply a side effect. Many have

63 . Such a room was later made for Dr. Kolisko.

even become better behaved, more cultivated, more intellectual.

That is very good and hurts nothing.

In my opinion, we must put more value upon psychology in the future. We must work with psychology. You should not understand that as abstractly or theoretically as it may appear. That might look as though we wanted to analyze the children. When we become

accustomed

to

understanding

the

children

psychologically, we will slowly find a relationship to them that results purely from our activity. That understanding of the children will not remain as a mere recognition, but will become another relationship if you really try to understand them. There is still much we need to catch up on in creating a proper relationship to the children. We need to be clear that when so much depends upon personal activities, as it does here, an intensive analytical understanding of the children is necessary. Then things that have occurred in the past will no longer happen.

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

Miss Lang showed me a prankster, B.N.64 She had cried terribly, but today she skipped school again. That is interesting, and we will have to study it. I cannot promise she will keep her word. It may last for years. I can imagine that she spent some time with tightrope walkers; that is certainly a reason for being interested in her, isn’t it?

If you create expectations about what a child is, you can easily define things. However, you can achieve a genuine psychological

64 . Expelled in October 1920.

understanding of a child only through intense study. One of my thoughts is that we should consider learning to understand the children as one of the main things in the first year. We should never assume they must be one way or another.

There is something else that strongly disturbs me in nearly all classes. We should continually strive to integrate anthroposophy organically in the instruction. That truly enlivens the children’s strengths. Just the way that you, Dr. von Heydebrand, have done in anthropology and you, Dr. Stein, have done in history.65 That is something that is present intuitively with many of you. You cannot do eurythmy without Anthroposophy. You need to try to bring Anthroposophy into your teaching without teaching anything theoretical.

In my opinion, you include a great deal of Anthroposophy when you attempt, and that is the ideal, to bring what we call rhythm into your work. For instance, when you try to connect what the students learn in music, singing, and eurythmy with handwork.

That has an extremely positive effect on the children. I would recommend that you read Karl Bücher’s book Work and Rhythm. 66

We should have this book. All work is based upon musical work, threshing, blacksmithing, plastering. Today, you hardly hear that anymore. But if you had gone out into the country at an earlier time and listened to the threshing, you would have heard the flails swinging in rhythm. I think we can bring that into our work. That is what I mean when I talk about bringing the spirit into it. You will find that principle in Work and Rhythm, even though he states it rather pedantically.

Of course, I am also carrying the question about the end of school, about the closing ceremony. I definitely think it should include a certain amount of festivities. Today is the twenty-third, and I will not be able to attend. I simply cannot be there, though I

65 . Steiner’s lecture on July 29, 1920; no record available.

66 . Karl Bücher (1847–1930), economist. Arbeit und Rhythmus.

surely would like to be. We need to begin the summer holidays on time. In my opinion, the teachers have done enough, and they will collapse otherwise. I would really like to be at the closing ceremony.

Each teacher should give a short speech. Perhaps Mr. Baumann would be kind enough to take care of the musical part. Perhaps you could write something that could be presented through eurythmy, not a normal eurythmy presentation, but something that represents the close of school.67 It would be really wonderful if we could do that. Begin with a eurythmy presentation accompanied by music. Then go on into a musical presentation alone and close with eurythmy again. I would suggest your composition be connected with the closing of school. Perhaps Miss Röhrle could do something with two or three of the older girls. Then we must have something, and this is very important to me, that is a kind of speech about life, to let the children go and to receive them again.

Something that has a connection with the children’s leaving school and their return.

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

Dr. Steiner: You haven’t seen that? Sometimes when the weather is too hot, you can let the children go. I don’t think it would be right to close earlier, though. I am not in favor of letting the children go as long as we can keep them here. We let them go earlier than we really should. We can, of course, make it easier for the children, but only when it is too warm. It would almost be better if we kept them and took them some place, but stayed with them. Don’t you think it is better when the children go to kindergarten. The longer we have them, the better it is. In that way, we can have the children

67 . Paul Baumann wrote a poem and the music for it (three voices with piano accompaniment).

who do not yet go to school. Right now we can generally take the children only when they begin elementary school. When the age of imitation ends, then we can begin. It would be nice if we could bring something into the child’s education during the first seven years. We will have to have something for the earlier years, later is less important.

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

How should we handle those children who arrive too late? I had to wait today as I came into the school. Three girls were coming in. They simply went in, not the least disturbed that they were late.

The person I was walking with said to me, “It seems quite all right with them that they are late.” So, what do we do with the children who come late?

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

Dr. Steiner: Then we run the danger that they don’t come at all. We must avoid under all circumstances giving them a punishment we cannot carry out. We may never place ourselves in a situation where we may have to relent in a disciplinary decision. If we say that a child must come earlier, then we must enforce that. We must order the child to come earlier. The girls today were in the seventh or eighth grade. We lose all control the minute we look away. We

will find ourselves on a downward path and will continue to slide.

With punishment, we cannot relent. It is better to let it go. Under certain circumstances, it can lead to the opposite of what we want, with the children forming a group among themselves and saying, “Today I come late, tomorrow, you.” I don’t think that would work, because it would make us somewhat laughable. Of course, it’s just laziness. Having the children come earlier is not so good; it would be better if they stayed a quarter of an hour longer. That is something the children do not like.

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

We could have the sheds built in the shop class.

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

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have the children put the teacher in the pen. It is important, though, that we differentiate in such things. I would not punish the children as severely in winter as in summer.

The moment the children notice there is some reason for the disciplinary action, they will agree to it. In the winter, we could discipline them less intensively and have them stand only twice as long. We need to stir them up. There are some who are inattentive.

The industrious children will hardly come too late.

A teacher asks about the windows.

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

Concerning F.R. in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: That is a very difficult case. If he leaves school, that will be a real problem, something not particularly desirable. On the other hand, he should not suffer. We should not serve our school on a silver platter to the school he next attends. There will certainly be teachers there who will happily hear that someone comes to them saying he could not stand it here. Tomorrow, I will take a look to see what we can do. This is a very difficult situation. Here, we have the question of whether to try a parallel class. Right now, there is hardly anything else we can do other than place him in the previous or the following grade. I definitely do not want him in the previous class, so he would then go in your class in the next higher grade. I don’t think there is any other solution, but that will cause considerable upset with the children. We will need to do it in such a way that it appears to be an exception. We will have to think about how we will handle this. It would be a bad story if people knew we did this for personal reasons. Of course, we also run the danger that the children will say, “Well, he got out, we could also try.” What should we do with such a boy though, if we do not want to send him away? Perhaps I will visit the class tomorrow. He is actually not the problem. That is something he inherited, and it has a continuous effect upon him. It is something in the family. It would be best if we could help him past that hurdle. Perhaps he might even become a really good person. He is certainly enthusiastic about eurythmy and singing, he simply does not want the normal class instruction. He finds it horrible. Then there are other things that people take too seriously. He took five marks, but only in fun. You can reach him, he just needs a certain kind of objective treatment because everything at home is so subjective. We have all tried that. His father is a person like the

teacher who says when a child is excited, “I will teach you what being relaxed is, I’ll show you what relaxed is.” That is how his father is.68

We cannot allow him to remain in the fourth grade. We would run the danger that he would jump overboard, and that would certainly not be pleasant. I still recall a very horrible situation. At that time, I was at an engineering school.69 The janitor’s son was very ambitious. A teacher who was very hot tempered grabbed him by the scruff and walloped him. The boy left the class. He knew from his father where the cyanide was; he took it and poisoned himself. After that, the teacher became red when someone left the class during the period. ( Speaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) I only mention all this because he will be coming to you in the fifth grade.

He does not belong in the fourth grade. We made an error there.

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

A teacher asks about lace making and embroidery.

Dr. Steiner: That work takes a great deal of time. These things are always done under the most horrible situations so that nearly all the people who do them become ill. Brussels lace is a terrible thing.

I would not bring that in. The things you are now doing in handwork are very beautiful. We need to be very careful about handwork. Today, I saw a girl sewing without a thimble.

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

Dr. Steiner: We can take the day off. “Peter and Paul is always quite lazy.”70

68 . This boy was apparently beaten at home and a continual problem at school.

He is discussed often by the faculty during his ninth-and tenth-grade years.— TRANS.

69 . From 1872 until 1879, Steiner attended a school in Vienna-Neustadt.

70 . There is a German children’s verse: Ich bin Peter, du bist Paul / Ich bin fleißig, du bist faul (I am Peter, you are Paul / I am hard working, you are lazy). In southern

The following was also noted.

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

Connection between eurythmy and the formation of teeth.

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

Germany and Austria, the verse is transformed to: Peter und Paul, das is faul (Peter and Paul, that is lazy). The first may become a taunt when someone is lagging behind; the second is a rhyme about saints’ day, June 29. —TRANS.

Saturday, July 24, 1920, 6:00 p.m.

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

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

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

I would like to continue with what I briefly touched this morning.71 I said that it was particularly valuable at this important moment in human evolution to believe we need to use all our deeds and being in working toward the intent of the Waldorf School. I spoke of this at the beginning of the pedagogical course in Basel.72 At that time, I said that many teachers have done an enormous amount of work toward providing principles of education, and it is not our task as anthroposophists to replace everything people such as Pestalozzi or Fröbel right up through Diesterung and Dittes have done. I mentioned that the abstract foundations that have come down from the great pedagogues of the nineteenth century will certainly stand up to a didactic pedagogical critique and that people can justifiably criticize us when we speak of a renewal of pedagogy.

71 . At the school’s closing ceremony, July 24, 1920. See Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School.

72 . Steiner’s lecture of April 20, 1920 in GA 301.

In reality, something quite different concerns us. If you read Pestalozzi, or Fröbel’s works, if you read from Herbart right up to Dittes, you will find they speak of many beautiful things in regard to pedagogy. 73 However, if you look deeply at what the educational system does, if you look into what actually goes on in the Pestalozzi schools, you will recognize that the spirit active there does not correspond to those principles you can accept abstractly. You need only look at the critical remarks Fröbel wrote about the Pestalozzi schools. If you follow the development of education in the nineteenth century, you will see that, in spite of the fact that people often thought properly, the proper thing was not taken up, was not done. Why is that? There can be but one answer. Regardless of which realm of culture you look at, it is always the same. Namely, the entire nineteenth century was under the influence of materialism. If we formulate educational principles from our anthroposophical standpoint, they can sound identical to what the nineteenth-century pedagogues said. We must, therefore, mean it differently. We speak from the perspective of the spirit, whereas they spoke from the overwhelming impulse of the materialistic worldview. Regardless of how idealistic those things may sound, those thoughts nevertheless arise from the position of materialism. It is not important that we discover some new abstraction, but that we find a new spirit.

Today, I want to present you with something I have recently said repeatedly in various places, something we must take into account in our times.74 Modern people think, when you speak of materialism, that it is a false view of the world, that we lay it aside because it is not right. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. The

73 . Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, 1746–1827; Friedrich Fröbel, 1782–1852; Adolf Diesterweg, 1790–1866; Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841; Friedrich Dittes, 1829–1896.

74 . See Steiner’s lectures on July 17 and 18, 1920, in GA 198.

human being is a being of soul and spirit and also a physical, bodily being.

But, the physical body is a true reflection of the spirit and soul, to the extent that we live between birth and death. When people are as blinded by materialistic thoughts as they became during the nineteenth century and right into the present, the physical body becomes a copy of the spirit and soul living in materialistic impulses. In that case, it is not incorrect to say that the brain thinks.

It is then, in fact, correct. By being firmly enmeshed in materialism, we have people who not only think poorly about the body, soul, and spirit, but people who think materially and feel materially.

What that means is that materialism causes the human being to become a thinking automaton, that the human being then becomes something that thinks, feels, and wills physically. The task of Anthroposophy is not simply to replace a false view of the world with a correct one. That is a purely theoretical requirement. The nature of Anthroposophy is to strive not only toward another idea, but toward other deeds, namely, to tear the spirit and soul from the physical body. The task is to raise the spiritsoul into the realm of the spiritual, so that the human being is no longer a thinking and feeling automaton. I will say more about this tomorrow in my lecture, but human beings are in danger of losing their spiritsoul.75What exists today in the physical as an impression of the spiritsoul, exists because so many people think that way, because the spiritsoul is asleep. The human being is thus in danger of drifting into the Ahrimanic world, in which case the spiritsoul will evaporate into the cosmos. We live in a time when people face the danger of losing their souls to materialistic impulses. That is a very serious matter. We now stand confronted with that fact. That fact is actually the secret that will become increasingly apparent, and out of which we can act fruitfully. Such things as the pedagogy of the Waldorf School can arise from a recognition that humanity

75 . See Steiner’s lecture of July 25, 1920, in GA 197.

must turn toward spiritual activity, and not simply from a change in theory. We should work out of that spirit.

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

The school was founded out of the echoes of our work in Stuttgart since April of 1919. Since that time, so many wonderful things have occurred. Nevertheless, we should not forget that what we intended in forming the Cultural Commission last year completely fell in the water. You can see why it failed by looking at the terrible scandals at the Goetheanum.76 The obvious demise of German cultural life reveals itself as a symptom through the things occurring at the Goetheanum. We will now have to use our strength very differently than we did before in order to counter that demise. That cannot, of course, occur only at the Waldorf School. Through the understanding that the Waldorf teachers have shown, through their dedication to their work, they are now called upon to act in a general anthroposophical cultural direction.

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

76 . See Steiner’s lecture of June 5, 1920, “Die Wahrheit über die Anthroposophie und deren Verteidigung wider die Unwahrheit” (The truth about Anthroposophy and a defense against untruth) in Die Hetze gegen das Goetheanum (Attacks against the Goetheanum), GA 250f, not published in English.

Those people who make themselves more materialistic, who lose their souls so that civilization will become materialistic, could still be saved today if what we have here in the spirit of the Waldorf School spreads out into the world.

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

A few months ago someone came to me who wanted to found something similar to the Waldorf School in France, and asked if I could give some advice. She wanted to know if she could observe in the Waldorf School. I told her I could recognize what she wants to form in Paris as being in the spirit of the Waldorf School only if they formed the school in exactly the same way that we formed the Waldorf School.77 Thus, these friends in France would first have to be ready to call me there to hold a course, and they would also need to declare that their school arose from the same spirit.

Otherwise, I would have to strictly deny that it was comparable.

You should not think that such answers are egotistical. You need to be clear that we will not move forward if we do not stand upon a firm anthroposophical viewpoint, that is, if we do not keep ourselves free from desires for compromise. If we take a clearly delineated standpoint, then it is not impossible that we would ourselves form a Waldorf school in Paris. What is important is that we cannot be moved to make any compromises. Today, you get

77 . The Paris school was in fact established only after World War II.

the furthest if you have a clearly spoken standpoint. You can be outwardly conciliatory, but inwardly what is important is that you have basic principles, and that you stand by them. For that, you will need the strength to look at things in a radical way and not give in to a tendency for compromise. As you know, at least in the spirit of our endeavor, we have tried during this first year to work from such a firm position. I hope that will become clearer. As teachers in the Waldorf School, you will need to find your way more deeply into the insight of the spirit and to find a way of putting all compromises aside. It will be impossible for us to avoid all kinds of people from outside the school who want to have a voice in school matters. As long as we do not give up any of the necessary perspective we must have in our feelings, then any concurrence from other pedagogical streams concerning what happens in the Waldorf School will cause us to be sad rather than happy. When those people working in modern pedagogy praise us, we must think there is something wrong with what we are doing.

We do not need to immediately throw out anyone who praises us, but we do need to be clear that we should carefully consider that we may not be doing something properly if those working in today’s educational system praise us. That must be our basic conviction.

To the extent that I feel in a very living way what it means to you to have devoted your entire person to work of the Waldorf School, I would like to say something more. As Waldorf teachers, we must be true anthroposophists in the deepest sense of the word in our innermost feeling. We must be serious about an idea often mentioned as a foundation of Anthroposophy, one of importance for us. We should be aware that we came down from the spiritual worlds into the physical world at a particular time. Those we meet as children came later and, therefore, experienced the spiritual world for a time after we were already in the physical world. There is something very warming, something that strongly affects the soul, when you see a child as a being who has brought something

from the spiritual world that you could not experience because you are older. Being older has a much different meaning for us. In each child, we greet a kind of emissary bringing things from the spiritual world that we could not experience.

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

Such things become practical when we say a child came down from the spiritual world later than we did. From the child’s life before me, I can perceive what happened in the spiritual world after I left. To carry such a living inner feeling is a genuine meditation for teachers, one of tremendous value and significance.

By enlivening anthroposophical nature in such a specific way, we will truly be teachers working from the anthroposophical spirit.

The best we can develop in Anthroposophy is not what the lazy people of the world want to coax out of us. The best is what develops in your feelings and in your souls as the spirit of the Waldorf School. During this first year, that spirit has truly come alive in your souls. In the future, we will need to direct our efforts

toward taking care of that spirit. That is what I wanted to say to you this morning.

We want to undertake all individual activities in that spirit. I am really very sorry that I could only come here today, and that I could not have been here for the preparation of the children’s reports.78

We must further develop what I said about the practical and pedagogical aspects of psychology. I can see how difficult it was for you to develop that psychology as a strength. We will continue to try because now that we have decided to be Waldorf teachers, something that arose from a cosmic impulse entering world history, out of that same impulse, we want to remain so.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: That is an important question. We also need to take into account that the solution will not be very easy. If you came to particular impressions during your discussion about writing the school reports, then perhaps we need to go into those in detail.

The question takes on a quite different aspect depending upon whether the situation concerns only some individuals, or whether a large number of the students are not in the proper class. We need to have an idea of how many children we should not move into the next grade, but keep in the lower grade. We need to go into detail about the numbers involved. Of course, a large redistribution of the children will reflect the inadequacy of our considerations at the beginning of school when we placed children

78 . After the first year, all student reports were discussed by the full faculty.

in classes according to the information presented by their former school. We may need to disavow ourselves of things in that regard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In that regard, could we perhaps go into the question that I heard gave you many headaches. I can certainly imagine how terribly difficult it would be, but we must objectively weigh whether we should form another sixth grade, given all the psychological peculiarities of the present fifth grade. We need to consider whether it might be better to create an additional class.

We would not need to split the class down the middle. We can certainly arrange it so that you, as the present teacher, would have full say. Now, there are fifty-one children, so I think we could arrange it so that you could select your sixth grade class, which would then consist of thirty, and we would move twenty. I would

certainly think that everyone has absolute freedom in that regard.

You should choose fifteen boys and fifteen girls.

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

Dr. Steiner: As you wish. The choice lies entirely with you.

However, it seems we should do it this way since the class was somewhat too large.

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

A teacher: I had A.S.K. in the sixth grade. He is epileptic and had to stay away from school for several months.

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

A teacher: This is a tricky thing. The parents will not understand.

They do not have a very positive attitude. There are always problems with the boys.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I.

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

general, we do not need to make any major changes. We can resolve the cases we have. We do not need a complete revision.

In teaching foreign languages, it will be less difficult because we do not have to divide the children so strictly according to grade.

We should not teach foreign languages so strictly according to grades. Things have developed that way; in general, we do not need to arrange the foreign language classes according to the grades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must form an extra class in foreign languages for such children.79 That is absolutely necessary since otherwise we cannot take children into the upper grades. If only that is possible! We need to do what needs to be done. In general, we can say that in the language classes it may be possible to have older and younger children since the younger children will learn from the older ones, and the older children will move forward by helping the younger ones. We can certainly mix up the ages.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: We cannot increase the number of hours.

79 . This was done as needed.

Why didn’t you present eurythmy as a separate subject in the reports, instead of combining it with music? I see that as a shortcoming.

A teacher: Since I had to teach all of the children, I did not know them well enough individually. I would also propose that we add one more hour for music.

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

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

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

A teacher: One hour.

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

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

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

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

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

An objection is made.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, then, we would have too many hours.

( Turning to Mrs. Baumann) Now you have two hours of eurythmy.

Wasn’t that too much?

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

Dr. Steiner is in agreement with that.

A teacher wants to divide the classes.

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

A teacher: Fifty-six.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we must make two classes of that. For the second grade, we don’t need to consider it. The future fourth grade is also so large, it has over fifty children. There are so many new children. I also thought of giving the youngest children to Miss

Lämmert for singing, as it will be too much for Mr. Baumann. It would also be too much for gymnastics. We have to see how we can work with the faculty we have.

We must also discuss the question of the faculty. The number of new classes is increasing, and we need new teachers. There are now two temporary buildings under construction, which we hope to complete by the beginning of the new school year. If they are ready, we will have just enough room. There may even be enough when we divide the future second and fourth grades since they are both more than fifty children. It will, however, be tight with the rooms. All we can do is keep the number of specialty classrooms down.80 We will have to put this off. We could just make it with the structures we now have. However, we are missing, at least for the time, a room for singing. A room is missing for the kindergarten, and we are also missing the rooms for the additional classes we will have in the following years. We do not have a library or a gymnasium. We lack rooms for the continuation school, but perhaps we can leave the continuation school aside for now. We still need a room for the physician, as we discussed before. We are missing a whole number of things. These are all things that we recently discussed. Perhaps we should try to solve these things by adding an extra floor.

A teacher: We can’t do that.

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

A teacher: The foundation is inadequate.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t understand. What does the architect say? Didn’t he know that already? It is terrible when ideas come up that turn out to be impossible. Of course we can, we are told, and then afterward everything has to be changed. The building code should

80 . This refers to rooms used to teach specialty subjects: art, music, singing, etc.

have been thought about earlier. In Dornach, I would never allow anyone to present a plan if we were not absolutely certain we could complete it. We only lose time with such things. We go around with ideas, and then nothing comes of them. We had counted upon having the eurythmy room upstairs. I mean, we counted upon it. You told me about that in Dornach.

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

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

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

That is something we need to consider carefully. Is there enough money? The main question is whether we have enough money. We need to spend the money, even if the purchase is not entirely necessary. It is there, people have given ten million marks.81 Now everyone wants to do things without risk. This is entirely a question of courage. We must build upon that basis. The spiritual value will certainly come from the school, and not from other things. As a result, we must have the courage to undertake risky projects. However, we should not do more shaky things than we can balance with solid things.

81 . The reference here is to the runaway inflation of postwar Germany. Before the war, the German mark was valued at four to one U.S. dollar. By 1922, it became seven thousand marks to the dollar, and by 1923 it had fallen to four trillion marks to the dollar. The situation was such that, if one’s money wasn’t spent immediately, it would lose its value. — TRANS.

We will need to travel around in the next six weeks to raise the money. The question is how we should do that. We need to see how we can find some way of doing it. We need to get some money, so it will be necessary to enlarge our plan for the school association.82 It is easily possible that we could get some money if we form a World School Association, that is, a general association for such schools, one that is international. Now everywhere we go, people say that Berlin has no interest in paying for the Waldorf School. If we form a World School Association, it might be possible to use some of the income for Stuttgart. It is unlikely that we would get very much if we ask people to pay for the Stuttgart Waldorf School. We need to see to it that we find some way to get some money. A number of things are in progress, but they are not going very quickly. We have something very promising in Dornach, a shaving soap and the hair tonic, “Temptation,” but we can’t get that going quickly enough.83 We cannot invent things fast enough to have a gymnasium, a eurythmy room, and a music room in the fall. Before we have that, all the baldies would have to grow hair.

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

Dr. Steiner: Our eurythmy ladies have already decided to try the hair tonic so that their mustaches grow. Then they will shave them off with the shaving soap. The thousand-mark bills will grow on peoples’ heads. There is still some money. The members of the Anthroposophical Society do not know how important the Waldorf School is. I recently spoke with some women, and they had no idea it was so pressing. Everywhere people are saying we

82 . The Waldorf School Association was founded in May 1921.

83 . The German word is Verlockung, which means “enticement,” “temptation,”

allure,” or “seduction,” but its root word is lock, or “hair.” The message was that this hair tonic would “tempt your hair to grow” (back, we presume). — TRANS.

should form schools. All that we need to do is to ask people, but we should not give the impression that we want to spend everything here. For that reason, I said that we don’t want to center everything here in Stuttgart, but instead travel around to various cities and prepare people. We don’t want to send things out and dictate to people. That was how the thought arose of creating a school in Berlin. We should not try to have people put off their school plans. What is important is that we do not offend people, so we will have to travel. We could go to The Coming Day for capital we would then pay interest on.84 We could afford the interest for four hundred thousand marks, so what we need to do to keep things moving, we should do immediately. Enlarging the school further is another thing. If we want to continue the school beyond next year, and want it to continue to grow as it has, then we will need a great deal more room.

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

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

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

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

How many new classes will we have? A first grade, a sixth, a ninth. We are also missing the gymnasium and an art room. The gymnasium would be the eurythmy room. We will need to make

84 . “The Coming Day” (Der Kommenden Tag) was a holding company created as part of the Movement for a Threefold Social Order. — TRANS.

ends meet, only it must be large enough for eurythmy. We will have to see how we can build the gymnasium and the other additional rooms.

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

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

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

A teacher: We must look at what we must do, and in addition, we must raise the money. The question of money must be secondary.

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

Dr. Steiner: Yes, we need something concrete. We cannot negotiate anything when we see that the architect says he can make the hall, and then says he can’t. To work in that way is terribly inefficient.

We already discussed in our last meeting that we need a eurythmy hall. We have known that for some time. We based our plan upon that impression, namely, that the architect had said we could build

it. In any event, we have lost three weeks since the architect claimed we could add a new floor, and today that is no longer true.

We do not want any temporary structures. We must see that we build the new things with an eye toward a longer period. We definitely need to meet again tomorrow.

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

Dr. Steiner is asked to say something about the problem of the faculty housing.85

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult for me to say anything since I am not in a position of putting up the money. That is the first thing you need to know. As long as we do not have the money, the question of teachers’ housing remains purely academic. Apart from teachers’

housing, there are other things we need to do. Either we will carry things out or they will not be done. It is important to avoid making the mistake of planning only for the minimum. We need to do things as they should be done, independent of the financial situation.

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

What can we do? How far we can expand the school is an important question. Somehow we must find a limit, or we must

85 . Housing was later built for some of the teachers.

have people behind us who can give millions. The situation is impossible because we have accepted every enrollment. For that reason, I would propose that, in the sense of my introductory remarks, we declare we will continue the school as it was, and that we will not accept new children if we cannot build a gymnasium.

We can tell people that we receive no support. We need to do that in the most effective way. We will continue the school as we did in the previous year, but we must, unfortunately, reject those children we have already accepted. The world should know what the situation is. We should tell people about this. We can say, hypothetically, that if we do not receive the finances we need, if we are not able to build a eurythmy hall and gymnasium for the fall, then we must limit the school to its present size. If we do not state things this radically, we will not move forward. We will also not be able to pay the teachers.

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

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

A teacher: People ask why they should give everything to Stuttgart.

People in Hamburg and Berlin have no interest in what we are doing here in Stuttgart.

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

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

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

Thursday, July 29, 1920, 10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

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

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

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

Emil Molt reports about the financial situation of the school.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: That statement is excellent and will certainly have an effect.86 In my opinion, though, that will happen only if we also say that we can continue to work only if the public provides the necessary financial means.

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

Dr. Steiner: Why shouldn’t we tell people now that we must reject the newly enrolled children if we do not receive the funds?

Through just that, our appeal will be effective. We need to turn away the children because we cannot employ new teachers. I think it is necessary in order to be effective.

These requests have their difficulties. First, the public thinks the school is a WaldorfAstoria school, and many people call it that.

People think the WaldorfAstoria Company supports the school financially, and they are surprised that this is not the case.

86 . The text of this statement is unknown.

Well, that is one thing. We must find some means of counteracting that kind of public surprise. We must clearly say that public support is necessary. That is one thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: The Swiss members are having so many difficulties because of the exchange rate that they can hardly do anything. In a brochure we recently sent out, we had to remove some words indicating that members in Middle Europe could do almost nothing because of the exchange problems.87 I am not terribly happy about pressuring the Swiss members anyway, since they do not easily open their wallets. We need to form a World School Association that does not include the Stuttgart school in its program, but has as its purpose the formation of schools according to our principles. The first responsibility of that association will be to undertake to support the Waldorf School.

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

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly true that if we form a World School Association, then it would also be important that it could freely determine how to use the money, and that it could support the Free University in Dornach with that money. My idea was to centralize the entire financial organization. We want a central financial organization so that all money donated for anthroposophical use will go to one central organization. That was what we wanted to do in those days when we worked toward forming The Coming

87 . At that time, the German mark was essentially worthless outside Germany.

Day and The Future. Then things became confused because the WaldorfAstoria Company could no longer help, and we had to form the Waldorf School Association. We also had to found a number of things in Dornach, but all of them are only formalities.

We could also include the Association for Goetheanism when necessary. We need to create everything we need so that in the end, everything leads to a central organization.

That was also our intention when we founded The Coming Day.

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

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

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

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

A teacher (continuing): I wanted to indicate that quite specific schools are involved. I think the current name is detrimental.

Dr. Steiner: We need to find a much more modern name. Much of the opposition we encounter is due to the emphasis of the name.

You will notice that people often say it with much emphasis. I can tell you that publishers accepted essays I wrote anonymously at one time or another, but when I included my name with them, the situation reversed. We could have another company name, but we will improve nothing by giving it a personal name.

Marie Steiner: Could we perhaps talk about what name would be desirable?

Dr. Steiner: It would certainly be quite good if we did that, then we would settle things. Perhaps the Goetheanism School, or the School of The Coming Day. It needs something like that, something that looks toward the future. We also need to think of something that indicates it is not a state school. The name needs to express the independence from the state, the foundation of the school without the state. We can achieve that only through a neutral designation. We did that in the Waldorf School by using “Independent.” The designation “Independent Waldorf School”

was good for the beginning, and had things continued as they had been, and had we not needed to form the Waldorf School Association, there would be little to say against that name.

However, things have not gone on as they were. We need to express somehow the principle of independence from the state.

We need something to indicate a school system created out of the independent cultural life. The question is whether we will be able to form the World School Association.

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

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

A teacher: We should retain the name “Waldorf School” until the school reaches a certain size, so that interest does not wane.

Dr. Steiner: Leaving the ninth grade aside, it is already so that we can no longer work with the eight classes as before. Without subsidies, we cannot continue the eight grades as we want. We will have to turn away new children for the eight grades unless we receive a subsidy. We can keep only the current level of activity.

Then, there is the question of space. We cannot increase the number of students without increasing our space. With the fourth grade at fifty-three and the second grade at fifty-six children, there is also the question of additional teachers. In my opinion, if the classroom was large enough, a teacher could handle even a hundred children. Simply because we do not have the space, because our classrooms are too small, we will need more teachers.

That will especially affect the future fourth and second grades that we will have to divide. In any event, we need to divide the first and fifth grades. The space problem is quite acute. There is still the problem of the eurythmy and gymnastics hall.

A teacher: Cultural School.

A teacher: I had thought of Independent Cultural School.

Marie Steiner: Perhaps someone else will think of something.

Dr. Steiner: It is not important to go into changing the name now.

What is important is whether or not we receive the two million marks. We have this problem because we have accepted every child. The WaldorfAstoria Company has done nothing wrong.

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

Dr. Steiner: The financial association does not need to carry that name. That would not hurt the WaldorfAstoria Company. The

Waldorf School is a historical fact that should remain. On the other hand, though, we do not need to expect that we should extend into other areas of Germany and Austria under the name of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. I think that for the purely practical reason that people will not give any money for it. We should limit announcements for the association to Stuttgart and Württemberg.

On the other hand, though, it seems clear to me that we should do things so we can have an international outreach. A teacher: Are we deciding to drop the association?

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: It is good that we know this. The problem we have is that the WaldorfAstoria Company has come out a little too good

in the picture of the Waldorf School. I do not find it responsible to give all the credit for the existence of this school to the WaldorfAstoria Company when they were really not so enthusiastic about becoming the patron of the school, whereas, Mr. Molt actually did most of it. We could at best say that the WaldorfAstoria Company is a member of the School Association.

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

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

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

Have we included patronages in the Waldorf School Association?

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

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

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

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

A teacher: Sixty to eighty thousand marks.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: And if that does not happen?

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

Dr. Steiner: So, that would be the costs to the WaldorfAstoria Company. We have so many wealthy parents who could afford to pay an appropriate amount, and who cannot demand that the company gives large donations. We need to approach those people who have an interest in the school if it does not fade as soon as we ask them to open their wallets. Otherwise, it is better the children do not come. We are not here to enroll children simply because the school is close. We will see what happens in the next week. If nothing happens, we will have to go back on the enrollments.

There will be a parting of the ways if people say a unified school is one where no one pays anything, where everybody is equal, and they have nothing against that. We do not need to consider it an honor that the children of high government officials attend, but that in the future the children of wealthy people will sit next to those of poorer people.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Our schools are built differently, but we have no way to express that. Otherwise, we could form a World Association for Young Invalids. A “School for Health.” That would be effective.

However, that wouldn’t work. We will have to connect things in our circulars so that we have a common fund that will pay for sanitoriums and schools. If we want to start schools, we would have to give the Association the right to use the money for Dornach, also. Otherwise, the Association would be counterproductive in regard to Dornach and would suck up all the donations. If we transform eurythmy into curative eurythmy, we would soon have a sanitorium.88 I will try to do something in a very limited way to show what can be done. I have been asked if

88 . See Curative Eurythmy; in that course (April 1921) Steiner mentioned the possibility of a patient doing eurythmy exercises under a physician’s supervision.

we can use eurythmy curatively. I will try to do that, and you will see that people will come.

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps it would be good to say this publicly.

There is a proposal that we continue this discussion again, and that you come ready to fire from both barrels. Is there anything against that? If you want to call another meeting today, you should do that.

I cannot be here this afternoon.

A teacher asks about the curriculum of the ninth grade and about building a dormitory. Some people have offered to take children as a means of making a living or simply as a secondary income. There was also a question about the Abitur.89

Dr. Steiner: Concerning the ninth grade curriculum, a primarily pedagogical question, we will take care of that at the beginning of the next school year. I will present that as a course of five to seven new lectures, which I still need to prepare.90 I will give them to the faculty at the beginning of the school year. Planning the curriculum for the ninth grade is something that will take five or six days, and to that extent we should put it off until the beginning of the next school year. Now we need only decide who will take the individual classes.

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

89 . The Abitur is a state examination in Germany that determines whether a student may continue on to a university.

90 . Balance in Teaching.

instruction. If they want to look at the school, they should do it, but we cannot allow ourselves to enter into any real negotiations.

We will not be untrue to our principles if the state examines those children who want the security of civil service.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: We could certainly paint the desks. Perhaps lilac, light bluish. We can do that with normal paint. The paints used in Dornach are too expensive to use here.91

I brought some drawings from a few of the children in Dornach that Mr. B. has brought along quite well. These are drawings by the children who were given a theme, and we see the result for each of the children. When we have some time, I would like to go through these drawings and discuss them with you. They are important if you are thinking about publishing something. When I mentioned to little G.W. that we would display her drawings in the

91 . Plant-based paints were developed to paint the dome of the first Goetheanum.

Waldorf School, she said she was making clay models, also. In this way, the children’s individual personalities are wonderfully expressed. I have no thought whatsoever of making a rule in that regard. Someone else might do it differently, but you can learn much from that. Mr. B. tells the children one thing or another, then, after giving them a little instruction, allows them simply to bring their ideas into some form. The children discuss it among themselves.

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

Friday, July 30, 1920, 3:00 p.m.

A teacher: We need to discuss hiring new teachers.

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

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

The worst thing was that he simply had no heart for his work.

His main interest is in studying, but what we actually needed, namely, someone who could teach gardening thoroughly, did not occur. From my perspective, there is nothing else to do other than look for a better teacher. I don’t believe he is able to really bring the artistic into the shop instruction. As things have developed, it is impossible to keep him on the faculty. He doesn’t seem able to find his way into the spirit of the school.

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

Emil Molt: I will see that he is taken care of in some way.

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

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

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

Marie Steiner: There is something trusting about him.

Dr. Steiner: There is no doubt that he likes to work with children, and that he is serious about it, but there are some things lacking.

When I saw certain things that occurred, I had to conclude that it was impossible to leave this work to him.

A teacher: Is there a reason we would need to get rid of him or could we employ him somewhere else, for example in the library?

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly difficult to make a clear decision. I think it will be difficult for him to find his way into the real spirit of the school because he hasn’t the spirit in him.

It is certainly possible to carry someone along, but do you really believe that he could do the shop class alone permanently? He could never teach all of the shop classes. Possibly he could teach the four lower classes if we had a teacher for the upper grades. I have my doubts whether he has the spiritual capacity to handle the upper grades in shop. I have watched how he works, and it is really

quite nice for the younger children if they put themselves to it.

However, for later, when a certain feeling for the craft is necessary, it is a question whether he can gain that feeling. This is very difficult, and we would need to change our thinking if he were to remain. My impression is that this is the general opinion of the faculty.

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

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

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

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

We can objectively say that he was not fit for the task. He does not have an artistic feel. I don’t think he would find his way into the subject. As I said, it would hurt nothing if he took the lower grades and someone else, the upper classes. Often, that is the best

way and the children will simply work. Later, when they need to show what they can do, things will be better. There is certainly nothing to object to for the lower grades, but for the upper classes, he simply will not do.

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

Dr. Steiner: That is a budget question. In the shop class, we must stretch to the limit. It would be best if we strongly developed shop.

If we had a good shop teacher, we could start in the sixth grade, but it is a different situation in the gardening class.92 That needs someone who really understands the subject. If we had two teachers, I would prefer that each would give shop in one year and gardening in the other.

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

I had the impression that was the opinion of the whole faculty.

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

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

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

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

92 . There was never a shop class for the lower four grades. Steiner never specified a time when shop classes should begin based on anthroposophic anthropology.

In July 1920, the discussion clearly concerned budgetary questions. Two years later in the socalled “Oxford Course” ( Spiritual Ground of Education, ), he specifically stated that shop could begin before grade six.

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

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

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

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

A teacher: I certainly think we can take him on as an assistant.

Dr. Steiner: It would be too much for one teacher to do the gardening and the shoemaking, but then we would have to be able to pay him.

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

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

You need to realize, Mr. X., that one thing builds upon the other. As we decided, you were to create the shop instruction. Mr.

Molt asked if we could consider Y. as an assistant for you, then, suddenly, he was sitting here in the faculty. He was never under consideration as a teacher for the Waldorf School. We can see that clearly because he is an employee of the WaldorfAstoria Company that they sent over. Thus, there was not the least justification for him to be on the faculty.

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

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

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

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

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

Following further discussion:

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

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

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

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

A teacher: Who should be on the faculty?

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

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

Dr. Steiner: You are the school mother. That was always the intent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Kolisko will take over the whole seventh grade.

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

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

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

A teacher: The reason why we two did not know our classes very well is unclear to me. The fact is that I knew the children the least

of all our colleagues. Could you perhaps say what the problem was?

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

Saturday, July 31, 1920

Saturday, July 31, 1920, 5:30 p.m.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: In general, the foreign language classes will continue as they were, and the teachers who taught them will continue next year.

However, there will be something new with the first grade. How many class teachers have taught foreign language in their class themselves? Miss Lang and Mrs. Koegel, both languages. Geyer, Dr.

von Heydebrand, Miss von Mirbach, and Kolisko, one language each. Next year, Miss Uhland will take over both languages in her first grade and perhaps Mr. Killian in his.

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

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

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

A teacher: We thought we should immediately found the World School Association so it can begin collecting money, whether for

schools or for the Goetheanum. The Waldorf School Association would be a member of the World School Association.

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

There was then considerable discussion about the events of the previous evening.93

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

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

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

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

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

93 . See Steiner’s lecture of July 30, 1920, in Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind.

There seems to be no record of the events after the lecture. — TRANS.

Saturday, July 31, 1920

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

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

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

Today, we will collect for the World School Association.”

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

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

move one step forward regardless of how determined we are to do that.

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

Dr. Steiner: This seems premature to me. It is certainly premature to say anything about the work of such an organization. It is not yet urgent. You see, it might have helped had we stood firm upon the statement that we would not continue the school if we could not make the world understand that it must make sacrifices for this thing.

That was the initial idea of the statement we wanted to present, but the picture shifted, primarily because, out of all we need, only a laughably small amount was presented. That is an illusion, because we will need two and a half times that much. It is certainly clear that we will receive the amount we asked for, and thus reach the first goal.

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, September 21, 1920, 11:00 a.m –12:00 p.m.

Following the third lecture of the cycle Balance in Teaching .

Dr. Steiner: Professor Abderhalden was in Dornach.94 He didn’t understand the significance of the anterior and posterior nodes of the vertebrae.95 That is where most such people have problems.

They don’t go into anything, but rather think to themselves that if they were to delve into a subject, they would be uncomfortable.

It’s better to stay away.

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

One thing was very interesting. He mentioned that during the time of the revolution some people found themselves out on a limb.3 He proposed that each professor teach the subject as he or she saw fit. The others could not imagine it. That is what he said.

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

There had been a difference of opinion regarding the relationship of the school and the faculty to the WaldorfAstoria Company. Bylaws had been prepared saying, among other things,

94 . Emil Abderhalden (1877–1950), professor of physiology.

95 . See Steiner’s description of the spinal cord and the posterior and anterior horns of the vertebrae ( The Foundations of Human Experience, lecture 2, p. 59). 3.

The 1918-19 German Revolution abolished both the monarchy and the Soviet-style workers’ councils and created a constitutional republic, the Weimar Republic. — TRANS.

that the teachers would no longer be employed by the WaldorfAstoria Company, and designating Dr. Steiner as the head of the school.

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

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

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

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

I have the impression that other things are in the background that could explain much of this. When I heard about it while I was in Berlin, it seemed to me to be rather superficial, but I also felt there were some problems living beneath the surface.96 Those things certainly have nothing to do with Mr. Molt, the patron of our school, and the faculty, but with certain other problems. It would certainly be desirable if we could look into the genuine basis, into the real common problems. External influences can play no

96 . September 18–19, 1920.

role here. It is better to discuss our problems, like this one, which come to such an explosion, while they are only problems than to allow them to end in an explosion. Who would like to say something?

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

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

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

A number of teachers describe their positions.

Dr. Steiner: You see, that is just what I meant. Some things that are actually interwoven into life have surfaced in the explosion of the bylaws. In the bylaws, we could separate them. We can see those problems that way. For instance, we could discuss for a long time whether or not the faculty is responsible for administering the finances of the school. You could show it would be proper to involve the faculty with the finances, but at the same time, we would need to feel certain the school will continue. We cannot eliminate that feeling of certainty or uncertainty regarding the continuation of the school. The last straw exploded in the last few

days. It was already smoldering, but it burst out, and I think we can see that through this discussion. It burst out through what happened at the end of the past school year in the discussion of the school finances for the coming year. The things we discussed then were of such a nature that I said to myself at the time, “We certainly cannot know how things will look at our Waldorf School next Easter.” It is not so much that we do not have the money. Of course, we have to take into consideration that we do not have it.

What appears necessary to me is that the teachers of the Waldorf School unite about how to achieve financial security for the future of the school. It is not possible for you to work as teachers if you have to work in absolute uncertainty about the future. The problem was most obvious when, at the end of last year, we couldn’t see how things would stand in regard to the future of the Waldorf School. I, myself, have no idea where we stand or how we will manage the more than 100 newly enrolled children. However, I said to myself that we will confront exactly the same problem next Easter. I had the feeling that the present relationships between the Waldorf School, the Waldorf School Association, and the faculty would render it impossible to imagine anything that would provide sufficient security for the future of the school. It seems to me that is what more or less quickly occurred. Through all these things, the question quickly arose about how to move forward.

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

moment we say the school failed due to lack of understanding about the finances, the school fails in such a way that we can survive. I can think of no other possibility.

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

Why tiptoe around it?

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

A teacher: Our desire to separate the school from the WaldorfAstoria Company then carried over to Mr. Molt personally. That was certainly a misunderstanding. The faculty, of which Mr. Molt is also a part, represents the Waldorf School. The relationship of the faculty to the Waldorf School Association and to the WaldorfAstoria Company is not clear, even today. The

conflict we have is simply an expression of the fact that the faculty wants to take over the leadership of the school.

Dr. Steiner: In a certain way, we have now come to the core of the problem. The faculty is prepared to go with Mr. Molt in all the things resulting from the historical relationship, but it does not want to have anything to do with the WaldorfAstoria Company.

To the extent I am involved, that is what we have actually done. I most certainly wanted to work with Mr. Molt, but I could have nothing to do with the WaldorfAstoria Company, simply because it wanted nothing to do with me. That is the problem, and we must overcome it in a wise and positive way. We should not simply say we are taking over the school, but instead, form the school so that we will have control.

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

Molt provided it.

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

If we accept that, we can also begin to discuss the problem in a healthy and objective way. We need only want to see Mr. Molt for

himself and not in connection with the company. If we move onto this healthy ground, we can understand one another better. I think that is the core of the problem. The problems will become larger if we do not try to find some financially stable ground on our own.

I don’t see any possibility other than that we come to a healthy basis ourselves.

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

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

In a certain way, the desire to be independent of the WaldorfAstoria Company is justifiable, because we must continue

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Now, the relationship of the numbers is the most unfavorable thinkable. If there were free access in Stuttgart, the number of enrollments would be limitless. There is no doubt of that. We have an extremely large number of requests that do not result in enrollments because the children have no place to stay.

People cannot send their children or we would have many more from outside Stuttgart. For the time, the situation is such that the school is fairly ineffective in the outer areas. This is when we should have said that we will not accept the other hundred children because we do not have the money. We could have done that at

the end of the last school year. Then, we would have only 365

when we opened the school this year instead of 465 children in the old rooms.97 We could have made things clear and said that the WaldorfAstoria Company is paying for the classes.

It is important now that we learn from the Waldorf School Association what the real budget is.

A teacher: We are preparing one.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: That would be a scandal. We could do that next Easter, but for now it would be better to see that we get some money.

If we could only put this on a broader basis! It would be good to find some way of doing that. People also want to do something for the university course in Dornach. 98 We must attack the problems of the school in another way.

97 . There is a discrepancy in the numbers presented by Steiner in relation to what the teacher presented previously. The correct statement would be that they would have had 265 students instead of the 365 they really had. — TRANS.

98 . The Art of Declamation (ms., GA 281) and The Boundaries of Natural Science.

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

For now, we have the greatest desire to keep track of everything we spend, but we have not the least idea about what we receive.

People have said they are ready to work all night when it comes to spending money, but when it comes to what is important, namely, to bringing in money, we find opposition.

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

Credit for the school goes to you. The others have simply been passive. When people publicly speak about the Waldorf Company,

we can do nothing about it. But, when they speak of the Waldorf School, it must be separate. They did not give the money, you coaxed it from them. They said they were in agreement in just the same way that a father is in agreement when the son spends too much. In the end, that’s how things are.

We will need to have a short faculty meeting, but first we must see to it that the board of the Waldorf School Association meets.

Afterward, we will have a faculty meeting so that we can bring things into some sort of order.

Wednesday, September 22, 1920, 8:00 p.m.–12:15 a.m.

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

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

Much of what I have recently had to say to you may appear simple, but I did not discover it in a simple way. Much of what we can learn about such a special area as pedagogy can become

available only by going through a great deal, by experiencing a great deal, which is possible only after many years’ experience with this type of investigating. Understanding it is easy and can occur in a short period, but the investigation itself is not at all so simple and requires a path of initiation. However, when someone tells fellow human beings of such investigation, he or she never does so out of a desire to speak as an authority in the normal sense, that is, as the exoteric world understands authority.

I would ask that you take what I have to say about this very seriously and precisely. You should not accept what I have to say simply upon authority in the normal sense of the word. You see, if you did that, it would have no effect. You would not receive it through the necessary intangible forces. The relationship must be entirely different. The relationship must be one in which you accept everything said through a completely free will. Your acceptance may not in the least depend upon the will of the speaker. Everything must depend upon the will of the listeners.

That is as exact a description of the relationship that must exist as is possible in human speech. I tell you things not to place them in the proper light, but because, in our times, we can base the effectiveness of esoteric work upon them.

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

statements, work that people can undertake communally, any other relationship would have a negative effect. If the spiritual researcher is to participate, then the capacity to speak free of authority and to listen through free will must be the basis of the entire relationship.

Nothing else may be the basis of the external relationships.

Therefore, my relationship to the faculty must be one, right to the dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s, that neither I nor anyone else wants something against the will of any member of the faculty.

The entire faculty as a whole must accept and desire it in their hearts. Whether something would pass in an election or not is unimportant. It requires that kind of inner relationship. The moment that is no longer so, the proper relationship would no longer exist. We need to somewhat keep an eye on that relationship.

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

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

I wanted to make this our starting point today. You may have already found from your many experiences that things arising out of the spirit proceed properly only when such an understanding of

spiritual relationships is their basis. Thus, in an exoteric organization you should separate the things that are simply necessary for the external world from what must lie between us.

We can then move forward not only in the most rational manner, but also in the most spiritual work. We will move forward.

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

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

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

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

For that reason I think it would be best if Mr. Molt could do something personally, if you were personally involved. The situation is such that we will feel secure about the Waldorf School

only if you personally speak with those people who have some influence. I am convinced that if an exchange of this sort occurs, and it forces the officials to say something in recognition of the school, that will offer us the best protection. Sending memos back and forth will achieve nothing. Particularly here in Württemberg, we can achieve more than in Prussia. In Prussia, after the final decision, we would have to dismantle this school within a short period of time.99

We need to work on the problem in that way. We should not forget that some school principal or a teacher from a normal school will often come along and want to have the Waldorf School pedagogy. They will ask what they can do to help their schools.

That is pure nonsense. The first thing they need to do is to free themselves from the state, and that gives rise to such a difficult problem that only a few people can think about it consequentially.

What is important is that what we could call our school movement, namely, a movement for independent schools, gets into more people’s heads so that a genuinely large movement toward educational freedom arises as a part of the Threefold Movement. We can use the opportunity that the excuse about a unified school provides. I must admit that I have always found a concrete definition of a unified school unpleasant, even though we had to use that term. It was unpleasant for me because it emphasized we wanted what the state defines as a unified school, but a unified school was less important than an independent school. That will come about by itself. What the present German government wants as a unified school is actually the opposite. We would be signing on to something terrible if we give in on this question. Somehow we need to feel our way through this. We need

99 . Between the school’s beginning in 1919 and September 1920, the Elementary School Law had been passed, which changed the regulations for starting private elementary schools. If the new regulations had been strictly enforced, the Waldorf School would have ceased to exist as originally intended. — TRANS.

to be aware that such things happen in life, but we should realize that they do not arise inwardly—that would be deceptive—but from without, and that we should do them with a certain mental reservation. We should be aware that we need to do things, but not inwardly, to achieve at least the minimum of what we want, and that we will need to speak with people while inwardly tweaking their noses.

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

A teacher asks about the lessons for the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I will write it down for tomorrow, but we will get farthest if we see it as a continuation of what we have already done.100I would, therefore, ask you to provide me with all the information about what you have done and achieved in German and literature.

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

Dr. Steiner: Well, what you will need to do in literature is to take care of Jean Paul. In particular, you will need to look at some sections of Aesthetics, or the Schooling of Beauty with the ninth grade— particularly the ones concerning humor.101 You should not pay too much attention to history. That would be about a semester’s work. Afterward, you would then go on with the students to something very different. They are, after all, fourteen and fifteen

100 . The text is unknown.

101 . Asthetik oder die Vorschule des Schönen, Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763–1835), 1805.

years old, and you could read and discuss some of the chapters in Herman Grimm’s lectures on Goethe.102 That is what you need to do in literature.

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

Now, what did you do in history?

A teacher: We went up to the Reformation and took Luther’s biography in detail. I then worked with Buckle’s History of Civilization in England, and attempted to use it to shed some light on the present.103

Dr. Steiner: I would recommend that you for the time do not go further, but go through it again with a spiritual scientific perspective. Follow that with Lecky’s History of Modern Civilization. 104

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

Dr. Steiner: It would perhaps be best if you precede Herman Grimm with Goethe, so that you could then catch part of the class up with what you already said about Goethe, Schiller, and Herder.

That would be good for both classes, and then you could leave

102 . Herman Grimm, Goethe-Vorlesungen (Goethe lectures), 1877.

103 . H. Th. Buckle (1821–1862), History of Civilization in England, 1857.

104 . W. E. H. Lecky (1838–1903).

Jean Paul for later. You could teach both classes the same history, so that we have only geography left.

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

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

Then we have mathematics. You have already taken up equations, haven’t you? How far have you come in exponents?

Squaring, cubing, and more general exponents? Have you already cubed binomials and trinomials?

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

Dr. Steiner: How do the students do that?

A teacher: I had them multiply them out.

Dr. Steiner: What I mean is, do your students know that (a + b)3 =

a3 and so forth? Can they do that? If you have not required that they learn it as a formula, then you have not begun with raising numbers to a power, and you have not had them figure the formula 3553 or 3552. I would continue in this way by having the children do the cubes for numbers using a formula. Then have them do the square roots and cube roots.

A teacher: I did not think it was important.

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

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

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

A teacher describes what he did in physics.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Of course, in that connection, we should look at the Doppler Effect, that is, the movement of the stars in the line of vision.105 You did not discuss the movement of stars in the line of vision? You need to include everything the children need in order to understand the movement of the stars in the line of vision. You should work toward that goal.

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

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

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

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

A teacher: We could conclude that about the Sun.

105 . Christian Doppler (1803–1853), Austrian physicist and mathematician; in writing of the Doppler effect, he made an analogy between the sound coming from a moving source and the light coming from a moving star. Doppler thought that just as the pitch of sound from a moving source varies, the color of light from a moving star would also vary.

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher: There is hardly space for eurythmy.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: That is the exact material for the ninth grade, and it is certainly something we should strive for under all circumstances.

We should look at some things a little theoretically and also give something for the feeling. Major and minor should become a feeling.

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

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

It is painful for me that you cannot move forward with the instruments. Playing instruments is something we cannot replace.

Regarding private lessons, well, private lessons are private lessons.

Here we must remember that, as we understand it, children should take up musical instruments in the general context of education.

Private lessons do not help in that regard. It is certainly too bad we cannot do that. I fear it will be a long time before we get to it.

A teacher: We have some instruments, but we need rooms, and we really need a teacher.

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

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

A question is asked about language class.

Dr. Steiner: At that age, I would emphasize recitation. You can learn much about the mastery of language through recitation. The children can gain a sense for idioms through recitation and then

learn to apply that to other things. We can continue that in eurythmy and grammar.

In the shop class, I had thought we could cultivate things about art and a feeling for art indirectly. In shop, it is important to have the children do different things and always complete them. I wouldn’t have them make only useful things, but toys also, reasonable toys. I think it would be very nice if the children made little blacksmiths that make each other move alternately.106 The children will become dexterous. They can also make presents. I would work in that direction.

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

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

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

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

Under certain circumstances, there is something else we should consider. She does not have one characteristic that another lady has. Miss Hauck is from here and is the daughter of the former

106 . A wooden toy: a handle is pulled causing one smith to hammer the anvil while another stands up; then the opposite handle is pulled with the opposite result.— TRANS.

professor Guido Hauck, 107 who wrote an article, “Arnold Böcklin’s Realms of the Soul and Goethe’s Faust.” He also wrote “A Technical Explanation of Faust.” Hauck was one of the last. If she could decide to become a handwork teacher, we would have the advantage that she is from Schwabia, something that would be quite good. She has been teaching at a workers’ school, and for that reason I would consider not calling her here, because it would be good if she taught the people there. The workers’ schools say that people don’t need to learn frivolous things like geometry.

Only things such as class struggle and preparation for the revolution should be taught. That is one thing, and the other is a recent event, namely, that the technical school has fired her.

Perhaps Mr. Strakosch could give an opinion about whether it is necessary for factory mechanics to learn something about geometry. I would ask you to give your own opinion, but I think architecture and mechanical engineering would cease if technical schools no longer teach geometry. Everything would sink into barbarism. In mechanical engineering, you can’t put a peg into a hole. People can’t construct anything like that. This is all pure nonsense.

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

For the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade independent religious instruction we could move into a freer form and give a theoretical explanation about such things as life before birth and after death, and all the consequences of a life before birth. We could give them examples. We could show them how to look at the major cultural

107 . See Hedwig Hauck, Handwork, Steiner Schools Fellowship, 1983. Guido Hauck (died 1905), professor of geometry.

connections and about the mission of the human being on Earth.

You need only to look at Goethe or Jean Paul to see it. You can show everywhere that their capacities come from a life before birth.

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

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

A teacher: A deaf and dumb girl has enrolled.

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

A class teacher asks about another child who has enrolled.

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

A teacher: He is impossible in class.

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

A teacher: Then my other children will be shortchanged.

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

A teacher: He was terribly nervous.

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

You can counteract that with hypophsis cerebri. Does he have any siblings? There is a disturbance in his growth caused by something the mother had before he was born.

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

Dr. Steiner: The boy came into this situation through the pregnancy.

Then we will work with him and take him into the school as soon as Dr. Schubert’s remedial class begins. Surely, you have more questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A question is asked regarding the opponents of anthroposophy.

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

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

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

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

We now need to begin it differently. We could work in Dornach, but I had also thought we could begin in a more international place, The Hague, for instance. We still have reason to believe we can do something for our movement, but we would ruin everything if we founded the World School Association here. We can do all kinds of things for the Waldorf School. There is such a positive attitude here, but we may not found the Association here.

At the time I had thought we could begin an energetic campaign, but I would now favor a foundation arising in London. That, however, is not yet achievable. Apart from that, I still hope that other things will move more quickly.

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

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

A teacher: I think they are all mixed up.

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

Dr. Steiner: If I were to go to The Hague, H. would certainly help.

A teacher: As long as you are there!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must use things as they come. You see, for example, we started the publishing company here, but it has done little until now.108 However, two books appeared, Dr. Stein and the one by Polzer.109 These were only beginning works, but in large editions.

We sold both books in only a few weeks. Someone said today that the book against Traub also sold out. People are just sleepy there.

The movement would move forward if people would just move with the stream. As such, the stream is already there, but no one is swimming in it. We can certainly say that the current is there, but no one is swimming in it. You can see that from the fact that my public lectures are always well attended. It is certainly true that

108 . Der Kommende Tag A. G. Verlag (Coming Day Publications), Stuttgart.

109 . Walter Johannes Stein, Die moderne naturwissenschaftlich Vorstellungsart und die Weltanschauung Goethes, wie sei Rudolf Steiner vertritt (The modern scientific perspective and Goethe’s worldview as represented by Rudolf Steiner), 1920; and, Rudolf Steiner als Philosoph und Theosoph (Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist), 1920, an answer to Friedrich Traub’s similarly named article.

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, Politisch Betrachtungen auf Grundlage der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus (Political considerations based upon the threefold social organism), 1920.

movement is there, but no one thinks about the fact that there is such movement.

In reality—the things I have to say are confidential, but I need to make a remark—the leadership of The Coming Day does not realize there is a threefold movement. That is not something that we need to advertise. We need only to know that a sleepiness exists. Many things begin and then stop. If I am to give everyone an individual task, then I can say only that everything can happen.

Then our meetings should definitely not last until three in the morning.

You will find the least amount of support in Berlin. There is no interest there. But even in Berlin, we could accomplish something if I could be there for a week. I cannot do it in three days. In Berlin, people don’t see beyond the walls of their own city.

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

Dr. Steiner: When I see there is some interest, we can begin to think about doing something in that connection in Dornach.

A teacher: Then we will have to decide how we can generate some interest.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, you see we have to learn how to generate interest in a more noble sense. If you look at the Haaß-Berkow Group with all their noise, you can see they certainly have a knack for creating interest.110 It must be possible, for example, when people come from outside, to have other titles for our presentations. It is important that we create interest, but we do not need to do it in a negative way. It is important to generate interest rather than simply

110 . During World War I, actor Gottfried Haaß-Berkow (1888–1957), at the request of the Red Cross, produced several folk-plays with amateur actors in various German cities. After the war, his traveling troupe, “The Haaß-Berkow Players,” presented many anthroposophic plays throughout Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Sweden. Many of the actors remained in Dornach following Steiner’s drama course ( Speech and Drama).

discuss how. When so many people gather in one place, there is much we can do from person to person.

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

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

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

Several teachers attempt to answer that question.

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

There is a sleepiness, a formation of cliques. It would be good if we could develop an esprit de corps.

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

A teacher: Well, the impetus must arise somewhere.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: It is not our concern to publicize the name of the World School Association, but to put such an organization into the world.

B. is interested enough. The moment we have the World School Association, he will join and be active. For B. in Br., that means nothing more than another opportunity for more freeloading. It is unimportant whether you go around and gather money as the Waldorf faculty or as the World School Association. That is only a new name for the same thing. We need to create a real organization, an organization in itself.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: There has been much talk, but we must do something.

My only desire is that you do not offer college level lectures that then fall flat. That would be terrible. I would say something about Anthroposophy and philosophy.

A teacher: We had considered giving lectures each semester.

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

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

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

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

I think we need to close for today. I would certainly advise you to consider the courses in Dornach. Bring your plans with you. In Dornach, our direction is more toward people, but students want

to have it more toward subjects. We could certainly specialize things. Dr. Schubert, there is certainly not much research about the soul of language.

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

Monday, November 15, 1920, 8:00 p.m.

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

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

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

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

A teacher: The children did not know that history.

Dr. Steiner: It is important that you cover the history of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, at least in the ninth grade. Perhaps you could do it that way. It is missing in the ninth grade. In teaching about these centuries, the goal would be that the students understand the present, don’t you agree? They are now fifteen years old. You could go through those

themes as Herman Grimm presents them in each chapter and take the nineteenth century as a confluence of the histories of various peoples. Use the themes of the last four centuries as leitmotifs.

Actually, it would be important to do that in both classes, only you should do it in different ways. In eighth grade, more narratively and in ninth grade, go more into the major ideas of the last centuries.

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

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

I have been so occupied with other things, but do you find it necessary to bring so much reasoned and theoretical material into physics? Doesn’t so much purely conceptual material slow things down? A teacher: I want to present only what is absolutely necessary.

Dr. Steiner: How many of the experiments have the students mastered? In electricity, it is, of course, necessary to present the observations very rationally with little theoretical speculation. That is something that probably does not stick with them too well.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Could you also do that in writing as a kind of essay?

You need to do something like that, also. In German, too, so that they have a picture, one that they can really articulate.

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

A report is given about French.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: I did not mean you should do everything one after the other. It is now mid-November, and we need to do some history.

Actually, the four centuries in their context. You really need until mid-January in both classes. For all the other classes, the curriculum is fixed.

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

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

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

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

The methods the public schools use for Latin and Greek are horrible and utterly decadent. We need to bring our children along so far that they find a connection. When we have sufficiently developed our methods, we need to bring our children just as far.

But our methods will not present things in the same way. I think that when we resolve this problem, you will no longer have discipline problems, and then you can achieve that. The real problem is that your children are out of control every five minutes.

The Austrian college preparatory high schools were exemplary.

When you think of Leo Thun and 1854, their curriculum was the very best imaginable; Gautsch ruined it.111 They did history well.

In Weimar, I found a different understanding of world history, namely, from the creation of the world until the Hohenzollern, only fifteen pages, and three volumes about the history of the Hohenzollern.

We also have the independent religious instruction for this class.

How are things there?

A teacher: We have nine grades in three groups.

Dr. Steiner: Why have the classes become so enormous? If the distribution is reasonable, then large classes will not hurt. But in your case, the children are really sitting on top of one another. Mr.

U.’s class is too large. We need to divide it. Seventy-three children!

They don’t fit into the available seats, and then they push one another out. Terrible! Today, the worst students were absent. It is absolutely clear that we need to divide this class, and I think we should do it. Particularly in these cases where the instruction really depends upon having contact with the individuals—you must be able to ask one or another question as often as possible— surely we can arrange for two periods and divide the class between them.

This is, at best, a question of space and is something we must solve, as otherwise we will fail in that area of instruction. Who could also give that class?

A teacher: I would be happy to do it.

Dr. Steiner: It needs to be someone who was not previously in religion. You may have been out for a number of years, but it still forms your thoughts. We have no one on the faculty. Of course,

111 . Leo Leopold Graf von Thun (1811–1888), Austrian Minister of Culture 1848–1860; Paul Freiherr Gautsch von Frankenthan (1851–1918), Austrian Minister of Culture, 1885–1895.

this is a difficult problem to solve, but we will have to get over this hurdle. The teacher must bring warmth into the instruction, warmth. I would, for example, propose A., but I do not know if he can acquire the necessary pedagogical perspective. How about trying A., since in the present crisis, who else could we propose from the anthroposophical movement? There is no one.

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

( To a teacher) It seems to me that you need a helper in your class, Miss H. Perhaps Miss S. could help you. We need to speak about that. You need someone especially when the children need to work. The class is too large for teaching in chorus. It has peripheral areas, and you cannot reach out into the farthest realms. I would prefer having two classes, but Miss S. can work in your class and help you when the children are busy, for instance, in drawing or painting. The class is falling apart. Individual children are not active enough during class. They just sit around. I also wondered if you could give a period and then stay in the class while Miss S.

gives the next period. That would take care of the discipline problem. We could think about how to do it. In principle, a class could have one hundred and fifty students, but we will not have such large rooms. You have fifty students in your class, but it is too large.

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

Dr. Steine r : You can do that.

A eurythmy teacher: I always assumed the absolute tone.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: How is the discipline in handwork this year? Last year, the last period was handwork and the discipline was quite good.

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

A comment is made concerning painting.

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

A teacher: You saw some attempts today.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: You should not emphasize chalk too much.

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

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

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

You need to do it concretely, so that the colors do something.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: That would have to occur in the periods we already have. We should do more artistic work, that is quite evident. That is also why it was important to me that Miss Hauck come into the handwork class and that handwork be taught artistically. Mostly the handwork is boring, and I would like to see it done really artistically. In handwork, you can use a ruler, but it is inappropriate with paper. We could form a bridge between shop and handwork.

There are a number of things that can be painted. There are also things the children could paint by themselves at home. If the children would make things for their dolls, there is much we could develop. We could develop a sense of style and color. If we could overcome the naturalism in making dolls, we could make something lively, laughing dolls, ones that are artistic. That would be very beneficial.

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

We had the most disgusting examples here a short time ago.

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

We could achieve something beautiful in the tenth or eleventh grade. One of our industrialists wants a logo for his baby food.

That is something that should be created from within. There are inner needs. Today, people know only about art objects, but that is how it should be if it is to imitate something. In Basel, there is

an art teacher who says he does not understand why, if I paint an eye here, I cannot paint the other one there. There is something to be said for that as long as you do not go along with the thing itself.

What I mean is an inner ability to experience, that is what I mean by a feeling for style. People need to experience a triangle or a rectangle and not simply imitate. Today, people make dolls by simply imitating and not experiencing them from within. You need to be able to experience within yourself how a doll laughs or cries, and that all needs to be done properly, including the clothing. The girls could make a doll and the boys, a jester. We must take the capacity for inner experience into account in painting with colors.

A teacher: Could we use that also with tones?

Dr. Steiner: I think they can also be experienced inwardly.

A music teacher: Should we express that to the children through words? The melody or the individual tones?

Dr. Steiner: That results from the theme alone, or the melody. If you treat tones that way, then something artistic results. I think that is what Goethe meant about how he learned to play the piano.112

A teacher asks if the children should make eurythmy shoes.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: How long does a child need to make a pair of eurythmy shoes? I think that among the members there are many, that is,

112 . See Goethe’s Poetry and Truth, Book 4.

among the women, there are many who could make at least a dozen such shoes in a day, or at least nine or ten.

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

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

Comment about student S.

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

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

Monday, November 22, 1920, 4:00– 6:30 p.m.

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

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

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

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

This morning Miss L. went through The Giant Toy, something Chamisso intended as a poem.113 As soon as you have gone through it with the children in Chamisso’s sense, you easily come into rationalism and lose the flavor of it. You need to understand it as a poem describing the old landed aristocracy traveling to castles. It is a very social poem. The giant toy is the farmer whom the landed aristocracy use as a toy. I would have been shocked to

113 . Adalbert Chamisso (1790–1838).

mention such a thing this morning. It can easily fall into rationalism. On the other hand, since the children really liked it, we should try

to translate it into painting without losing the flavor of those thoughts—that is, the poem’s thoughts of the playthings of the declining landed aristocracy. We should not have the children translate this poem into prose, but into a picture. If we hung something like that as a picture, it would give a deep impression, something taken from the instruction that the children fully felt.

When the Waldorf School opened, I spoke in detail about this with Miss Waller.114 I spoke about the need to create something in a truly artistic way that gives metamorphic thought to the realm of life. We have done something similar in Dornach in the transition from one architrave to another. 115 If we had such things, it would be much easier to explain things we teach. When G. donates things, he donates what he likes. That is something we want no part of. Perhaps you could think about these things, but we need them.

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

Dr. Steiner: Your niece visited me and brought her first paintings.

She said I should not just look at them, but should hang them on the walls in my home.

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

114 . Marie Elisabeth Waller, later Mrs. Pyle (1883–1954), a painter who had just suggested constructing a building for presenting Steiner’s mystery dramas. In Munich, she played the role of Johannes.

115 . An architrave is a molded band, group of moldings, or other architectural elements around a door or other opening.

He ate with them and was a part of them. That was thought of out of the relationship of the room. Such things justify the paintings.

Simply hanging up pictures makes things more confused.

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

Dr. Steiner: You should leave that for now.

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

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

There is another thing I wanted to speak about. There are a number of things under construction. Due to the lack of appropriate rooms, music instruction is suffering terribly. That is a calamity. It is certainly true that if the music teacher goes deaf because he has to teach in an inappropriate space, that is a calamity.

We must improve this. People would be quite satisfied if we had something like a quartet in the Waldorf School. That is the sort of thing we can achieve when we have everything we need. It would be good to know for sure that we would properly provide for music for the next three or four years.

A teacher: We have plans for a music room.

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

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

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

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

A teacher: It only begins in the sixth grade.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: How is Sch. in the trades class? He walks so oddly. Last year I gave some basic exercises for those children who were weak in comprehending so that they had to think about their own bodies. 116 “Touch your left shoulder with your middle right finger.” Through such things, you have to think about your own body. I also showed you how to draw something in a stylized way, and then have the children figure out what it is. You can also have them draw a symmetrical picture. Through those things, you form a perspective connected with the structure of the body. When you bring such exercises into your teaching, they work to awaken the sleepy child. That boy is sleepy.

I ask you to accept no laziness in detail with the children. Do not tolerate the children holding chalk like a pen, or doing anything awkwardly. I would pay a great deal of attention to such things.

Nearly half the children hold chalk improperly. You should not allow that to pass by. You should be very attentive to such things.

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

116 . Steiner also spoke of these exercises in his lectures of August 15 and 16, 1924, in The Kingdom of Childhood.

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

I would also pay some attention to the little girl in the fourth grade at the back on the right. She tends to invent a great deal, and she thought that the whole scene from “The Ode to the Courageous Man” took place in the Mediterranean Sea.117 She began with the line, “The dewy wind came from the midday sea.”118 From that beginning, she made a fantastic geography. You need to speak with this little girl often, since she is in danger of suffering from flights of fancy. “The Aegean Sea flows into the Mediterranean Sea.”

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

A teacher asks about F.L.

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

A teacher: He doesn’t speak in class.

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

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

117 . Gottfried August Bürger (1747–1794), Lied vom braven Mann.

118 . Mittagsmeer, “ midday sea”; Mittelmeer, “Mediterranean Sea.” The little girl heard “mit” and “meer” and extrapolated the rest. — TRANS.

Dr. Steiner: Has she learned something from the instruction? What bothers you about her?

A teacher: Her character disturbs me.

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

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

He is sleepy and apathetic.

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

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

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

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

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

to change that. You need to ask the children a lot individually. That is what you need to do because that has significant educational value. Don’t believe that when the children become restless you should always have them speak in chorus.

A teacher: What should we do about restlessness?

Dr. Steiner: What do the children do?

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

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

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

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

( Speaking to Miss Hauck) It’s true, isn’t it, that I’ve never found the children misbehaving in your class. I think things will settle down, and the children will get used to you. The fourth grade is really well behaved and interested. They entered into a difficult discussion and thought things out well. I spoke a little about that.

You should not immediately expect—as a teacher in the Waldorf School, you are still quite young and fresh as the break of day. You need to wait until the children come to see you more closely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have your primer.119 It is well done, and it would certainly be very helpful for someone who uses it. We could do a number of things with it. It would be a good example of the spirit active in the Waldorf School. I think it would be generally good to publish such things connected with the instruction. Not simply essays, but things that we actively use in teaching. That, however, would cost money, and the problem is, how can we do it? The way you have put your book together with its drawings, we

119 . Leonie von Mirbach had put together a reading book for the first grade, but it was unpublished. Caroline von Heydebrand later continued the work, published as Der Sonne Licht (The light of the sun).

should print it in an appropriate way. We can certainly have it set.

We could do that. We could also make a title page. The typefaces available now are terrible. We would need to do that for the whole book. It would cost twenty thousand marks. If we assume we could sell a thousand copies, we would need to sell it for forty marks each. How can we do that financially? It would be interesting to discuss how we could do it. We need to think about that. Books are terribly expensive, and you could not do this sort of thing with normal typeface. It is so different as a primer, and it deserves support. I could write an afterword for it. No one would understand it if we published it as it is, but there would be much talk about it.

You have a system with the moveable pictures that have strings attached to them; you have a short text and above it a moveable picture.120 I find that very useful for picture books. Such picture books are extremely necessary in kindergarten. If you would only continue to work on it! Modern books are so boring.

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

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

A teacher: Would he also participate in the services?

Dr. Steiner: That will soon be necessary.

( Speaking to Miss. H. ) I would like Miss S. to join you. I think it would be good if Miss S. were with you, and if you allowed her to continue the instruction. You teach a period and then remain in the class and maintain contact. In between, there is someone else.

120 . The idea was later taken up by Hilde Langen, who published several children’s stories in that form.

It seems to me you should want that. Of course, you do not need to carry it out pedantically. I just think that should begin because you cannot manage that class by yourself in that room.

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

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

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

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

I also need to think about your desire for a Christmas service.

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

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

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

There is something else I want to mention. In a certain sense, our activities in Stuttgart need to be a harmonizing whole, and we need to feel them in that way. We need to develop a harmonious working together. It would be good if things everywhere went as the Waldorf School pedagogical work did last year. The Waldorf teachers are working valiantly so that one thing supports another.

You need to consider what is in Stuttgart as a whole. The Anthroposophical Society and the Waldorf School are together the spiritual part of the threefold organism. The Union for Threefolding should be the political part, and the Waldorf teachers should help it with their advice. The Coming Day is the economic part. The Waldorf School began, but everyone must do what is necessary so that the other things do not get lost. In particular, everything depends upon the activities of the Union for Threefolding. We should remember that with each new step forward, new tasks arise. Now that we have added the Del Monte factory, we have a whole slew of workers.121 A factory meeting like the one we held is very visible in today’s society. Every bridge between the workers and the leading classes has broken. If we cannot awaken common interest through the threefold movement, like that of the 1870s when the European proletariat was interested in the democratic idea, so there were common interests, and people thought of more than simply bread, if we cannot do that, then we will move forward nowhere. We need to create a cultural

121 . José del Monte (1875–1950), owner of a cardboard manufacturing company.

atmosphere. In that connection, the cultural life in Stuttgart has been sleeping a deep sleep in the last five months, and we must awaken it again.

We can see that the threefold newspaper, that is as good as possible, has not had any increase in circulation in the last five months, nor has it had an increase in the number of employees.

We need new people for the threefold newspaper. Our goal must be to change it as quickly as possible into a daily paper. If we are not consequential, that is, if we add new factories without accomplishing something positive for the political movement in Middle Europe, we will not survive. We cannot simply add new companies and at the same time fail to do something politically important.

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

Someone like Stinnes is very important for the near future.122His ideas are gaining support. In particular, his party, the German Idiots Party, that is, the German Industry Party, is gaining strength through those ideas. We need to be clear though, that there are clever people behind the scenes. He intends to create a monopolistic trust for cultural life and economic activity so that the proletariat crawl to the gates of his factories and ask to be allowed in. He is well under way in that direction, and what he does is systematic. The cultural movement in Germany has a certain connection with such people. People in our group understand this trick too little, but Graf Keyserling in Darmstadt certainly saw

122 . Hugo Stinnes (1870–1924) developed the Rhine Shipping Company, involved in shipping, mining, paper, oil, printing, and automobiles.

through it.123 He has strong financing behind him. What Stinnes is trying to do is put forth as a salvation. You can read about it in the newspapers. This is bringing about a kind of threefolding, but with an Ahrimanic slant. It will be the devil’s work if it is not done in the way we can do it.

It is important that we keep our eyes open, our ears to the ground, and our noses to the wind for everything happening. It is nice to set up absolute theories, and we need to connect the overview with the details. Our activities need to remain current. In my lecture in the Liederhalle, I connected what I said with the miners’ strike.124 We need to raise people’s view from everyday things to the large perspective. We need to coordinate everything and through that The Coming Day will probably work. It would not hurt the Union for Threefolding if we lit a little fire under it.

The urgent question is what to do with all those children coming from the newly acquired factories. That is a question that can turn into an accusation if we do not act. It’s certainly true that Dr.

Unger’s company has a hoard of children, as does the Del Monte factory.125 Since we took them over, our task has grown, so how do we now handle the Waldorf School? We need to take care of that. I would also like to remind you of what I said yesterday in a different place. We have a responsibility not to allow those students who have engaged themselves in spreading the word to be left out on a limb. We need to be careful about that. The call is a terribly valiant deed. It is having an effect. The students from the Agricultural College in Hohenheim have already reacted. We must

123 . Count Hermann von Keyserling (1880–1946) made critical remarks about Steiner in Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (Travel diary of a philosopher), 1919, and in Philosophie als Kunst (Philosophy as an art), 1920.

124 . The lecture was “The Truth about Spiritual Science and the Demands of Modern Practical Life,” November 16, 1920 (not recorded); the English miners’

strike began April 1, 1921 and lasted about three months.

125 . Dr. Carl Unger (1878–1929) was a close student of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, and owned a factory in Stuttgart.

see our movement in such a way that it does not stop, that it makes progress every day, for otherwise it makes no sense. We can’t move into a retirement home yet.

Sunday, January 16, 1921, 9:45 a.m.

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

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

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

We can accept no more children than we have already had.

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

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

Another thing we must speak of is the fact that the threefold newspaper has not had one single new subscriber since the end of

May. The fact that the Union for Threefolding is absolutely not functioning needs to be said.

A teacher: The school building will not be completed in time. We may need to put up a temporary building.126

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

Technically, we could complete it, but financially that is impossible. Several teachers speak about ways of obtaining money.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing standing in the way of obtaining money somehow. That kind of activity depends upon humor. I was unable to take care of the Waldorf School very much recently.

That was very difficult for me. I have never gone away with such painful feelings as I do this time. I want to say a few things. It does not seem to me that our present Waldorf teachers can add much to such appeals. In general, I have the impression that the Waldorf teachers are sufficiently burdened with teaching the seminars. We need to relieve them of many things if the school is to flourish properly. I have the impression that we cannot burden you further.

When you want to teach, you really need a certain amount of time for preparation. You need a thorough preparation of the material.

Some of you are so burdened that that is no longer possible. Thus, I would decisively recommend to Dr. Stein that, when someone shoves him a task from the Union for Threefolding, he

126 . The cornerstone of the new school building was laid on December 16, 1921

(Steiner’s speech on that day is in Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School).

energetically refuse it. This is a way of correcting things. If the Union for Threefolding pushes things onto you that it should do itself, and then limits itself to withdrawing to its rooms, that is a method of overburdening and thus ruining those few people who really work, and allowing the others to return to their fortress so that nothing moves forward.

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

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

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

They belong together.

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

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

The case would be different if you were teaching acoustics.

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

Dr. Steiner: There is no connection between the Punic Wars and something musical. What do you suppose the connection to be?

What is the goal? Not with eurythmy, either. You can certainly not present some eurythmy in order to create a mood for a shadow play. Would you want to give eurythmy presentations in order to write business letters? That would be an expansion in the other direction. Our task is to form the lessons as inwardly artistically as possible, but not through purely external means. That is as detrimental for the content of what we present as it is for the art itself. You cannot tell a fairy tale as preparation for a discussion on color theory. That would put the instruction upon the completely wrong track. We should form the instruction so that we create the mood out of it. If you find it necessary to first create a mood through something decorative, whereby the art itself suffers, then you are admitting that you cannot bring about that mood through the content of the lesson. I think it is questionable that sometimes anthroposophical discussions are preceded by some piece of music, although that is something else because that is done with adults. We cannot do that in the classroom, and we will need to stop it.

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

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

A eurythmy teacher: It was a very short poem.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps they would be even more interested if you showed a short film. We may never pay any attention to what interests the children. We could let them dance around. What interests them is unimportant, it leads only to a terribly nonsensical pedagogy. If that became normal practice, then our instruction would suffer and eurythmy would be discredited. Either it is proper in principle, in which case we should do it, or it is wrong.

Those are the two choices. In any event, this is something that doesn’t work.

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: You don’t need to do anything there. He was always a problem child, and now there is not much we can do with him.

Until the light goes on, in spite of the fact that he makes trouble, you will have to call upon him more often so that he sees that you see him lovingly. He will then think to himself, “I can be called upon more often.”

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

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

Now, what is the situation with the withdrawals?

A teacher: Many parents have removed their children after the eighth grade to put them to work.127 The children of laborers are particularly susceptible to that.

Dr. Steiner: That will truly be a problem if we cannot expand the instruction in the higher grades with training that people can see can replace what the children would receive through some sort of apprenticeship. We need to set up our upper classes in the way that I discussed in my “Lectures on Public Education.”128 That way, the children can stay. If we do not move in that direction, we will find it very difficult to get the parents to allow them to stay. Many will not see what we want to do with their children. We can still prepare the children for their final examinations. That is a practical difficulty, and we need to look for some solution. We can still prepare the children for their final examinations, even though they may do practical work. For those who tend more toward the trades, we should provide more practical training, but without splitting the school. I don’t think we can avoid losing a number of children when they are fifteen if we allow the school to become an “institution of higher learning.”

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

Dr. Steiner: First, the parents have no understanding, something that does not go very far in social democratic circles. “Our children should become something better,” is something they may understand a bit. That attitude is barely present. They may have taken the opportunity to allow their girls to be educated cheaply.

We cannot immediately achieve very much in the area of people’s habits. It will also not be easy with the children who have not attended the elementary school from the very beginning, that is, with those who entered later, those we had for only a year in the

127 . At that time school was required only through age fourteen.

128 . Contained in Education as a Force for Social Change.

eighth grade, and who will now move on to the higher grades.

Those children cannot really move up. We did not have very many working-class children in the eighth grade.

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

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

I would like to say something about this tone of “just teach.”

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

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

reading and modern handwriting at too early an age, we decisively support diligence, for such things are not directly connected with human nature. Learning to read and write later has a certain value.

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

Dr. Steiner: What has occurred in those relationships?

A teacher: I was unable to discover anything between the children.

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

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

A teacher: He cannot concentrate.

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

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

body. That is something that treating the blood could change significantly.

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

We need a school doctor and we need to arrange that position in such a way that it is acceptable to official opinion. We need to create the special position of the school doctor. 129 A teacher: Couldn’t we do that quickly?

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

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

We would have to carry it out strictly as that is the only way the officials would accept it. The doctor would have to be employed by the school.

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

129 . Dr. Eugen Kolisko became the school doctor in fall 1921.

Dr. Steiner: R.D. is much better. Last year he was not in that state.

Why did you put him in the back of the class? Last time he sat quite close to the heater.

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

Dr. Steiner: In any event, R.D. is better now. Concerning W.L., I know only of his general state of health as I have not given him much thought. There is something wrong with him physically.

R.D. is hysterical, he has an obvious male hysteria. Perhaps the other one has something similar. We will have to examine him to see if there is something organically wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: She is intellectually weak. We need a class for weakminded children so that we can take care of them systematically. These children would gain a great deal if we did not have them learn to read and write, but instead learn things that require a certain kind of thinking. They need basic tasks like

putting a number of marbles in a series of nine containers so that every third container has one white and two red marbles. They need to do things that involve combining, and then you could achieve quite a bit with them. We need a teacher for these emotionally disturbed children.

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

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

A teacher: The problem is that I am not very familiar with history.

The preparation needed to encompass entire periods is very arduous.

Dr. Steiner: Where did you begin?

A teacher: With the Reformation.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Well, that is a more general question. It is not a good idea to use things in projective geometry that do not exist. There are no light rays and still less shadow rays. It is not necessary to

work with such concepts in teaching projections. You should work with spatial forms. There are no light rays and no shadow rays.

There are cylinders and cones. There are shadows that arise when I place a cone at an angle and illuminate it from a point and allow a shadow to fall upon an appropriately angled plane. Then I have a shadow form. The form of the shadow as such is the boundary of the shadow, and even a child should understand that. It is the same later in projective geometry when the child learns what occurs when a cylinder cuts through another with a smaller diameter. It is very useful to teach children that, but it does not detract from the artistic. It guides children into the artistic. It makes their imagination flexible. You can imagine flexibly if you know what section occurs when two cylinders intersect one another. It is very important to teach these things, but not as abstractions.

A teacher asks about plane geometry.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps I came in the middle of the class. In this case I think you should proceed more visually. The children could answer more rationally. Everything fell apart. The children spoke in a confused way. If you taught them juicier ideas, that would, of course, change. I would begin with more visual things; teach the children how different a building looks when seen from a balloon.

Or, how different things look when you look down upon them from a mountain behind them. In this way, I would then move on from the more complicated object to explain the concepts of the horizontal and vertical projections before I went on to a presentation of the point.

This sort of geometry is something children would do with a passion when you teach them. It is something terribly fruitful. I think you talked too much about placing a point in the surface of a triangle. When you drew a point at the beginning of the lesson and then spoke about all kinds of things without having come to drawing the lines at the end of the class, then I think you have

spread the picture out too much. When you spread children’s’

imaginations out so much, they lose the connection. They lose the thread. Everything is so spread out that the children can no longer understand it. It breaks apart.

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

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

A teacher reports.

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

A teacher: There are some individuals with some difficulties.

Dr. Steiner: That is also good; you should awaken some individuals.

In general, I was quite pleased with both first grade classes. They were relatively quiet, whereas the second grade is terribly loud.

They are having a hellish time of it. They are also restless. In that regard, the two first grade classes are quite good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Well, that certainly does not come into question if you are seeing to it that a child who is jumping about remains in his seat. I don’t think we want to get into a discussion about principles here. The interesting thing about this class is that the children all run around in colorful confusion. You can certainly keep them from that confusion. What could Miss H. say in opposition? I certainly hope you are not having differences between yourselves.

I don’t mean that when children go somewhere for a reason you should keep them in their seats. The concern here is with those obvious cases when children are misbehaving and it is difficult to maintain discipline. Do it unobtrusively so that you do not do anything about which Miss H. could complain.

Is it really so difficult to do that? My intent in proposing this was to give Miss H. some help because the class was too large for her, and the children are somewhat difficult to keep under control.

We cannot make an experiment like this one if it remains an experiment. I can easily imagine that you might come so far as to

speak for five minutes with one another about the object of the next day’s lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

have to know he would be here heart and soul. I would like to meet Mr. Boy personally.

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

Dr. Steiner: Well, then, we’re in agreement that we will give Mr.

Ruhtenberg one class and that we will try to get Boy or someone else. Is it possible for me to meet Boy personally? Is there still a class in deportment?

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

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

I have not seen much of the eurythmy.

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

Dr. Steiner: I have been considering the development of curative eurythmy for a long time, but it has been difficult for me to work in that area recently. We will have to work out curative eurythmy.

Of course, there is also much we can do for the psychological problems. If we have the children, then there is much we can do.

A teacher reports about the singing class.

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

Dr. Steiner: That is something we should also consider. I think we should give attention to allowing the children to sing not only in chorus. Do not neglect solo singing. Particularly when the children

speak in chorus, you will find the group soul is active. Many children do that well in chorus, but when you call upon them individually, they are lost. You need to be sure the children can also do individually what they can do in chorus, particularly in the languages. How do things stand with the older children in singing?

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

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

A report is given.

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

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

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

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

A biennial report is mentioned.

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Nothing to say against that, but it cannot become a rule.

Those who want to do it, should do it. You simply need to believe it is necessary. Not everyone can do that. People will need the kind of energy you have if they are to do such things.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is in general not possible for the children from the Waldorf School to travel around. I am not sure we should even begin that when the whole thing is somewhat spinsterish. We cannot be sending the Waldorf children around all the time, so that must be an exception. The Waldorf children can’t be a traveling troupe. I don’t think that would be appropriate. We can certainly work for the children’s eurythmy, but we should have people travel here to see it. It must be taken more seriously than Mrs. P. and Mr.

L. would do. They want to make it into some sort of social affair.

There is also too much energy being expended in giving lectures in this connection. We should not accept this tea party Anthroposophy too much.

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

In Bavaria, the major party is completely narrow-minded. These idealists have done everything wrong, so that narrow-minded

viewpoints easily arise. When Bavarians say “Wittelsbacher,” they mean a good bratwurst.130

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

130 . Wittelsbach was the ruling house of Bavaria as well as the name of a type of sausage. — TRANS.

Wednesday, March 23, 1921, probably evening Dr. Steiner: ( Speaking to Ruhtenberg who was substituting in the 5b class) How are you doing in the fifth grade?

A teacher: The children are talkative and boisterous.

Dr. Steiner: To what do you attribute their talkativeness? Their previous teacher, Miss Lang, could always work with them.

A teacher: I listened in on her class, and the children were always quiet with her.

A teacher: That class was always particularly difficult.

Dr. Steiner: This is something peculiar. Miss Lang could always keep them quiet, so there is something hidden here.

A teacher: She was very strict.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to call your attention to the fact that there is something important for us in this situation. Miss Lang was a credentialed teacher in Württemberg. When we are evaluated, they will tend to use the strict discipline taught in Württemberg. When the three wise men were in the school, one said, in reference to Mrs. K., that the discipline in her class was not as good as that in the credentialed teachers’ classes. They noticed when a properly credentialed teacher was in the class.

A teacher: I have the impression that the problem lies in not having enough time to prepare myself.

Dr. Steiner: Here we come to the intangibles. It is not only important what a teacher does, but who the teacher is, the attitude in his or her soul. That is how things are and how we must think of them. That is something particularly obvious in the college

preparatory high schools, where a teacher often arrives at school with a hangover because they have spent the evening at a bar.

Then, all hell breaks loose simply because the teacher has a hangover. That is one of the intangibles, perhaps the most radical case. The moment you are insufficiently prepared, the souls of the children vibrate differently. That is easily seen in the lack of discipline. The real difficulty for the teachers in the Waldorf School is to be truly prepared. With all the stressful activities, it is terribly difficult to prepare. Why are you laughing?

A teacher: Because that’s the way it is.

Dr. Steiner: Once again, we want to become aware of the kind of teachers we need. Yes, we have the sixth grade. We don’t need to divide it. There are fifty-four children, but that is still bearable.

However, we must still think of the ninth grade, and in that connection, the tenth. We will need to find some division there.

The classes are reviewed—including those of the specialty teachers— and assigned.

Dr. Steiner: I would like Dr. Röschl to come here. I think she is suitable. I would very much like her to have Latin and Greek. She could begin in the fall.

Is Ruhtenberg free? Considering that I want to have Dr. Röschl, I think it would be a good idea if Mr. Ruhtenberg would permanently take over the 5b class.

Then we need to discuss only two new teachers.

Isn’t Miss Klara Michels a high school teacher? We could certainly consider her for the upper grades.

Dr. Kolisko says he can be at the school beginning in the fall.

Dr. Steiner: If Dr. Kolisko comes here, things might shift a little. It is not easy to find teachers. A large number of people have applied, but there are hardly any we can use.

A teacher: In ninth grade history, I am now at the present.

Dr. Steiner: You had thought about skipping Jean Paul. I think we must keep things we have decided upon. Are you also at the present in the eighth grade?

I would recommend that you have the eighth grade read the first chapter of Schiller’s Thirty Years War. They can learn a lot from that. It contains many things that go up to the present.

A teacher: Could we read something out of a book in the seventh grade English class?

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps you could. How much time would you have to read? How could we manage to read Dickens’s A Christmas Carol?

It would be extremely instructive if the children had the book, and you called upon them individually and had them read aloud before the others, so that they learn to think and work together. In the sixth grade, poetry followed by prose. In Latin, you could have them read Ovid or Virgil, perhaps Plutarch, little stories.

A teacher says he has read Ovid.

Dr. Steiner: Stay with it until they can do a great deal.

A question is asked regarding Pliny.

Dr. Steiner: Pliny is good reading. Use Livius for the older children.

There you will have to go into the more intimate things. We know very little about Livius. He is a famous writer you can conjecture about.

In Greek, I would go through such sayings (an example is given). There are a number of these two-line sayings in Greek.

A question is posed about the religion class.

A teacher: I was in the 6b class. That went quite well.

Dr. Steiner: You can help someone a great deal when you are in the class.

How is it with eurythmy? I wanted to have Mrs. Steiner hear about it.

A report is given. An extra class has been formed.

Marie Steiner: It is not a bad idea for some of the young men and women to simply look on.

Dr. Steiner: Forming an extra class broke with the principle of showing eurythmy to the school. If that principle were properly held by the school, you would not do that, you would not prepare an extra group. You remove the class from the normal process of the school instruction that way. Forming such a student aristocracy is something that disturbs the school’s pedagogy.

A teacher: We did it that way because we needed some of the children for performances.

Dr. Steiner: There must be some of the regular students you can use for that. It is not pedagogically correct to prepare a particular group in a special way.

A teacher: I spoke with Mr. N., and he thought it might be better if we had a course outside the school.

Dr. Steiner: Then we could never say that we are presenting the Waldorf School children. That is something we need to take into account for the public. We have never discussed such an extra course in one of our meetings.

A teacher: It is something that arose out of the first performance.

Dr. Steiner: We need to discuss such important things in our meetings. Otherwise, one day someone could decide to select a number of children and begin a class in chess. In principle, it’s the same thing. We cannot do this. You are creating an aristocracy.

Marie Steiner: I understand that.

A teacher: I wanted to ask if we have given up the idea of a kindergarten.

Dr. Steiner: Not given up. We just need to wait until we can form it.

A teacher: We wanted to bring up the question of a vocational school.

Dr. Steiner: Are there concrete possibilities? We will need to determine the plan for the tenth grade. It should contain something practical. But a vocational school? Are there any concrete possibilities for it?

A teacher: The concern is with the children who have left, so that we could include them also. At the present, it was not possible due to space limitations and money. We should prepare it for next year.

Dr. Steiner: The preparation would actually be to see to it that the officials don’t spit in the soup.

A teacher: From the official perspective, vocational schools are acceptable, but we will need to show that the curriculum meets the standards of the others.

Dr. Steiner: Now we are to be so stupid as to stick the children into special situations. We cannot do that if we are to remain with our pedagogy. We can create only those things that will bring people forward. If we create a vocational school, we must do it in such a way that the children will have something for the continuation of their human development.

We will decide what kind of school we want to create. There was certainly no doubt that Strakosch was called to a general vocational school. It was to be a kind of practical continuation of the college preparatory high schools, a school for human development. We haven’t the slightest inclination to create anything else. It is certainly not necessary that we do what everyone else does.

A teacher: The situation is that the children who will go into a trade must attend one of the state schools.

Dr. Steiner: Those who are already attending such trade schools don’t come to us. We will have none of them in our classes. We lack the possibility of teaching children according to our plans from the age of fifteen on. That was something we said earlier. For now the question is settled. We already discussed it here and we cannot do anything more now. The most acute question is how to use the time between elementary school and college. If we had some way of getting official recognition, we would have a tremendous increase in attendance.

Is it possible that when an apprenticeship is not under consideration, someone could get such people accepted into a company?

A teacher: Those who have not learned through a certified master cannot be employed.

Dr. Steiner: We can’t do anything! Everything is so limited that all we need is a law about how to hold a fork.

We need to study the question about how we can create a vocational school so that it can be a vocational school in the sense of my essays on public education. The Waldorf School needs to see if we can force that through the official channels. We will need to create more respect for the school.

Thursday, May 26, 1921, 8:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: We need to discuss the ending of school. You have a number of questions.

The following are discussed: A question about how to handle promoting the students this year. General questions about the tenth and following grades. A request for a course about educating children over fourteen years of age and also the instruction of religion. Questions about “bourgeois methods” in the school and how to eliminate them. A question about teaching instrumental music. A question of whether third graders should write foreign language or only speak it. A question about social studies and social understanding. A question about a special course for eurythmy. Questions about a teachers’ meeting, pedagogical conferences, and a newsletter.

Dr. Steiner: I think we could handle the individual questions more easily if the teachers first discuss promoting the children and the end of the school year. We can then more easily discuss the question of promoting the children. I think we should begin with the ninth grade. I would ask the teachers to present the experiences they had at the end of the school year.

Each class is discussed, beginning with the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was present during the Jean Paul discussion. Were you satisfied with the way the children participated?

What is there to say about eurythmy? That lethargic child, U.A., is not really lethargic. He only makes a lethargic impression.

In the event we create a tenth grade, all the children would have to move on to it.

Now we come to the eighth grade. Are there any students so weak we should hold them back?

A teacher: We should consider H.K. and whether it would be better to keep him in a lower grade so that he will progress better.

Dr. Steiner: My impression is that he does not need to be held back.

Is he one of those who is more behind in particular subjects? A teacher: He literally falls asleep.

Dr. Steiner: He is physically weak. He took part in the Quaker meals.131

A teacher: The situation at home is very bad.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you think he will be a disturbance next year in the ninth grade, or whether you will be able to carry him along. With such situations, a shock like that is not exactly desirable.

A teacher: I do not think he will be a disturbance.

Dr. Steiner: Can you achieve something with him in eurythmy?

A eurythmy teacher: He is trying. P.R. is deformed. Should we have a look at him specifically?

Dr. Steiner: Do we have a number of such children in the different classes? You need to do the best you can to come to grips with the children in the same groups. We can’t put P.R. aside. Is there anything to say regarding languages?

We should think about H.K. I think there is some doubt we can take him into the ninth grade. Perhaps I will come by the class tomorrow morning or the morning after. We need to have a remedial class. We need to think about that. In a lower grade, such a student would be just as disturbing.

A teacher: The children in my sixth grade class have a poor memory.

There must be an error in my teaching.

131 . After World War I, the English Quakers provided school meals for undernourished children in Germany.

Dr. Steiner: You can’t say every child’s memory is weak.

A teacher: The children cannot retain things. They don’t have any clear pictures of Egypt, for example.

Dr. Steiner: How do you attempt to teach them a pictorial idea?

A report about teaching geography is given.

Dr. Steiner: The children remember the pyramids and the obelisks.

You need to ask yourself whether you did everything in detail. Did you give the children a picture of the true situation in Egypt, so that they do not have holes in their pictures of Egypt? If you simply emphasize Egypt and do not give a picture of how the children get from here to Egypt, if they don’t have a living picture, then it is very possible that they cannot remember. Perhaps you need to pay more attention to going into all the details so that the children have a completely living picture, one with no holes in it, about the location of Egypt in relationship to their own. The child would know something about pyramids and obelisks, but not that they are in Egypt. You should really think about whether you did all of these things that come together as a complete picture. Have you had the children draw only Africa? Perhaps you should make a special map, including Europe, which would give them an overview of the connections.

A teacher: I asked in which direction of the compass they would look for Egypt.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps you should have them find the cities they would pass through if they went from here to Egypt. This kind of memory problem arises from some kind of holes in what they have otherwise learned. Without doubt, the memory would be better if the children had a complete picture. That was not the situation in Mr. O’s class. The children were interested, they understood everything and were enthusiastic. They remembered nothing, though, because he emphasized specific things and did not give

them the overall connections. A good way of improving memory is to create the large overview.

That is true in various ways for other areas of instruction. It is particularly true for such things as geography, but also for certain things in natural history. It is, of course, particularly true for history. In history, it is important that you find every possible way of giving the children concrete images.

When you discuss things like the Persian Wars, never neglect to emphasize some person, at least where there are important connections. Today, you did the Athenian runners. I would never have neglected creating a real picture for the children of how these people lived long ago. You could, for example, go back through the generations, grandfather, son, and so forth. I would construct the series right back to the Athenian runner. The result would be fifty-five or fifty-six people lined up in a row. In that way the children would have an idea of how far back the timeline reaches. 132 I would ask, for instance, which one was a contemporary of the Mystery of Golgotha. Use such pictures and let the children think about them. Speak about Egypt and then show them how they can get from Stuttgart to Egypt. You could stop in Venice, and then try to lighten things a little with a joke about Venice. There should be some humor in the instruction since otherwise memory will suffer.

A teacher speaks about some of the weaker children in the 6a class, particularly W.G. He is so sanguine that he is nearly an idiot. He doesn’t write the letters together nor complete words. He says whatever occurs to him.

Dr. Steiner: In his soul, this is a young child. He is at the age of seven or eight in the development of his soul. The situation is that he would not care very much if you held him back. The question is, how do we handle the whole question of promoting children in principle? This child, W.G., is one who would come under

132 . See Discussion of September 5, 1919, in Discussions with Teachers.

consideration. It would be good for him to go through the material a second time. We should discuss the principles of the question.

A teacher: I would be unhappy to give him up.

Dr. Steiner: He would be the only one of those you have mentioned.

We could put E.W. into the extra class.

A teacher: Many of the children cannot write properly yet.

Dr. Steiner: They would all come into the remedial class. W.E. is a clear candidate for that class. He cannot properly collect his thoughts. How is he in music? Most of them will be musical. He will also not be particularly diligent in handwork class. W.E. would be hypnotized by vibrant colors.

We need to give some consideration to forming a class for remedial instruction.

There is some discussion about some of the children in the fifth grade, particularly about E.E.

A teacher: He is not keeping up, but he is gifted in languages. He is clever and sly.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to pay attention to him, to speak with him with particular attention to his individuality. You need to vary that, but give particular attention to him.

A teacher: Shouldn’t he go into the remedial class?

Dr. Steiner: What would he do there? He loves being different. It would affect him deeply if you had him make a pair of shoes.133We should do something like make shoes so that he can nail things together. They should be real boots for someone else. We should have him make shoes in the handwork class, that would be

133 . The teacher did, in fact, learn how to make shoes in order to teach the boy later.

something good. He would have fun putting on the soles. He could even double-sole the shoes.

Discussion of the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was in the class, and I have to say it is going well, with the exception of three or four who will quickly catch up on what they cannot do. Some are weak in arithmetic, but others are quite good. I think it is a class that has suffered very little from having had three different teachers.

We can promote the whole class to the fifth grade. The previous teacher was extremely good in discipline. She was what people in bourgeois schools refer to as strict. The children liked her a lot.

Then you came. Today, their discipline was exemplary.

A teacher: I made myself strict.

Dr. Steiner: You will see the result only after you have been with them for a longer time.

L.H. certainly has weak eyes and the axes of the eyes need to become more parallel. They converge too much. Try to get him used to holding his book a little further away, just a half finger’s length more than what he is used to now. Move the location of where his vision crosses a little further from his face.

I noticed B.E. He awoke for a day. The children were all very surprised that he said something.

A teacher: M.I.’s mother is quite concerned that he inherited something from his father.

Dr. Steiner: He has a touch of childishness. He is apparently a Prussian, a little one. He is not actually disturbed, but if you wanted, you could call him weakly disturbed. He was born in Berlin and has something sweet about him through the language.

With good guidance, he can become quite normal.

A teacher: He is gathering statistics about electrical trains. He keeps himself apart.

Dr. Steiner: You need to guide him lovingly. The only concern is the statistics about railways. You need to try to get him interested in something else and to break him of that. He should learn German writing.

In the second grade, you have several children who are quite good. Your problem is that the class is so large. The disturbed children, G., H.N., and M.H., should also go into the remedial class. B.R. is not quite normal. He should receive particular help in the afternoon. That is difficult with some of your children. His brain is too small. You need only look at him. He is smaller than he should be. We should try to counteract that characteristic. It is not possible for him to completely pay attention. You should call upon him more often and discuss things with him in the corridor or on the street so that he has to think while he listens. His mother is just like him.

A teacher: Many children in the first grade already have new teeth, but some do not.

Dr. Steiner: None of the children in the first grade can have finished teething. That happens only at the age of eight. What is important in connection with school age is only that they have begun to change their teeth.

O.Nr. should also be considered for the remedial class. He transposes words. We could have him for a time in the remedial class where we can work with each child individually.

A teacher mentions T.M.

Dr. Steiner: The problem with T.M. has diminished. He is already healthier.

A teacher: He has asthma attacks at night.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him with moderate amounts of arsenic in the form of Levico Water. The boy has an irregularity in the astral body that we could cure physically. Give it to him twice a

week diluted in a quarter glass of water. You will then be taking all of your students into the second grade.

A teacher asks about F.O. in the present 1a class.

Dr. Steiner: The remedial class should help him so that he can come into the present second grade and the future third grade. Now we are all done with the individual classes.

A report is given about foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: You can try to achieve something by dividing into groups. We can put them into groups so that we have all those with the same knowledge and capabilities together.

A teacher: I think it would be good if we gave the sixth grade something printed to read.

Dr. Steiner: How old are they? You would have to look for a moderately long story. You would need to find a short story, something that has some substance and is not superficial. They could read something historical from Mignet.134 They would also learn quite a bit from it.

We will need to divide the foreign languages differently. It is so difficult to satisfy the children there. You need to ask the children questions often in foreign languages. There is a prevalent opinion that the children are unhappy. They learn the most from the lectures. It is helpful when they find their way themselves into a good lecture. Rote learning is only a crutch. You should proceed sentence by sentence and with the younger ones, only speak.

A teacher: Should the children also write in the third grade foreign languages?

Dr. Steiner: You can begin writing short, easy sentences that express some simple thought.

134 . François Mignet (1796–1884), French historian.

A teacher asks whether three songs from Dr. Steiner could be printed.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly give these choruses to the publisher in Dornach.135 They will sell well.

A teacher: Can we count upon having texts for the children?

Dr. Steiner: There is already something for the youngest children.

The “Springtime Song.” The instrumental music class is only a substitute, but we will have to leave that for now.

A teacher: I have used some things from curative eurythmy. Should I continue with that?

Dr. Steiner: I was very satisfied with what I saw today.

In the fifth grade there are a number of boys who could have a class in gymnastics. Our school program already should include one hour of that. We will make it more spiritually expressive as soon as we can.

A teacher: We have already begun modeling in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I was satisfied with what I saw.

Now I would like to ask you if we should prepare the reports as we did last year. Doing the reports that way is good, just as we did last year.

A teacher: We kept them positive.

Dr. Steiner: It is important to phrase the sentences properly. If you are not individual enough, something that is difficult, if you phrase the sentences too harshly, they will put people off. If someone is dawdling, you should write that it would be desirable for him to pull himself together next year. The way you say it is important.

135 . The music is in the first edition of Lieder der Freien Waldorfschule (Songs of the Waldorf School). The texts are taken from Truth Wrought Words. The songs are “Der Sonne Licht” for two voices; “Im Seelenaug sich spiegelt” for three voices with piano; “Die Sonne schaue” for two voices with piano; “Frühling” for solo with piano; “Planetentanz” for four voices.

You should express deficiencies positively, but be careful about how you say it.

Then we agree that we will do the reports as we did last year.

Give as true a picture as possible. At the bottom of each report, write a verse for each child that expresses the child’s individuality, that can act as a leitmotif for the future. I would also like to see, since the child will keep the report, that all of the teachers who worked with the child sign it. I would like each child to have all the signatures. It is important that the children have all the signatures of the teachers who worked with him or her. The class teacher’s name should be first, along with “Class Teacher,” so that the child knows to whom it belongs. The others should be below. It would be good if each teacher wrote some text. The class teacher should write the most and the others should write short remarks.

Concerning the question of promotion.

Dr. Steiner: We actually only have these two P. children, and then there would be almost no one else except F. H.M. could go into the remedial class, all the others would move ahead.

Now we come to the question of the remedial class. The question is whether we need another teacher. Dr. Schubert should take it.

A list of teachers who are to teach the main subjects is created.

Dr. Steiner: How would it be if we had Dr. Schwebsch from Berlin come by? He is supposed to be coming here on June 11.

In the fall, we will have Dr. Röschl for Latin and Greek. That will certainly be a very good addition. We also need help, a new teacher, for modern languages. Perhaps young Englert. He is still quite young. He should come here on June 11 or perhaps before to Dornach.

A report is given about the independent religious instruction. A class teacher mentions he had attended the religion class of his class to see that they behaved.

He felt like a barking dog.

Dr. Steiner: In a certain sense, a kind of exception is possible. We should keep to what is included in our pedagogy. We must assume that the class and the teacher belong together. Since different classes are together in the religion class, I certainly think it is possible that the class teacher be in the classroom while another teacher gives the instruction. We can hardly get around trying to form smaller classes.

A teacher: There is not always an inner participation. There are too many children.

Dr. Steiner: The groups are too large. That is something that should not be if the children are to take in the instruction.

We need to awaken a feeling for the seasons in the children. We also need to pay more attention that the children have a living picture of Christ. That should be the center of their thoughts at all levels. We should always return to that and see that the earthly life of Christ is the center. We must care for the personal relationship to Christ, even at the lowest grades, so that it becomes a kind of inner religion. Care for the personal relationship of the children to Christ. We must create an ideal religion in the period. Symbolism and pictures should play a role so that they strongly carry the feeling along.

As a religion teacher, you are not a part of the school. You give it as though you were a minister in an anthroposophical church outside the school and only came here.

Concerning education from the age of fourteen, that is, the pedagogy for those over fourteen years of age, we will have to see

that we have some time when I return on June 10.136 That relates to what you referred to as “bourgeois methods.”

A teacher: Last year we included social understanding as a part of technology.137

Dr. Steiner: That is connected with the academics for the upper grades. We can best teach social studies, but then we would have to drop languages. The older teachers, those who have been here at this school for two years, would have to take on such things.

Concerning a special class for eurythmy.

A eurythmy teacher: The performance was extraordinarily fruitful. It did a great deal to make the Waldorf School known. It appears we will form an extra group.

Dr. Steiner: We can do two different things. Either we can give performances with the children of the Waldorf School, in which case we simply select some from the regular group of children, or we can forego that and form a group. The group would not be the children of the Waldorf School, so we could no longer present that to the public as an achievement of the Waldorf School. We can do those two things. Either we give performances with children from the Waldorf School, in which case we cannot form a special troupe, or we form a special department for eurythmy at the Waldorf School that operates in parallel. That is something we can do quite officially, but then we would say, “Performances with children of the special class at the Waldorf School.”

A teacher: If the children were to sing in a chorus, they would also need to be selected.

136 . See Education for Adolescence.

137 . This seems to be a reference to the discussion on June 14, 1920.

Dr. Steiner: It would hardly be positive if we formed a chorus of individual students. Either we accept the achievements as they are or we create a special department for eurythmy. We can do either, perhaps depending only upon sympathy or antipathy. There are a large number of capable eurythmists we can use in that way, but we can no longer claim it is a performance of the Waldorf School.

A teacher: We could form a group from the older girls.

Dr. Steiner: We may well be able to do that if we give performances from the Waldorf School, but the littlest kids have the greatest success. There could be a special group of the more advanced eurythmists. We would, however, excuse those who are also professional eurythmists from normal eurythmy practice. We could do such things. You would have to create something separate from the school.

I think there are some who have a burning desire to do eurythmy. However, I think it would be nice if at least some of the boys were included. In Dornach, we only have S., and he needs half a year to prepare for a performance, so we never see male eurythmists on stage. You can see what eurythmy really is in Munich.138 There, the men performed. We debuted with four men. But then masculinity moved more and more into the background. The women are more agile. Here, the students are very capable. It is quite curious that women are much better doctors than men.

A teacher: The children in the upper grades who want to develop themselves musically need to begin practicing. Could we excuse them from those classes that inhibit their dexterity with difficult physical work?

138 . The first eurythmy performance took place August 28, 1913 (Goethe’s birthday) for members of the Anthroposophical Society in Munich; Steiner’s introduction to the performance is in An Introduction to Eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: We could change the curriculum for individuals. That is certainly possible. We should also think about having special practice rooms. What provides human education should remain, otherwise you can specialize.

A teacher: The children have asked about a student library, and whether they could read Dr. Steiner’s books. Should the older children get something socially directed?

Dr. Steiner: When we have the tenth grade, we can use reading to educate. In general, it is too early to give them such things. On the other hand, perhaps you could give them some cycles if they are appropriately printed. Christianity as Mystical Fact, perhaps. Or, maybe Theosophy. We would have to work out the preliminaries.

A teacher asks whether students could attend Dr. Steiner’s lectures.

Dr. Steiner: Do you think that such a lecture would be helpful? We will probably not be able to get around leaving such things up to the parents. We cannot make any rule about it. The parents need to do that themselves and also be responsible for it.

A question is asked about publishing a newsletter and also about putting on pedagogical conferences for teachers. The discussions with the teachers were quite favorable.

Dr. Steiner: What did you discuss there?

A teacher: We talked about the relationship of the school to the state and also a number of pedagogical things.

Dr. Steiner: I think it would be superfluous. People misunderstand the most important points. If you want to progress in the movement, you have to approach the consumers, not the factory owners. You can do that as a pleasant chat, but nothing comes of it. I have never resisted that. If you think you should do it, then go ahead. We have already wasted so much strength by always beginning new things that have no real possibility of success. In

Switzerland you can enjoy the luxury of working with teachers.

During the Easter course,139 I had the experience that the Swiss said their schools are independent. But, the Swiss schools are really only slaves. I don’t think that we need to hurry.

We can make the Waldorf School principle only a model. We will not be able to create a second school. It will remain a model, so we need do nothing more than maintain this school as a model until people get angry enough. The only thing that would make sense would be to oppose the school laws through a worldwide movement. It is high time for the World School Association to do something. It is important to bring the World School Association to life so that a gigantic movement for the independence of education and for the freeing of the school system arises throughout the world. For that reason, I think we should make this school with its students inwardly as complete as possible and extend it upward. Add a class each year and extend it upward.

Due to a lack of help, the newsletter will not be possible.

Pedagogical conferences are a luxury. Is there something else?

A question is asked about the closing ceremony.

Dr. Steiner: We can hold the closing ceremony in the main hall of the art building. If it gives the children a closing point and they receive a few thoughts, then it would be good. It is a part of their soul experiences, for otherwise the children would simply leave and then begin a new school year. In the end, they would become indifferent. The closing ceremony is the conclusion of the entire school year. The fact that the holiday is only a week is an exception.140 Each class will begin a new year. That should not be prosaic.

139 . See Die befruchtende Wirkung der Anthroposophie auf die Fachwissenschaften (The fructifying effect of Anthroposophy upon science, untranslated, GA 76).

140 . The beginning of school had been changed to Easter but, during that year, school closed on June 11 and opened again on June 18 as a transition.

Why have we not had any more monthly festivals? That is too bad. I think we should have them.

Thursday, June 16, 1921, 4:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if we could begin with your questions, with those things weighing upon you. Tomorrow’s School Association meeting will not be very long, so we can perhaps discuss things more thoroughly afterward.141 Today, I would like to learn about what is happening in the faculty itself.

A teacher: Saturday is the opening ceremony, but we have not yet spoken about it.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult that the school closing and opening ceremonies are occurring so quickly one after another. Have you thought of some way you would like to begin?

A teacher: Perhaps you would say something.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to do that. I think it is also necessary that the class teachers once again receive the children. I am not certain if we should create a visible symbol for the beginning of school. A certain impression is made upon the children when the class teachers receive them. That is also true for those teachers of the other subjects like foreign language, eurythmy, shop, and handwork. The reception line is rather long, but it makes a certain impression upon the children when we say some warm words to them at the beginning. You will see that it makes an impression. I will give a short speech first, and then we could go on to that.

Perhaps we could do something musically to receive the children, that is, play something to conclude the ceremony. It would be nice if the ceremony concluded musically.

A teacher: We could sing something.

141 . See Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean.

A teacher asks about the teaching assignments.

Dr. Steiner: That is not an easy question. We have already determined some of the new class teachers, but others will begin later. Miss Düberg will take over the 1a class, Miss von Grunelius, the 3b class, and Mr. Ruhtenberg, 5b.

Then we have the eighth, ninth, and tenth grade classes. It will not be easy to continue what would otherwise be so desirable, namely, the system we have had until now.

( Speaking to a teacher) Could you perhaps take over mechanics and surveying and survey mapping? It would certainly be good if we had three teachers for the tenth grade. Then there would also be three teachers for the ninth grade. It would be good if we could arrange the last three grades so that they are taken care of by three teachers.

We will need to replace Dr. Schwebsch by the beginning of July.

We do not have enough teachers. Mr. Englert is missing and Dr.

Kolisko can come only in the fall.

How do we divide the material? Actually, I would prefer to have four teachers for these three classes, but that is not possible right now. What would you prefer to teach, Dr. Stein?

A teacher: I would prefer that you set my task.

Dr. Steiner: I think that you should remain with those things you have been doing. You should do literary history and history in the tenth grade, as well as literature and German in all three grades. I also think that Dr. X. should take over history for the eighth and ninth grades, and that you, Mr. Y., should teach mathematics, physics, and natural sciences for the three grades, as well as mechanics and surveying for the tenth grade. The only problem is that that is only one-third of the time. We will not make a lesson

plan, but only determine the amount of time for each subject.142 I actually wanted four teachers, but that is not possible now. We could try out young Englert for teaching gymnastics.

A teacher: I had assumed I would be doing the practical work in the higher grades, or be teaching those children who have already graduated [from the eighth grade].

Dr. Steiner: The technology class begins in eleventh grade. You are an electrician. Somebody will need to teach spinning and weaving since that is a specific subject at the technical university. That is something our people from the Research Institute could do.

A teacher: I can learn that.

Dr. Steiner: ( Speaking to Dr. Kolisko) When you begin in October, you could take over the Health and First Aid course in the tenth grade. That is something we need.

We now have only the problem of the 1b class. ( Speaking to Mrs.

Stein, who had been away for some months) You want to return to eurythmy. Could you, perhaps, take over the 1b class for six weeks or so? The only problem is your dialect [Mrs. Stein was from Hungary]. The children will pick that up. Perhaps, the best solution would be to ask Dr. Schubert to take over the 1b class.

I have sought everywhere, but have been unable to find anyone to teach religion. We need to separate the children according to grades. I want to avoid the appearance that the religious teaching is something integrated into the school.

There is a discussion of how to schedule foreign language instruction, during which mention is made that some of the Greek and Latin classes have very few children.

142 . This refers to the unfixed schedule for the various subjects in the upper grades; only their duration is under discussion.

Dr. Steiner: If you only have one, if only one child is there, then that child needs to be taught. There is nothing to be done about it, that is what must be. Dr. Röschl is coming in the fall, and then we can take this up more forcefully.143 Let’s begin with the fifth grade.144 But we were speaking of the curriculum.

In handwork, we can add only the tenth grade, and we should make it increasingly artistic.

There is some discussion about the amount of work done by some of the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. X. has 22 hours. That is too much, and the same is true of Mr. Y. with his 24. Mr. Z. could do more, he only has 16

hours, whereas Mr. V. has sufficient with 22 hours.

A teacher asks about the connection between the various organs within the human being and the various periods of history. [Four days before, at the conclusion of the first lecture of the course on teaching adolescents, Dr. Steiner had mentioned that teachers could learn how to treat late Egyptian history by observing the function of the liver.145]

Dr. Steiner: You should not do that too consciously. If you were to do it in a very conscious way, it would be forced. I would prefer the history teacher to simply acquire an understanding of the human organism. He will then discover the organ that provides the correct perspective.

There is not sufficient liveliness in the instruction. In most classes, you seem to be having difficulty working with the children.

They are not all attentive, and many are not keeping up with their work. That is a problem we need to overcome.

143 . This discussion occurred with Maria Röschl in September 1921. See E. A. K.

Stockmeyer, Rudolf Steiner Curriculum for the Waldorf School, Robinswood Press,

1990.

144 . In previous years, Latin was begun in the fourth grade and Greek in the sixth.

145 . Education for Adolescents.

I noticed, for example, that many of the children were very lethargic in the discussion about Jean Paul.

A teacher: That always happened when I was too abstract, that is, when I attempted to present something too strongly conceptual.

When I gave examples and such things, then they were certainly interested.

Dr. Steiner: You certainly do not need to overemphasize the participation. You need to occasionally bring in some sort of “at ease!” without letting them get out of hand. You can achieve that when you have their complete attention. Then, you can slip something in by discussing some detail or making a joke or something like that. It is good for children when you bring in something that is not actually a part of the lesson so that you build a good relationship with them. Of course, you shouldn’t become a clown for the class, but it is certainly important to have a relationship to them. You should also bring in the relationships of the children to one another.

Dr. Steiner reads a letter from the medical inspector who, among other things, mentions that the children at the Waldorf School have bad teeth.

Dr. Steiner: That is just a bluff. That is something that could be determined only by investigating the situation. That is simply stupid. We would need to determine which children have bad teeth; how many have bad teeth and how many have good teeth.

With those children who have bad teeth, we would have to find out where they come from, if they are workers’ children. We would then have to look more specifically at them. The fact that we have so many children with bad teeth is because we have so many workers’ children who are not well taken care of and thus have bad teeth. Do you have any insight into this question?

A teacher: I looked at the children in my class and saw that their teeth were not particularly bad. The worst was K. who came from America.

Dr. Steiner: It is quite common that children who come from far away have a bad tooth or sometimes more. We should look at that in more detail. It is total nonsense to say that the children at the Waldorf School have bad teeth. At the time that the good doctor looked at the children, the school had existed for not even two years. Even if demonic forces had brought all these children together, and even if they had worsened here in the Waldorf School, that would not be visible so quickly. Even if we went so far as to think that there were something in the Waldorf School that ruins teeth—we could certainly think that about the eurythmy room— that would certainly not be visible in one and three-quarters years.146

The gym is really terrible. Apparently the ground underneath it is not very good. It must be moldy. The cellar is damp. It has a moldy smell to it. We will move the eurythmy into another room.

How are things with the construction of the new rooms?

A report is given.

Dr. Steiner: Next spring, we will have the eleventh grade and will need a number of new rooms. We most urgently need more rooms for teaching music. That is something we really need. Basically, everything we have is just a make-shift, and that is terrible, that is a real problem. We still are missing something for completing the construction, something very important. The money. Two-and-ahalf million Marks. The Waldorf School Association cannot provide that.

Emil Molt proposes that the company should do it and take out a loan.

Dr. Steiner: Isn’t that what people mean in Vienna when they say,

146 . At the time the eurythmy room was also being used for gymnastics classes and Sunday services.

“Six of one and half-a-dozen of the

other?”147 Emil Molt: People say that here, too.

The possibility of obtaining more money is discussed.

Friday, June 17, 1921, 8:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We need to look more closely at the ninth grade. After I more thoroughly considered yesterday’s discussion, I do not think we can take care of that class if we burden one teacher like Dr. Schubert, which is what would undoubtedly happen. I think we need to hire another teacher for the 1b class, and, in my opinion, Dr. Plinke would do well as a Waldorf teacher. She was here just today. I asked about her a few days ago, but could not obtain any real information about her stay here. I think she should take over the 1b class, and then Dr. Schubert’s work could be done differently.

Concerning the curriculum of the tenth grade, we need to take into consideration German language and literature. That would be a continuation of what was done in the ninth grade.

A teacher: I had them read Jean Paul.

Dr. Steiner: You had them read and complete Jean Paul.

A teacher: They completed the chapter about humor.

Dr. Steiner: What is now important is that you begin a comprehensive presentation of meter and poetics. Upon the basis of what they have learned from Jean Paul, the children will be able

147 . Gehupht wie gesprungen means literally “hopped as jumped,” a southern German and Austrian expression. — TRANS.

to learn a great deal here. In any event, we must avoid normal pedantic school methods. We must teach living poetry in a living way and treat it in a reasonable manner.

The class could then study The Song of the Niebelungs and Gudrun.

Where possible, you should study it in Middle High German. As time allows, go through it in Middle High German, but also speak about the entire context of the poem, its artistic and folk meaning and, aside from the passages that you read, go

through it so that the children learn the entire content. Of course, with The Song of the Niebelungs, you could do some Middle High German grammar and compare it with that of modern High German. That would be sufficient for the tenth grade, but begin with meter.

A teacher: Could you perhaps recommend a German book about meter?

Dr. Steiner: They are all equally good and equally bad. Take a look at Göschen’s anthology, one of the worst methods, but you will find the concepts there. There isn’t a good book on meter and poetics—Bartsch, Lachmann, and so forth. Simrock attempted to maintain that in his Germanized version of The Song of the Niebelungs.148

I gave the basics in a lecture in Dornach and showed how meter is connected to the interactions of the pulse and breathing look at the caesura when you study hexameter. You can see it as a harmony of the pulse, and, breathing. Today, we can’t go into metric theory.

It would still be good if we could arrange things in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades so that the class teachers would relieve one another.

A teacher: We did that.

Dr. Steiner: So, when one begins at 8 o’clock in the tenth grade, the others would begin in the ninth and the eighth. It would not be good to change weekly. You need a longer period for each block.

Our principle is to begin a block of learning and remain with it as long as possible. See if you can do that. We will also need to see that Dr. Schwebsch joins you as a fourth teacher when he comes.

For the remaining classes, the plan will remain as it was.

148 . Bartsch and Lachmann were more concerned with the scientific study of The Song of the Niebelungs. Simrock’s translation was published in 1827.

Now Schubert can take over the whole subject of history, since he no longer has the 1b class.

Now we have history in the tenth grade. In order to teach economically, it will be important to be well-prepared. In the eighthand ninth-grade classes, do the same as before. In the tenth grade, we should return to the earliest period of history. Beginning with the earliest period, take history through the fall of free Greece, that is, beginning with the earliest Indian Period, go through the Persian, the Egypto-Chaldeaic and Greek until the end of Greek freedom, that is, until the battle of Charonea in 338 B.C.

For tenth-grade geography, describe the Earth as a morphological and physical whole. In geology, you will need to describe the Earth so that the form of the mountains is presented as a kind of cross, that is, the two rings of mountains in the east-west and north-south directions that cross one another. In morphology, discuss the forms of the continents, the creation of mountains, everything that enters into the physical realm, and then the rivers. Take up geological questions, physical characteristics, isotherms, the Earth as a magnet, the north and south magnetic poles. You need to do this in morphology. Continue on with the ocean currents, the air currents, the trade winds, and the inside of the Earth. In short, everything encompassed by the Earth as a whole.

How far have you come in mathematics?

A teacher: In algebra, exponents and roots, geometric drawing, and the computation of areas. We also did simple equations, equations with multiple unknowns, quadratic equations, and the figuring of the circumference and area of a circle.

Dr. Steiner: You could also teach them the concept of __. When you teach that, it is not important that you teach them about the theories of decimal numbers. They can learn the number __ to just one decimal place.

A teacher: We studied the number __ by looking at the perimeters of inner and outer regular polygons.149

Dr. Steiner: What lines do the children know?

A teacher: Last year we studied the ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola from a geometrical perspective.

Dr. Steiner: Then, the children will need to learn the basics of plane trigonometry. I think that would be enough for now. How far did you come in descriptive geometry?

A teacher: The children learned about interpenetrating planes and surfaces. The children could certainly solve problems involving one triangle penetrated by another. They can also find the point of intersection of a line with a plane.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps that is not necessary. You should actually begin with orthogonal projections, that is, from a point. You should go through the presentation of a plane as a plane, and not as a triangle.

You should then go on to the theory of planes and intersection of two planes and then, perhaps, to the basics of projective geometry. It is important to teach children about the concepts of duality, but you need to teach them only the most basic things.

A teacher: In trigonometry, wouldn’t it be necessary to go into logarithms?

Dr. Steiner: What? They don’t understand logarithms yet? You must do that in mathematics, it belongs there. They would know only

149 . This refers to a primitive form of differential calculus used by the Ancient Greeks to calculate __. An inner polygon is formed inside a circle, with the points of the polygon conjoining the perimeter of the circle. An outer polygon is formed outside a circle by having the midpoints of the sides of the polygon conjoin the perimeter of the circle. If you take one circle and construct successive inner and outer polygons—that is, construct first inner and outer triangles, then squares, then pentagons, etc., the lengths of the perimeters of the inner and outer polygons will converge to one value, which is the perimeter of the circle.

Through this process, the value of __ can be approximated. — TRANS.

the basic concepts of sine, cosine, and tangent, you need to say only a few sentences about that. They should learn only a couple of the relationships, for instance, sin2a + cos2a = 1, but they should understand that visually.

A teacher: Should the goal be to teach logarithms in the ninth grade?

Dr. Steiner: They should know enough about logarithms to be able to perform simple logarithmic computations. Then we have physics.

A teacher: I was supposed to teach them to understand the locomotive and telephone.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, that was the goal, so that the children would have a preliminary overview of all of physics.

The teacher then describes what was done.

Dr. Steiner: With a grain of salt, it appears you did go through most of physics. That was when we should have gone through all that.

It is sufficient if the children have an idea of it.

A teacher: I covered mechanics the least.

Dr. Steiner: Now is just the right time for that. You need to begin with mechanical forms [perhaps formulas]. It is best if you treat it mathematically. You need to go only far enough for the children to have a basic understanding of simple machines. Then we have chemistry.

A teacher: The main thing we attempted to do was to present the differences between acids and bases.

Dr. Steiner: That is, of course, good. Do the children have a clear idea about the importance of salts, bases, and acids? Such things need to be done first. It is really terrible to speak about organic chemistry. We need to get away from that and expand our concepts. We could accomplish a great deal if we simply did what

belongs to this year and did it by observing in detail basic and acidic substances as well as salts. We should, therefore, look at alkalines and acids, and then subsequently at the physiological processes so that the children understand them. We could begin with opposite reactions which we can see in the contrasting behavior of bee’s blood and digestive juices, since they are acidic and alkaline. In this way, we would touch upon physiological processes. You only need to work through the concepts of bitter and sour, base and acid with them. That is, take up the blood of the bee and its stomach acid because they react in opposite ways.

Stomach acid is sour and the blood is bitter. Bees have these opposites of blood and stomach acid in their digestive organs. The same is true of human beings, but it is not so easy to demonstrate.

It can be easily done, however, with bees in a laboratory.

How far have you come in natural history? Remember, we now have fourteen-and fifteenyear-olds.

A teacher: I have not done much there.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we will need to assign classes differently and have a fourth teacher.

A teacher: I will have at most a third of the year available to do al of this.

Dr. Steiner: You can do it in a third of a year. You could save some time if, in the future, we had two and a half hours in the morning for these three classes and compress the material somewhat.150Then we could include a fourth teacher. We need to begin these three classes a little earlier and end them a little later.

150 . This was not possible; rather, a third hour was added to the main lessons in the upper grades.

A teacher: But then we will have difficulties for the other subjects because they change classrooms at the 10 o’clock recess.151

Dr. Steiner: In the future we will not need as many hours of language instruction in all the grades as we have had. We do not need as much English and French in the tenth grade, that is absolutely unnecessary. We use too much time for modern languages. If we do languages so much in the lower classes as we have, we will not need to do so much in the upper grades. We can limit foreign languages somewhat in the upper grades.

It is important to consider minerals in natural history. In the tenth grade, we should also discuss the human being. We should also do mineralogy.

A teacher: What should we do about anthropology in the tenth grade?

Dr. Steiner: You will need to make the human being understandable, in a certain sense. Of course, you have to create a context in which you can make the human being as an individual understandable, so that you can later go on to ethnology. In making the individual human being understandable, you can take a great deal from Anthroposophy without getting the reputation of teaching Anthroposophy. That is the objective truth. Teach about the physical human being and its organs and functions in relation to the soul and spirit.

We also need to create a transition from shop into what is truly artistic. You have already done that with modeling, but now you can alternate that with painting. Paint with those children who are adept. We can look at the tenth-grade children as though they were in a college preparatory school, and thus we can move them into the various arts. I think we need some sort of class on aesthetics, and that is something that Dr. Schwebsch could do since he

151 . In 1921 Germany, it was a very innovative to have the children, rather than the teachers, change rooms. — TRANS.

created an aesthetic connection between sculpture, painting, and music. He has done a great deal with music. In connection with musical aesthetics, you need to form a kind of sub-faculty: shop classes that move into the artistic and then into the musical, so that the aesthetic, but not musicology, is of concern. I think we should give the children as early as possible an idea of when a chair is beautiful or when a table is beautiful. You should do that in such a way as to stop all this nonsense about a chair needing to be pleasing to the eye. You should be able to feel the beauty of a chair when you sit upon it. You need to feel it. It is just the same as I said yesterday in the handwork class that the children need to be able to feel one way or another about what they have done, for instance, in crossstitching. I think that in general, these things will all merge: handwork and shop with a feeling for art and music. Of course, this all must be done properly.

That has all been done in the most horrible manner in the college preparatory schools. Herman Grimm always complained that when people came to him, and he showed them pictures, they couldn’t tell whether a person was standing toward the front or back in the picture.152 People did not have the slightest idea about how to view them. The high-school students could not tell whether someone was standing toward the front or toward the back.

We will see how things move in regard to instrumental music in the tenth grade.

A teacher: We need to begin it earlier.

Dr. Steiner: For the tenth grade, in any event.

A teacher: In the tenth-grade class, all of the children are doing instrumental music and I want to put them together and form a small orchestra. Most of the children belong.

152 . See The Renewal of Education, lecture 6.

Dr. Steiner: For those who are not participating, you would need to be certain that they willingly participate.

A teacher: We would certainly need two periods for the tenth grade, otherwise we could hardly do anything in choir.

Dr. Steiner: In the tenth grade, we could teach some harmony and counterpoint, so the children would want to perform. But, don’t force the issue. Wait until they come to it themselves.

In eurythmy, we need to work toward an ensemble. There are already some young men and women who can do complete ensemble forms. In music, it is important that when we begin working on something, we bring it to a certain degree of conclusion. It is better to complete three or four things in the course of the year than to simply begin all manner of things. You will soon get past the hurdle of boredom.

We must also teach children the simplest concepts of drafting.

We could do that in the periods we otherwise use for languages.

We need only one period per week for drafting and for surveying, also only one hour per week. We could do drafting for a half year and then surveying. In drafting, you should begin with screws, something that is not normally done. We should do that because we should begin with the character of what is material, with the poetic in drafting, and only later go onto dynamic subjects. You will certainly have enough to do in a half year without that, so teach all about the screw in drafting. You will, of course, have to guide the children so that they can draw screw forms. Work on drills and screws and worm gears.

In surveying, it will be enough if you bring the children so far along that they can determine the horizon and then simple landscapes, vineyards, orchards, and meadows, so they have an idea of how they are drawn.

Concerning spinning, you should begin with the tools, like the spinning wheel or hand loom and so forth, and first teach primitive spinning and weaving. They won’t be able to do much more than

learn the simplest things and ideas. They do not need to come much further than to understand how a thread is created and how a piece of cloth is woven. You should be happy if they acquire some skill in the years. They should have some understanding of the fibers, also. And, in addition, you should teach them the historical development. To give it some spice, they should also learn about more complicated forms, since the simpler forms are no longer used.

In health class, teach simple bandaging, roughly what is needed in first aid. Let the boys do it also, tenderly and decently, and things will move along. It is not important whether they think they can do it, it is sufficient if they simply acquire an idea about it. For this, you will need one period a week for half a year.

You should see to it that the girls watch the tomboys and the boys, the more effeminate girls. The boys should not do it, they should simply become accustomed to it. They could talk a little bit among themselves about which girls do it best.

While the boys are drawing screws, the girls should talk about that in a more theoretical way. One problem with drafting is that it takes so much time to do so little. You do all kinds of things, use a great deal of time, but not much gets done. You could make the period quite exciting since the boys won’t do very much otherwise.

There is certainly a lot we could do in this period of life to make things more exciting. I have noticed that they are a little bit sleepy, the boys and girls.

Tenth-grade French: Do literature and culture. I would do it by beginning with the more modern and going backward to older things, that is, in reverse. What can the children do in French?

A teacher: Simple conversation.

Dr. Steiner: They could read Le Cid.153 The children should begin to have some concept of classical French poetry. Do Molière later.

153 . Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) published Cid in 1636.

I would prefer that you do not rush from one thing to another. If you like Le Cid, then do all of it. We can add other things during the year.

A teacher: What should I do in English? I have covered all of the background information about the text.

Dr. Steiner: Continue with that. Then see if the children can freely write a paragraph. There are some students in the language class who think they can do it better than the teacher. That is easy to see. Foreign language teachers are seldom accepted if they are not foreigners and speak with an accent. You need to pay a little attention here. This is a difficult problem, but we will need to stick with the principle that things will come with time.

When we do not teach efficiently, we burden the students. We should avoid wasting time for that reason. We should not do everything as though we had an endless amount of time. It is apparent that we too often assume we have an endless amount of time.

A teacher asks if he should do Dickens.

Dr. Steiner: Our plans are good enough. Now we have only Latin and Greek. What can the children do there?

A teacher: Ovid, without always translating.

Dr. Steiner: Continue that. They need to be able to understand at least simple things in Greek.

We should give as much Latin and Greek as we can. It is not so important that we use the encapsulated methods used at the college preparatory schools. That is nonsense. We should give somewhat more emphasis to Latin and Greek and somewhat less to modern languages. In the lower grades, we need to come so far that later we do not need to use so much time. Our job is to make it clear to as many students as possible that it is something

beautiful. I cannot understand why more boys do not want to learn it.

Use more time in the upper grades for Latin and Greek.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: Such problems come up. If we add stenography to our curriculum, we need to start now.

A teacher: Most of them already do it.

Dr. Steiner: That doesn’t concern us. We need to ask ourselves if we should use these two periods a week to teach stenography in the tenth grade and, then, which system. Gabelsberger? The boundary for that is here. Gabelsberger predominates here and in Bavaria also. I think the Gabelsberger method would do the least damage. If only stenography had never been created! But now that it exists, people cannot live without it, just like the telephone. Well, Gabelsberger it is. Two periods of stenography.

We can no longer address the girls in the tenth grade with the informal “you.” It’s bad enough when a teacher is not old enough.

Evening lectures: One or two hours for those who have completed the eighth or ninth grades and have left the school. The children will learn the practical things they need to know outside.

It would be good for the health of the children, though, if they were taught about aesthetics and art and literary history.154

In the independent religious instruction, we have not yet taught the children the Psalms. The ten-year-olds could understand the Psalms. Discuss everything in the Psalms. Give a kind of inner contemplation of the Psalms so you can crown it by singing them.

A teacher: What should I do now? I am getting past fairy tales.

154 . These were to be lectures to the students who had completed eighth or ninth grade and left school. The lectures were given for a short time only, if at all.

Dr. Steiner: Use the symbolism that comes from the material, for instance, the meaning of the festivals. There is so much information in the lectures about Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun.

You could discuss most of what those lectures contain. If you present it properly, it would be quite good for children, particularly at that age. Try to stay connected with the times of the festivals.

You could begin a little earlier and end a little later, though. Spend four weeks on Christmas.

A teacher: Could we use Michelangelo’s statues when we do the prophets?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, that is possible.

A teacher: Should we work from the sculptural perspective?

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to know how far you have come, and how you would continue.

Transition to consideration of the Psalms. Then take up the Laocoön group, so that the tragic and lofty are expressed. It is the moment of death.

A teacher: Can I continue teaching religion in the same way in the third and fourth grades?

Dr. Steiner: You should not believe you can leave out Christ.

A teacher: I have done Old Testament history.

Dr. Steiner: Do not limit yourself to Old Testament history.

A teacher: How should I begin with the first grade?

Dr. Steiner: In the past, we have always tried to begin with natural phenomena. That was even the theme of the lower grades. Then, we slowly went on to stories and to tales we made up. From that, we went on to the Gospels and created scenes from the Gospel of St. John. We began with a kind of natural religion. It is important

that we create a religious feeling in the children in a natural way by connecting all things together.

Comments are made about a religion teacher’s teaching methods. He was unable to keep the children under control, so they just walked around in class.

Dr. Steiner: That cannot occur again. That is a tremendous setback.

Things certainly cannot be the way they were in Haubinda.155Some of the students were lying about on the floor and stretching their legs up into the air, others were lying on the window sill, and still others on the tables. None of them sat in their chairs properly. A short story by Keller was read aloud, but there was no hint of a religious mood. That was in 1903.

A teacher: We have done Jean Paul in the ninth grade. We were also to do Herman Grimm. What should we read in the eighth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Also Herman Grimm.

A teacher: I am beginning with Jean Paul. You suggested doing the chapter on humor.

Dr. Steiner: You have to do the whole thing, including the historical context and literary history.

A teacher: What should I read in seventh-grade French class? I chose poetry.

Dr. Steiner: Read stories, La Fontaine.

A teacher asks about anthropology in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should do what is appropriate there. In the fourth grade, you will have to remain more with external things. That is possible in nearly every class. The skeleton is, of course, the most

155 . In July and August 1905 whenever Steiner lectured to members of the Theosophical Society in Haubinda, he also visited a nearby boarding school directed by Dr. Hermann Lietz.

abstract thing. I would not consider it for itself, but include it with the entirety of the human being. I would not handle the skeleton by itself, even in the tenth grade. I would begin more with the picture of the whole human being. The way Dr. von Heydebrand did it was good. You should try to make a plausible group of ideas about the human being.

A handwork teacher: Should we try to teach the new children knitting, or could we simply integrate them into the regular classwork?

Dr. Steiner: It would be best to have them learn to knit first, and then have them do the same thing as the rest of the class.

A teacher: Is it best to study commerce and finances in connection with mathematics?156

Dr. Steiner: Yes, do it with mathematics, and also in other areas.

A question is asked about business writing.157

Dr. Steiner: I recently asked that The Coming Day do something and received the reply yesterday. I told them I could not accept it as it was. I have to be able to understand what happened. Usually you can’t tell what happened. In the first case, the address was incorrect, and secondly, instead of what I wanted to know, namely, if something had been moved to a different location, other things were included. The third thing it included was something that did not interest me at all, namely, the charges they had incurred. I could not find out what I wanted to know, namely, whether the task was done, from what was written in the reply. A different address was given. That comes from a superficiality because people do not believe things need to be exact.

156 . See “Second Lecture on Curriculum” in Discussions with Teachers.

157 . See Discussions with Teachers; lecture 12 and “First Lecture on Curriculum.”

You only need to say what happened. You should try to understand the course of a business relationship, and then write from that perspective. That can best be done in a critical way. You should try to probe, to get behind all this gibberish, and see if you can’t bring some style into it.

Concerning business writing: If you need an expert opinion about something, then that opinion is a business report.

Information of various sorts, sales reports and so forth, those are all business reports. It is not so terribly bad if you do something wrong.

Someone who can do something will find their way better than someone who can do nothing. Those who do things are the ones who most often cannot do them.

Using simple expressions is better than normal “business style.”

Some of the things I have experienced myself, I could not repeat here, they were so terrible. It is really not so bad if you simply summarize the situation and repeat it. Everyone can understand that. This is not connected with business alone. You need only read some legal opinion or legal judgment. I once read that a railway is a straight or curving means of movement on a plane or a number of planes with greater or lesser degree of elevation from a particular goal, and so forth. It was sixteen lines.

When you create your lessons, always consider how you can draw them out of the nature of the children.

Be careful when a school inspector comes that he does not leave with his questions unanswered. He may ask questions in such a way that the children cannot answer them. We should work so that the children can handle even the most surprising questions. We certainly want to hold good to what our official plan is, namely, that the children know what they might be asked at the end of the 3rd and sixth grades without preparing them for that specifically.

We certainly do not want to work like those teachers do who drill the children about specific questions. The school inspector comes and asks a child if he believes in God. “I believe in God.” The

inspector then asks if he believes in Jesus Christ. “No. The one who believes in Jesus Christ sits behind me.” That must not happen here.

We should also be careful that the class teachers do not enter the classroom too late. That is one of the main reasons why the children get into such an uproar, namely, that they are left to themselves because the teacher is not there.

A comment.

Dr. Steiner: ( Speaking to a teacher whose class is to be divided) You should try to make the division yourself. It’s best, since you know the children, that you try to do what is best according to your feeling.

Otherwise, you could simply take the children who have been here the longest, and the new teacher would take the new children.

A comment concerning the student library.

Dr. Steiner: Do Grillparzer, Hamerling, and Aspasia as late as possible. Do König von Sion as soon as you have done history.

You can let them read Ahasver and Lessing at fifteen. Recently, you could have had them read the Zerbrochenen Krug (The broken pitcher). You don’t need to emphasize the Prussian dramas. You could have them read Shakespeare in English. Your goal in such things should be to have them read such things as Shakespeare in the language in which they were written. When the children are so old that they normally do not learn a new language, they should read things in translation, things that are as important as Shakespeare is for English. You should not have the children read Racine and Corneille in German except when they can’t read it in French. Include Fercher von Steinwand and also the twenty-four volume history by Johannes Müller. They should become accustomed to that style. You can also include other things for the children. Fairy tales and mysteries about good and evil are good for children, but you cannot give them the whole book.

We need to consider the faculty. We need a new teacher, and Dr. Plinke might be good. It would be good—you will excuse me—if we alternate, man, woman; man, woman, as otherwise this school will become too feminine.

A teacher is suggested.

Dr. Steiner: He is only “half grown” and will still grow. Isn’t it true that we have men and women equally?

A teacher: There are more men.

Dr. Steiner: I am certainly in favor of equality, but not in a forced way. That is also dangerous. We should have Miss Michels come as a gardener. We could telegraph her.

A comment about the opening ceremony on the coming Saturday is made.

Dr. Steiner: I could speak first, and then all the teachers. I think we should take all the class teachers beginning with the higher grades downward, one after another, and then representatives of the different subjects. We could begin with the top, that is, with the 10th grade. The subject teachers should also speak. We could present the 10th, 9th, and 8th-grade teachers, then the eurythmy, music, foreign language, handwork and shop teachers. We should invite somebody from the ministry, though I don’t think he will come. But, that is another question. Others will also be here.

Someone asks what they should say.

Dr. Steiner: You will find that your goals and intentions for your class at the beginning of the school year fill you with inspiration.

Perhaps I should say more about what you should leave out.

Everyone is thinking about their goals and intentions. I don’t think it would be proper for me to tell you what to say. It is too bad we cannot do something original in eurythmy, that would certainly be a nice thing to do. The ceremony should be very dignified. It is a problem that we have to hold it in the hall in the botanical gardens.

It is a problem that we cannot have the ceremony here. We could not even fit all the children in here, let alone the other people. They could only stand. The faculty should do something at the beginning of school. We will divide the children into the 1st through sixth grades, and seventh through tenth. We’ll have to do that next year.

Sunday, September 11, 1921, 5:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: School begins on the thirteenth.158 Now that we have more teachers, we need to discuss the classes again. Do you have a plan here? We could go according to that.

A final decision is made about who will be the main teacher for each class.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing we need to talk about is the remedial class.159 We definitely need it, but the question is, who can do it?

I would be happy if Dr. Schubert could take over the remedial class. Don’t you think you would just die if you could no longer have your old class?

Dr. Schubert: Did I do poorly?

Dr. Steiner: No, the children are quite lively. I think that Dr. Kolisko should step in for Dr. Schubert in history for the upper three grades.

I would also like to see if Dr. Schwebsch could give a kind of aesthetics class, a class in art for the upper three grades, eighth, ninth, and tenth. Thus, we would add Dr. Schwebsch to the three

158 . The school year began on June 18 in 1921.

159 . The remedial class had been temporarily suspended while Dr. Schubert substituted for a class teacher.

main lesson teachers for the upper classes, and he would teach aesthetics. We already spoke of that to an extent. That would not continue indefinitely, but would merge into other teaching in a few weeks. The four of you would then rotate.

A teacher: That would mean that one of us would be free for a period of time.

Dr. Steiner: That does not matter since the upper grades need that.

We need to speak about the foreign languages. They discuss how to divide the modern languages.

Dr. Steiner: Dr. Schubert should take over the younger children for Latin and Greek, and I would ask Dr. Röschl to take over the remaining Latin and Greek classes. I will say something more about that later.

A teacher: Isn’t it better to place the students in Latin and Greek by class?

Dr. Steiner: With the confusion we now have, we can do that only slowly. Our goal could be to achieve some balance by the age of sixteen or seventeen. I would like to talk about that tomorrow at 2

o’clock. The teachers who are no longer responsible for Latin could help in the teachers’ library.

Today there was some talk about hiring a librarian, something I consider pure nonsense. If you work at it, you could finish the entire library. I think it would be silly. I could keep the whole thing in order with three hours a week. We need to consider how we can save some time. I think it would be a good idea if the faculty took that up. We can’t create a library and then hire a librarian who will need at least a palace. That talk is pure fantasy. Someone like Dr.

R. would cost 30,000 Marks, money we could save if you would spend some of your free time in the library. I think that would be best and most efficient.

The theology course will take place in Dornach from September 26 until October 10.160 Hahn, Uehli, Ruhtenberg, and Mirbach will attend, and thus the independent religious instruction will not

160 . Vorträge und Kurse über christlichreligiöses Wirken II (The second course on theology, GA 343); the course that laid the foundation for the Movement for Religious Renewal; it included fifteen lectures and fourteen discussions with those who would later establish the Christian Community.

take place. We will have to teach something else in their place. It would be interesting if, for example, Dr. Schwebsch is free during that period, and if he could do something appropriate for the children concerning history or art history. It could also be something else.

I would now like to hear what else has been happening.

A teacher: What should we read in the seventh grade?

Dr. Steiner: We cannot hold the whole class back simply because there are a few new children. Those who are less advanced will not be able to read A Christmas Carol.

A new teacher: I think Dickens is much too difficult for this grade.

Could we obtain a textbook for teaching language?

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against using a textbook, but all of them are bad. The class does not have one book that unites them. Look for a textbook, and show it to me when I come back.161

With regard to Dickens, I do not agree.162 The seventh grade can certainly read him. You could also choose some other prose, that was only given as an example. There are a number of good students’ editions. Of course, you’ll have to use something appropriate to the students’ age.

A teacher: In other schools, we began Dickens in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Find some texts you feel you can work with.

A teacher: I would be grateful if you would say something about rhythm and verse.

161 . Shortly afterward, this teacher gave Steiner a list of textbooks that the teacher thought useful. Steiner put the list in his pocket without saying a word and never returned to the question.

162 . Steiner had suggested that the seventh grade read A Christmas Carol during the meeting on March 23, 1921.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to hold a course about individual topics in teaching. Why can’t you find anything reasonable?

A teacher: I cannot say precisely.

Dr. Steiner: The children need to learn the poetic meter and rhyme that you know. They should understand the relationship of the individual meters to the pulse and breathing rhythms. That is the goal. I can hardly believe you cannot find anything. We cannot say that all books are bad. You can make them good by using them.

A teacher: I would like to ask a question about algebra. I think it would be good if we gave the children homework. It is certainly clear in this case that the children should do some problems at home.

Dr. Steiner: We need to emphasize what results from a good pedagogy. One basic principle is that we know the children do the homework, and that we never find that they do not do it. You should never give children homework unless you know they will bring the solved problems back, and that they have done them with zeal. A liveliness needs to come into the work, and we need to encourage the children so that their inner attitude is not paralyzed. For example, you should do it so that when you have covered some material, and you want to assign them some work in connection with it, you say, “Tomorrow I will do the following arithmetic operations.” Then wait and see if the children prepare the work at home. Some will be interested enough to do it and then others will become interested. You should bring it about that the children want to do what they need to do in school. What you need to do from day to day should come from what the children want to do.

A teacher: Can we also give homework such as multiplication problems and so forth?

Dr. Steiner: Only in that way. It’s the same story in the other subjects, and together we would then have a great deal of homework.

We would then have pale children. Our goal must be to cover the material in such a way that we don’t need anything outside of school.

A teacher: I also wanted to ask what we could do following mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: Afterward, when the children are tired, you could go on to something simpler. You could do something like what you had originally thought of as homework.

A teacher: I have not had the impression that even the most strenuous things in mathematics tire the children.

Dr. Steiner: In spite of that, we should not keep the children under the same stress for two hours.

You could help the children or give them a hint that they should do this or that at home. But do not demand it.

A teacher: Could you give me some help in teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: These are fourteen-to sixteen-year-old children.

Through examples, I would try use art itself to give them the concept of beauty. Look at the metamorphosis of beauty through the various style periods: Greek beauty, Renaissance beauty, and so forth. It is particularly important for children at that age that you bring a certain concrete form to what is otherwise abstract. If you study the aesthetics of people like Vischer and Carrière, all that is simply chaff in regard to concepts. On the other hand, you ennoble the children regarding ideals if you can give them an understanding of what is beautiful or what is great. What is comedy and how does music or poetry achieve it? The child’s soul cannot take in generalized concepts in this period. For that reason, at that

age you must include such things as what it means to declaim and recite.

At the time when I was lecturing about declamation and recitation, I discovered that most people do not even know there is a difference.163 If you take the way you should speak Greek verses, then you have the archetype of reciting, because what is important is the meter, how things are extended or contracted.

When the important point is the highs and lows, and that is what you need to emphasize, for instance, in The Song of the Niebelungs, then you have declamation. I showed that through an example, that there is a radical difference between the first form of Goethe’s Iphigenia, that he later reworked into a Roman form. The German Iphigenia should be declaimed and the Roman, recited.

A teacher: If we are to integrate our work with that of Dr.

Schwebsch, I would like to ask approximately how much time we should allow for teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to allow equal times. In that way, the German class would be less work.

We need to have somewhat different concepts. Think about the Austrian college preparatory schools. They have eight periods of Latin in the fifth grade. That is the result of terribly inefficient teaching. We, of course, must limit that. The Austrian schools have only very few periods of mathematics. Three in the 4th, 5th, and sixth grades and two in the seventh and eighth. If you work in these periods so that you correctly distribute the material you have to cover during the time available, the children will get the most from your instruction. These are children of fifteen or sixteen years of age.

Thus, in geometry, if you can see that the children have the basic concepts, including the law of duality and perspective geometry, so that the children are perplexed and amazed and have some

163 . See Steiner’s The Art of Declamation, manuscript, GA 281.

interest in what you say about some of the figures, then you will have achieved everything that you can.

Have you begun with descriptive geometry yet?

A teacher: I have done the constructions with a point and a line, Cavalieri’s perspective and shadow construction, so that the children have an idea of them. Now we are only doing shadow construction. Then, we will do technical drawing. We have done relatively little of that.

Dr. Steiner: Then, you should do mechanical drawing including trajectory, simple machines, and trigonometry. Trajectory is better if you treat it with equations. Do the children understand parabolic equations? If you develop concrete examples, then you do not need to go into detail there. From a pedagogical perspective, the whole treatment of a trajectory is only so that the children learn parabolic equations and understand parabolas. The coinciding of reality with mathematical equations is the goal you need to strive for.

“Philosophy begins with awe,” is partially incorrect. In teaching, awe must come at the end of a block, whereas in philosophy, it is at the beginning. You need to direct the children toward having awe. They need something that will completely occupy them. They need to understand that it is something that, in the presence of its greatness, even Novalis would fall to his knees.

I would particularly like to remind all of you who are involved with drawing to study Baravalle’s dissertation thoroughly. I have attempted to mention it several times. Copies were available at the conference.164 Baravalle’s dissertation is extremely important for aesthetics. You should all study it. Baravalle’s dissertation could have a very deep effect, particularly in the handwork class. There

164 . Dissertation by Hermann von Baravalle, “Zur Pädagogik der Mathematik un Physik” (Teaching mathematics and physics) published by Der Kommende Tag, 1921. Copies were available at the conference in Stuttgart, August 28 to September 7, 1921.

is certainly a great deal in it that would help in understanding how a collar or a belt should be shaped.

Things like this from Baravalle—now don’t let this go to your head—things like this dissertation have a fundamental importance for Waldorf teachers, since they show how to pictorially present mathematical ideas and thus make them easier. That is something we could extend. What he has done for forms could be done in a similar way for colors or even tone. You could find a number of helpful ideas about Goethe’s thoughts about the world of tone in my last volume of the Kürschner edition. The table contained there is very informative. Certainly the theory of color could be treated in the same way.

A teacher: It may be possible to create a parallel in the moral and perceptible side of tones. Color perception follows the order of the spectrum. Everything in the blue range corresponds to sharps, and the remainder, to flats.

Dr. Steiner: That would be an interesting topic.

A teacher: In looking at both spectra, there is a certain parallel between them.

Dr. Steiner: The thought is nearly correct, but we must avoid simple analogies.

I would like to say something more that will hopefully strike an anthroposophical chord with you. I said that it would be a good idea to study Baravalle’s dissertation. I would like to mention that there is an occult significance in enlivening instruction when a lively interest exists for the work done by members of the faculty.

This is extremely important. The entire faculty is enlivened when you take an interest in some original work by a colleague.

That is also a basic thought of many of the various school programs, but it has been corrupted. Each year discussion of the program should be published, but the whole faculty should be concerned with it. The fact is that the spiritual forces within the

faculty carry the faculty through a communal inner experience. We should not try to do things individually, the whole should participate. Of course, here, through lively presentation, there is a significant general interest. However, there is an assumption that many others are also hiding their work. I would like to remind you to make that work fruitful for others as well.

A teacher: Sometime ago we spoke about a gymnastics teacher.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Baumann told me we could no longer consider the business regarding a gymnastics teacher because we have no rooms. When we have room, then Englert will be here.

A teacher: He wrote that he could not do that. He is now in Norway.

Dr. Steiner: We haven’t the slightest need in the next half-year. He will need to wait until something else occurs. We will need to make an effort that the boys get better. We cannot say anything about gymnastics since Baumann is not here.

They discuss the public conference in Stuttgart from August 29 until September 6, “ Cultural Perspectives of the Anthroposophical Movement.”165

Dr. Steiner: The conference was such a success that it far exceeded our expectations. It was really quite a success. Only the members’

meeting on Sunday, September 4, was poor. It was the worst thing imaginable. The meeting of the local threefold groups was still worse. I had thought that just those people would bring new life into Anthroposophy. We should have been able to see that on Sunday. You can be certain that a great deal was wanted. People were sitting in all the corners having small meetings, but the whole was lost. It would have been better had it all been visible at the surface. Hopefully, further development will be better.

165 . The Fruits of Anthroposophy.

.

Wednesday, November 16, 1921, 8:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I have not been here for so long. Let us take a look at what we need to do today.

A teacher asks if they should turn some of the more difficult children away or if a trial period should be implemented.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question we can decide only when we have analyzed each case.

A teacher: One of the children, B.O., stole something.

Dr. Steiner: Is he just spoiled or is this habitual?

A teacher: The child is really quite spoiled. Our question is whether it would be responsible of us to have that child with the other children.

Dr. Steiner: You would have to see whether the boy is disturbed. I hope I can come by again for a while tomorrow. We have already had some children who had stolen something, and we still have them.

A teacher speaks about H.M.A. and asks if she can be excused from foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: There is no reason to not have her in the school. It is for just such children that we need a remedial class.

That is something we need to do. Even though they may be disturbed, the children need to learn, and we do not want to turn them away. The situation is somewhat different in B.’s case. We have to admit it is difficult to come to grips with him. If he is disturbed, he would also have to go into the remedial class. The question is not easy to decide. With such children, it is not so easy to turn them away after a time. Accepting them and then rejecting

them would lead to a bourgeois tendency in the school. We would all become bourgeois, just like everyone else. We certainly cannot accept children and then turn them away. There are not many children like B. and were we to observe him more closely, the various tricks he plays, we would probably see the meaning of it.

For instance, in the case where he said he was someone else, there is certainly some other circumstance that would explain that.

A teacher: He has a bad influence on the others. When he is around, they act differently.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, the danger of infection is high. It will not be easy to find a way to work with him. In any event, before I consider the question, I would first like to meet him.

We have already had some thefts, but we never really considered whether we should keep the children or not. What kind of criteria could we make?

The difficulty is in determining some criteria and then sticking to it. Surely, there must be some way of doing that. How can we set the boundary between those who are servile enough for the Waldorf School and those who do not deserve it? How would you want to determine a tendency for theft? We can take note of the question, but such questions are more easily asked than answered.

We are not done with the question yet, and I do not tend to give general answers to such questions. We must answer them case by case.

A teacher: The Independent Anthroposophical Youth has asked the teachers to give a course.166

Dr. Steiner: They are mostly those who were down there in the Society branch building. They already had a few small meetings.

Why shouldn’t you do that?

166 . Younger members, who prompted the formation of the Independent Anthroposophical Society in March 1923.

A teacher requests some guidelines.

Dr. Steiner: It would be quite a service if you were to do it. But stay more in the area of pedagogy. They are certainly thinking of pedagogy in general and not specific pedagogical methods. They are thinking more of cultural pedagogy. There is certainly a lot more going on in young people since the beginning of the century, or perhaps a few years earlier. There is a great deal going on in their unconscious. That is why the youth movement has a supersensible foundation. We should take this up seriously.

I was in Aarau last Friday.167 It was not really a discussion, but a few people spoke up. One of them was a very curious person.

During the first university course, I was put in a difficult position.168 I had received an unexpected telegram stating that two students had cut class and gone to the course. That is quite dangerous in Switzerland. Dr. Boos lay in wait for them and caught the two rascals.169 We gave the money back. It was one of those boys who spoke last Friday.

In reality, what happened was that a minister spoke first, a middle-aged man who really had nothing to say other than that we shouldn’t talk only about death; then, a teacher; and then that boy.

The boy actually spoke best. He said something that was really quite correct. The whole conversation ended in the minister saying that modern youth does not recognize authority. Then the young man said, “Who should have authority? You should not complain if I state things radically, but if you want authority, then you have to be able to justify it. Don’t older people make compromises? If we see that, how can we look upon them with a feeling of

167 . See Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 1, lecture 4.

168 . September 6, 1920 to October 16, 1920 contained in The Art of Declamation, manuscript, GA 281.

169 . Dr. Roman Boos, 1889-1952, was active in the Threefold Movement.

authority?” He spoke very insightfully, and it made a good impression upon me.

We should pay attention to the youth movement. It is a cultural movement of great significance. Nevertheless, we need to avoid narrow-mindedness and pedantry in connection with the youth movement.

The teachers could give lectures on three days around Christmas and New Year’s.170

A teacher asks about the behavior of some of the older students toward the girls and about smoking.

Dr. Steiner: Have they been making some advances? Let’s leave the question of smoking to the side, we can discuss that later. These other things we can do now. Has anything occurred that goes beyond reason? Of course, when a number of children get together, certain things happen, at least to an extent. Has anything happened that goes beyond reasonable limits?

A number of teachers speak about the behavior toward the girls.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it could simply be naïveté.

A teacher: It was sharper, more than naïve.

Dr. Steiner: It depends upon their character. If someone is rather coarse, he could still be naïve. It is important since we have looked at this point, that when nothing else can be done, we should somehow step in. On the other hand, we should not go into the situation with the children themselves. That would certainly make them difficult to handle. Take one such instance that occurred. A girl sits upon an older boys’ lap. You can be certain that you should ignore it as long as possible. You need to try to inhibit such actions, but don’t go so far as to put the children off. If you do, you will certainly draw their attention to it. You should handle such things

170 . Some teachers spoke at the Pedagogical Course for English Teachers, the socalled “Christmas Course” ( Soul Economy and Waldorf Education).

with extreme care. You cannot teach boys and girls together if you do not avoid taking direct action.

Our materialistic age has created horrible prejudices in this regard. It often happens that a mother and father come to me and ask for advice because their children are developing a perverse sexuality. But when I see the child, he is only five years old and supposedly perverse! He doesn’t have any sexuality at all. This is pure stupidity. At the end, they bring out the Freudian theory that says a baby’s sucking on a pacifier is a sexual act.

What is important here is your tact. It can happen on occasion that you must act upon something sharply. However, in this question, you should do things more indirectly, otherwise you will draw the children’s attention to them.

It would be a good idea to report these cases psychologically, at least where a discussion of them is justified. Have you told me of all the instances? That doesn’t seem to be the case?

A teacher: Z.S. has a little circle of admirers around her.

Dr. Steiner: Such things have been cause for great tragedies. We need to handle them indirectly. Suppose a tragedy is playing out there. Because of that tragedy, one of the older girls says something to a teacher, then the girl sees that as a terrible breach of trust, and then the other girl finds out that you have told it further. You told something to another teacher that was told you in confidence, and the girl finds that out. The girl has cried a great deal over that. We really need to take these things in a way so that we can see they are actually an enrichment of life. These are things we cannot handle in a pedantic way. Every person is a different human being, even as a child.

A teacher: In my discussions about The Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade, I have come across a number of risqué passages. How should I behave in this regard?

Dr. Steiner: Either you have to pass over them tactfully or handle them seriously. You could try to handle such things in a simple and natural way, without any hint of frivolousness. That would be better than hiding them.

Concerning a restriction on smoking and similar things, it is quite possible that the children feel they are above that.

A teacher: One boy smoked a whole pack. We also find the name “Cigarette School.” It is not good for the school when the students smoke.

Dr. Steiner: In Dornach, the eurythmy ladies smoke much more than the men. The best thing would be to teach them to exercise some reason in regard to smoking.

A teacher: The result was, as they noticed, that they only hurt themselves.

Dr. Steiner: I think you could say what the effect is upon the organism. You could describe the effects of nicotine. That would be best. You may be tempted to do one and not another. This question in particular is a textbook example of when it is better to do one thing, namely, when the children who have such bad habits learn to stop them. In that case, pedagogically you have done fifteen times more than if you only prohibit smoking. A restriction on smoking is easier, but to teach the children so that they understand the problem affects the entirety of their lives. It is very important not to forbid and punish. We should not forbid nor punish, but do something else.

A teacher: Some of the teachers have started a discussion period for the students. We have discussed questions of worldview.

Dr. Steiner: It does not appear that children from the specific religions stay away. In any event, such a discussion period is good.

It would be impossible to avoid having the discussion of worldview take on an anthroposophical character. You can barely

avoid that in the religion classes, but in such a discussion group it is unavoidable. It is also not necessary to avoid it.

A question is asked about tutoring for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question about the extent to which we can make the foreign language classes independent of the grades, so that a child in one of the lower grades could be in a higher foreign language class.

A teacher: That would be difficult.

Dr. Steiner: It is still a question whether we can solve it or not.

A teacher: It will hardly be possible to teach foreign language in all the classes at the same time. That is why we thought of tutoring as a temporary measure.

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do what we can in that direction. In the continuation school in Dornach, all the children from eight until eighteen sit together in the various subjects. There is also a forty-five-yearold woman with them. I cannot say that is such a terrible thing since it really isn’t so bad. Yesterday, an “officer of the law” came who wanted to take the children away from us.

We cannot make many classes, but we could do something.

However, the teachers would have more work than if we simply tried to get past some of these small problems.

A teacher: Then, it would be good to leave the children there?

Dr. Steiner: That is the ideal. We could give them some extra instruction, but not take them out of the class. That would actually be too strenuous for the children. Otherwise, we would have to form the language classes differently from the other subjects.

A teacher: That is enormously difficult.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot easily increase the number of teachers.

There is a discussion about art class in the upper grades and about some drafts for crafts.

Dr. Steiner: In art, you can do different things in many different ways. It is not possible to say that one thing is definitely good and the other is definitely bad. In Dornach, Miss van Blommestein has begun to teach through colors, and they are making good progress.171 I have seen that it is having a very good influence. We allow the children to work only with the primary colors. We say, for instance, “In the middle of your picture you have a yellow spot.

Make it blue. Change the picture so that all of the other colors are changed accordingly.” When the children have to change one color, and then change everything else in accordance with that, the result is a basic insight into color. This can be seen, for instance, when they sew something onto a purse or something else and then do crossstitch on it so that it sits at just the right spot. The things you have told us about all result in essentially the same thing, and that is very good. The only question is when to begin this. You will have the greatest success if you begin in the very low grades, and then develop handwriting from that.

A teacher: Wouldn’t the class teacher contradict the shop teacher then?

Dr. Steiner: The person giving the art class needs to be aware that these children have all done this as small children. Now we could do it like you said; however, later you will need to be aware that the children have already done all that. Today, you first have to get rid of all bad taste. In this connection, people have not had much opportunity to learn very much. When people today do some crossstitch upon something, they could just as easily have done it on something else.

171 . Miss van Blommestein was a teacher at the Dornach continuation school.

A teacher: I did not agree that the children in my third-grade class should paint in handwork class.

Dr. Steiner: If the children paint in your third grade, they will begin painting in handwork only in the eighth grade.

A teacher: What I meant is, I think the children are too young to do anything artistic.

Dr. Steiner: In your class, there is still not any artistic handwork.

There is some discussion about this conflict.

Dr. Steiner: The individual teachers need to communicate with one another. The fact that there is no communication can at best be a question of lack of time, but, in principle, you always need to discuss things with one another.

The shop teacher: I think the children in the ninth and tenth grades should have more opportunity to work in the shop. I have them only every other week.

Dr. Steiner: Only every other week? How did that happen?

The shop teacher: I can have only twenty-five at a time.

Dr. Steiner: It is impossible to have more time for that. Rather than dividing the classes, which is pedagogical nonsense, it would be better if you compressed everything into one week, namely, that you had the children every day for a week. That is something really important for life, and the children suffer from having to do without their work for a longer period. This tearing apart is significant. Perhaps we should consider this more according to our principle of concentration of work.

Why do we have to have this class in the afternoons? Is it a question of the class schedule? There must surely be some solution.

A teacher: We only need to know what would have to be dropped.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we certainly cannot affect the main lesson.

A teacher: Then, that would mean that for a week we would have only shop.

Dr. Steiner: We could do it so that only one-third has shop class.

The only class that is suffering less from a lack of concentrated instruction is foreign language. It suffers the least. The main lesson and art class suffer not only from a psychological perspective, there is something in human nature that is actually destroyed by piecemeal teaching.

The children do not need to do handwork, knitting or crochet, for a week at a time. That is something they can do later. We don’t need to be pedantic. I could imagine finding it very intriguing to knit on a sock every Wednesday at noon for a quarter of an hour, so that it would be done in a half year. To work every Wednesday on a sculpture is something else again. But, you can learn to knit socks in that way.

You need to simply find a solution for these things.

A handwork teacher: I find it very pleasant to have the children once a week.

Dr. Steiner: If it does not involve crafts, then the pauses are unimportant. However, when it does involve crafts, then we should try to maintain a certain level of concentration. When we have the children learn bookbinding, that certainly requires a concentrated level of work. This is something that is coming. In the tenth grade we already have practical instruction. In such a class, we wouldn’t do any other crafts.

A teacher: …

Dr. Steiner: You should learn stenography in your sleep, that is without any particular concentration. Teaching stenography at all

is basically barbaric. It is the epitome of Ahrimanism, and for that reason, the ideal would be to learn stenography as though in sleep.

The fact that is not possible makes it significant when it is being done so poorly, as though there was no concentration given to it while learning it. It is simply all nonsense. It is cultural nonsense that people do stenography.

A teacher: Shop was connected with gardening class. Now Miss Michels is here, so how should we divide that?

Dr. Steiner: Miss Michels will take over from Mr. Wolffhügel. The best would be for them to discuss how to work together. They can discuss it.

A teacher reports that the faculty began an extra period for tone eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible with tone eurythmy. It is not something that burdens the children. It could, however, open the door to other things. If we have a tutoring period for every regular period, that will be too much. We would have to teach all night long.

A teacher asks about eurythmy for the children in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: I hope I will have time to have a look at them. For the children in the remedial class, it would be best to do eurythmy during that period.

A teacher asks about the development of the curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: In the pedagogical lectures, there was a large amount of theoretical material. Now we also have some practical experience.

A teacher: Attempts have been made to create a boarding school.

Dr. Steiner: Under certain circumstances, boarding schools are good, but that is seldom the case these days. They are not a purpose of our Waldorf School. It is not the purpose of our Waldorf School to create special situations. We are not here to

create a special social class, but, rather, to bring out the best we can from the existing social classes through our teaching.

If the home is good, we can recommend it for the children.

A teacher: Mrs. Y. had asked if other parents want to participate.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible only if the parents ask the school, and if the school determines that Mrs. Y.’s home is adequate. Then the faculty would recommend it. Right now, we do not know. What we should really work for is the founding of as many Waldorf Schools as possible, so that parents would not have to board the children for them to go to a Waldorf school. Right now, there is only the one Waldorf school, and that is why we could support a boarding home. Actually, it must become possible for children everywhere to go to a Waldorf School, otherwise Stuttgart will remain only as model.

There is a tremendous amount of hubbub. If I look at the letters I have received in just the last three days, people want to create boarding homes everywhere. This sort of thing happens all the time. People want something, but we really need to look at it critically. People are always poking their nose into things as soon as something like the Waldorf School is created. All kinds of uncalled for people appear.

A comment is made about a continuation course that has started.

Dr. Steiner: In principle, there is nothing to say against it. You only need to be careful that some guys don’t come into it who would ruin the whole class.

A question is asked about the biennial report and whether Dr. Steiner would write something for it.

Dr. Steiner: I will write something; now there are a number of things to say.

A question is asked about the reading primer.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t have the primer. I haven’t had it for a long time.

I have nothing against it if it is done tastefully. If I am to do the lettering, then I will have to have it again.

One of the subject teachers complains about the disturbances caused by the confirmation class.

Dr. Steiner: Are there really so many? That is an invasion into healthy teaching.

A teacher: The faculty would like a special Sunday Service for teachers only.

Dr. Steiner: We already discussed something like that.172 I would have to know if there is an extensive need for it.

A teacher: The desire was stated.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, something quite beautiful could come from that. I could easily imagine a unified striving coming from it. It will not be so easy to find the form. Who should do it? Suppose you choose by voting and then rotate. Those are very difficult things.

You must have a deeply unified will. Who would do it?

A teacher: It never occurred to me that this could cause an argument. We certainly may not have any ambitions.

Dr. Steiner: If everyone had a different opinion about who could do it well, then it would be difficult. You would all need to be united in your opinion about who could do it. But then, problems arise. That is like the story about Stockerau: Someone asks a man in Vienna if it is far to America, to which he replies, “You’ll soon be in Stockerau and afterward, you’ll find the way.” A teacher: Should only one person do it?

Dr. Steiner: Then every week you’ll wonder who could do it well.

172 . This discussion is not mentioned elsewhere.

A teacher proposes Mr. N.

Dr. Steiner: Now we will have to hold a secret ballot.

A teacher: What seems important to me is that we have it.

Dr. Steiner: Of course. This is a difficult thing, like choosing the Pope.

A teacher: Everyone would be fine with me.

Dr. Steiner: Now we would have to think about the form. I would never dare say who should do it.

A teacher: Perhaps one of the three men now doing the children’s service.

Dr. Steiner: Only if it were perfectly clear that that is acceptable. A service is either simply a question of form, in which case you could do it together, or it is a ritual act, and you have to look more seriously at it. In that case, you can have no secret enemies.

Another teacher speaks about the question.

Dr. Steiner: Now I am lost. I don’t understand anything anymore.

A sacrament is esoteric. It is one of the most esoteric things you can imagine. What you said is connected with the fact that you cannot decide upon a ritual democratically. Of course, once a ritual exists, it can be taken care of by a group. But, the group would have to be united.

A teacher: I thought we shouldn’t demand things of individuals.

Dr. Steiner: That is what I mean. It should be like the ritual we provided for the children. That was not at all the task of the Waldorf School.

The question is whether something that, in a certain sense, requires such careful creation might be too difficult to create out of the faculty and too difficult to care for within the faculty as a whole. Let us assume you all are in agreement. Then, we could only

accept new colleagues into the faculty who also agree. We could esoterically unite with only those people who are united in a specific esoteric form. A service is possible in esoteric circles only when it is to be something. Otherwise, we would need to have just a sacrificial mass. You would need that for those who want something non-esoteric, and it would exist in contrast to the esoteric.

You cannot have a mass without a priest. In esoteric things, people should be united in the content.

A question is asked about esoteric studies.

Dr. Steiner: That is very difficult to do. Until now, I have always had to avoid them. As you know, I gave a number of such studies years ago, but I had to stop because people misused them.

Esotericism was simply taken out into the world and distorted. In that regard, nothing in our esoteric movement has ever been as damaging as that. All other esoteric study, even in less than honorable situations, was held intimately. That was the practice over a long period of time. Cliques have become part of the Anthroposophical Society and they have set themselves above everything else, unfortunately, also above what is esoteric.

Members do not put the anthroposophical movement as such to the fore, but, instead, continually subject it to the interests of cliques. The anthroposophical movement is dividing into a number of factions. To that extent, it is worse than much that exists in the exoteric world. I say that without in any way wanting to express a lack of understanding for the history of it. Think about what you have experienced in the external bourgeois world led by functionaries. When some important government official moves from one city to another, he must, with great equanimity, introduce himself to all the various people with their differing opinions. However, in the Anthroposophical Society, if someone comes to a city that has a number of branches, it might occur to him that, since there are many branches, that is good, and he can

go to all of them. But after visiting one, the others turn him away.

A naïve person would think he could go to all of them. There are cities in which numerous anthroposophical branches exist, and that is how they treat one another.

Esotericism is a painful chapter in the book of the anthroposophical movement. It isn’t just that people always refer to what has occurred in the past. It is, in fact, the case that when Kully writes his articles in the local newspaper, you can clearly see that he is well informed about the most recent events within the Society, right down to the most unimportant details. We would first need to find some form.

A teacher: Is it possible to find that form?

Dr. Steiner: We must truly find the form first. You can see that since now there is this wonderful movement that has led to the theological course.173 It was held very esoterically and contained within it the foundation of the sacraments in the highest sense of the word. There you can see that people were united.

In any event, I would like to think about this, and what can be understood about your needs.

The children’s Sunday service, isn’t it an esoteric activity for the individual human beings who attend it, regardless of whether they are children or not?

Finally, you need to remember that lay people have a priest— Protestantism has no esotericism within it any more—the priest has a deacon, he has a bishop and that goes right on up to the Pope. But even the Pope has a confessor. You can see there how human relationships change. That ironclad recognition of the principle is what is necessary. The confessor is not higher than the Pope, but nevertheless he can, under certain circumstances, give

173 . The Course on Theology.

the Pope penance. Of course, the Roman Catholic church also comes into the most terrible situations.

I want to think about this some more.

.

Saturday, January 14, 1922, 7:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to briefly handle the questions that are burdening you. That is why I have called you together today. Are there any further questions?

A teacher: The school inspector has made an appointment for February. He would like to have a report on the teaching.

Dr. Steiner: You should keep the report as brief as possible.

Certainly do not write a book, but something more like your lesson plans, containing only notes like, “binomial theorem” or “permutations.” Keep strictly to the subject.

You need to assume that such an official would view any diversion as incorrect, and that additional remarks would only make him angry. You need to assume that he has only a small amount of capacity within his soul. That is something officials cannot have due to their position. If you provide him with a long discourse that is different from the normal elementary school curriculum, you will be beating him over the head. We should never believe we could ever satisfy such people, really. Our position in regard to such people should be that we simply tell them that we do such and such. There is no reason to hope there will be any sort of insight from that side. There is more reason for hope in anyone other than a professional educator. It is better to tell how far you are, and what you have done, and leave out any other remarks.

A teacher: N.G. would like to attend school only for a half day and to use the remainder of the day to work on mechanical drawing.

Dr. Steiner: He is in the tenth grade. Of course, something of that sort could not be considered in the lower eight grades, but

beginning only with the ninth grade. In such cases, we could look into the question of whether we accept part-time students who would only attend a few periods. That might be possible. He would, of course, not be a regular student, but only an auditor. We might even be able to see this as a solution to a more general problem. Those in a similar situation could attend the school as auditors.

A teacher: Should we put T.H. in the remedial class and have him attend the other subjects afterward?

Dr. Steiner: Put him in the remedial class, but then send him home after ten o’clock.

A teacher: The Independent Youth Group has asked about a pedagogical course in Jena over Easter.174

Dr. Steiner: That depends upon what you want, and what you can do. Which of you in the faculty would and could do something? It would be good if we could propagate what we can refer to as “the Waldorf School Idea” and, in particular, if it would take root among younger people. It would be a good idea if the Waldorf School idea could become more widespread, so that people would see the Waldorf School as something special, something great.

A teacher: Wouldn’t it be better if we began something?

Dr. Steiner: That’s true, and if you can create something independent and win over youth for it, that would certainly be preferable. Without winning over youth, there is not much we can accomplish in the area of pedagogy. We need to win over youth, especially those in the youth movement. On the other hand, I have no doubt that if the youth movement in Jena approaches the

174 . The Easter 1922 pedagogical course was delayed until October 1922, and then cancelled. A course was held instead in Stuttgart, October 3–15, 1922 ( The Younger Generation).

Waldorf faculty, you would not be any less independent than if you were to begin it yourselves. What is important is what you do, and how you present yourselves. I think you could accomplish a great deal with such things.

I do not know if I can participate since, if this project really happens, it will be just at the time I am in England. Miss Cross wants to bring her school into our movement.175 If it is possible, it is certainly something quite important, but it seems to me to be something that would be difficult to do. If some of the people who participated in the Christmas Course in Dornach in 1921 were employed there as teachers, perhaps we could have an actual beginning.176

I think that in something like that movement, we should not be overly concerned about the direction. Perhaps you know the wellknown anecdote about Bismarck. We could also apply it, with some reservations, to the Waldorf School movement. Here I am referring to the story about how Bismarck was invited to certain royal festivities simply because of his official position. As a not very high-born country squire, he could not sit at the high table, [but as High Chancellor, he sat with the Crown Prince]. But, when Mrs. Bismarck [who was a commoner] went along, members of the royal court complained that the Bismarcks should not sit up front at the high table. They went so far as to send the ceremonial master to Bismarck, but nothing could be done. Bismarck’s official position was such that he was entitled to sit closer, but nothing could be done about Mrs. Bismarck. Bismarck then said, “Well, you know, my wife sits where I sit, and you can seat me wherever you want. Wherever I sit is always the highest position.” I think that is similar to our own case. What is important is what we do.

175 . Steiner visited the school in Kings Langley (directed by Margaret Cross) now called The New School.

176 . Soul Economy and Waldorf Education.

Is there anything more to say about individual students or classes?

A teacher asks about L.R. in the fourth grade. He had expressed some suicidal thoughts.

Dr. Steiner: He would be ripe for the remedial class, but let’s leave him in your class until I have seen him.

A teacher: The health of one of the first grade classes is very poor.

Dr. Steiner: In this class are the first children born during the war.

However, since the children were simply divided according to the alphabet and the other first grade class is healthier, external circumstances could not be the only cause of the poor health in the class. The problem is in the humidity in the classroom and the heating.

A teacher: There are bad family situations.

Dr. Steiner: Among the children there are the most unfortunate circumstances, and these are then transmitted on to the others.

There is not much we can change. However, we could improve the heating. Central heating would be best. We should try to do that. That is something we must do as part of the new construction.

A teacher speaks about D.M. in seventh-grade Latin class.

Dr. Steiner: You certainly accomplished a great deal with those you had today in Latin. You went through the entire reading from the beginning. That is quite good. They learned a relatively large amount. Who is this D.M.?

A teacher says something about the student.

Dr. Steiner: That’s the boy on the left toward the back. Now I remember.

A teacher: He likes to write with Greek letters, but doesn’t know what they mean.

Dr. Steiner: You should try to bring him away from that through something artistic. For instance, you could have him draw a top in a number of colors, red, orange, yellow, green, all seven. Then have him try to blend red into this so that he would have to use his intellect in connection with art. It is difficult to spend so much time with one boy, but you could also try to have him divide things into, say, subject, verb and object, and so forth, that can be exchanged with one another. In other words, have him do something that brings the intellect and art together. That might help. You could occupy him with such things.

A teacher: I am trying it with Amos Comenius.

Dr. Steiner: That is a good idea. You need to make it quite visible, so that both his intelligence and perception unite in it.

A teacher: I have completed La Fontaine’s Tales in the seventh grade. Some of them are rather suspect morally.

Dr. Steiner: Make a joke about that. You need to treat them as stories. A teacher: It appears to me that La Fontaine is lacking in humor.

Dr. Steiner: You must create the humor from yourself, but, in certain situations, you can just as easily create a great deal of misunderstandings. What is important is that you attempt to be one with him. When you are done with him, I would undertake one of the major prose works. You could certainly do Mignet with those children.

A teacher: Should we do The Tempest after A Christmas Carol?

Another teacher: I did The Tempest with each child taking a role.

Dr. Steiner: That is a real pedagogical problem. It depends upon how you do it. The children have the material, but they experience

nothing more. On the other hand, this may be the best way of bringing them into the spirit of the language.

A teacher: I wanted to read Jules Verne with my ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against Jules Verne if you treat him in such a way that the children do not become silly about it. But, you can certainly do it.

A teacher: Do you recommend that we do some short stories?

Dr. Steiner: That’s good for thirteen-or fourteen-year-olds. It is also what I meant when I mentioned Mignet. In English and French, you need to find some characteristic pieces to read.

A teacher: For economic reasons, we may need to use the school editions.

Dr. Steiner: You can obtain the material wherever you want. The main thing is that each student has their own book. Often, the school texts are simply poison for children. What is in the lower grade school books is often just terrible.

A teacher: K. was here for two years, and now he is leaving with very little knowledge. What kind of report should I give him?

Dr. Steiner: Write the truth in his report. Give the exact reasons why he is lagging behind. You can write all of that in it. You cannot keep him here. One day, the light will go on for him.

A teacher: You gave Biblical stories as the story material for the third grade. I don’t know how I should do that.

Dr. Steiner: Look at one of the older Catholic editions of the Bible.

You can see there how to tell the stories. They are very well done, but of course you will have to do it still better. Here you have the opportunity to improve upon the terrible material in Luther’s translation. The best would be to use the Catholic translation of the Bible. In addition, I would recommend that you work

somewhat with the translations before Luther’s, so that you can get past all of those myths about Luther’s Bible translation. There is something really wrong about all the laurels Luther has earned regarding the formation of the German language. That lies deep in the feeling of middle European people. If you go back to the earlier Bible translations and look at longer passages, you will see how wonderful they are in comparison to Luther’s translation which, actually, in regard to the development of the German language, held it back.

There is an edition of the Bible for students, the Schuster Bible.

You can get it anywhere there is a Catholic majority. Before the story of Creation, you should begin with the fall of the angel. The Catholic Bible begins with the fall of the angel and only afterward with the creation of the world. That is quite beautiful, simple, and plain storytelling.177

A teacher asks about a boy in the seventh grade who has amyotrophia (muscular atrophy).

Dr. Steiner: Treat him with hypophysis cerebri.178

There is a question about an assistant for music class.

Dr. Steiner: We have only a few good musicians, but nevertheless, we do have some. I will keep my eye open on my trip.

Dr. Steiner speaks with Dr. Schwebsch about the problem of music and refers him to Eduard Hanslick’s book, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen and also an article by Robert Zimmermann about the aesthetics of music.

A question is asked about a gymnastics teacher.

177 . The texts of Schuster’s stories were the basis for the book Und Gott sprach: Biblisches Lesebuch für das dritte Schuljahr der Freien Waldorfschule (And God spoke: Bible reader for the third grade of the Independent Waldorf School) by Caroline von Heydebrand and Ernst Uehli, 1930.

178 . This refers to a homeopathic preparation. — TRANS.

Dr. Steiner: I think we need to be very careful about who we choose to teach gymnastics. It is important that we place gymnastics upon a broader foundation, so that it can be done in a more reasonable way. We need to find someone who is interested in that.

In the Christmas course in Dornach I showed how the soul slowly takes over the entire organism. That is something we need to take into account. I want to have this course printed as soon as possible, for there is considerable information about such questions. I had not previously had an opportunity to discuss them so exactly and in so much detail, that is, the formation of the organism, so that gymnastics teachers could actually understand them. I will look into this question further.

Wednesday, March 15, 1922, 3:00 – 5:45 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Today, we have come together to discuss the results of the official school inspection. From what you told me over the telephone, I have formed a picture. Before I take any position, though, I think it would be a good idea to hear what each of you who participated in the inspection has to report, so that we all have a complete picture. I have repeatedly said that I am willing to meet with the man, but that has not occurred as yet.

We need to discuss all this to attain a perspective from which we can ward off any blows that may come from the public. It is unnecessary, and it would be fruitless, to make objections to the officials. If such things could be successful, we would not need a Waldorf School. The reason the Waldorf School exists is because the official bureaucracy does not understand our methods and our direction.

Let us go through the classes, then each of you can say what occurred in your class.

The teachers report about the inspection in each of the classes. The inspector had asked only very superficial questions.

Dr. Steiner: A boy in Zurich told me that he does not want to go to the school any more because the teaching through illustrative material was too dumb. When I gave the course in Berlin, I spoke about learning to read.179 Such things are very current and should be put into the Threefold newspaper and be used. For instance, how children learn to read, or the fact that our children—this is something I say everywhere—thank God, learn to read only at the age of eight or nine. We need to put such things right under people’s noses. They are certainly more important than some essay

179 . March 5-12, 1922, not recorded.

about a convention in Honolulu. We should also criticize the practice of failing children. We should mention that, too.

A teacher: He wanted to have quick answers in arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: If children cannot do arithmetic quickly, their body is still slow.

A teacher: My perception is that what we teach children about grammar is something still foreign to them. Do we have to do that in the second grade?

Dr. Steiner: It depends upon how you do it. You do not always need to teach them the terminology, nouns and verbs, but use them only for yourself to form an objective polarity. A child of seven and a half can certainly differentiate between an activity and a thing. You do not need to emphasize the terminology. You could begin with stories and make the difference between a thing and an activity clear. That is something a child at that age can grasp. They should be able to grasp the difference between running or jumping and a human being or something of that sort. We do not need to follow the form of a pedantic grammar. In particular, with children in the lower grades, you should completely avoid using definitions.

There are further reports.

Dr. Steiner: ( Laughingly, to a teacher who was happy about a positive remark made by the school inspector) Yes, you will certainly need to improve there.

The subject teachers report also.

Dr. Steiner: He will come to handwork class only with some old lady.

It is clear that this sort of inspection is an example of something that could never lead to an understanding of what actually happens in a school. When you think of the goodwill this man could have brought to understand at least a little about the Waldorf School,

you will see that he had none whatsoever. He simply tried to determine to what extent the children meet the requirements of a regular school. He would need to know that he could learn something about what is actually going on only if he asks himself questions. He would have needed to ask himself how to question the children about what he wanted to know. His primary task should have been to find out from the children what they have learned, and the children would have needed to provide him with the possibility of asking the proper questions.

No one can learn very much if they simply ask the teachers questions, listen to the answers, but lack a firm foundation for forming a judgment about them. I make no assumption about that.

There are a large number of psychological reasons why children answer their own teacher well or not. You need only recall how it is at the university for people who do their major examinations with the same professor they had for their seminars. It is easy for them. For the students who have not worked with the same professor, it is more difficult. Those who know the professor have an easy time. Having simply heard the professor’s lectures is not sufficient, since you could not discover his method of asking questions.

It is quite important to make the public aware of the things we consciously had to forego. We should use the space available to us in the “Threefold Social Organism” to present such things to the public. The different anthroposophical organizations here should work together, otherwise everything will dissipate. Everything is already falling apart, becoming unglued. We must work together.

We need to publish articles, but of course, we should not obviously direct them at this particular point. That would be quite false.

Nevertheless, the official inspection of the school could play a role.

We should publish an article presenting, from various perspectives, how important it is for a child to learn to read only around the age of eight or nine. We could give examples like Goethe, who could not read and write until the age of nine, or

Helmholtz, who learned to read and write only much later. We could, in contrast, give examples of people who learned to read and write at the age of four or five, then became complete idiots.

This is what we must do. If we do this properly, so that when we see ourselves in danger, and people everywhere are talking about these things, then we will have an effect. Then people could also not say that our intent is aimed at a very limited group. In this way, we can bring many of the weird judgments of the present into line. The actions of a person like the school inspector are simply an extract of the general perspective. If you turn to the entire civilized world using someone like that as an example, what you do will be good. The school inspection shows us what should not be done. Now we can turn to the world and try to make clear what should have been done.

A teacher: I have written an article for “Die Drei.”

Dr. Steiner: Make it short and sweet, don’t write ten pages about it.

There is nothing to prevent something that appears in “Die Drei”

from also appearing in “The Threefold.”

We’ve already talked about these things. A careful presentation of the impossibility of determining what a school is like by using such inspection methods could be one topic for discussion. Then we would have to defend against all the objections to teaching according to historical periods. When the inspector made his judgment, he said something very characteristic of our times, namely, that life requires people to do arithmetic quickly, and, therefore, we should teach that to the children.

Nearly everything you have said today offers wonderful examples of the way things should not be and how we can improve them. For instance, flunking children. The fact that he referred to the children as bright and dumb in front of the children is absolutely impossible.

He will probably also do what bad teachers always do. He will ask questions that require an exact answer and ignore everything

else. He will have no sense of the way children express things. It is really very nice to receive a response from the children in their own way. It would be interesting to know what part of the poem he misunderstood.

You reported his remark that our method of teaching foreign language leads to a mechanical understanding.

These are the things we need to put out in public: Learning to read and write at a not-to-early age; a defense of teaching foreign language at an early age; flunking children; the manner of asking children questions; and, assuming that children will answer in exactly the way you expect them to.180 We should also mention superficial questions, senseless questions.

This is all connected to modern culture. These methods are decades old, and modern people have developed a spirituality, an attitude within their souls, that shows how they were mistreated as children. Today, only those who are more or less healthy, who have a counterforce within them, can hold up against that. The physical and psychological condition of modern people is often quite sad. That comes from such incorrect forming of questions.

You can even see that in the physical body, that is, whether the forces of the soul have become incoherent. Many people take leave of their senses later. Many who still have their senses notice through their heart or lungs that they were mistreated by such things.

We need to be clear that if we did things to satisfy the education authorities, we would have to close. We could then simply put the children in any other school. They see the Waldorf School as an attack.

180 . A series of articles was written later: C. v. Heydebrand, “Testing Children”; H. v. Baravalle, “Block Instruction”; H. Hahn, “Student Strengths and Weaknesses”; E.A.K. Stockmeyer, “Block Instruction”; Cl. Düberg, “Forms of Letters”; E.

Schwebsch, “Foreign Language in the Lower Grades”; J. Geyer, “Not Promoted.”

It is not so important to develop the letters the way they historically developed, since they developed differently in different regions. What is important is a renewal of the artistic path of work.

We do not need to use historical forms. We must make that point very clear. From such events, we should learn what we must make clear.

A teacher: I asked the children in my seventh-grade class why they went along and behaved so well. They replied that they did not want to get me into trouble.

Dr. Steiner: That is wonderful behavior on the part of the children.

We should make notes of all of this so we can publicize it. There is so much interesting material that we could fill our publications with it. External activities and specific questions. We need to see that people pay more attention to us and learn more about our way of thinking if we want the Waldorf School movement to spread.

During the course I gave in Berlin, there was something that could also have been published. (S peaking to Dr. von Heydebrand) You remember you had said some things and then someone with an education background said that you had overemphasized the dark side.181 We should have stepped in then. We should have shown that you were not too extreme, that, in reality, things are very much worse. Experimental pedagogy is reasonable only in its basic ideas, but regarding other things, it is quite unreasonable. It is something only for professors who have to do as many experiments as possible.

The situation in Berlin was impossible. A discussion of barely an hour. There was sufficient time for many people to say really dumb things, but not enough time to defend yourself. In such

181 . Caroline von Heydebrand spoke in a lecture (March 8, 1921) against experimental pedagogy during the course in Berlin. The text of her lecture was published in Die Drei, vol. 7, pages 688 ff. Schwebsch and Stein spoke at the same conference.

cases, it would be better not even to speak. We should not leave our people out on a limb. It would be best not to give such presentations. We cannot allow only our opponents to be heard.

The situation there was the best possible for those who want to hurt anthroposophy.

Our outside activities are, of course, connected with the outside, but they also belong here in the faculty.

A teacher asks whether they should start teaching Greek and Latin at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: The best, the ideal, would be to begin Greek earlier and then begin Latin after two years. However, that is difficult to do in practice. Then, we would have to drop something else for Greek, and that would be difficult. Our plans are designed to correspond to the individual and to development, so that doesn’t work out.

Latin is required for external reasons. It is helpful to do things the way I described in my lecture in Berlin in order to slowly understand the language.

I based the entire development of language upon an imagination, but K. spoke of inspiration and intuition. People today have no sensibility for exact listening, and we need to take such things into account. The things I discussed need to be felt.

That is something that can be taught through Greek. Latin is not as important because it does not teach feeling in the same way as Greek.

A teacher: How can we determine which children should attend that class?

Dr. Steiner: As long as we are only a single school, we cannot do much. Only when there are more schools could we make a decision of that sort according to their characteristics, that is, when we can influence the further course of the child’s life. That we have thirty percent who participate in this class is still too few to justify changing our plans for them. We need everything we have.

A teacher requests help with students in the upper grades, N.G. and F.S.

Dr. Steiner: With such difficult cases as N.G., we can approach him with understanding if he still has some belief in a person who can be completely objective about the life he has experienced. He grew up as an extremely lively little spirit from the very beginning.

He gave many insightful answers. Now he is growing up with a mother who is the personification of a lie. She is one of those people who falls down with a heart attack, but on the soft carpet, not next to it. She is completely untrue. She is a woman who always wanted to bring Anthroposophy to her husband, a very superficial and trivial person. The children knew about this at an early age.

This is one of the comedies in life that have such a tragic effect upon children that they lose all trust in life.

Now, the boy knows all this. He needs only the fulfillment he so much desires. He needs to be able to believe in a person. That is an opportunity he should have, namely to have people in his surroundings who are interested in telling the truth about even the most mundane of things.

A teacher: He says that he smells anthroposophy everywhere.

Dr. Steiner: In such cases, you can help him form a sound judgment if you take everything into account. The beliefs of such boys as N.G. are based upon the idea that everyone lies, but that can be cured. It could be difficult for him because he knows he was forced into the Waldorf School. For that reason, he now asks what is right. That is one thing.

Now that he is here in the Waldorf School, he must be able to find something that he can believe in anthroposophy. This is a truly Herculean task. It would have been quite normal for him to attend a school where life approached him from outside. The worst thing for such a boy is to place him in the Waldorf School.

A child does not have to be in the Waldorf School. A school that pleases the school board could be a good school in which to spend

your time from the age of six until fourteen. The Waldorf School is not necessarily the right school for everyone, but one day, there he was.

I am not sure it is pedagogically proper that F.S. is here. In 1908 I held a course about the Apocalypse. 182 He occupied himself by digging deep holes in the garden soil. If you came close to him, he stood up and kicked you in the stomach. He never gave an answer. Once, an older lady wanted to do something nice for him, but he took some sand and threw it in her eyes. He broke nearly all of the coffee cups. He called himself “you” because people told him, “You did it.” If he is still behaving the same way, but at a higher level, then things have not improved. Now he would call himself, “I,” but for a different reason.

Somehow, we will have to come to grips with F.S. and N.G.

Someone who has never been involved with his situation and in whom he can trust, will need to take over N.G. In the case of “you,” only someone who impresses him can help. He never knew his father very well. He needs someone who would impress him.

( Speaking to a teacher) Can’t you do that? You have impressed many people. You certainly gave X.Y. the idea that you are impressive.

While I was in Berlin, someone approached me and told me about this boy. From that, I had an impression that the real reason for these things lies in his living conditions. We should try to avoid having anyone lodge there. X. does not like the Waldorf School. I promised the woman to ask you if he could live with one of you.

He posed some questions concerning Schopenhauer, and that is quite positive. He also greets me very warmly.

A teacher asks about a child with curvature of the spine.

182 . The Apocalypse of St. John.

Dr. Steiner: He should be in the remedial class for a time. Let him do only what he wants, and discover what he does not want to do.

A language teacher complains about difficulties in the 7b English class.

Dr. Steiner: That is not at all surprising when you consider how their class teacher keeps them under control. That certainly calls forth a comparison. He knows what he wants. If she did not have him, but someone else instead, then ( speaking to the language teacher) it would be much easier for you. You have a rather uncertain nature, and your own thoughts sit within the form of the children’s thoughts. These are things that would not occur to such an extent if you had a colleague more like yourself. The class teacher impresses the entire class because he is so much a part of things.

You will have to break your terrible, vaguely lyrical, sentimental attitude when you go into the class.

The language teacher says something about boxing children’s ears.

Dr. Steiner: If you give them a slap, you should do it the way Dr.

Schubert does.

Dr. Schubert: Did somebody complain?

Dr. Steiner: No, you are always slapping them.

Dr. Schubert: When did I do that?

Dr. Steiner: Well, I mean astral slapping. There are physical slaps and astral slaps. It doesn’t matter which one you give, but you cannot slap a child sentimentally.

The class reflects our thoughts. You need to be firmer in your own thoughts. If I were in your class, I would do the same. I would certainly behave terribly. I wouldn’t understand what is happening.

I wouldn’t know what you want. You must be firmer in your thinking. The battle of a whole class against the teacher is not actually real, it is not something you can touch. We can talk about individual children, but not about a whole class. Look at the things

Baravalle has written. Keep them until Whitsun. We cannot hold some lyrical discourses about a class. You seem to me today to be like one of those books from Husserl. Break your habit of thinking like that. It is a picture of your own inner nature.

We have to strongly integrate the art of teaching with the subject, but at the same time selflessly integrate it with the subject.

Those are not common characteristics.

The 7a class has become quite good, and you can work well with them. The effectiveness of teaching depends upon the overall impression the teacher makes upon the children and not upon some small misdeeds or acts against authority. It is easy for a teacher to become laughable through some piece of clothing, but that will recede after a time. Perhaps you have a hole in your boot, but that is not very important. You cannot change those things.

What is important is the humanity of the teacher.

The context of the following is unclear.

Dr. Steiner: They had the audience in their control. In the Vienna hall, Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony was presented in 1887. I attended a concert by Schalk. That was the first performance of Bruckner’s symphony.

A question is asked about four students in the 7a class.

Dr. Steiner: Will the children go into an apprenticeship? They are all nearly the same type. I would hope that things would become better if, with these children, you were to introduce a reading of a speech by Buddha objectively and formally, with all the repetitions, and then had them memorize short passages. You could also use The Bhagavad Gita. You could do that with the whole class. Go through it with the whole class and have those children copy it, then do it a second time and they should be able to present it. You should particularly aim at those children. This could also be done in teaching history and language. You could do that every day.

A teacher asks about a girl whose parents do not want her to participate in eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Convince the parents. She should not interrupt the eurythmy lessons.

A teacher asks about P.R., a student with a crippled hand.

Dr. Steiner: We should think about what profession we should direct him toward. He is not very dexterous with that hand. He writes poorly. He should become something like a bookkeeper, or some other job where that is not important. He certainly cannot become an actor. The best would be if we could bring such children so far along that they could then participate in the normal morning instruction, and then have some continuation of their education following elementary school. We need to try to bring him along so that he overcomes his self-consciousness and participates in handwork. He should certainly learn bookkeeping.

We need to find a teacher for him.

A teacher: The elementary schools here have more periods of handwork.

Dr. Steiner: So much handwork is unnecessary.

A teacher: R.L. in the fourth grade is not coming to school.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot force the children if parents don’t want it.

We need to work practically with the things you mentioned today. There is no doubt that we have to take over a greater responsibility toward extending the movement so that the movement is not torn apart by some small thing one day. The whole world is looking at the Waldorf School, the whole civilized world. We must do a number of things well in the school that the movement is not doing very well in other areas. The main thing is that everyone in Stuttgart work together, that all the different

groups connected with the movement, that is, really connected, find some way of working with one another.

When you are active in the anthroposophical movement on a broader scale, you will find that elsewhere people do not know how to relate to Stuttgart and what is happening here. It is important that the Waldorf School movement keep its promises.

In particular, even though we may fail in other areas, the cultural areas need to be particularly strong in the world. The Waldorf School and its faculty need to always be careful to spread an understanding of themselves. Lectures like those given by Schwebsch, Stein, and Heydebrand are particularly effective.

Answers to specific questions are often misunderstood.

The Waldorf teachers should not slide into that mistaken behavior so common today, that is, to write articles like the one X.

wrote about the article from S.G. We will slowly die if we engage in normal journalism and a non-objective treatment of our work.

It, the lecture from S.G., was certainly unbelievable, wasn’t it? I like S.G. quite a lot, but he needs to gradually learn what is important. For now, he is simply in his baby shoes. It makes our movement laughable. It is a hymn sung out of tune with the worst journalistic attitude. I would prefer to have said that when X. was here. It is a sad day, a very sad experience. We must remain above all that. There is not one uplifting thought in the entire article aside from those dealing with declamation and recitation. If we do such things that show so little goodwill to remain with the subject, if such habits enter our work, we will soon have a complete demise.

Concerning the education conference.

Dr. Steiner: It should be in a broader context that would enable us to work not from compromises, but toward the real perspective of our pedagogy. We do not want to do what was done at previous conferences and simply talk about things. We should discuss things in such a way that people genuinely understand them. We must create a feeling that our people already know what others

want to say. Our people should not simply stand there while someone else says something we do not know. We must know which of the questions could arise in the conference. We cannot allow people to say we are poking our noses into everything, but when experts come along, you can see how little we know. We need to arrange things so that someone cannot come along and say something and there not be enough time for us to reply.

That must not happen. It was a real problem in Berlin since people went away thinking that we spoke about Einstein, but knew nothing about him. Aside from that, the discussion leader thought that idiot was right. The others who put on the symposium also thought the same thing. In any event, it happened—something that had a detrimental effect upon the whole scientific mood from the very beginning. The first problem was that Rittelmeyer came along and said we had done poorly.183 Such things simply must not happen. If that were to happen here with pedagogy, it would be terrible. The listeners should perceive that our work and each speaker is of a high level.

We have put enormous effort into setting something up. The conferences have had an enormous success, but no one lets the results of the conferences be truly effective. If we could only find a way to let what we accomplish have a practical effect. What you have to say does not actually affect people. Afterward, no one actually knows what you have to say. Our work needs to be used more. We need to affect opinions. However, I am convinced that this thing with X. will be forgotten. For example, we have long had the problem that we have an economic movement, but we cannot get any economists to speak about it. The economic perspective is important. Leinhas’s lecture was good, and people will not forget

183 . Friedrich Rittelmeyer, at that time a Lutheran minister in Berlin; he later became first head of the Christian Community.

it.184 The same is true for Dr. Unger’s essay about valuation. That is the beginning of something we should further develop in economics. Now, however, we must talk about the existence of three pillars that should in some way be comprehensive.

Everywhere I went in my long series of lectures, I mentioned the lectures given by you, Dr. von Heydebrand, and Leinhas. I spoke of them everywhere. We must create opinion. Our work must speak to people. Pedagogy needs an opinion connected with the substance of our movement. We can ignore negative opinions.

We must do what is good.

That is something that is painful for me, but I want you to know it because the Waldorf School has developed that good spirit. This does not need to be said to the Waldorf School itself. The Waldorf School has a great task because there is no leadership in other areas. The school is moving along well, but it has a responsibility to take up some things that have an even larger responsibility associated with them. When something negative occurs now, with the increasing number of followers, then it is a negative event that is actually gigantic. That would, of course, not happen with the Waldorf School. Such things can tear a spiritual or cultural movement apart. For that reason, those working in the Waldorf School need to be the primary support for the whole movement.

That is how things are today. The Waldorf School has a broad basis because it has kept all its promises. It can, therefore, be the primary support for the entire anthroposophical movement. We need such a support today. Your responsibility is quickly growing. That is something each of you needs to take to heart. We haven’t the least reason to be happy when the number of followers increases. We

184 . Leinhas gave a lecture (March 9, 1922) during the Berlin conference on “Social Science” day. Leinhas also spoke (September 6, 1921) of Robert Willbrand’s Economics, later published as “Der Bankerott der Nationalökonomie” (The bankruptcy of economics).

should be aware that every increase in interest is also an increase in our own responsibility.

A teacher asks about a pedagogical conference in Kaiserslautern.

Dr. Steiner: We have already decided against the proposal for Bremen. I looked at the big picture. We cannot accomplish much by systematically discussing pedagogy before there is any possibility of seeing some movement in regard to pedagogical questions in modern times. The seventy or so people who would come there would come only out of politeness. They would not know what is needed. We would first have to tell them that something is happening in the world. We would first have to hold a cultural and historical lecture on pedagogy. That would be necessary. Giving a three-day course for people whom you cannot help any further would mean too much wasted strength.

We saw that here. The teachers were the least interested. They all said they could not attend. I am uncertain if that has gotten better, but what else could happen?

We must awaken people’s awareness of what needs to be done.

I’m afraid people believe we should begin the threefold. I think that if two or three of you want to give a lecture there on the return trip from Holland, that would be good. People need to be aware.

God, there was a conference in Stuttgart and then one in Berlin.

Now things need to be made more well known, otherwise we will be running to every village giving lectures. It is enough when we do that in some of the central areas. It is not efficient if we are running everywhere. We must improve the efficiency of our work.

A teacher: Is there something concrete we could do in Berlin?

Dr. Steiner: Quite a lot. We could discuss a large number of questions there and essentially nowhere else in the world today, but theology is too strong there. There were a large number of questions that could be treated nowhere else in the world. We need to make the lectures more well known. The question is, how?

Steffen printed the “Christmas Conference” in Das Goetheanum 185

in such a way that I would almost prefer to print his report than my lectures. He did a wonderful job there.

When such dry reports are published, the kind people are used to seeing in academic journals, then people have difficulty getting through them. Not just my own lectures, but also those of others, were written in an indescribably pedantic way. In that case, I can only say there is not much goodwill behind them. R. could do it better. When he gives a lecture, it is really very good, but when he writes something, it would drive you up the walls. Here, we see no goodwill. Such things wash the ground away from under our feet.

Friday, April 28, 1922, 4:30 – 7:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: All of the eurythmists are missing at the same time?

Why everyone at the same time? Something like that should not happen in the future. Even though it may be short notice, it must be possible not to leave all at the same time.

The seventh-grade class teacher asks about K.F.

Dr. Steiner: I will speak with him when I return on the ninth. I think he should go into the parallel class. He can return, but a man should take care of the things that have happened. You cannot do it, at least, until he is better. Since it is possible to have a man take care of it, we should do that. I think the boy needs to go through a kind of healing process. I will speak with him, then we must handle him in a strict way. It would not hurt anything if he were there during the other periods.

If I allow him to stay, then someone else would need to do it.

We could also arrange things so that Dr. Schubert and Wolffhügel

185 . Soul Economy and Waldorf Education.

work on healing him, and he stayed with you. That would not be such an embarrassment for him. In general, he’s just a little at loose ends. He has a sexual aberration that gave rise to the problem.

Work together willingly! Understand your colleagues in the faculty! Things are getting better. You need to be interested in speaking about pedagogical questions. We should need no major preparations for discussing pedagogy. Outline it, like going for a walk, then follow that with a fruitful discussion.

We see these things everywhere in the world. They are particularly apparent in England where you have to tell people things ten times before they begin to understand you. Two and a half years ago, I had an experience with the proletarian workers.

Those who were not good in school understood the things we discussed about

the threefolding of society well. In contrast, there were speakers who showed they understood nothing but the words they used to write their Marxist propaganda. You could see that they had heard nothing of what was actually said. Such things occur time and again. With pedagogy, things are said about which people then say that is just the way they teach. We must make it clear that is not the case. You have to say that as often as possible. Continue to emphasize the basis of the pedagogy so that people can hear it.

They hear only what they are used to hearing.

In Vienna, Professor Cizek said some things.186 He teaches at the Zugbrücker School. He looks like an archetypal pedant, like a real old goat. He has a certain reputation with people who know nothing about art for taking elementary school children with no talent and getting them to paint quite well. The paintings made by these children are impressive, but when they are about fourteen or fifteen, they can’t do it anymore. They simply cannot paint anymore. The children are painting from their own metabolism, something that is possible until puberty, but then changes. The fact that it disappears is connected with the forces of the chest and circulation. The moment human beings begin to awaken, it all stops. People are extremely impressed by all this, but we must recognize such things for their inner nonsense. This is all simply nonsense, but people wallowed in the sensationalism of it. I try to counteract this by trying to impress upon people that they need to paint through quite different powers. The children paint Madonnas with all the details. They paint battles, for instance, Constantine with the other Caesars. It is really unbelievable, they are absolutely perfect. He looks like a decadent old goat.

You can see that there is a counterforce in this man that excites the forces in the children. Here you can see what is actually at work

186 . Professor Franz Cizek (1856–1946); beginning in 1908 at the Vienna Academy of Art, he had thirty to forty artistically gifted students ranging in age from five to fourteen.

in the area of education, and for that reason, you, the faculty, must learn to recognize the false paths of modern pedagogy more clearly. You must have a clear insight into everything that is the human being.

A teacher asks a question about a parent evening.

Dr. Steiner: I am really very short on time, so I think it would be best if we held the parent evening on the evening of May 9, just after the school association meeting. The general meeting is in the morning, and at four o’clock there is one for the Waldorf School Association, so we could have the parent meeting at 7:30. The members of the Waldorf School Association could then also come to the parent meeting, but we would have to announce it as an evening for parents and members of the Waldorf School Association.

A teacher asks about a child in the first grade who cannot do arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to do some specific exercises with the child. First, draw him a circle, and then draw half a circle, and have him complete the other half of that circle. In other words, draw a symmetrical figure, but only one side and have him complete it.

You should probably have him in the remedial class.

A question is asked about the eighth-grade Competency Test and the corresponding recommendation.

Dr. Steiner: You mean Jungens. Why do we need to test him? We should write our reports so that they document.

You could make the reports optional. Simply give them a report that allows them to accomplish what they need to accomplish depending upon their age and grade. I do not think the report will have much effect.

A teacher: The question has arisen as to whether the Waldorf School provides enough factual material. The students in the ninth grade made a comparison and saw that they do not know enough.

Dr. Steiner: The question is resolved. At the time when the school was founded, I wrote a memorandum that states that we are to have a completely free hand between entry into school and completion of the third grade so that our students could enter any fourth-grade class. The same is true for them at the age of twelve and we could continue that to the age of eighteen. The problem is solved. The only problem is that we should not just say it, but we should work in the most efficient manner to actually achieve that goal. It is possible to achieve the teaching goals in many different ways, but we can certainly bring the children so far along that they reach a genuine degree of maturity. Test a child in the eleventh grade to find out what he or she knows about history, and then think of everything that child has forgotten. You will see that one of our children at the same age will know just as much. Of course, we cannot achieve everything because some of the teachers are not able to sufficiently prepare. You need to prepare your instruction more carefully, and then we could certainly write a report in good consciousness.

A teacher: In many of the subjects, the children do not learn enough to enter the eleventh grade. Many ninth graders are still at the very beginning in English.

Dr. Steiner: The solution to that is that we work upon our teaching plan from the very beginning. We cannot solve the problem with those we received at the fourth or fifth grade, but we must be able to solve it for those who came to us in the first grade. It would be a mistake if we could not do that. We must teach the children enough in the most important subjects that they can pass their examinations.

We could give them a supplementary report that would be easier to write. For instance, we could say that the student has achieved

the learning goals for the third or sixth grade, in particular in the following subjects.… We do not want to issue grades as such, but we would express it in reasonable words. We could consider such reports for the third, sixth, eighth and twelfth grades as we promised to do. We must have this report for the eighth grade.

If the children do not leave, they do not need it, so we should write it only for those who need it. For the higher grades, you need to write it only as part of the graduation report.

A teacher: We are required to give the children a copy of the constitution upon graduation.

Dr. Steiner: Then we should do that.

There is a question about the Greek and Latin classes.

Dr. Steiner: Since they are not living languages you can translate them.

You are not teaching efficiently enough. That is a particularly important principle for the upper grades, and something I always find lacking. You need to go through some material in considerable detail, for instance, in physics you should do experiments with prisms. After you have done that so that the children genuinely understand it, you can later look at it again more or less aphoristically, in a more cursory way. Then take up another area in detail. If that is not done, you are not teaching the children enough, and what they do learn does not form a complete picture.

In physics, you are not taking up the main subjects in sufficient detail. This is true for all sorts of things you should be doing in detail, for instance, Eichendorff. Afterward, you should close with a survey of a number of things. Then take up something else in great detail so that you achieve a rounded understanding. I have never seen an instance when something is taught in that way that the children do not meet their learning goals. It is important that you get the children to concentrate on their work. A great deal

depends upon that, and with it, we can, in fact, move forward.

Reaching the real goals of the instruction should be child’s play.

A teacher: We do not have enough time for mathematics and physics. We could achieve a great deal through teaching in blocks.

Dr. Steiner: A normal middle-grade school class has thirty-two hours per week. Five hours are used for mathematics, three for physics, and two for nature studies. But that is not particularly important. We must teach so that we achieve our goals in the time available. Time cannot be our ruling principle.

A religion teacher thinks that three-quarters of an hour is not enough for religion class.

Dr. Steiner: It would certainly be good for the children if they could have that class more often, but I do not understand why three-quarters of an hour is not enough. I certainly think it is better when the children have the class twice a week. I would prefer to have the periods even shorter, but more often.

A teacher: The children in the seventh grade should feel responsible for their work.

Dr. Steiner: We should try to make the children curious about their work. If you ask the children such questions, that makes them curious about what they can find out for themselves. That is something that will excite them. I would do it in that way. The children cannot develop a feeling of responsibility before you teach them the meaning and consequence of the concept of responsibility.

Give them such themes for their essays as “The Steam Engine: Proof of Human Strength” and then follow it immediately with “The Steam Engine: Proof of Human Weakness.” Give them two such themes, one right after the other, and I think you will certainly arouse their interest. You can organize your instruction so that you arouse the children’s interest. They will become excited about it,

but you must keep the excitement down to an extent. They must also be able to attentively follow the instruction without such excitement. People understand the idea of responsibility only with very great difficulty and so late that you should actually begin to speak about it with children. You can give them some examples and teach them about people with and without a feeling of responsibility. The children have understood that the squid is a weeping person and the mouse an attentive eye. We need to develop the things that lie within our pedagogy so that the children receive really strong pictures, and those are engraved in them. That is something that excites them. We need to give the children pictures that become deeply engraved within them. To do that, however, we need time. We need time until the children understand them. Once they have that, they will yearn for pictures.

A teacher: We did Faust in the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I would not read the Gretchen tragedy with fourteenor fifteenyear-old children, but you can certainly use some passages from Faust.

I have given a lot of consideration to Shakespeare and was deeply concerned by it. I was concerned with the question of how to use Shakespeare in school. We would have to have a special edition for school because Shakespeare’s plays have been edited so much that they contain many errors. Shakespeare’s plays were not originally given as they are performed. The things contained in Shakespeare’s plays can be given through a special youth edition.

I mentioned this in Strattford. 187 In England, you can go further in a lecture with some things than you can in Germany, and for that reason I mentioned that Shakespeare was a man of the theater. Just as a genuine painter knows that he only has a surface to work upon, in the same way, Shakespeare knew he had only a stage. That is important. When you make Shakespearean

187 . See Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy, vol. 1.

characters living in that sense, you can raise them into the supersensible world where they remain living. Of course, they do not do in the higher worlds what they do on the physical plane, but they remain alive, nevertheless, and they act there. It is, however, a different drama. If you take one of Hauptmann’s dramas into the spiritual world, all the characters die. They become simply wooden puppets. The same is also true of Isben’s characters. Even Goethe’s Iphigenia does not completely live at the astral plane. Shakespeare’s characters move about there and do things in the same style, so that it is possible to rewrite a Shakespearean play. We could actually rewrite them all.

That was something quite surprising for me. I have until now only made some attempts. You could do it with Euripedes, but Iphigenia is not completely alive in the astral plane. There is something else that matters and that we should develop in detail.

Sophocles and Aeschylus characters, like Prometheus, live in the astral plane. That is also true of Homer’s characters, the figure of Odysseus. The Roman poets are not alive in that way. The French poets, Corneille and Racine, they melt away like dew and simply exist no more. Hauptmann’s figures are stiff like wood. Goethe’s Iphigenia is a problem, not a living character, something true of Tasso, also. Seen from the astral plane, Schiller’s characters, Thekla and Wallenstein are like sacks stuffed with straw, though Demetrius is more alive. Had Schiller worked on the Maltese, it would have become a living drama. Such characters as the Maid of Orleans and Mary Stewart are simply horrible on the astral plane. All of which, of course, says nothing about their effect in the physical plane. In contrast, even Shakespeare’s most incidental figures are all alive because they arose out of a true desire of the theater. Things that imitate reality no longer live upon the astral plane. Only what arises from emotions and not from the intellect. Vulgarly comical things come to life immediately on the astral plane as they are not created in order to imitate reality.

I ventured to say that the most important thing about Shakespeare was his enormous influence on Goethe. The reason for that can be found in the fact that Goethe was completely unaffected by what was stated in an academic way about Hamlet and Julius Caesar. What had an effect upon Goethe was not what we can read everywhere, including those things that Goethe himself said about Hamlet. There is certainly much of what he said in that regard that we can object to. I am speaking of something, however, to which there can be no objection. Namely, where he says they are not poems, but are more like the book of fate, where the stormy winds of life flip the pages back and forth. That is something that more closely expresses his own experience, but when he speaks of Hamlet he does not really express his own experience.

A teacher: We read Macbeth in my eighth-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly read Macbeth. You may need to modify some of the things we cannot give to children. Schlegel’s translation is better than Schiller’s.

There is a question about Bible editions.

Dr. Steiner: We should teach the Bible so that the children can understand it. The Old Testament is not intended for children. It contains things you should not teach them. The Catholics have done a good job. Schuster’s Bible is good for children. I saw a copy in Schubert’s room. It is very well done.

These are problems you could solve within the faculty. How could we prepare the Bible for each age? How about Schiller or Goethe or Shakespeare?

All of the attempts until now are childish. Things cannot be done that way, they need to be done with some interest and insight.

Things need to be rewritten and not simply left out. Certainly, we can use Shakespeare’s comedies very well.

A teacher: I have been asked about books that are not in the school library, for instance, Hermann Hesse.

Dr. Steiner: Seventeen or eighteen year olds could read that. In regard to reading Faust, you should also consider that if children read such things at too young an age, their taste will be spoiled for later life. A young person who reads Faust too early will not understand it. I did not even know it until I was nineteen.

Fourteen or fifteen year olds can read Wallenstein as well as Shakespeare. Lear is perhaps the most disturbing modern drama dealing with fate, and should probably be read later. A feeling should remain and you should not numb it.

Marie Steiner: The Maid of Orleans is certainly the most beautiful ideal. I was shaken as Salome was set forth as the ideal some twenty years later.

Dr. Steiner: I am not in favor of having the children read The Robbers, but they can certainly read Schiller’s later plays. Don Carlos presents a distorted picture, but I think that Schiller’s historical works would be good reading. Such books are excellent for thirteen and fourteen year olds. I do not think that any of Kleist’s works are appropriate for school. At best The Broken Pitcher. As a playwright in connection with tragedy, Kleist has insufficient education [incorrect pictures?].188 Aside from that, he is a Prussian poet. All this, with the exception of The Broken Pitcher. They cannot read Katy, nor The Prince of Homburg. The Battle of Hermann is Prussian. Grillparzer has a bad influence upon youth, but Raimund has a good influence. Grillparzer makes them soft. They can read Goethe’s Egmont. The characters in Hebbel’s Demetrius do not live.

They can read Genoveva along with The Niebelungen. You could also include Wagner’s Ring and Jordan’s Niebelungen. From a historical

188 . The brackets note a difficulty with the original transcripts. Either reading seems to be possible from existing notes. — TRANS.

perspective, Calderon, who represents the dying drama of the middle ages and a completely decadent life, lived at the same time as Shakespeare’s rising life. There are many things you could give to the children as a first drama. I think you might perhaps begin with one of the dramas of antiquity, for example, Antigone.

However, you cannot present real drama until at least the age of twelve or thirteen. They can read Wilhelm Tell, but Ühland’s Baron Ernst is a silly Schwabian work with no real value.

It is simply straw, not well done. It does not even live on the physical plane.

During the whole week in Stratford, there were performances of Shakespeare. Representatives from various countries spoke on the twenty-third. It was rather humorous that the most important Frenchman, Voltaire, referred to Shakespeare as a “crazed wild man.” I noticed how much better the comedies were performed.

Julius Caesar was not well done. The Taming of the Shrew was done well. There was also Much Ado about Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Twelfth Night.

The children should read Cid in French. They should know something of that. They can also read Racine, Corneille, and Molière. Every welleducated person should be able to speak of Corneille and Racine. People should also know Molière.

The ninth-grade teacher asks about essay themes. He has had them write essays about Faust and the character of Faust.

Dr. Steiner: That is really too much for them. You should remember that even Kuno Fischer did not write well about that. I would center the themes more on observations of life, like the ones I mentioned earlier. For the eighth grade, we could also do such things as “What Is Beauty in Nature?” and then follow it with “What Is Beauty in the Soul?” You should use more themes like that, where the children have to concentrate on developing the theme.

A teacher: Should we first discuss the theme?

Dr. Steiner: You should discuss the theme in the normal context of the lesson. You will need to have discussed a number of things.

While you were discussing Jean Paul, there were a number of good theme possibilities. You set the themes too high.

A teacher: What would you give the ninth grade as an essay about the friendship between Schiller and Goethe?

Dr. Steiner: I would describe how it looked when Goethe went from Weimar to Tiefurt.189 Then I would have them describe “A Walk with Goethe” as concretely as possible. These are things they can do.

A question is asked regarding the exercises for kleptomania, namely holding on to the feet and remembering things in reverse order.

Dr. Steiner: It is better if both things are done together, that is to remember backward while holding on to the feet. We may not make an error here. The exercises should be continued for a quarter year.

A teacher asks what the eighth-grade art class should do.

Dr. Steiner: Do Albrecht Dürer and also something that is, musically related, for instance, Bach. Treat the black-and-white drawings in a very lively way.

Children only truly take in a fairy tale when they tell it. Miss Uhland in the third grade is very good at coaxing it out of them. I think she can do that very well and perhaps she should speak about it in a meeting. She just coaxes it right out, but she does not need to be too proud for that reason. She does it sitting next to the child

189 . Tiefurt is located two miles from Weimar. Goethe often visited the Baroness Anna Amalia’s country estate there.

so that the entire class is interested in what happens. She is quite good at that.

A teacher asks about the curriculum for the eleventh-grade handwork class.

Dr. Steiner: We could consider bookbinding. The main thing is that the children learn how to bind a book.190 They should also make pleats and rolled seams for linens in handwork. Can the children chop wood?

That is how things are done in Miss Cross’s King’s Langley school. There is no extra help at the school, and the forty children do everything. It is a boarding school. The children wash their own clothing, they keep the heater going, they cook, they clean the windows, they do everything. They also keep poultry, have cattle and bees, even ponies. They take care of all the work around the home and garden. Here, every child works for themselves, but there, every child is just like the next. It is difficult to get parents to put the children there. The teaching suffers from this.

People do not know how little we teach children and how much they actually learn themselves. We need to help develop the three aspects of the child’s individuality, that is our educational task. The child gains a great deal when it must do all that. It is too bad when the things necessary to ripen the soul do not happen.

190 . Books were often sold in unbound signatures, which the purchaser could then bind at home. Many people elevated the craft to an artistic hobby. — TRANS.

Wednesday, May 10, 1922

Wednesday, May 10, 1922, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m.

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.

Wednesday, May 10, 1922

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 lefthandedness quite easily through practicing the piano. That is something we need to keep in mind. We should

always correct lefthandedness. 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 20.191

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.

191 . Steiner gave a short speech at the opening on June 20, 1922, in Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School.

Tuesday, June 20, 1922, 8:00 p.m.

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.192

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.193 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

192 . See lectures of June 21 and 22, 1922 in “Education Lectures,” manuscript.

193 . See Education for Adolescents.

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 al 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.194 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

194 . Carnot’s theorem: “No engine operating between two given temperatures can be more efficient than a perfectly reversible engine operating between the same temperatures.” Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., 1958. — TRANS.

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.195

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.

195 . See lectures of June 21 and 22, 1922 in “Education Lectures,” manuscript.

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.196 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

196 . The school was not founded until after Steiner’s death.

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.

.

Wednesday, June 21, 1922, 8:30 –10:30 p.m.

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.197

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.198 I believe that you need to work through all Kolbe’s

197 . Gottfried Semper (1803–1879), a leading architect in the nineteenth century.

198 . Jacobus Hendricus van’t Hoff (1852–1911), Dutch chemist and Nobel Prize winner; founded stereochemistry, which deals with the spacial relationships of atoms.

polemic against symbolic chemistry, since this polemicizing has, in a sense, placed the entire problem on developments in chemistry.199 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.200

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.201 In this case, you can illustrate something that occurs materially and then go on to point out that the processes within

199 . Hermann Kolbe (1818–1884), chemist. The reference to polemic is unclear.

200 . Wilhelm Pelikan, “Rätsel des Stickstof s und ihre Erhellung druch anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft” (The nitrogen question and an answer through Anthroposophy), Die Drei, vol. 1, No. 11; Eugen Kolisko spoke at the Vienna Conference on “The Phenomenology of Some Elements and Chemical Processes” (June 1, 1922), “Chemistry and Counter-Chemistry: Inner and Outer Chemical Processes” (June 6, 1922) and “A New Human Physiology” (June 9, 1922).

201 . The coherer was part of the receiver in radio transmissions at its earliest stages—for example, in the devices built by Marconi, 1896. One way of describing its function is to say that it is a “noise eliminator” that enables the receiver to eliminate all but the desired wavelengths. — TRANS.

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.

.

Thursday, June 22, 1922, 8:30–10:30 p.m.

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.202

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

202 . A religious institute founded in Rome in the 17th century by St. Joseph of Calasanza.

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.203 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

203 . This refers to the selection and translation of the text to be read at the Sunday services. Steiner never wrote this translation.

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.204 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.

204 . The Magyar language belongs to a prominent ethnic group of Hungary. It is Finno-Ugric in affiliation. — TRANS.

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.205 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

205 . The Spiritual Ground of Education.

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.206 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?207 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.

206 . Professor Abderhalden. See the faculty meeting on September 21, 1920.

207 . Streets where the Association of Physicians and the Waldorf School were respectively located.

Continued in volume 2.

Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner

VOLUME 2

[VIII/2]

FOUNDATIONS OF WALDORF EDUCATION

R U D O L F S T E I N E R

Faculty Meetings with

Rudolf Steiner

1922 –1924

V O L U M E 2

Translated by Robert Lathe & Nancy Parsons Whittaker

Anthroposophic Press

The publisher wishes to acknowledge the inspiration and support of Connie and Robert Dulaney

❖ ❖ ❖

This text is a translation of Konferenzen mit den Lehrern der Freien Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, from vol. 2 and vol. 3 (GA 300b, 300c), published by Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland, 1975. Translated by Robert Lathe and Nancy Parsons Whittaker.

Copyright © Anthroposophic Press, 1998

Published by Anthroposophic Press

3390 Route 9, Hudson, NY 12534

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Steiner, Rudolf, 1861–1925.

[Konferenzen mit den Lehrern der Freien Waldorfschule in Stuttgart.

English]

Faculty meetings with Rudolf Steiner / Rudolf Steiner ; translated by Robert Lathe & Nancy Parsons Whittaker.

p. cm. — (Foundations of Waldorf education ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: v. 1. 1919–1922 — v. 2. 1922–1924.

ISBN 0-88010-458-9 (set). — ISBN 0-88010-421-X (v. 1 : pbk.). — ISBN 0-88010-452-X (v. 2 : pbk.)

1. Freie Waldorfschule. 2. Freie Waldorfschule—Faculty. 3. Steiner, Rudolf, 1861–1925. 4. Waldorf method of education. 5. Anthroposophy.

I. Title. II. Series.

LF3195.S834S84 1998

371.39—dc21 98-29827

CIP

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publishers, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Publisher’s Note …. .… .. .. .. .. .. .. … …. .… .. .. .. .. .. .… .. .. vii FACULTY MEETINGS / 1

First School Year Meetings from September 8, 1919 to July 31, 1920

Second School Year Meetings from September 21, 1920 to May 26, 1921

Third School Year Meetings from June 16, 1921 to May 10, 1922

Fourth School Year Meetings from June 20, 1921 to June 22, 1922

FACULTY MEETINGS / 2

Fourth School Year : June 18, 1921 to March 24, 1922

Meetings from October 4, 1922 to March 8, 1923

Wednesday, October 4, 1922 …………………………………………. 377

Friday, October 6, 1922 ……………………………………………….. 387

Sunday, October 15, 1922 …………………………………………….. 396

Saturday, October 28, 1922 …………………………………………… 420 Friday, November 24, 1922 …………………………………………… 447 Tuesday, December 5, 1922 ………………………………………….. 462 Saturday, December 9, 1922 ………………………………………….. 471 Wednesday, January 17, 1923 ………………………………………… 489 Tuesday, January 23, 1923 ……………………………………………. 500 Wednesday, January 31, 1923 ………………………………………… 513 Tuesday, Febraury 6, 1923

……………………………………………. 532 Wednesday, Febraury 14, 1923

………………………………………. 552 Thursday, March 1, 1923

……………………………………………… 570

Thursday, March 8, 1923 ……………………………………………… 581

Fifth School Year : April 24, 1923 to April 7, 1924

Meetings from March 30, 1923 to March 27, 1924

Friday, March 30, 1923 ………………………………………………… 586

Tuesday, April 24, 1923 ……………………………………………….. 600

Wednesday, April 25, 1923 ……………………………………………. 607

Thursday, May 3, 1923 ………………………………………………….619 Friday, May 25, 1923 …………………………………………………… 627 Thursday, June 21, 1923 ………………………………………………. 637 Tuesday, July 3, 1923

…………………………………………………… 642 Thursday, July 5, 1923

…………………………………………………. 651 Thursday, July 12, 1923

……………………………………………….. 652 Tuesday, July 31, 1923

…………………………………………………. 664 Tuesday, September 18, 1923

………………………………………… 674 Tuesday, October 16, 1923

…………………………………………… 685 Tuesday, December 18, 1923

………………………………………… 689 Tuesday, February 5, 1924

……………………………………………. 697

Thursday, March 27, 1924 ……………………………………………. 720

Sixth School Year : April 30, 1924 to March 30, 1925

Meetings from April 9, 1924 to September 3, 1924

Wednesday, April 9, 1924 ……………………………………………… 731

Tuesday, April 29, 1924 ……………………………………………….. 735

Wednesday, April 30, 1924 ……………………………………………. 741

Monday, June 2, 1924 ………………………………………………….. 753

Thursday, June 19, 1924 ………………………………………………. 764

Tuesday, July 15, 1924 …………………………………………………. 777

Wednesday, September 3, 1924 ……………………………………… 786

Bibliography .… … … . .… .… … … . .… .… .… .… .. 791

Index .… … … . .… .… .… .… … …… .… .…… . .. 799

Publisher’s Note

Publisher’s Note

The eight hundred pages of Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner represent something unique, even among the bewilderingly different kinds of works (more than 350 in number) published under the name of Rudolf Steiner. These include the written works— books authored and published by Rudolf Steiner in his lifetime; the transcripts, based on stenographic reports, of public lectures given by Rudolf Steiner; and finally, the transcripts, based either on stenographic reports or sometimes just auditor’s notes, of “private” talks given to larger or smaller (and sometimes very small) groups or subgroups of members of the Anthroposophical Society (before 1913, the Theosophical Society). In addition to these three kinds of works, Steiner also wrote journal and magazine articles, contributed to collections, gave written esoteric instruction, wrote letters, and kept voluminous notebooks. Although Steiner initially intended only the written works for publication, very early on in his teaching career, to forestall the dissemination of pirated versions of his lectures, he began to oversee the printing of stenographic transcripts, even going through some of those that were published in his lifetime. However, he could only do this for a very small sample. For the rest, the Nachlassverwaltung in Dornach, Switzerland, has, with minimum resources, done a tremendous job of editing and comparing different manuscript transcriptions.

Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner is something else again. The volume contains, as the title suggests, a record (more or less) of five years of faculty meetings. Thus it consists, as such meetings usually do, mostly of responses to unconnected questions arising from the life of the school. Sometimes the discussion is lively; sometimes it is dull; sometimes the issues addressed are hair-raising and critical; sometimes they are more routine and operational. Throughout,

however, we are able to watch Rudolf Steiner in action in a unique way while, at the same time, witnessing the extraordinary birth and development of a new pedagogical adventure: Waldorf education.

All this is shown very organically and interwoven with the personalities and capacities of those involved and with the particular conditions of the time and the place.

Rudolf Steiner addresses the questions as they arise. Except on two occasions, no stenographer was present. What we have today is based on participants’ notes—above all, those of Karl Schubert who joined the faculty in the summer of 1920. Before that, only brief notes were taken; whereas, after that, following Dr. Schubert’s example, other faculty members began to take notes. The text, which remains fragmentary, is compiled of all these elements. As it is stated in the preface to the German edition: “Only when Rudolf Steiner gave a longer, connected perspective or when several sets of notes exist can we view the text as relatively authentic.”

Readers are forewarned to expect a very full, unpredictable, unrehearsed, spontaneous reading experience. Faculty Meetings is astonishing in its richness, its vitality, its variety. The scope and wisdom of Rudolf Steiner’s comments, the enormous range of his knowledge, and, above all, perhaps, his amazing ability to create a living, culture-transforming, truth-bearing institution, the first Waldorf school, is overwhelming. However fragmentary it may be, we really have here the closest thing to a living portrait of Steiner, the man of action. All of which is to say that despite the shortcomings of this record, Faculty Meetings is, from many points of view, a most valuable document.

It is also, in some sense, a dangerous one. For much of the period, Rudolf Steiner and the anthroposophical movement were under attack from without and in crisis within. New Years’ Eve 1922/23, the Goetheanum, the anthroposophical headquarters in Publisher’s Note

Switzerland, went up in flames. Germany herself tottered on the edge of an abyss. Following the Treaty of Versailles, the pain of

national humiliation exhausted itself in failed revolutions, opening the way to National Socialism. Social and economic chaos ruled. The children suffered from congenital malnutrition. Groups of “ruffians” roamed the streets. In a word, it was a wild time, and Rudolf Steiner is often acting under great pressure. Much here if not taken in context can be misunderstood and misrepresented. As publishers, we have debated whether to publish the book and whether to publish it whole. We have decided to publish it because we believe that it represents a valuable resource both for those interested in the history of Waldorf education and for those interested in Rudolf Steiner. We have no doubt that both of these, Waldorf education and Rudolf Steiner, represent vitally important impulses for a healthy human future in the next millennium.

Understanding both of these, making what they have to offer our own, so that we, in turn, may serve our culture and our fellow human beings, will mean coming to know and learning to read Rudolf Steiner in a new, twenty-first century way. With this in our minds and hearts, we publish this extraordinary record as it stands in German.

x

FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER

Wednesday, October 4, 1922, 8:00 p.m.–12:30 a.m.

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.

Friday, October 6, 1922, 9:00 p.m.

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. Al 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.

Sunday, October 15, 1922, 2:30 p.m.

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.208 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

208 . General Gerald v. Gleich opposed anthroposophy.

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. 209 The boys think this is a

209 . In Germany, a student decides which degree (or subject area) to pursue.

Universities offer many classes in all subjects, but, unlike the American system, students do not enroll in classes but attend those they perceive will help prepare for final examinations for being granted a degree. Students are given a great deal of personal responsibility for determining their methods of preparation. — TRANS.

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.”210

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

210 . He wrote “fert” instead of “pferd. ” In the Stuttgart region, his spelling is an accurate phonetic representation of the local pronunciation. — TRANS.

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.211

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?

211 . Curule chairs are a style of seat similar to a campstool with curved legs; they were reserved for the highest dignitaries in ancient Rome. — TRANS.

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.212 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

212 . Steiner believed that if greater harmony had existed between the participants in Steiner’s course in Stuttgart (October 3-15, 1922) and the Waldorf School teachers, he could have been more effective. See The Younger Generation.

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.213

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.

213 . See The Younger Generation.

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.214 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.

214 . This refers to the Waldorf School teachers; the school was on a hilltop.

Saturday, October 28, 1922, 8:00 p.m.–1:30 a.m.

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 fortyeight. 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 twentyone 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.215 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

215 . In German, it is obvious that the class teacher is female. –TRANS.

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.216

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

216 . These represent two popular trends in German script at the time. — TRANS.

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.217 That is something you can use appropriately for the fourth grade. It even has some good remarks

217 . A middle-high German story by Rudolf von Erns (ca. 1230), translated into modern German by Simrock (1848), and retold by Rudolf Treichler (1955).

for teachers. Gerhardt the Good is wonderful reading material for that age. I discussed it from an anthroposophical perspective in a lecture in Dornach.218

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.219 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.220 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.221

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.

218 . December, 25-26, 1916, GA 173

219 . Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845–1909) wrote “Heldenlieder” (Songs of heroes) in 1874 and a series of historical dramas popular at the turn of the century.

220 . Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831), diplomat, historian, and author of Griechische Heroengeschichten. An seinen Sohn erzählt (Stories of Greek heroes, as told to his son) 1842.

221 . There is no record of the remedy mentioned.

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.222 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 fal 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.

222 . The courses of August and September, 1919 ( The Foundations of Human Experience) and September 1920 ( Balance in Teaching).

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.

Friday, November 24, 1922, 8:00 p.m.

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.223

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.

223 . The new school building, which included a gymnasium, was begun December 1921 and opened December 1922.

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.224 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

224 . Medical question were discussed during the meeting of February 6, 1923, not during the English teachers’ visit.

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: Twentyfive 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.225

Tuesday, December 5, 1922, 4:00–6:30 p.m.

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

225 . A “roly poly” is a punching toy that is weighted at the bottom so that it always springs up after it is knocked over. — TRANS.

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 1920.226

226 . See Balance in Teaching.

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. 227 Of course, these things are

227 . Rudolf Steiner never wrote the essay.

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.

A question is asked about the human ear.228

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.

228 . See Health and Illness, vol. 1, lecture 3.

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.

Cochlea: feeling

( rhythm )

Memory (head)

Understanding tone

Probing

Eustachian tube:

Eardrum

will (metabolism—

limited to the air)

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.

Saturday, December 9, 1922, 4:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I think that first I need to hear what has happened with the class schedule during the short period it has been implemented.

I would like to know whether you see it as a possible solution.

A teacher: A father wrote a letter indicating things have gotten worse.

Dr. Steiner: We should include those opinions in a practical evaluation. We need to ask ourselves how it is that a boy in the fourth grade has class until ten minutes to 7:00 in the evening.

A teacher: We had to put one of the language classes into the afternoon, and then handwork follows it.

Another teacher: In general, the situation is not worse.

Dr. Steiner: That is the way it should be. We have not increased the number of hours, but actually reduced them, and the instruction is more concentrated.

A teacher says something about the free periods.

Dr. Steiner: If we had more teachers, such free periods would not occur. What do the students do during that time?

A teacher: They are put together in one room, and we keep an eye on them. The older children work alone.

Dr. Steiner: We should answer such a letter by pointing out the advantages. There must certainly be some advantages.

A teacher: In the eighth grade, there do not seem to be any advantages.

Dr. Steiner: We have to recognize that as unavoidable. Is it really so obvious? Certainly, the number of classroom hours has not increased.

A teacher: It is only a temporary disadvantage and will exist only as long as we have shop in the afternoon.

Dr. Steiner: This situation can last only for the darkest months of winter. Instruction begins relatively late, at 8:30 a.m. I always assumed that was for reasons of economy. We could also say that if the parents paid for the additional lighting, we would begin at 8:00. We could ask the parents whether they want it or not, and then decide according to the majority. We could begin a half hour earlier and use electric light.

We could survey the parents after we explain the basic issues of the class schedule. The main complaint of the person who wrote that letter is that he does not see his children. He is quite sorry his son does not arrive home until 7:30 in the evening. We need to take a survey. We could ask him whether he would be willing to pay more in order to have school begin a half hour earlier.

The gymnastics teacher: The children have asked whether we could have gymnastics from 7:30 until 8:30 in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: The children would then come to main lesson tired.

They would be just as tired as if they had a regular period before main lesson.

We need to speak with the students about their dissatisfaction, and we should send a questionnaire to the parents. For the students, our task is that they have the same perspective as you, the teachers. Where would we be if the students’ viewpoint was different from that of the teachers? It is absolutely necessary that the students support the teachers’ perspective. We should try to achieve better harmony between the students and teachers, so that the students would go through fire for the teachers. Each time that does not happen, it is painful for me.

A teacher: Things would improve if we could have shop in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: If that is possible, go ahead.

It is curious that the students criticize the class schedule. Why is that?

A teacher: The children criticize a great deal.

Dr. Steiner: That should not be. In general, you should not lose contact with the children. I think every class schedule would have advantages and disadvantages. If you had good contact with the students, the class schedule would not be a problem. I would like to hear from the teachers what you think the practical results have been. We could send out a questionnaire to the parents, but student criticism is unacceptable. What I said at the beginning referred to the perspective of the teachers.

A number of teachers report.

A handwork teacher: Can we allow the boys in the upper grades to have handwork as an elective? The girls have asked if we could leave out the boys. The boys who have grown with the classes like to participate, but the new ones do not.

Dr. Steiner: How could we do that? We have included those things in our curriculum that are appropriate in handwork; that leaves no room for variation. We cannot allow handwork to become an elective. How would you do that? Your guiding rule would then be that the children go only to what they want.

You can vary things within the class. There are a number of good possible variations. You can give the children many kinds of activities. Things to not need to be the same everywhere. As far as I am concerned, you can give the boys and girls different activities beginning in the eighth or ninth grade, but if it becomes an elective, we will destroy our plan.

A teacher: I would like stenography to be an elective. The children do no homework.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad. When does that class begin? Oh, in the tenth grade. I do not understand why they do not want to learn it.

We are so close to some things that we often forget that we have a different method and a different curriculum than in other schools. You see, now that I’ve been in the classes more often, I can say we are achieving results with what we might call the Waldorf School method; the results are apparent. A comparison with other schools, in fact, shows that, to the extent we are using the Waldorf School pedagogy, we are achieving results. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are unconsciously not using the Waldorf method where we have not achieved results.

I do not want to be too hard. Things do not always need to end in a storm about how the Waldorf School method is not being used everywhere. Sometimes you fall back into the usual school humdrum. You get results when you use the methods. Even though the results in foreign languages are uneven, there are, nevertheless, quite good results. We are also achieving good results in the lower grades with what is normally called penmanship. In arithmetic I have the feeling that the Waldorf School method is not often used.

I think we need to continually ask ourselves how we need to work in these different conditions. Of course, it is easier to flunk a third of the class at the end of the school year than to continue bringing them along. That would result in different conditions. If we continue to use the same guidelines and think in the same way, we will not move forward. We would then have to allow the students to fail. You cannot have one without the other.

On the other hand, we also need to consider that the work done at home needs to be done happily. The children must feel a need to do it. If you teach at one of the public schools with compulsory attendance, where you have no interest and can operate like a slave owner, you are in a different situation. If the children do not bring

their homework, you simply punish them. The children would simply run away. If we were like other schools, they would simply run from us. We need to get the children to want to do their homework. But, their work is well done, isn’t it?

I work so hard to unburden the teachers because I must admit to feeling that you do not always have the necessary enthusiasm to really put something into your teaching. We need more fire, more enthusiasm in our teaching. So much depends upon that. If, for example, a boy does not want to participate in handwork, you need to give some thought to giving him something he finds interesting.

I know stenography can be learned in nothing flat, without much homework. I have, unfortunately, not been able to see what you do there. How do you explain stenography to the children?

A teacher: I gave an introductory lecture on the history of stenography, then taught them the vowels.

Dr. Steiner: You can generate much more excitement if you also teach abbreviations when you teach them the vowels,. All that relates to what we must overcome. What is that supposed to mean, “The children don’t want to”?

A teacher: One girl told me she does not need stenography. She is interested only in art.

Dr. Steiner: One thing must support the other. The students do not need to consider the question, “Why do I need to learn this?” We must direct our education toward being able to say to the student, “Look here, if you want to be an artist, there are a number of things that you need. You should not imagine you can simply become an artist. There are all kinds of things you need to learn that are not directly connected with art. As an artist, you may well need stenography. There was once a poet, Hamerling, who once said he could not have become what he was without stenography.” We must learn to teach so that as soon as the teacher says something, the children become interested. That should simply happen.

We begin teaching stenography in the tenth grade. By now, the children should be so far that they understand they should not question their need to learn what we teach.

A teacher: The children asked before we even began. Some of them had already learned the Stolze-Schrey method.

Dr. Steiner: That is a real problem. If there were enough children, it might lead to needing a special course for those who want to learn the Stolze-Schrey method.

A teacher asks about the visit of someone from England.

Dr. Steiner: Concerning this visitor, it is important that we develop a kind of “visitor attitude” so that we appear to be accustomed to having visitors. Don’t you agree that we do not really do that when we have German visitors? Englishmen will be terribly disappointed if you receive them the way you normally receive visitors in the Waldorf School. I do not want to suggest that you take up “Emily Post” in your free time, but there is something you might call a kind of “natural manners.” It is different when you have a visitor than when you speak in the faculty meeting. The main thing is that you are gracious to visitors. I mean that not only in connection with your external demeanor, but also inwardly. You need to want to allow the visitors to see what is special about our instruction.

Otherwise, they will go away with no impression at all. The impression our visitors receive depends upon how we act with them. That is the first thing. The other thing is that we need to make the visit as efficient as possible. It will not do to have thirty visitors in a class on the same day, but only as many as we can handle. We should not allow them simply to watch us.

When the Theosophical Society had a conference in London some time ago, they had a “Smiling Committee.” When we had our meeting in 1907 in Munich, there was a great deal to see.1

There were the celebrities of the Theosophical Society. I thought it was really horrible that these famous people left with the opinion

that people are right, Germans are impolite. I once suggested to someone that he should say a few words to a wellknown person.

He replied, “With them?” He thought it was a terrible imposition that I thought he should be polite. He thought he should simply ignore someone he did not like. These things happen. They should not happen here. Otherwise, we would have to not allow the visit, and that is something we cannot easily do.

A teacher: We thought we would serve tea in one of the classes.

We’ve also prepared a display table.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly good, but I am referring more to your attitude. You could certainly say we should not allow these people to come, but that is not easily avoided. You need to show them what is special about our teaching methods, and you need an opportunity for doing that.

Sometimes when you say something, it feels like you are taking the morning dew from the flower. It is all so easy to say in a lecture, but with concrete questions, you seem so dry and barren. Then, it is like taking away the dew. Everything depends upon how you do it, whether it seems you want to help someone or not. What I want to say is—I can say this today because it will not seem as though I wanted to praise Dr. B.— when I come into his class he seems to think it is important and correct to point out certain things to me.

The same is also true of Dr. S., but I also do not want to praise you. I do not think it would disturb your teaching if you were to point out what you are doing. Perhaps it is not so necessary with me, but I am convinced it is more important that you make sure visitors see what you are doing instead of simply having them stand there noticing nothing at all. Englishmen with their lack of concepts will understand nothing if you do not point out the basis of it. If you only give the class and let them

1. See Rudolf Steiner: An Autobiography, chapter 38.

watch, they won’t have the faintest idea of what happened. You need to forcefully point out what is special about the instruction.

An earlier visitor left without the faintest idea of what the Waldorf School is. He left and went home with only a proof that the methods he used in his English school are good. The only impression he had was that we are doing the same things he does.

You shouldn’t believe people notice things by themselves. Many of you have not yet noticed it, so many things continue on in their normal trot, even with our own teachers. That is what I meant.

Not much more can be done.

We should give a very impressive 5:00 o’clock tea at the branch office on Landhausstraße. Otherwise, the Englishmen will leave Stuttgart saying they have seen nothing of the Society, all we wanted was to lecture. In England, everybody introduces themselves, and they consider lectures as something to do on the side. They just put their hands in their pockets. Most of their lectures are simply long sentences. Germans say something in a lecture, something special about life, and they should notice that here. If you can show them that, they will slowly gain some respect.

No Englishman can understand the German nature. They do not understand it, they have no concept why we see something in a lecture that we associate with conviction. For them, it is only a longer speech within a conversation, but they do have a good sense of ceremony for formal occasions. You can certainly see that in everything they do. We do not need to imitate English culture, we do not need to imitate English nature, but we do need to give these people the impression that we simply do not stand around, but are truly active. That is what we need to do. We do not need to do much more, and there is not much more we can do during a twoweek visit than to try to get people to respect our Waldorf School methods. Nevertheless, we do need to gain their respect.

You need to remember that there is no way of expressing the word “philistine” in the English language. An Englishman cannot properly express the peculiarities of a philistine. People’s most

prominent characteristics cannot be expressed in their own language. Nowadays, Germans have taken on so many characteristics of the English that they are almost incapable of saying the word “philistine” with the proper feeling. We should eliminate everything that is philistine from the Waldorf School.

A teacher: Should we tell the children about this now?

Dr. Steiner: I would not do that. What I have said should remain within our four walls. Outside our circle we will have to arrange things so that the children consider the visit as a matter of course.

Don’t tell them. Don’t do things as though they were something outside our normal life. The visitors should not notice anything.

They should not believe we made any special preparations. They should think their visit does not bother us at all. There can be no talk of taking their visit into account. Do that as little as possible.

A teacher: Won’t the children bring some resistance from home?

Dr. Steiner: I visited the school of a man who will be coming. I went through all of Mr. Gladstone’s classes.229 The children, of course, knew I was a German just as the children here will know that the visitors are from England, but it was natural that I was treated as a guest.

A teacher: I would always ask an English visitor to tell something.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer to tell it myself. You should understand that all other classes will be of interest, but the English class will interest them only a little. I would try to make them understand, in a polite way, of course, that it is unimportant to me if they find the class not well done. If they say something, you could reply that you would probably say the same thing in their German class.

229 . Mr. Gladstone was director of a large boarding school near Michael Hall in England. He was one of the first English teachers to visit the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.

You are probably right. That is what is important. Don’t give the impression they are important for you, but treat them as guests. It is important that people feel they have been treated as guests. It is important that they believe the things that happen while they are here are what occurs normally, not that they believe we prepared something for them. They should not believe that. When we give a 5 o’clock tea at the branch house, they should think that that is the custom here. We are moving a little too strongly in the direction of becoming bureaucrats rather than people of the world, but we need to become people of the world, not bureaucrats. It is bad for the school if bureaucracy arises here. All German schools are bureaucracies, but that is something that should not happen at the Waldorf School. Basically, we do not need to show the people anything other than what happens here. Everything else lies in the way we do that.

I will be here on the eighth and ninth of January, perhaps also on the tenth, and then at the end of the visit. I was thinking it might be possible in that connection to give a short pedagogical course that would deal primarily with the aesthetics and pedagogy of music.230

A teacher asks about Parzival in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: In teaching religion and history, what is important is how you present things. What is important is how things are treated in one case and then in another. In teaching religion, three stages need to be emphasized. In Parzival, for instance, you should first emphasize a certain kind of human guiltlessness when people live in a type of dullness. Then we have the second stage, that of doubt in the heart, “if the heart is doubting, then the soul must follow.” That is the second stage. The third stage is the inner certainty he finally achieves.

230 . See Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone, lectures 5 and 6.

That is what we need to especially emphasize in teaching religion. The whole story needs to be directed toward that. You need to show that during the period in which Wolfram wrote Parzival, a certain segment of the population held a completely permeating, pious perspective, and that people at that time had these three stages in their own souls. You need to show that this was seen as the proper form, and that this was how people should think about the development of the human soul. You could speak about the parallels between the almost identical times of Wolfram’s and Dante’s existence, although Dante was something different. When you go into these things, you need to give each of the three stages a religious coloring.

In teaching literature and history, you need to draw the children’s attention to how one stage arises from an earlier one and then continues on to a later stage. You could show how it was proper that common people in the ninth and tenth centuries followed the priests in complete dullness. You can also show them how the Parzival problem arises because the common people then wanted to participate in what the priests gave them. In other words, show them that people existed in a state like Parzival’s and grew out of that state just as Parzival grew out of it. Show them how common people actually experienced the priests, just as Wolfram von Eschenbach did. He could not write, but he had an intense participation in the inner life of the soul.

Historically, Wolfram is an interesting person. He was part of the whole human transition in that he could not write and in that the whole structure of education was not yet accepted by common people. But it was accepted that all the experiences of the soul did exist. There is also some historical significance to the fact that it is a cleric who is the scribe, that is, who actually does the writing.

The attitude in Faust, “I am more clever than all the fancy people, doctors, the judges, writers, and priests,” persists into the sixteenth century. Those who could write were from the clergy, who also controlled external education. That changed only through the

ability to print books. In the culture of Parzival, we find the predecessor of the culture of printed books.

You could also attempt to go into the language. You should recall that it is quite apparent from Parzival that such expressions as “dullness,” “to live in the half-light of dullness,” were still quite visual at the time when people still perceived things that way. With Goethe, that was no longer the case. When Goethe speaks of a dog wagging its tail, he refers to it as a kind of doubting, whereas in Faust, it means nothing more than that the dog wags its tail. You see, this doubting is connected with dividing the dog into two parts: the dog’s tail goes to the left and the right and in that way divides the dog. This is something that is no longer felt later. The soul became completely abstract, whereas Goethe still felt it in a concrete way. This is also connected with the fact that Goethe once again takes up the Parzival problem in his unfinished Mysteries.

That is exactly the same problem, and you can, in fact, use it to show how such things change. They return in an inner way.

Take, for example—well, why shouldn’t we speak about Goethe’s Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily? You have probably already done this, that would be just like you. Why should we not take into account that the story of the kings is pictorially the same in Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, where you also have pictures of the kings? If you go back to that, you will see the natural connection to the Arthurian tales and the Grail story. You would have the whole esoteric Grail story. You would inwardly comprehend the Arthurian tales and the particular cultural work as the Knights of the Round Table, who set themselves the task of destroying the lack of consciousness, the dull superstition of the common people, while the Grail Castle’s task is to comprehend external life in a more spiritual way. Here you have the possibility for an inner deepening of Parzival, but at the same time you can place him in his own time. I have mentioned this in some of my lecture cycles, as well as Poor Heinrich, which can also be treated historically as a theme of the willingness to sacrifice. A moral understanding of the

world coincided with the physical understanding of the world, something that was lost in the next cultural period. Something like Poor Heinrich could not have been written in the fifteenth century.

I have also made a comparison between Parzival and von Grimmelshausen’s

Simplicius.

In

Christoffel

von

Grimmelshausen’s time, people were already so advanced that they could treat the Parzival problem only in a humorous manner. You can still find an echo of it in Simplizism. This is something you can do in literary history.

When you continue on to the present, things become very hidden, but you nevertheless should uncover them. It is also good to uncover much of what has been hidden. Take, for example, the training of Parzival by Gurnemanz. The question could arise whether a Gurnemanz existed in the nineteenth century. The answer is, yes, but you must understand the situation. It was Trast in Sudermann’s Honor. There you will find Trast and the inexperienced Robert. There you have a real Gurnemanz figure.

You will find all the characteristics translated into silliness. But, you will again have an opportunity of showing that Robert is a kind of Faust, but made silly, and Trast a kind of Mephistopheles.

Sudermann is a silly fellow and translated everything into silliness.

Here you have an opportunity to show the tremendous superficiality that lies in the transition from the Middle Ages into the most modern times.

A teacher asks why there is talk of twelve religions in The Mysteries.

Dr. Steiner: For the same reason that I spoke about twelve world views in a lecture in Berlin. 231 Goethe was not interested in discovering these twelve religions. He knew that the twelve religions were connected with the twelve pictures of the zodiac, and for that reason he spoke about twelve religions. It was not that he imagined a priori that there were twelve possible religions. I

231 . See Human and Cosmic Thought.

prefer to keep to Goethe’s attitude. As soon as you construct something of that sort, it becomes dry. The number is enough, and then you can give examples. Such things need not be particularly clear empirically.

There are also only twelve consonants, the others are variations.

That is something that occurs in no other language except Finnish, where there are only twelve consonants. That is how you can treat such questions, and you need only fill in the holes.

A teacher: How should we handle the Klingsor problem? That is such a difficult theme for the children.

Dr. Steiner: Avoid it. But, there is one important thing you can mention. You could discuss Wagner’s Parsifal with the children, but avoid bringing up questionable things. The result of your teaching will be that these things will be taken in with a much greater amount of inner purity later than they are today.

A teacher: I wanted to ask you to say something about methodology.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t understand your question. Isn’t that something that comes from the material itself? You have told the children a number of things, and the methodology lies in the things themselves. You have behaved in a way so that the children slowly came to behave in the same way. And the result is that the faculty could have sat on the school benches, and the children could have become the teachers. Everything is connected with that, with theory. You need to teach things much more naturally. There is no value in, for instance, saying that we need to ask the children if we want to know what it is that we should do. You should not repeat such things.

A teacher: When teaching the Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade, I had the feeling I was right on the edge because I do not understand the language.

Dr. Steiner: You see how difficult it is to speak in terms of general principles. The details are what is important. I think that if properly handled, the language is always interesting to the students. Things that can be learned from the inner structure of the language itself would always interest the students. I also think that the teachers working together would bring a great deal of good. For example, Mr. Boy presented a number of very interesting things, things that really interested the students in spite of the fact that a number of philologists would not consider them. Although they are rules, such things are interesting. Everything connected with language is interesting. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generalize. What I have had to say in that regard, I said in my language course, but I connected it with specific things.232 It is not possible to generalize.

We could achieve a great deal if those who know certain things would tell the others who do not know them. This is a possibility for real collaboration. It is a shame that there is so much knowledge here and the others do not learn it. In the faculty, there could be a really great cooperation.

A teacher: I do not understand Middle High German.

Dr. Steiner: I’m not sure that is so important. I once knew a professor who lectured about Greek philosophy, but who could never read Aristotle without a translation. What is important is that you come into the feeling of the language. Who is there who really understands Middle High German well? There is much that the other teachers could tell you.

A teacher: I cannot pronounce it well. You read it then.

Dr. Steiner: Not everyone reads it the same. It is colored by various dialects. We all speak High German differently. In some cases, it is important that you don’t speak High German like an Austrian.

232 . See The Genius of Language.

A teacher: Then you mean we should give only some examples from the original text.

Dr. Steiner: The original version of Parzival is really boring for students, and now one of them is translating it. One of you might write to Paris to order a book that you could get much more quickly if you simply ask Mr. B. to loan it to you.

A teacher: We could also make a connection with etymology.

Dr. Steiner: Regarding languages, my main desire is that the aesthetic or moral, the spiritual, and the content is emphasized more than the grammar. That is true for all languages and is what we should emphasize here. A word like “saelde” is really very interesting, “zwifel,” too. There is much that could be said about that, as well as about “saelde” that relates to the entire soul.

A teacher: Could you say something about the spiritual scientific perspective?

Dr. Steiner: All you have to do is look it up in How to Know Higher Worlds. Recently, there have been a number of lectures in Dornach about literary problems that Steffen found very interesting.

A teacher asks about periodicity in teaching art at various levels: I will be going to the ninth grade on Monday. I have already spoken about the themes in Albrecht Dürer’s black-and-white art.

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that. Do you really believe that the many things in Melancholia are attributes of Dürer? I think the difference between Dürer and Rembrandt is that Rembrandt treats the question of light and dark simply as a question of light and dark per se, whereas Dürer attempts to show light and dark through as many objects as possible.233 The many things contained in the

233 . See Steiner’s lectures of November 8, 1916 and November 28, 1916, The History of Art, manuscript.

Melancholia should not be seen as attributes, but more as his desire to place all possible objects into it. For me, the problem with Dürer is more how light behaves when reflected from all kinds of objects.

With Rembrandt, the problem is more the interactions between light and dark. That is what I think. Rembrandt would not have seen the problem of Melancholia in the same way. He would have done it much more abstractly, where Dürer is more concrete. I think that is how you can draw a very fine line.

A teacher: I wanted to include the problem of north-south, and then that of east-west.

Dr. Steiner: You could contrast Rembrandt’s light and dark with the southern painting style. In that way, you can bring such things together. Of course, when you describe that, you can also mention that Rembrandt treats the question of light and dark only qualitatively. Space is only an opportunity to solve the problem through painting. If you show how a sculpture is entirely a question of space, you can then go on into sculpture. Of course, it is probably best if you make a connection with French sculpture of the late classical period. In the rococo—of course, you need to leave out the good side of the rococo—you find in sculpture an extreme contrast to Rembrandt. You can show how the question of light and dark is treated in the rococo quite differently than by Rembrandt. You always need to mention the thought that the rococo, even though it is often not valued artistically as highly as the baroque, is actually a higher development in art.

A teacher: Should I then develop a kind of art-historical stages?

Dr. Steiner: I would show how these stages in their various forms are expressed in various regions. It is interesting how, during the time when Dürer was active, there existed in Holland something different from what Rembrandt was doing. Different times for different places.

I would arrange things so that I begin in the ninth grade only by concentrating upon the class and then develop the stages more strongly as I progress. Thus, by the eleventh grade, a review would awaken a strong picture of the various stages.

A teacher: Our proposal in teaching languages was to begin with the verb with the lowest beginners. From the fourth grade onward, we would develop grammar, and beginning with the ninth grade, we would do more of a review and literature.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly quite right to begin with the verb.

Prepositions are very lively. It would be incorrect to begin with nouns. I would like to explain that further, but this is a question I want to discuss when everyone who gives a language class is here, and N. is not here today. He did something today that is directly connected with how the verb and noun should be treated in class.

We also need to answer the question of what is removed from the verb when it becomes a noun. When a noun is formed from a verb, a vowel is removed, and it thus becomes more consonant, it becomes more external. In English, every sound can become a verb.234 I know a woman who makes a verb out of everything that she hears. For instance, if someone says “Ah” she then says that he “ahed.”

We want to turn our attention to this as soon as possible.

234 . Nouns in German are often formed by “substantiating” verbs. In English, a verb is often formed by changing a noun into a gerund, or “verbal noun,” for example, by adding “ing.” — TRANS.

Wednesday, January 17, 1923, evening

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to begin the meeting with a short speech.

Dr. Steiner asks about gymnastics class.

A gymnastics teacher: We tried teaching at the same time in the same room. We could just do it with the third grade, but it was completely impossible with the sixth grade. Because of the size of the gymnasium, we were unable to keep the two classes under control. We do not think there is any advantage in continuing in this way. In addition, we also need the gymnasium for teaching eurythmy some of the time.

A teacher: We do not yet have an instrument for the new smal eurythmy room.

Dr. Steiner: That is only temporary.

A eurythmy teacher: The new eurythmy room is too small for some of the classes, which is why we have to use the gymnasium.

Dr. Steiner: The socalled “little eurythmy room” is large enough.235It is not a little room, it is a large hall. Anything larger would be too large for eurythmy. It is not very fruitful to teach eurythmy in an enormous room. That would certainly not be fruitful.

The fact is that you need the gymnasium so much that eurythmy cannot be taught there. It was conceived as a gymnasium and thus should be used to hold gymnastics class. Where else could you teach it?

235 . The “little” eurythmy room was 35 x 22 feet.

Concerning the first two grades, there is not much we can do for now. In the future, though, gymnastics is actually too much for the first two grades. Instead, they should have some supervised play. We should begin with such supervised games as soon as we have a little breathing room, so that in the third grade a transition can be made from games to actual gymnastics. The children need real movement.

The gymnastics teacher: Without increasing the number of hours, we could include the first and second grades by giving them only one hour of instruction.

Dr. Steiner: The third grade has two hours.

How are things with eurythmy in the various grades?

A eurythmy teacher: The first through fifth grades have one hour each; the sixth through eleventh grades, two.

The gymnastics teacher: Due to the large number of classes in the tenth and eleventh grades, we had to move one of the gymnastics classes into the time allocated for shop.

Dr. Steiner: Gymnastics loses less than shop if one hour is dropped.

We could talk about it if the question was how to give a complete education without any manual training. That seems preferable to me since the children have a quiet form of gymnastics in their shop class. We have arranged the schedule so that the gymnastics does not adversely affect the periods following, haven’t we?

A teacher: We could arrange to have a games period.

Dr. Steiner: We have no one to teach it, so we can hardly consider that now. It will not be possible to decrease the teaching load until the end of this school year.

The gymnastics teacher: We are certainly not concerned with an overburdening.

Dr. Steiner: Fifteen hours are enough. If you teach fifteen hours, then you need to give two or three hours per day, and that is a lot for gymnastics.

The gymnastics teacher: We want to find a way.

Dr. Steiner: That is true. Nevertheless, you must take the following into consideration. In a school such as ours, we need to develop gymnastics class in a certain way, but that can happen only over time. Next year we may well be able to focus on developing gymnastics for the twelfth grade. At present, we treat it as only a stepchild. We will need to work together on that.

I think teaching gymnastics will present a number of difficulties for you as our Waldorf School develops. The main thing is that, beginning with a particular grade, the purpose of gymnastics will be conscious exercise for strengthening the human organism, a kind of hygienic whole-body massage of the human organism. I think you need to orient yourself more toward the upper grades.

In the lower grades, I am considering having the women work on the games. The authority of the gymnastics teachers should not suffer by first having them play with the children. They should represent what actually occurs in gymnastics. The children should not feel that their games teacher is now teaching gymnastics to them. I am, of course, not belittling games. A female games teacher in the first and second grades would not go on to gymnastics. The children would get a distorted feeling if we don’t make such a change. What I mean with games is movement.

What is important now is to find a replacement for Mrs.

Baumann during her illness. Mrs. Fels should take over half the eurythmy classes and Mrs. Husemann, the other half. Mrs. X.

would have the more mature students because she is older and more mature herself.

Marie Steiner: Mrs. X. first had quite a shock.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want Mrs. Y. to give the entire instruction, because I want the older children to have a more mature person.

A teacher: Tittmann will be free only after the first of April.

Dr. Steiner: Then there is nothing we can do other than wait. I am really sorry that this situation must continue. I thought it was very difficult that you had to do the French class immediately after art.

A teacher: There is nothing we can do about that.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult, but there is nothing we can do. Twentyfive hours is too much, but we have to wait.

A teacher: We will lose eight teaching days due to the earlier close of school.236

Dr. Steiner: We don’t need to cling to our schedule as though it were a great treasure. The exact amount of material per week is not so important.

A teacher: Should we do a longer book in tenth-grade French?

Dr. Steiner: You could use a different book. They should complete at least one book, even if they do not read a lot. Have you thought of something? I think you could choose something shorter that could be completed in the remaining two and a half months. In a class like that, it might be best to read a biography. There is a nice little book called La Vie de Molière.

Marie Steiner: Enfant célèbre.

Dr. Steiner: I would particularly recommend a biography.

A teacher: We read Livius in Latin. Next we will do Somnium Scipionis. I also included Horace, and we will read two or three odes and learn them from memory.

236 . The school year ended at Easter (March, 1923).

Dr. Steiner: You will certainly take up Cicero?

A teacher: In tenth-grade English, we completed The Tempest, and now we are doing excerpts from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Dr. Steiner: I would prefer that, instead of excerpts, you read the whole book. Making a selection for English is not easy. As soon as you move past Shakespeare, things become difficult.

It may be good to read Macaulay in the tenth grade, but that depends upon how you treat it. This is the age of life where children should learn to characterize in a broad and comfortable way. Biographies, for example Luther’s, are very useful for children at the age of fifteen. They are not very appropriate later, as the children will find them boring. In contrast, I think it would be good to read Carlyle and Emerson in the eleventh and twelfth grades. You might recommend Walter Scott for reading by themselves, but Emerson and Carlyle would be books for the class.

Emerson has such short sentences.

A teacher asks about a newly enrolled child.

Dr. Steiner: She could go into the ninth grade. In foreign languages, she would be at the very bottom, but that is not so bad. You should, however, make her acceptance dependent upon her having some place to live, but you will need to do that with some tact.

You might even consider trying to find good living quarters for her yourself.

We now have two children of workers at Dornach in the eighth grade, and the tuition has to be paid out of the funds for the building. They will have to find their own living quarters, but they will have to be places where we know that the adults pay some attention to such children. The workers at the building are quite connected to these things.

A teacher: If I were a man and had an apartment I would take some children myself.

Dr. Steiner: Now you tell me you are almost a man.

A class teacher: T.M. and O.Nr. need to be separated in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: With such children, much depends upon what they are accustomed to. It will not make much difference in the first half-year, but afterward for sure. They should be separated. ( Speaking to the teacher of the parallel class) T.M. would go to you. He is easier to handle. I think it would be best if you took him.

A religion teacher asks if it would be all right if he were to go on a lecture tour.

Dr. Steiner: If you arrange it with the others, there should be no difficulty.

A teacher: We are striving to awaken a religious mood, but there are some problems with many of the children. X. often ruins the class.

He does not like such moods.

Dr. Steiner: He certainly does not like moods, but there is nothing to be done. Even worse could occur. You could use his lack of participation to highlight the seriousness of the material.

A teacher asks about a service for the older children.

Dr. Steiner: I will soon arrange for an offering at the Sunday service.

A religion teacher asks another question.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with this question, we need to return to something we have already discussed. It is important that the youth of our Waldorf School talk less about questions of world perspective. The situation is that we need to create a mood, namely, that the teacher has something to say that the children should neither judge nor discuss. That is necessary, otherwise it will become trivial. An actual discussion lowers the content.

Things should remain with simply asking questions. The children even in the tenth and eleventh grades should know that they can

ask everything and receive an answer. For questions of religion and worldview, we need to maintain that longer. The religion teacher needs to retain a position of authority even after puberty.

That is something I mentioned before in connection with the “discussion meetings.” They need to be avoided. If the children put forth questions of conscience, and you answer them, then there is nothing to say against that.

We also need a second thing. The older students often mentioned that we emphasize that the Waldorf School is not to be an anthroposophical school. That is one of the questions we need to handle very seriously. You need to make the children aware that they are receiving the objective truth, and if this occasionally appears anthroposophical, it is not anthroposophy that is at fault.

Things are that way because anthroposophy has something to say about objective truth. It is the material that causes what is said to be anthroposophical. We certainly may not go to the other extreme, where people would say that anthroposophy may not be brought into the school. Anthroposophy will be in the school when it is objectively justified, that is, when it is called for by the material itself.

In things such as Parzival, it is already there, so that you will need to direct attention away from symbols rather than toward them.

Wagner’s followers in Bayreuth have gone into much more nonsense about symbols than occurs here. We do not do that here.

Parzival has to be taught as a man of the world, not a monk. I think this is something I needed to say today. For the children, of course, much is quite difficult.

It would be best if you discussed symbolism as little as possible.

Stay with the facts, the historical background, without becoming trivial. Remain with the facts, not symbols.

A teacher asks about the English teachers who had visited the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Only women came, and they were quite satisfied. I certainly thought we would have to deal with much harsher judgments.

Discipline is much easier in England. When you go into a boys’

school there, you find only well-behaved boys. You might not find that so nice, but if you love discipline, you will find it wonderful.

Modern Englishmen, at least in regard to their external behavior, are close to being insolent. Everybody assures you that they get better by the age of fourteen. That is certainly true in Gladstone’s school. I have observed how they go into the dining hall. It’s something that lies in the temperament of the people. The children are quieter there than here.

A teacher: N.G. is here.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to have anything to do with that family, even indirectly. Besides N.G., I feel sorry for the children.

I am very sorry to have disturbed the harmonious mood. So much occurred that I referred to as the “Stuttgart attitude”

following that terrible misfortune.237 I could not let things pass by without naming names, because things were really catastrophic. I have to say that was the way things had to be. Due to the nature of the problem, I repeatedly needed to put these things in the proper light. I also would have thought, considering the situation, that no one would have thought of doing something like this. It is quite strange how things that outside, in normal life, would not occur at all, blossom so well in this anthroposophical foundation, the foundation of the Waldorf School that should be kept pure. It would be hard to imagine a normal faculty meeting where someone asks the school principal to say something nice. If we have no self-discipline, we cannot move forward. It is very painful for me that things are as they are. Aside from the fact that I have been unable to determine the actual content of the problem,

237 . The destruction by fire of the first Goetheanum.

everything is simply swimming around. If only something would move in a particular direction, but everything is simply floating about. I do not know what people are thinking. The mood here is so tense. We need to give some thought to all this. Certainly one task of the

Waldorf School faculty is to cease all of this inner comfort. The fact that things are done in the way they are is a part of these nonmethods. It is really too bad for today’s meeting, since a disharmony has now come into it.

In the interest of the Anthroposophical Society, I had to see that the methods that have arisen here since 1919 do not go any further.

Something must happen in the near future in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. This is an important question, but people will have to think about it. It would be best not to do things in that way, and better if you helped to improve the situation. You can certainly not say that working together does not make sense, and that everyone should work individually. If that principle had been in effect in 1901, there would be no room for us. People worked together until the end of the war. This kind of separation from one another arose only since 1919 when individuals went off to the great tasks that were begun then. That is the reason for what has unfortunately occurred in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that the Society has divided into a number of cliques.

Before, there was some balance that inhibited the formation of such cliques. Now, there are big and little cliques everywhere, and everything is falling apart.

We cannot say everyone should live like a hermit. A harmonious cooperation should arise from the admonitions of our opponents that became so clear through the catastrophe at Dornach. Learn from our opponents! Our opponents know things very exactly, and they know, at least from their perspective, how to take them seriously, more seriously than is done by the Anthroposophical Society. There is a continual demand for something new, as has happened in Dornach. The Society as such needs to become a

genuine reality, not simply a bureaucratic list of so-and-so-manythousand people who barely want to know anything about one another. The Society must become a reality, and there is much we can achieve through the Waldorf School if the faculty would stand as an example of harmonious cooperation. Everyone needs to really give something of themselves, and that is where individual activity comes in, namely, that everyone takes interest in each other’s work. It is simply narrow-minded to always seek the error in someone else. If we fall prey to that error, we will cease to be an anthroposophical society. There is certainly no other real example of anthroposophical activity if it is not here in the faculty. If you do not want to become enthusiastic about anthroposophy, then I do not know how it will be possible to save anthroposophy itself.

That is really necessary. The catastrophe in Dornach is the culmination of our opponents’ activity. The Waldorf School faculty needs to take on the leadership of anthroposophical behavior. That is what is necessary.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to give you information. What I said recently about the incorrect methods relates to how anthroposophical matters are treated, not to the teaching methods here. What I have to say about that, I have already said. As of this morning, I cannot say that anything special has resulted. I was satisfied with the little I saw this morning. I thought things would come to a good conclusion. It was clearly noticeable, for example, that there is a greater level of seriousness in the higher grades.

There is a much better tone in the higher grades. I see nothing to talk about there. I spoke about incorrect methods in connection with the extent of faculty participation in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society.

( Speaking to a teacher) It would be good if you were careful to leave out the inner school methodology in your considerations until tomorrow.

We will overcome the problems in the school methodology. The Waldorf School has proven what lies in its basic impulse.

Individual problems have arisen, but as a whole, the Waldorf School has proven what lies at its basis. We will overcome the problems. Most certainly, we will move forward with the inner methodology. There is something else that comes into question aside from the general anthroposophical aspect. In connection with methodology, we could try to lift everything from the Earth and move it to the moon where we could perfect it. But, that is something we cannot do with anthroposophical activity. We will overcome the problems at the school because that is an isolated area and can remain so.

Everything was present in the discussions with the leaders of the Movement for Religious Renewal. In the lecture I had to give in Dornach on December 30, I directed everything toward anthroposophists, not toward those working for a renewal of religion.238 That was clear from ten paces away, but it lead to an argument between the anthroposophists and those of the Religious Renewal. There is now a tense mood and a heavy atmosphere. If we leave these things the way they are, the Anthroposophical Society will be destroyed, and other institutions along with it. It is sad that this all occurred directly following the events in Dornach. We should have guarded against that. We need to do something to relieve it. Those anthroposophists who are not involved with the renewal of religion said nothing, but the anthroposophical perspective should have been maintained, but without rancor. You cannot expect the Movement for Religious Renewal to make things easy for anthroposophists. They are taking the cream and leaving the rest, but the Anthroposophical Society needs to stand firm. That is something of concern to everyone.

The school should not shine because the faculty has no concern

238 . See Rudolf Steiner, Man and the World of Stars: The Spiritual Communion of Mankind, lecture of December 30, 1922.

about the Anthroposophical Society. You need to have a strong interest in it.

Tuesday, January 23, 1923, afternoon

Dr. Steiner: I would like to share some of my thoughts about my visit to the school, specifically, about the walls. Now that everything here is so new, it is more apparent than before that it is not good for a school to merely have a somewhat lost and not particularly good picture hanging here and there. It is significant that our school does not make a particularly impressive artistic impression.

Of course, we cannot completely fulfill the ideal at this stage, but it seems to me that it would be good to at least have that ideal before us so that we could move toward it, at least in our thoughts, and that in the end we would do something in that direction. I would ask you not to understand what I have to say the way many things have been understood. For instance, when I said that this or that is a difference between eating meat or vegetables and people immediately began to promote vegetarianism as a result.

Accept it as an ideal. Out of our pedagogy itself, what should be the artistic form in our classrooms? We could perhaps extend this from what we find in the schoolrooms to what we find near the schoolrooms on the walls.

There is no doubt that we need some pictures to decorate the schoolrooms. I say this not because I think we need to do this tomorrow morning, but because our guiding principle needs to be what is needed by our pedagogy.

First, we have the lower grades. There, we need a more physical presentation of what we give the children pictorially. That can gradually move into the more artistic, on the one hand, and to

more practical activities in life, on the other. Today, I only want to mention some of the main things that we can deepen in the course of time. It is important that where the subjects themselves

play the main role in artistic decoration, we have no mechanically created or barren illustrations, but that things be artistically formed. These artistic creations should not be such that they emphasize special opinions or special styles, but more in the direction of what seems to genuinely human.

If we look at the first grade, the main thing would be to decorate the walls with pictures from fairy tales, and when possible, to have them in color. I need to emphasize that if it is not possible to do everything in color, we will need to use some black-and-white reproductions. It is better to have a technically good reproduction than to have some poorly done copy of something. In the first grade we need to have pictures of fairy tales, and in the second, of legends. That is something we need to strictly maintain.

You can imagine the continuous and proper effect that will have upon the children’s feelings. The only thing is that we cannot just take the pictures from picture books. They should be artistically done. It would be beneficial to set this as a task, not in some one-sided painting style, but such that everything has a general human feeling to it.

When we come to the third grade, we must take into account the state of the soul. What we hang on the walls should be what is normally called “still life” pictures of plants and of flowers. Of course, these should not be normal still lifes, but genuine representations of what is living, but not yet feeling. If we bring the children so far that they live into them with their souls, that will be good. We should save representations of the feeling of animals for the next grade because then the child’s soul begins to relate to a portrayal of feeling. Only from that time on do children have a sense that they have feeling in themselves, even though that feeling may be quite dull. Pictures of animals that the children saw earlier in children’s books have an effect such that the child cannot differentiate whether it is a picture of a real cow or a cow made of wood. Before about the age of nine or ten, children cannot differentiate in an inner living way between the picture of a real

cow and a cow made of wood. However, at about that age, this capacity to differentiate begins.

In the fifth grade, when the children are ten or eleven years old, what is important is to choose pictures that show groups of people of differing ages, for instance, dancing groups, or, say, a street where people meet one another, so that you can say something to the children about it. You need groups of people so you can talk with the children about what occurs between those people.

We now come to the sixth grade. There, we should have individual human beings. You could have pictures of heads or of the whole person, for example, a person standing in nature, where nature comes to that person’s aid. You could then draw the children’s attention to what a sunny landscape is, or to one in the rain, but there should be a person in it such that the individual person is important. Perhaps a picture of a small lake where someone is rowing.

We have now come to the point where the material itself is less important and where the pictures should move more into the artistic. Here, we need to begin with the most artistic things. We must, of course, recall that if you cannot obtain good copies, then we should have black-and-white pictures. For the age of the children in the seventh grade, it would be good to have Raphael and Leonardo, things that can also remain in the eighth grade. You could divide these between the classes in both grades. What is important is that the children have these pictures in front of them.

You should not believe that the proper thing to do is to choose the pictures so that they go in parallel to what is being taught. It is actually quite important that the children have the pictures before they are spoken of in art class. You should speak occasionally about the pictures, but, in general, the child’s eyes should simply be occupied with the artistic aspect of the pictures. Children should first receive only a pure sense impression and know that we consider these pictures particularly beautiful. They have already been properly prepared since they knew that previously the

pictures hanging on the walls were primarily important because of their content.

In the following classes, what is important is that you tactfully connect what is artistic with the practicalities of life, so that the children have both perspectives continually in front of themselves.

Thus, in the ninth grade, you might have pictures from Giotto or similar things, and in the same class, pictures of other things, more technical, for instance, a meadow or a willow tree, a pine forest, and so forth, but not done artistically, rather, technically. Purely as examples, in the way that you might draw a plan. You could put those on one wall and hang other things on the back wall, for instance, paintings by Giotto. You could also have a star chart in the ninth grade where the various constellations are connected with some figure, with stylized figures of the heavens, as used to be done in star charts.

In the tenth grade, where you are dealing with fifteen and sixteen year olds, you should have pictures by Holbein and Dürer on the artistic side, and on the technical-scientific side, you could have—other things would be possible—a drawing of everything in the sea, all the animals, and so forth. That would have to be drawn appropriately so that it was intellectually instructive, but also had an artistic effect upon the children.

Holbein and Dürer would remain for the eleventh grade, with perhaps the addition of Rembrandt. That would also continue in the following grades. You might also include some older paintings.

At that age instruction can go in parallel. Thus, for the eleventh and twelfth grades, Holbein, Rembrandt, and Dürer.

On the technical side in the eleventh grade, you should hang something like a cross-section of the Earth or geological cross-sections or perhaps elevation charts and similar things. Only in the twelfth grade would you have physiological pictures, anatomic charts in addition to Holbein, Dürer, Rembrandt.

That is what we need as an ideal. Things look terrible now, but if you have an ideal before you, at least under some circumstances,

you can work in that direction, even if it takes a century. It is better to have a good woodcut than much of what is hanging now. This is what I wanted to say to you about pedagogy. It is certainly necessary that we attend to an exceptionally good treatment of art in our pedagogy, since that definitely belongs to the total picture of the anthroposophical treatment of human progress.

We can say that until the sixteenth century, there was not a sharp contrast between an intellectual and an artistic comprehension of the world. You should remember something that is no longer considered; the Scholastics created their books with a certain architectural art, very consciously, apart from the illuminations.

Until the tenth century, there was absolutely no real difference between art and knowledge. Now, children in even the earliest grades are poisoned with purely intellectual material. There is an effect here in our school of something we cannot yet do differently: when teachers use reference books, not only by giving them to the children, but also for their own preparation, the intellectual tendency of such references enters the teacher. The teacher thus becomes a distorted picture of intellectualism.

You could ask, then, how should teachers prepare themselves?

When the teacher wants to teach something to the children, he or she learns the material from modern presentations. When I see where teachers get their material for preparation, I would like to put another book alongside the one the teacher is using, a book that is perhaps a century older than the teacher’s. It is not possible to use only books that are centuries old, but it would certainly help in many areas to use books that are a hundred years old along with more modern books on the same subject. Now, if people are teachers, they know what someone like Goethe or some other exemplary person wrote about one work of art or another, or about something in nature. The problem is that no one looks at what people two or three generations ago, at Goethe’s time, wrote about art, but these, along with more modern works, are certainly important. Even today, when we have so many outstanding things,

you can gain something by using books that are a century or so old that treat subjects similar to the subjects of more modern works.

That is very important. I have often mentioned that, for example, editions of Greek and Latin from the first half of the nineteenth century are like gold in contrast to the brass printed today. The grammar texts that are thirty or forty years old are much better than the modern presentations.

I think we need to take into account that our pedagogy must everywhere counter with a thoroughly artistic activity the rule of intellectualism present throughout modern thinking. We should avoid allowing modern systematic books to affect our teaching.

The systematic presentation in modern books is narrow-minded and inartistic. People are ashamed to speak of anything artistic.

Modern academics are ashamed to develop their own artistic style or to artistically divide things into chapters. We need to take these things into account in our own preparations.

I would like to take this opportunity, which has arisen from a number of circumstances, to ask you all the following question.

During a meeting last night, I again had the feeling that you think preparing is very difficult. Someone said that Waldorf teachers normally sleep only from 5:30 until 7:30 in the morning. Everyone needs to recognize that is much too little. People need to understand that a really enormous amount of time is used to prepare for school. From that, it seems that preparation is difficult.

I would like to ask in that regard if it is true that for one reason or another you can go to sleep only at 5:30. I would also like to know if the difficulty lies in the preparation, if it is really so difficult and requires so much time. Of course, that is subjective; nevertheless, I would like to pose this question now, at the beginning of our discussions, and ask you to tell me about it so we can talk about this today or at our next meeting.

Some teachers report about it.

Dr. Steiner: Are there any specific questions about preparation?

A teacher: I usually need a long time. I used Carus239 for teaching about the skeleton.

Dr. Steiner: The bones of the human being have not changed. You used a book that is a hundred years old, but it is important that you use the easiest sources. This is a case where much help could have been given. The teacher of one class could help the teacher of the following class.

An upper-grades teacher: I do not actually prepare for a specific class.

Instead, I read a book about the whole subject I will be teaching.

Then, I read an anthroposophical book connected with it, for example, The Riddles of Philosophy, for background on the development of consciousness within the period. I read something that brings me into a mood of that time. For the specific class period, I look for something, perhaps even a small detail, from which I can form the instruction.

Dr. Steiner: That is a very good method, to begin with something you are strongly interested in yourself that brings your soul into movement, so that you make some small discovery. In that way, you will get an idea during the class. You will notice that while you are with the children, things come to you more easily than when you sit and brood by yourself. That will not happen in history and geography until you have taught for a few years. It is particularly important when you are beginning a new period that you really try to form a comprehensive picture of what occurs during the entire period, possibly only in broad outlines, so that you know what is important in that period.

The same teacher later gave Dr. Steiner some additional information when he was visiting the teacher’s class. Dr. Steiner told the teacher that while using that method he actually thought of too many things.

239 . Karl Gustav Carus (1789–1869).

He needed to be careful not to overload the students with what he was interested in at the moment.

A teacher: In Latin grammar, I have the feeling it could be organized according to thinking, feeling, and willing, but it falls apart when I do it.

Dr. Steiner: To orient yourself, it would be a good idea, when you have three weeks free, to simply take one author, for instance, Livius, and select some sentences, then study the sentence structure empirically. Someone should do that.

I would like you to pay more attention to developing a certain feeling regarding the Socratic method. I would like you to try to develop a feeling so that you differentiate between what the children can simply repeat and what you should ask them. It is more exciting for the children when you tell them something than when you ask them something they cannot answer. You should not believe you can get the children to say something they cannot know. You should not overdo the Socratic method because you will tire the children too much. You need to develop a feeling for what you can ask, and what you need to say. You need to develop a certain tactfulness.

I would now like to hear questions about what is currently going on.

A teacher asks about the school administration. Many things within the administration need to be done by everyone.

Dr. Steiner: This is an awkward problem, but I have given it a great deal of thought. This is so difficult and we can accomplish our intentions only when we carry it out with the general support of the entire faculty, or at least the vast majority of the faculty. On the other hand, the way it is accepted necessarily affects the way it is organized.

First of all, I would ask you to consider what should be included in this new area of organization. There are a large number of

operations the person in the school house2 needs to do. We need to exclude these things since they are connected with the person in the house. Concerning everything in the administration that represents the school to the outside, I would recommend that a small group of three or four people from the faculty take up that work in the future. This group can only work in an alternating fashion, so that they work one after another as individuals, and they should meet with one another only in those cases where a common decision is valuable. In order not to violate our republican constitution, it should be a group. I would ask you to speak your thoughts about this freely and openly, even though you might think what you have to say may contradict this in the broadest sense. I would still ask you to say what you think.

A teacher: There are some things we all know only Y. can do, and other things for which other people are better suited.

Dr. Steiner: I thought that such a small group would always represent the faculty since members would alternate, particularly for limited tasks. This group could do what you just said from case to case, namely, designate one person as capable of one task or another. Nevertheless, there will still be differences of opinion.

A teacher: I think regulating the situation would be a help. It could be very useful for the school.

Dr. Steiner: We could think still further. We would form such a group and the entire faculty would declare itself in agreement when the group decides some member of the faculty should be designated for a particular task. That is what should happen.

Preparation for faculty meetings and setting the agenda could also be part of the duties of the head of the administration, but that would make the job rather difficult. It is possible that preparation for the faculty meeting could be one of the tasks of the committee member who has the task of administering the school

2. This refers to the person living in a house on the school grounds. — TRANS.

at the time. It is important to do this in complete harmony with the whole faculty.

A committee of seven teachers had formed concerned with questions of the Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, I now need to ask what the faculty thinks of this committee that formed itself. It is important to find a way of reaching a final resolution of this problem. That committee seems very active, and we could make an assumption that through its efforts to reorganize the Anthroposophical Society, it wanted to prepare itself for administering the school. Of course, if that committee has the complete trust of the faculty, the question can be easily answered.

A teacher proposes expanding the committee.

Dr. Steiner: I only thought that if a group of people was already working with this question, it would be best if that group continued its work because it would save time.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: You are mixing up two questions. I only wanted to ask who is in that group because I know such a group exists.

Apparently that group has worked with these questions and—I must emphasize from the outset that we must do the whole thing harmoniously—the first question I wanted to ask is whether that group has the complete trust of the faculty, so that it can make proposals for a final form. It would be difficult for us to begin from zero today. It would be better, since I will probably be here again soon, if we could answer the question of whether that or an extended group has the full trust of the faculty, so that the group could prepare a proposal for a final resolution of the question for

the next meeting. That is the question we need to answer today. I would like to hear what you have to say about this question of trust.

A teacher: This makes an impression that there are first-and second-class Waldorf teachers, but perhaps that feeling is based upon a false assumption.

Dr. Steiner: The fact that a group has formed is their business.

Since, however, it has worked with these questions, we could, in the event there is trust in that group, think we could trust them with working out such a proposal. It is more complicated to consider this question in the faculty as a whole than it would be to have a group that has the trust of the faculty consider it.

Some teachers agree.

A teacher: I have an awkward feeling about the formation of that group. The people who formed the group are the same ones who are so distracting for the administration.

A teacher: I have noticed that certain groups get together, and when you go by, you hear parts of important conversations. I became uncomfortable with that, and I went to a colleague and said that it was creating cliques. I was quite fearful that the faculty was dividing into those who were more or less active.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly a problem. The Waldorf School can prosper only if the faculty is in harmony. It is not possible for everyone to find everyone else sympathetic, but that is a personal question and does not belong in the faculty. To the extent that the faculty represents the entire Waldorf School, the prosperity of this school depends upon the inner harmony of the faculty. There is a major difference in whether someone says to someone outside, “You are getting on my nerves,” and when that is said here in the faculty meeting. Here in our meetings and in the administration of the Waldorf School there are only teachers from the Waldorf

School, and the difficulties arise due solely to the more democratic constitution of the school. Of course, difficulties do arise. I am certainly against using the terms “first-and second-class” here in the faculty. That would certainly be the beginning of very bad things if something like a first-and second-class of faculty and faculty cliques played a role in our discussions. These are things we must strictly keep out.

Basically, when such a group forms, we need to accept the fact that the group exists and not use it as an occasion to say bad things about it. If there were reason to do that, it would be the start of difficult times in the faculty. As long as the group has formed and exists as such, I would like to again ask to what extent we need to take that group into account. It is perhaps not at all necessary to say anything about that. The question has been posed because it has received an official duty and that group should work on proposals. Barring some misdeed, I do not see that it should have any significance whether it is that group or a completely different small group. The only thing that is important is the usefulness of the group, since the proposal will be presented to the whole faculty and discussed. The only question is one of trust, that is, whether you consider that group capable of making the proposals. When such remarks are made, it is difficult to see that there is even the slightest movement toward forming a faculty. That is something that must not happen. Here we must have only harmony.

A teacher: I have complete trust in the group, but I did want to bring out that there may be colleagues who do not.

Dr. Steiner: When I use the expression, “getting on my nerves,” I mean that one person makes another person nervous. The subject of the group’s work would be how to organize the administration.

Thus, you would make them nervous.

A teacher: I do not distrust the group.

Another teacher: I do not feel there is a faculty within the faculty. I think all of my colleagues could agree to this group.

Dr. Steiner: Some things have been said that were not taken back, so we can assume we cannot do this in the way it was originally intended. I could just as well think that according to the impulses out of which the school and the faculty arose, I could create such a group. I am not doing this because suspicions have arisen. I would like to wait until things have become clearer. Some antagonisms are apparent.

The committee that works upon these questions needs to study such things in order to make proposals for the administration. I think six people would be enough.

Dr. Steiner has the faculty vote by secret ballot for a preparatory committee of six members.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to have the committee propose people who can do things.

A teacher asks about an educational conference in England.

Dr. Steiner: There is a possibility of another conference in England.240 I need to try to put these two things together. Perhaps we could agree to it in principle.

A teacher: The English people want to know if you would agree to inviting Waldorf teachers who can speak English.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, they can do that.

240 . See A Modern Art of Education.

.

Wednesday, January 31, 1923, 4:00–7:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I have a few things to add to what I recently said. The question concerns pictures in the music rooms. Clearly, we cannot decorate music rooms with paintings of figures. A music room is best decorated with sculpture or, if you have to use paintings, use ones with harmonious colors, paintings that are effective through pure colors. In other words, paintings in which pure colors are active.

Then, we also need to consider the pictures for the eurythmy room. I differentiate them from the music rooms, although there may be conflicts in our case. Under certain circumstances, we may teach music in the eurythmy room, but that would be only temporary. We should decorate the eurythmy room with themes that form the dynamic of the human being, including the dynamics of the soul. The pictures should present the expressive human being in an artistic way.

It is important that we carry that over into the gymnasium, but direct it more toward the world. For eurythmy, it is important to find an artistic way to express the dynamics of the soul, but in gymnastics we should connect more with the human being’s relationship to the world of balance and movement. You could, for example, have a picture of someone valiantly poised at the edge of a cliff, or such things. In the gymnasium, pictures should depict the relationship to the world.

For the handwork rooms, you should use pictures of interiors that particularly express feeling.

Now, that leaves only the shop. As much as possible, we should fill that with themes of practical life and possibly crafts, so that what hangs on the walls reflects what we do in the rooms.

I think we should decorate the faculty room in a way that is harmonious with the soul of the teacher. So, we would not have any particular rules for the faculty room, but would reflect our tastes in agreement with the teachers themselves. It should reflect the particularly intimate connections, but in an artistic way.

In spinning, the same applies as for shop.

For music, it is better to leave the room quite plain than to add pictures that have no psychological connection with the essence of music.

The frames should fit the pictures. The color of the frames should be some color in the picture and the picture should also determine the form.

A teacher asks about the room for the Sunday services.

Dr. Steiner: I will give another service, and the pictures should be appropriate to that.

We should also decorate the remedial classroom, but we can discuss that at our next meeting.

We should place the eurythmy figures in a glass case in the eurythmy hall. In the hallways you should see to it that you place something similar to what is in the class to the left and right of the door. That is, something connected with the classroom.

A teacher asks about the physics and chemistry rooms.

Dr. Steiner: We have such major problems there that I cannot answer that today. Next time, we also want to begin discussing medical aspects, something we have long wanted to do.

Let’s turn our attention to creating an administrative committee.

A teacher: The committee we elected last meeting proposes three teachers. They would take over some of the administration previously done by the school administrator. They would be responsible for representing the school internally and to the

outside world, with the exception of the custodial work, business, and finance.

In connection with school functions, they would do the following things:

1) Preparation and minute taking for the faculty meetings; 2) Naming specific faculty for specific areas, for example, thequestion of student boarding or decorations in the classrooms;

3) Prepare and oversee a yard duty schedule; 4) Assigning classrooms;

5) Supervise the use of school rooms for events from outside.

They would also take over the following things related to the outside:

1) Correspondence and communication with school officials, initialing all communications to the Department of Education;

2) Everything connected with enrollment (introductions andtests) and leaving school (school reports); 3) Yearly reports;

4) Visitors;

5) Public relations, in particular, working with the Union forIndependent Cultural Life in the struggle against the Elementary School Law;

6) Gathering

information

about

salaries

and

administeringspecific gifts.

Those are all the specific areas that we can remove from the present administrator and that a group can accomplish.

Dr. Steiner: First, we want to discuss this in principle. I would like you to say whether you are in agreement or not, or to speak in general about what has been presented.

The present administrator: It seemed to me that we should give this committee everything I did that should involve the entire faculty, and that all the economic and technical things would remain with me. We would thus rest secure that the work would be done to the satisfaction of the whole faculty. Those were my basic thoughts.

A teacher: I would like to propose Mr. L. as an additional member of the administrative committee.

Another teacher: We should use Mr. L. for more artistic work and not include him in the administration.

Dr. Steiner: The committee proposed three members, and now we have a proposal for a fourth.

A teacher: If he agrees that he would like to work with it, there should be no problem.

Mr. L.: I would be happy to do that if it would be useful.

Dr. Steiner: If I understand things correctly, we designated a preparatory committee. We cannot leave everything in the air.

This committee proposed an administrative committee of three people. And now Mr. Y. is proposing that Mr. L. be included. The preparatory committee, though, proposed three people.

Something official needs to move along with some precision. If you are proposing that Mr. L. join as a fourth member, what we have is that the recently elected preparatory committee proposed three and Mr. Y. makes a counterproposal to include a fourth person. Who wishes to say something further?

A teacher: I would like to give my support to that proposal.

Dr. Steiner: Does someone from the committee have something to say?

One of the three teachers proposed: I would like to say that we would be happy to work with Mr. L.

Dr. Steiner: The first question is the creation of the administrative committee. The proposal of the preparatory committee was three men. Then we have here from the faculty those three men and, in addition, Mr. L.

A teacher: I don’t see why we shouldn’t add an additional person to the committee.

Dr. Steiner: If we had only the proposal of the committee, we would need only to agree to or reject that proposal. Now we have two proposals, and we will have to have a debate about them. If there is another proposal, it should also be made. We created this preliminary committee with a great deal of pain. We believe it made its proposal only after mature consideration. Taking our trust in them into account, we now need to either verify or reject the proposal. The question is whether someone has something to say that is germane to the proposal. Is there perhaps a third proposal? Now the question is whether there is something to be added or whether a third proposal will be made.

A teacher supports the addition of Mr. L. because of his nature.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else have something to say?

A teacher: I would like to ask Mr. L. himself what he thinks about it.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you would accept the position.

Mr. L.: I would if people think it is appropriate.

Dr. Steiner: The situation is thus: The administrative body should arise from the faculty, taking into consideration what we recently discussed. Recently I said that I could, according the way we created the Waldorf School, name the members of the committee myself, but I do not want to do that because of past experiences.

Rather, I want the administrative body to arise from the will of the faculty. We have given the responsibility of preparing a proposal

to the committee because we assumed that a preparatory committee could make better proposals than those who simply speak off the top of their heads. We must learn to become accustomed to saying things with some responsibility. Recently, we elected the members of this committee, and we now need to assume that the committee made proposals only after due consideration and in recognition of their responsibility. That is the basis of this discussion. At present, there are two proposals.

This could be very depressing. It is important that we do not work with illusions. What is happening now is very depressing. We have agreed that a committee should present us with some proposals, and we certainly do not want to simply throw those out the window. We would do that if a counterproposal is made now and the faculty gives a vote of distrust. If Y.’s suggestion is accepted, that would be a vote of no confidence against the committee. I’m telling you that the acceptance of Y.’s counterproposal means a vote of no confidence. There have been some sharp words used about the administrative body in the last days. All of those expressions could be used against the faculty if you think a vote of no confidence regarding an elected committee has no significance.

I have asked for honesty in the discussion. I have repeatedly requested your comments and have delayed closing this discussion in order to enable a discussion of the counterproposal. I once again request that you say what you have to say about this question.

The following remarks were not recorded.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Y., do not interpret the words I have said in leading the discussion. I cannot say I am presenting a counterproposal at the same time I declare that I agree with the first proposal. I would request that you suppress nothing. If you do not agree with something, please admit that, but this system of hiding things cannot continue.

At present we have three proposals: The proposal from the committee, the proposal by Mr. Y., and a third proposal by B. and S. to skip Y.’s proposal and go on to the agenda. The proposal from B. and S. is more extreme, since it would skip Y.’s proposal and simply go on to the agenda.

Mr. Y.: I support the suggestion from B. and S.

Dr. Steiner: This is where understanding simply stops. Either you have a reason to make a counterproposal, or you do not. If the committee presents a proposal, and you suggest a counterproposal, then I cannot see any degree of seriousness in your proposal if you yourself are in favor of skipping the proposal and going on to the agenda. If we continue on in this way about important things…. Simply because we need to decide the matter….

Marie Steiner: Mr. Y. had suggested L. because of his good nature.

Dr. Steiner: But that can only mean complete distrust.

A teacher: I understood Y.’s proposal as the beginning of a debate.

Dr. Steiner: The work of the committee ends today. Of course, a counterproposal can be made, but distrust arises because of the desire to vote for the four by acclamation without further ado. It would, of course, show no distrust in the committee if the four were chosen. However, the way things are going now, it would be a vote of distrust if the committee’s proposal was simply thrown out without any further discussion. The distrust arises because we formed a committee with the assumption that they would check into everything and make a proposal in full awareness of their responsibility. Then, a counterproposal was made. Now, we are voting on all four people. What that means is that we take one of our own actions with very little seriousness. To be rid of the matter, we simply vote for all four, and that constitutes a distrust in the committee. To handle the matter so that we can create an illusion that we are harmonious and united constitutes a distrust in the committee.

We need to honestly speak our minds. It is important that everyone has their own well-founded opinion. The way the Waldorf School was founded, it was based upon the blood of our hearts, and now so much is moving toward this terrible system of not taking matters seriously. That is even coming into the faculty.

It is significant whether the faculty is united in accepting a proposal or not. That is something that goes straight to our hearts. I would like to emphasize that we may not take such matters lightly. I have no illusions about the fact that there are things in the background here. When such proposals are made, then something is playing in the background. In the realm of anthroposophy, honesty, not intransigence, should rule. That is what I am asking you to do, at least here at the seat of the Waldorf School, to begin for once to seriously stand upright, so that we do not fall into an atmosphere where we shut our eyes to the disharmony, but, instead, honestly say what we have to say.

Is it so impossible that people say they have one thing or another against you, but that they nevertheless still like you and are still ready to work together? Why couldn’t you say the truth in private and, in spite of that, still respect and value one another?

Difficult things need to be done when there is reason for doing them. Now that there are two proposals, we first have to vote on the third proposal, or we would have to handle the two proposals in parallel.

The fact is that you demanded to be included in the discussions with the committee. I found that to be a first vote of distrust.

A teacher: I would like to ask if Mr. Y. could give his reasons.

Dr. Steiner: I also think that when a counterproposal is made, there should be reasons given. Y. attempts to give his reasons.

Dr. Steiner: I can assure you that I do not allow anything that goes through my hands to be in any way imprecise. I do not skip over a situation when one arises. We have before us the proposal of the

committee, and separate from that, a proposal by Mr. Y. They represent two opinions. Now that we have these two opinions, and the committee has come here with the intention of proposing a threeman group, after they had already decided not to propose a fourman group, there is an even greater contradiction when Mr. Y.

proposes that. It is not our problem that Mr. Y. did not hear the matter. There is, in any event, a precise fact before us that the committee did not think they should propose a fourman group.

Mr. Y.’s proposal is significantly different from that of the committee.

The debate we now have concerns the proposal of B. and S. to skip Y.’s proposal and to go on to the agenda.

The motion has been made to skip Y.’s proposal and to go on to the agenda.

Who is in favor of concluding the debate…. The discussion is closed…. We now come to the proposal that three men are to form the administrative committee. We now come to a vote about that motion. Now that the motion is before us, I would like to ask you formally whether you desire to vote on the motion by acclamation or by secret ballot.

A teacher: I suggest by acclamation.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to speak to the motion to vote by acclamation? No one wishes to speak, so we can now vote on whether to accept the motion to decide by acclamation…. I request that those in favor of creating the administrative committee with these three men, raise their hands.

I have always attempted to maintain a friendly tone, and it may be that we can return to that again. However, these kinds of discrepancies that are not said aloud cannot remain. Aside from that, it is not bad if we occasionally use parliamentary procedures so that we gain some precision in our work. That is something we must have here.

We now come to the other proposals of the committee. The committee proposed that the administrative committee should take over certain areas of representing the school. The proposal was to leave certain tasks with Mr. Y. and remove others. What we are dealing with here is that the following things should be removed from the administrator: First, the preparation and minute taking of the faculty meetings. Second, requesting colleagues to take over certain areas of work, the yard-duty plan, the distribution of the classrooms, usage of schoolrooms by people outside the school. These are the things connected with the inner administration of the school.

I would ask you to say what you have to say regarding these points. Do you agree that the administrative committee take over these areas? Those in agreement, please raise your hands. It is accepted.

In regard to the external representation of the school, the committee would take over correspondence and communications with the authorities as proposed, and, aside from Mr. Y., the member of the committee who is active at the time would countersign.

A teacher: Requiring a countersignature makes things more difficult than they were. It would cause delays.

Dr. Steiner: If a member of the committee assumes that it cannot always be done, then I would like to know why we have the committee in the first place. We must always be able to do this.

There can be no question of a difficulty. A bureaucracy depends upon attitude, not upon authority. If you imagine you can fight bureaucracy by installing chaos in its place, you have an incorrect picture, and that, of course, cannot be done.

A teacher moves to close the debate.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone want to say something about the motion to close the debate? Then I ask those who are in favor of closing the debate… . The motion is accepted.

We now need to vote on whether the administrative committee should take on the activities of interaction with the officials, countersigning documents and so forth. I ask those who are in favor to raise their hands.

Dr. Steiner then asks for discussion about each of the various points concerning external representation of the school, and a vote is taken upon each point.

Dr. Steiner: You have all agreed to each of the specific points. I would now like to have a vote on the question as a whole with the exception of the public relations work and the relationship to the Waldorf School Association. I want you to vote on the question as a whole, that is, about all the areas we have discussed. Passed.

Dr. Steiner now enumerates all the individual functions for which the present school administrator will continue to be responsible.

Dr. Steiner: Now that you have heard all these points, is there anything you would like to say?

A teacher asks about enrolling students.

Dr. Steiner: We have decided that that will be done by the administrative committee. If what we are doing is to have any meaning at all, then we cannot remove such an important matter from the administrative committee. We need to eliminate this bureaucratic way of thinking. If you think we should remove important discussions with parents from the administrative committee, then you are thinking bureaucratically. The administrative committee should participate from the very beginning, from the beginning of the enrollment of the student.

The administrative committee should also be aware that it cannot let its duties slowly slide.

A teacher: I wanted to ask you to speak about the whole thing so that it will become clearer for us.

Dr. Steiner: The situation is that over time I have been made aware of things from many different people, that the faculty wanted such a group. From my perspective, I could answer such questions by saying that I thought it was necessary. I have a certain satisfaction in knowing it is now happening, but I also think it should happen with all seriousness. Is there still some argument about the matter?

I could ask, perhaps, that this committee include what we have voted upon as a kind of addition to our by-laws exactly how we will divide the agenda, then we can make a final decision about that at our next meeting. The activities we have now decided upon should be taken up as quickly as possible.

I would now like to ask for some discussion about how long the members of the committee should be in office, and about the rotation.

A teacher proposes a longer period of rotation, two to three months, otherwise the continuity would be continually disrupted.

Dr. Steiner: What you mentioned, that a person does not receive a reply, could also happen with a longer period of rotation. In any event, an orderly transfer of activities is necessary. I think a period of two months would be appropriate. We need to be careful that the work does not become a burden, and it seems to me that a period of two months would be appropriate.

A teacher: I would like to ask if the current executive would work alone or whether all three would work together.

Dr. Steiner: When not actually in the executive position, the activities of the others would be advisory. That is clear from the situation itself. However, the executive should ask the advice of the other committee members. What we are now deciding is something else. What we now need to decide is the relationship of

the faculty to the administrative committee. I think two months would be the right amount of time. Would you like to have that extended or shortened? Is anyone against two months? Then we will do it that way. The administrative committee will begin tomorrow and the first period of rotation would be February and March, that is, two months. In what order should the members rotate?

A teacher: I would suggest alphabetical order.

Dr. Steiner: We can now go on to the question of public relations and our relationship to the Waldorf School Association.

Concerning public relations, you have made a connection with the Union for Independent Cultural Life, namely, a fight against the Elementary School Law. The way the situation is, I do not think it is a good idea if the Waldorf School as such takes a position for or against normal public questions, as they are generally trivial.

We can move forward much better when we energetically work upon our own concerns and positively present what we are doing with Waldorf pedagogy. We should not involve ourselves with questions formulated from outside. I often had a bitter taste in my mouth when one of us gave a lecture about the Elementary School Law. We should be involved in the situation. The things we should present should represent our own concerns. In that way we can accomplish much more than when people who want to learn about the Elementary School Law ask us about our position. Of course, we are against it, but we should not be involved in discussions about mundane daily questions.

How do you envision working against the Elementary School Law? Certainly, we must handle these things practically—I usually say “real” instead of “practical.” The world should have the impression that people from the Waldorf School handle such questions practically.

If you look at the essays that have been published as weekly reports in Anthroposophy, they certainly look as though they were

written without any understanding of the relationship between the parliament and the executive and the bureaucracy and so forth.

The way they are written, those people active in everyday life will have a feeling that they are impractical, and then that opinion is hung around the neck of an Independent Spiritual Life or the Movement for Threefolding. By doing that, we increasingly foster the opinion that we are an impractical group of people. That is something that must cease. I am not speaking about our opponents, but about those insightful people who stand with us in the Threefold Social Movement.

If we include the Union for Independent Cultural Life in our work here at the Waldorf School, it is important that we do not fall prey to the same error the union itself does, namely, that we don’t fall into a kind of theorizing. What I mean is that it is important that any work we do in public relations stand upon a sound foundation. Certainly, we can work with the union, but when we do something, we should be aware that it must be practical, for instance, when we present the Waldorf School pedagogy as a contrast to the Elementary School Law. The more widespread the Waldorf School pedagogy becomes, the less possible such terrible laws will be. We don’t need to base our work upon the politics of the beer hall. All this is a question of tact. We should actually not participate. That is something we should never have done. That is the main problem with the Movement for Threefolding, we should never have become involved in mundane daily questions.

I have given special consideration to this area because I think it is particularly important that we take a higher position. For years I tried to form a World School Association that would not work toward handling pedagogical questions in some mundane manner, but would try to present them to the public from a higher position.

That would be the difficult task of such a world school association.

A teacher: Couldn’t we have some evenings for discussing pedagogical questions to which we can invite some people, and also officials?

Another teacher: It is apparent that some leading school officials would like to know more, but are afraid to take the first step.

Still another teacher: Perhaps we could create something here at school so that we could invite people to whom we have a personal connection.

Dr. Steiner: That would make sense only if such meetings with people from outside were the result of public announcements in which we invited others to attend. It would make sense only if the Waldorf School started such things and then people came to us with their requests. Otherwise, all we would have would be the normal blather.

A teacher: I am thinking about the question of final examinations, that will certainly be important a year from this Easter.

Dr. Steiner: That is, of course, a task that does not actually belong in the school administration, but is more connected with the work of the Waldorf School. As soon as we would want to decide about such things, nothing would happen. That is a question that belongs among the general tasks of the Anthroposophical Society and is the task of everyone who is in any way concerned about the flourishing of the Waldorf School pedagogy. Actually, the answer should be apparent from the question itself. It is difficult to arrange anything in that regard because it needs to be handled individually so that we can take everything into account. We should take every opportunity to put the Waldorf School in the best light. On the other hand, we need to say that those who want to learn could also learn in England if they were there. So, it should really not be so difficult for someone who wants to learn about the Waldorf School to find out about it.

A teacher says something.

Dr. Steiner: What you just said is not serious. People are not happy about things, but as soon as you go beyond the general level of dissatisfaction and want to say something particular, they turn away. What ruins things is our participation, in any degree, in that turning away. We need to stand upright upon our foundation. We need to do everything that properly represents the Waldorf School pedagogy and not allow ourselves to make compromises. Such illusions are most detrimental to our goals. From what I have heard about these things, and such opinions come up all the time, we should have no illusions about them. We need to follow our own path and not treat these cases bureaucratically. If each of us recognizes our responsibility to do what we can, it may be better to teach these officials than to arrange things so that people could attend who would prefer to enter unseen through the back door.

We went through all this when the union was formed in July 1919.

There, we discussed pedagogical things. We held meetings where it was dark but nothing came out of it because people did not stay, not even the teachers. At the moment when things become serious—remember how people said they are dissatisfied, but that they have a wife and child. Do not misunderstand me. Work as uprightly as possible and use each individual connection, but do not believe that if you hold a meeting you can expect something from it.

We can best resolve the question of final examinations if we attempt to prepare the students as well as possible and then go to the examiners in question. The others will have forgotten it by then. In general, personal discussions are useful, but it depends upon how. We certainly cannot treat questions in the way you did today at the beginning, by deciding to allow the nicest person to take care of some particular problem. If that would work, then I would suggest that those people who are less gracious should take lessons from the others.

Marie Steiner: You prefer the Austrian form of charm.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to ask you to be personally involved. That is certainly something we need. I would certainly offer to fail every professor of botany in botany if that is what it took.

If you have some old connections and you could find out a little from those who have more experience, then your old connections would be more useful than if you brought others without such connections. The other thing is that you are a woman, and these are male examiners. If it is a female examiner, then see to it that you bring a man. Things need to be done individually. You should not believe that the impression you make will continue when you drag other people in.

The relationship to the Waldorf School Association does not seem to me to be resolvable except by a change in the statutes of the association. Of course, it should not be that the person who is the executive should not have a seat and a voice in the Waldorf School Association.

A teacher: Now, every teacher is a regular member of the Waldorf School Association.

Dr. Steiner: That does not fit with these regulations. This regulation requires that the faculty send a representative who will have that position for five years. We must clearly express that the person taking care of the administration here will also sit in the Waldorf School Association for two months. The by-laws have been changed so often that we can easily do that. That is something the Waldorf School Association must do. Is that all right with you?

Thus, the current administrator would be our representative for two months and would sit in the council of the Waldorf School Association and have a vote. That person would not simply be one of the members, but would be on the council, and, in that way, the relationship would be self-regulating. So now we have taken care of this question. The necessary change in the by-laws should be made at the next meeting of the Waldorf School Association. Of

course, for the time being, the representative of the faculty could be at the next meeting of the association. Are there any other remarks?

A teacher: Should we send a donation to the people in the Rhineland?241 It would be important for us if you could give us some information about the situation.

Dr. Steiner: It is not so easy to discuss the general situation now because the situation is as I described it quite clearly while I was giving the lectures about threefolding here, namely, that something needs to be done before it is too late. Today, it is too late to accomplish anything in the area of what people have called European politics. The only suggestion I made was to transform the old Threefold Association into the Union for Independent Cultural Life. I made that suggestion out of the recognition that we could do something for the future of Europe and for present Western civilization by supporting cultural life as such. That is where everything else must begin. The economic things that have been done by the present government as well as all political impulses are useless now. It is only possible to support spiritual life and hope that something will happen. What is important is to collect everything we are doing in that direction under one roof.

At one time I quoted something Nietzsche said in one of his letters from 1871 about the fact that the German spirit has been exterminated in favor of the German empire. Today, it is important to achieve the opposite, namely, to restore the German spirit in spite of the decay of all political institutions. In that way, we can move forward, but we must stand firmly upon that basis.

Everything else needs to be decided case by case.

The Rhineland occupation should be handled from the perspective that it is being done by a drowning man. A hysterical

241 . French and Belgian troops occupied the Rhineland, a primary German industrial region. Local workers protested the occupation by calling numerous strikes, which led to an economic crisis.

policy is being created from the drowning and thrashing. The tragedy is that the death throes are causing so much suffering. For that reason, I favor sending a donation if possible. It is a humanitarian deed. We can neglect all the nationalism and consider the question from a purely human perspective. I am in favor of all such things to the extent that they are purely human situations.

Today, we stand before the abyss of European culture, and we must prepare to jump over that abyss. I have long since stopped writing articles about it. I wrote the last one at the time of the Genoa conference, drawing attention once again to the whole situation. When I give lectures to the workers in Dornach, they no longer want to hear anything about politics. They are interested in things about science because they understand that all political talk today no longer has any sense to it.

If you think you could make a collection, you should probably be aware that it will not be much. It could be very little.

A teacher: I have divided the 8b class into two groups.

Dr. Steiner: I will have to agree to that until I can see it.

A teacher: The Latin class is a double period. I have the impression it is not very good.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to discuss such questions without having a meeting about purely pedagogical questions that could perhaps provide an ideal toward which we can work. Today, I have heard quite a bit about your class. Normally, I try to look at a number of things. Recently, I have been paying more attention to the question of the extent to which individual students have reached the learning goals and how many are falling behind. I cannot say I am convinced there are greater differences in the students you had today than in those in the geography class.

We will need to take care of this in the next meeting when we will be able to handle pedagogical questions more completely,

because I noticed that the differences in ability and capability are quite large in that class.

( Speaking to another teacher) In contrast, I noticed when I taught the class myself that your class was much more homogenous. The differences are not so large. That is how the classes differ. We will discuss such questions and how to proceed at another time.

Tuesday, February 6, 1923, 4:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Today, we want to have our agreed-upon discussion with Dr. Kolisko on health in the school. I will not go into the details of treating students because there are a number of principle things we need to present first. They will form the basis for further work that must also occur. We will proceed, then, by selecting some typical cases that could arise here. You will also have an opportunity to ask questions about specific cases.

I would first like to draw your attention to the fact that all of our Waldorf School pedagogy has a therapeutic character. The entire teaching method is itself oriented toward healing the child.

If you create a pedagogy that does the proper thing during childhood, then educating children takes on a healing aspect. In particular, if we properly handle the child as an imitative being before the change of teeth, then use authority properly, and then appropriately prepare the child to form judgments, all of that will have a thoroughly health-giving effect upon the child’s organism.

It is fundamentally necessary that the direction of our behavior at school be hygienic. That is, that the teacher, in flesh and blood, has penetrated the three aspects of the human organism. The teacher should have an instinctive feeling for each child, that is, for whether one of the three aspects of the human organism, the nervesense system or the rhythmic system or the metabolic -limb system, predominates, and for whether we need to stimulate one

of the other systems in order to balance a harmful lack of balance in the other systems.

For that reason, we will look at the threefold human being in a way particularly important for the teacher. We have the nervesense system. We can properly understand that only if we are aware that there is a regularity in the nervesense system that is not subject to the physical and chemical laws of earthly matter.

We need to be aware that the human being rises above the laws of earthly matter through the nervesense system. The form of the nervesense system is completely the result of prenatal life. The human nervesense system is received by the human being in accordance with pre-earthly life. The nervesense system is thus capable of independently developing all activities related to the spiritsoul, because all material laws of the nervesense system are removed from earthly matter.

The case is exactly the opposite with the metaboliclimb system.

Of the three human systems, the metaboliclimb system depends most upon external material processes. When people understand the earthly processes playing out in physics and chemistry, they also understand which processes continue within the human being, at least to the extent that human beings have a metaboliclimb system. However, they learn nothing about the laws of the nervesense system.

The rhythmic system lies between these two and, in a certain way, naturally balances the two extremes.

These things form quite individually within every human being.

This is particularly true of children. The activity of one system always predominates over the others, and we need to do what is necessary to create a balance. For that, we must have a capacity to really listen to how children express themselves, so that expression can become a revelation of what we need to do with the child in order to help it achieve a completely harmonious health.

It is important that we become clear about the fact that, for example, we can have a beneficial effect upon the nervesense system by adding the proper amount of salt to the foods the children eat. Thus, if we notice that a child tends to be inattentive, to be flighty and turn away from what you present, that the child is what we might call too sanguine or too phlegmatic, we will need to see to it that we strengthen the child’s pictorial forces so that he or she becomes better able to pay attention to the outer world. We can do that by providing the child with more salt. If you have, for

instance, children who are inattentive or who tend to wander, then, if you look into the matter, you will find that the child’s organism does not properly process salt.

In more severe cases, it will often not be enough to simply suggest putting more salt into the child’s food. You will notice that because of some lack of knowledge, or perhaps inattentiveness, the parents salt the food too little. There, you can help with such suggestions. It is, on the other hand, also possible that the child’s organism refuses to accept salt. In such cases, you can help achieve the proper intake of salt by using a very dilute dosage of lead compounds. Lead is what, to a certain extent, enlivens the human organism to properly process salt. Of course, if you go beyond that boundary, the organism will become ill. What is important is to achieve the proper limit, which you may notice when a child has the first traces of a tendency for mental dysfunction. That is something many children have. You will then see that you will have to bring the whole healing process into line with what I have just described.

It is certainly a major deficiency that many educational systems pay no attention to such things as, for example, the external appearance of the children. You can stand in front of a school and see both large and small-headed children. We should treat those children with larger heads, in general, in the way I just presented.

Those with small heads should not be treated that way, but in a way I will shortly describe. In those children with a physically oversized head, you will be able to find what I have just described as deficiencies, namely, lack of attention or a too-strongly developed phlegma. Now, however, we have all those children who have the contrasting tendency, that is, those whose limb-metabolic system is not sufficiently active throughout their being.

Of course, such children feed their organic metabolism, but what the metabolism should be for the human organism does not sufficiently extend throughout their entire being. External observation of such children shows that they like to brood over

things, but that they are also very strongly irritated by external impressions, that is, they react too strongly to external impressions. We can help such children improve throughout their entire organic system by taking care that they receive the proper amount of sugar.

You should also study the development of children in the following way. There are parents who overfeed their young children with all kinds of candy and so forth. When such children come to school, from the perspective of the soul and spirit, and thus also physically, they are concerned only with themselves.

They sit and brood when they do not feel enough sugar in their organism. They become nervous and irritated when they have not had enough sugar. You need to pay attention, because when such children have too little sugar for a period of time, their organism slowly decays. The organism becomes fragile, the tissue becomes brittle, and they slowly lose the capacity to properly process even the sugar in their food. For that, you need to take care to properly add sugar to their food. Nevertheless, the organism may, in a sense, refuse to properly process sugars. In that case, you again need to assist the organism by giving a small dose of silver.

Now you see how, for the teacher, the spiritsoul life of the child can become a kind of symptomatology for the proper or improper functioning of the body. If a child shows little tendency for differing imaginations, if the child simply tosses everything together in a fantasy, if it cannot properly differentiate, then the nervesense system is not in order. In your attempts to teach the child to differentiate, you have at the same time a symptom indicating that the nervesense system is not in order, and you must, therefore, do what I just described.

If a child shows too little capacity for synthetic imagining, that is, for constructive imagining where the child cannot properly picture things, if he or she is a little barbarian in art, something common in today’s children, that is a symptom that the metaboliclimb system is not in order. You must, therefore, provide

assistance in the other direction, in the area of sugar. From a hygienic therapy perspective, it is very important that you look at whether differentiating imagination or analytical imagination or artistic synthetic imagination is missing in the child.

There is now something else. Imagine you have a child whose analytical imagination is clearly missing. That could also be a sign that the child is directing his or her astral body and I too much away from the nervesense functions. You must, therefore, see to it that the child’s head is cooled in some way, for instance, that you give the child a cool wash in the morning.

You should not underestimate such things. They are extremely important. You should certainly not see it as a kind of deviation into materialism to advise the parents of a child who shows no capacity for painting or music to give the child a warm stomach wrap two or three times per week, so that the child has it on overnight.

People today have too little respect for material measures, and they overestimate abstract intellectual measures. We can attempt to correct that modern, but incorrect, perspective, by attempting to show that the divine powers have used their spirit for the Earth in order to fulfill everything materially. Godly powers allow it to be warm in summer and cold in winter. Those are spiritual activities accomplished by divine powers through material means.

Were the gods to attempt to achieve through human education, through an intellectual or moral instruction, what they can achieve by having human beings sweat in the summer and freeze in the winter, then they would be incorrect. You should never underestimate the effects of material means upon children. You should always keep them in mind.

There is also another symptom for the same organic problem that arises when there is a deficiency in synthetic thinking, namely, children become pale. Children are often pale in school. We can handle that similarly to the condition of the astral body not being properly integrated into the metaboliclimb system. You can

improve the paleness of children through the same means, because when you give a child, say, a warm stomach wrap, it sets the entire metaboliclimb system into motion so that the full metabolism develops greater activity throughout all systems of the organism.

If that system develops too strongly, so that you need to make only a small remark to a child and he or she immediately gets a red face and is terribly annoyed, treat that in exactly in the same way as when the astral body and the I are not properly integrated into the nervesense system. In that case, you need to give the child’s head a cool washing in the morning.

It is extremely important for the teacher to be able, in a sense, to foresee the child’s state of health and act preventively. Of course, there is much less thanks for that than when you heal when the illness already exists, but for children it is much more important.

Now, of course, things that have been used upon a child’s organism to direct a process in one direction or another may need to be subdued. If you treat a child for a time with lead in the way I described, you will need to stop the process at a later time. If you have, for instance, treated a child for a time with lead and have accomplished what you wanted, it would be good to treat that child with some copper compound for a short time, so that nothing remains of the lead process. If you found it necessary to treat a child with silver for a period, you should later treat him or her with iron, so that the inner process is arrested.

There is one more thing I want to say. If you notice a child is, in a sense, lost in its organism, that is, does not have the requisite inner firmness—for example, the child suffers a great deal from diarrhea or is clumsy when moving its limbs, so that it dangles its arms and legs when picking up things and then lets them fal again—such things are the first symptoms of what will develop into processes that strongly affect the person’s health later in life.

You should never ignore it when a child often has diarrhea or urinates too much or picks things up so clumsily that they fall again

or shows any kind of clumsiness in grasping objects. You should never simply ignore such things. A teacher should always keep a sharp eye open for such things as, for example, whether a child dexterously or clumsily holds a pencil or chalk when writing upon the board. In that way, you can act as a hygienic doctor. I mention these things because you cannot accomplish very much by simply reprimanding the child. Only someone who is always active in the class can affect anything. On the other hand, you can achieve a great deal through external therapeutic means. If you give the child in such a case a small dose of phosphorus, you will see that it will become relatively easy to reach the child with reprimands about clumsiness, even with organic weaknesses of the sort I just described. Give the child phosphorus, or if the problem is deeper, for example, when the child tends toward flatulence, use sulfur. If the problem is more visible outwardly, then phosphorus. In such cases, suggest to the parents that they should feed the child foods connected with colorfully flowering plant blossoms. Speaking in an extreme case, suppose a child often wets the bed. Then you can accomplish a great deal through a therapeutic treatment with phosphorus, but still more by working with the diet. Suggest adding some paprika or pepper to the food as long as the condition persists. You will need to determine that based upon the child’s further development.

In such questions, it is absolutely necessary that members of the faculty work together properly. We are in the fortunate situation of having Dr. Kolisko as the medical member of our faculty, and we should not undertake such therapies without speaking with him first, since a certain understanding of chemical and physiological things is necessary to arrive at the correct opinion. Nevertheless, every teacher needs to develop an eye for such things.

I once again need to take this opportunity of mentioning that in teaching it is of primary importance to take care to bring the nervesense system and the metaboliclimb system into a proper balance.

When that is not done, it shows up as irregularities of the rhythmic

system. If you notice the slightest inclination toward irregularity in breathing or in the circulation, then you should immediately pay attention to it. The rhythmic system is the organic barometer of improper interaction between the head and the limb-metabolic system. If you notice something, you should immediately ask what is not in order in the interaction of these two systems, and second, you should be clear that in teaching you need to alternate between an element that brings the child to his or her periphery, to the periphery of the child’s body, with another element that causes the child to withdraw within. Today, I cannot go into all the details of a hygienic schoolroom; that is something we can speak of next time.242

A teacher who teaches for two hours without in some way causing the children to laugh is a poor teacher, because the children never have cause to go to the surface of their bodies. A teacher who can never move the children in such a way as to cause them to withdraw into themselves is also a poor teacher. There must be an alternation, grossly expressed, between a humorous mood when the children laugh, although they need not actually laugh, but they must have some inner humorous feeling, and the tragic, moving feeling when they cry, although they do not need burst into tears, but they must move into themselves. You must bring some life into teaching. That is a hygienic rule. You must be able to bring humor into the instruction.

If you bring your own heaviness into class, justified as it may be in your private life, you should actually not be a teacher. You really must be able to bring the children to experience the periphery of their body. If you can do it in no other way, you should try to at least tell some funny story at the end of the period. If you have caused them to work hard during the period on something serious, so that their faces are physically cramped from the strain on their

242 . The discussion never occurred.

brains, you should at least conclude with some funny story. That is very necessary.

There are, of course, all kinds of possibilities for error in this regard. You could, for example, seriously damage the children’s health if you have them work for an entire period upon what is normally called grammar. You might have children work only with the differences between subject, object, adjective, indicative, and subjunctive cases, and so forth, that is, with all kinds of things in which the child is only half-interested. You would then put the child in the position that, while determining whether something is in the indicative or the subjunctive case, the child’s breakfast cooks within the child, uninfluenced by his or her soul. You would, therefore, prepare for a time, perhaps fifteen or twenty years later, when genuine digestive disturbances or intestinal illnesses, and so forth, could occur. Intestinal illnesses are often caused by grammar instruction. That is something that is extremely important.

Certainly, the whole mood the teacher brings into school transfers to the children through a tremendous number of very subtle connections.

A great deal has been said on various occasions during our earlier discussions on this topic. The inner enlivening of our Waldorf School teaching still requires considerable improvement in that direction. Even though I might say something positive, I would nevertheless emphasize that it is highly desirable, even though I am aware that we cannot always achieve ideals immediately, for Waldorf teachers to teach without preconceptions. teachers should really be so prepared that they can give their classes without preconceptions, that is, that the teacher does not need to resort to prepared notes during class. If the teacher needs to look at prepared notes to see what to do, the necessary contact with the students is interrupted. That should never occur. That is the ideal. I am not saying this just to complain, but to make you aware of something fundamental. All these things are hygienically important. The mood of the teacher lives on in the

mood of the children, and for that reason, you need to have a very clear picture of what you want to present to the class. In that way, you can more easily help children who have metabolic difficulties than if you had the children sit in a classroom and taught them everything from a book.

It is a fact that in earlier periods of human development, teaching was generally understood as healing. At that time, people understood the human organism as tending to cause illness itself and knew that teaching brought a continual healing. It is extraordinarily good to become aware that, in a certain sense, every teacher is a doctor for the child.

In order to have healthy children in school, teachers must know how to overcome themselves. You should actually attempt to keep your private self out of the class. Instead, you should picture the material you want to present during a given class. In that way, you will become the material, and what you are as the material will have an extraordinarily enlivening effect upon the entire class. teachers should feel that when they are not feeling well, they should, at least when they are teaching, overcome their ill feeling as far as possible.

That will have a very favorable effect upon the children. In such a situation, teachers should believe that teaching is health-giving for themselves. They should think to themselves that while teaching, they can move away from being morose and toward becoming lively.

Imagine for a moment you go into a classroom, and a child is sitting there. After school, the child goes home. At home—of course, I am referring to a different cause, I am not saying the teaching would cause this—the child needs to be given an emetic by the parents. Of course, that could not have been caused by the instruction given by Waldorf teachers, that would only occur in other schools. However, if you went into a class with the attitude that teaching enlivens me and brings me out of my morose state, you could spare the child the medicine. The child can digest better

when you have the right attitude in the classroom. In general, a moral attitude of the teacher is significantly hygienic.

This is what I wanted to say to you today. We will continue to work on this later.

Is there anything in particular you would like to ask me now?

A teacher: I had wondered about how the three systems relate to the temperaments.

Dr. Steiner: Phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments are connected with the nervesense system; choleric and melancholic with the metabolic system.

A teacher: You spoke of flighty children having large heads. In my class, I have a very flighty child with a small head.

Dr. Steiner: A small head is connected with brooding and reflecting, whereas large-headed children are more flighty. If that is not the case, your judgment is incorrect. A small-headed child who is very flighty has not been evaluated from the proper perspective. You can orient yourself with these things. You first need to look at the nature of the child from the proper perspective. Show me the child some time. It is possible to mistake a child’s brooding for superficiality. It is possible that the brooding is hidden behind a kind of superficiality. That is easily possible with children.

A teacher: Is this description valid for a specific age?

Dr. Steiner: It is valid until approximately the age of seventeen or eighteen.

A teacher asks about a girl in one of the upper grades who often wants to drink vinegar.

Dr. Steiner: You can understand that by seeing that the child has absolutely no tendency toward concentration. She lacks a capacity for concentration, but now and then she has to concentrate upon something, not because of outside demands, but from her own

organism. She wants to rid herself of that requirement by drinking vinegar. She simply cannot concentrate, so the physical body demands it sometimes. She tries to overcome it by drinking vinegar, but you should not allow it.

A teacher: How can we work with children who absolutely cannot concentrate?

Dr. Steiner: With such children it might not be so bad if you tried to give them something moderately sweet, that is, to put them more on a sweet, rather than a salty, diet.

A teacher asks about a girl in the first grade.

Dr. Steiner: First try to get the parents to give her a warm stomach wrap, perhaps even a little damp, for a longer period, so that the astral body becomes more firmly seated in the limb-metabolic being. Silver would be the right remedy for her. For her, much depends upon getting the metaboliclimb system to take over the activities of the astral body. Give her silver and stomach wraps.

She is a child who does not live in herself and is not in her metabolism at all. You need to have the entire picture when attempting to treat specific cases.

The school doctor: I thought we would arrange things later on so that I can see the children everyday.

Dr. Steiner: Today, I was speaking specifically about children’s organisms. Perhaps it would be good go through this again in relation to the physicians’ course, so we could be more specific.

We now have a report about the new administrative organization.

A teacher: I wrote the report about what we decided at the last meeting. It contains the results of the work of the preparatory committee. The other things we need to do are the concern of the administrative committee.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps it would be good if faculty members said something about any of the individual points they think we need to speak about.

Current committee administrator: I think it is important that we work toward a new attitude in our meetings. There should be no one here who thinks the meetings are not necessary. The indifference we now bring to our meetings must disappear. I think we could bring an attitude to the meetings that would give them some meaning. I think our meetings would then have something that was much stronger earlier, when the effects of the seminar were still active in us. This is not a new thought. We will try to leave the concerns of the administrative committee outside the meetings.

The parents have asked for a lecture.

Dr. Steiner: We first must work with the Anthroposophical Society so that it can continue to exist, so we will have to put that off. I feel like I have contracted lockjaw from the bad attitude toward the meetings.

A teacher: We should not present things to the full plenum that we can easily take care of in private discussions. Bad forces have taken over the meetings. I have given some thought to how we could form the meetings so that only good forces are present.

Dr. Steiner: As in all such things, those who are most dissatisfied with our gatherings could do the most toward making them better by personally trying to make them better. If the meetings appear ugly, couldn’t you try to make them as nice as possible? If you notice they are difficult for you, and that you need to rid yourself of something after the meeting, then the situation will be better if you behave so that others will feel good when they leave. At the next meeting, you will also feel better. We should not ask anything from the meetings, but rather believe we should give. It is not very fruitful to criticize such things; instead try to improve things in yourself.

Much of what you have said concerns the interactions of faculty members and really requires much more consideration than you give it. We can say that, aside from some individual things that need improvement, the teaching has been very satisfactory recently. It has greatly improved. In contrast, there is a certain coldness, a kind of frigidity, in the interactions between faculty members. The meetings can create a bad atmosphere only if that coldness becomes too great. We can counteract that by working with the interactions between teachers.

When you say you cannot meet one another at the meetings, that seems rather strange to me in a group that is together from morning to night and sees one another during every break. During every break you have an opportunity for smiling at one another, for speaking in a friendly way to each other, for exchanging warmth. There are so many opportunities for developing a certain kind of vivacity, that I cannot understand why you need to do that only in the meetings. In the meetings, we should each present our best side. The problem is that you simply pass by one another and do not smile enough at each other. We can certainly speak the truth bluntly to one another, as that aids digestion and hurts nothing when said at the proper time. On the other hand, though, our relationships must be such that each one knows that the others feel that way about me not only because I am sympathetic or unsympathetic, but also because I am a teacher in the Waldorf School. That is something that is generally necessary in anthroposophy here in Stuttgart. Here, people meet one another in the Anthroposophical Society in just the same way as they would anywhere else, but what is necessary is that they meet one another in a certain way because the other is also an anthroposophist.

teachers should meet one another in the Waldorf School in just the same way. That gives a special tone in every expression made during the school breaks, whether smiling or making accusations.

I see too many sour faces. We need to pay more attention to that.

That is why I got a kind of lockjaw when there was so much discussion about the bad atmosphere in the meetings, because it meant that there must be a bad attitude toward one another, or an attitude of indifference. I cannot understand why there isn’t an atmosphere of great happiness when all the Waldorf teachers sit around one table. The proper attitude would be to think to ourselves, we haven’t had a meeting for a week, but now I am so happy to be able to sit with everyone again. When I see that is not the case, I get a kind of cramp. There should be no Waldorf teachers who do not look on the others with good intent. We do not need to resolve questions of conscience here in the plenum.

When we have such relationships between members of the faculty, we can certainly take care of those questions individually. I can easily imagine everything moving quite smoothly.

It would certainly be quite nice if the teachers met now and then for a picnic. Each of you should try to make the meetings as lively as possible for everyone, so there is no need to complain. If someone thought of complaining, they should change their thought into asking, “What should I do so that things are better next time?” Otherwise, they would be a kind of outcast, and they would be that only if they had a bad attitude toward the meetings.

Are there any other malcontents?

A teacher: The problem of discipline is continually discussed without any positive conclusion.

Dr. Steiner: In general, there are a number of things we could object to regarding discipline in the lower grades, but in the upper grades there is not so much. I do not know how you could expect to have better behaved children. They are just average children. Aside from the fact that the children in the lower grades need to be more active, I can only say that, in a certain sense, I have seen classes that are really very good in regard to discipline. This question of discipline can be a cause of distress forever, and if it were, we would have to discuss it continually. We cannot have the attitude

that we do not want to discuss the question of discipline in our meetings simply because it is unpleasant. That is exactly why we do need to discuss it. I would like to mention a concern about discipline that has a kind of legendary significance. This may be important only outside of the school, in the [WaldorfAstoria]

Company. Many of you may think this is not a question for our meetings, but I do not know which members of the faculty I would call together to discuss this problem. In this question, we do not need to point to one person or another.

There may be teachers in the Waldorf School who slap the children, and so forth. That is something I would like to take care of in private discussions. I have heard it said that the Waldorf teachers hit the children, and we have discussed that often. The fact is, you cannot improve discipline by hitting the children, that only worsens things. That is something you must take into account. Perhaps no one wants to say anything about this, but my question is whether that is simply a story that has been spread like so many other lies, or have children, in fact, been slapped in the Waldorf School? If that has occurred, it could ruin a great deal. We must hold the ideal of working without doing that; discipline will also be better if we can avoid it.

A teacher: I teach English to the eighth grade, and I found the discipline there terrible.

Dr. Steiner: What do you as the class teacher have to say?

The teacher reports.

Dr. Steiner: It would be pedagogically incorrect if we did not take the personal relationship to the children into sufficient account. It is certainly difficult to create, but you must create it and you can create it in individual cases. You should, however, remember that our language instruction is extremely uneven. In spite of the fact that we have a Waldorf pedagogy, there is, for example, sometimes too much grammar in the classes, and the children cannot handle

that. Sometimes I absolutely do not understand how you can keep the children quiet at all when you are talking, as sometimes happens, about adverbs and subjunctive cases and so forth. Those are things for which normal children have no interest whatsoever.

In such instances, children remain disciplined only because they love the teacher. Given how grammar is taught in language class, there should be no cause for any complaints in that regard. We can really discuss the question only if all the language teachers in the Waldorf School meet in order to find some way of not always talking about things the children do not understand. That, however, is so difficult because there are so many things to do.

What is important is that the children can express themselves in the language, not that they know what an adverb or a conjunction is. They learn that, of course, but the way such things are done in many of the classes I have seen, it is not yet Waldorf pedagogy.

That is, however, something we need to discuss here in the meetings. There are so many language teachers here and each goes their own way and pays no attention to what the others do, but there are many possibilities for helping one another. I can easily imagine that the children become restless because they do not know what you expect of them. We have handled language class in a haphazard way for too long.

A teacher: We language teachers have already begun.

Dr. Steiner: Recently, I was in a class and the instruction had to do with the present and imperfect tenses. What do you expect the children to do with that when it is not taught in Latin class? How should they understand these expressions?243 You need to feel that there is so much that is not natural to human beings,

243 . Steiner is saying that the words used for “present” and “imperfect” were both Latin— präsens and imperfektum—rather than the German gegenwart and vergangenheit. He clearly believed it to be more appropriate to use German terms when teaching German-speaking children. — TRANS.

particularly in grammar. It is clear that in schools where discipline is maintained through external means, discipline is easier to maintain than where the children are held together through the value of the instruction. I am not saying that such expressions as present and indicative should be done away with, but that you should work with them in such a way that the children can do something with them. What I noticed was that the children did not know what to do with such expressions.

A teacher: There is examination fever in the highest grade. The middle grades are missing the basics.

Dr. Steiner: That is not what they are missing. Look for what they are missing in another area. That is not what they are missing! It is very difficult to say anything when I am not speaking about a class in a specific language, since I find them better than the grammar instruction. Most of our teachers teach foreign languages better than they teach grammar. I think the main problem is that the teachers do not know grammar very well; the teachers do not carry a living grammar within them. Please excuse me that I am upset that you now want to use our meeting to learn grammar. I have to admit that I find the way you use grammar terms horrible. If I were a student, I certainly would not pay attention. I would be noisy because I would not know why people are forcing all of these things into my head. The problem is that you do not use time well, and the teachers do not learn how to acquire a reasonable ability in grammar. That, then, affects the students. The instruction in grammar is shocking, literally. It is purely superficial, so that it is one of the worst things done at school. All the stuff in the grammar books should actually be destroyed in a big bonfire. Life needs to come into it. Then, the problem is that the students do not get a feeling for what the present or past tense is when they really should have a lively feeling for them. The genius of language must live in the teacher. That is also true for teaching German.

You torture the children with so much terminology. Do not be

angry with me, but it is really so. If you used mathematical terminology the same way you do grammatical terminology, you would soon see how horrible it is. All your horrible habits do not allow you to see how terrible the grammar classes are. This is caused by the culture that has used language to mistreat Europe for such a terribly long time, it has used a language that was not livingly integrated, namely, Latin. That is why we have such a superficial connection to language. That is how things are. The little amount of spirit that comes into grammar comes through Grimm, and that is certainly something we need to admire.

Nevertheless, it is only a little spirit. As it is taught today, grammar is the most spiritless thing there is, and that gives a certain color to teaching. I must say there is much more to it than what we do. It is just horrible. We cannot always have everything perfect, which is why I do not always want to criticize and complain. You need a much better inner relationship to language, and then your teaching of language will become better.

It is not always the children’s fault when they do not pay attention in the language classes. Why should they be interested in what an adverb is? That is just a barbaric word. Things only become better when you continually bring in relationships, when you repeatedly come back to the connections between words. If you simply make a child memorize and yourself have no interest in what you had them memorize, the children will no longer learn anything by heart. They will do that only if you return to the subject again in a different connection so that they see there is some sense in learning.

You should not so terribly misunderstand some things, Mr. X.

I got a kind of cramp when I saw how you presented The Chymical Wedding today. I said you could do that if you wanted to learn about spiritual activity for yourself, but then you did it in class. After you have done the conclusion, you will see how impossible it is to do The Chymical Wedding in school. It could be very useful if you know something about it yourself, as then you can handle other things

appropriately. Now, however, you can do nothing more than present the question of the kings in The Chymical Wedding as pictorially as possible so that the children become aware of how one theme makes a transition into another.

A teacher: How should I do that?

Dr. Steiner: The theme of the three kings goes throughout it. You can find it in The Chymical Wedding and again in Goethe’s Tales. You could show how the same idea was active over centuries, and then tell stories about other themes that lived for centuries. There are a large number of such themes. If you recall, I once mentioned to you how you can see Faust and Mephistopheles as Robert and Trast in Sudermann’s Ehre.

A teacher: In the tenth-grade art class I showed how Schiller developed the word into a musical effect in The Bride of Messina and how Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony moved toward the word through human voice. In the end, Beethoven met Schiller in the “Ode to Joy.” Richard Wagner felt this quite strongly.

Dr. Steiner: It may be quite important to emphasize this relationship of Schiller to Beethoven. That is something the children will feel quite deeply at their age. You can best carry out what you wanted to say about Parzival if you also put the choir in Schiller’s Bride of Messina at the center.

Wednesday, February 14, 1923, 6:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We have received a request from Dr. Karutz regarding the next parent evening; it requires a thorough discussion in the faculty before any public discussion of it.244 We need to discuss

244 . Richard Karutz, MD, an ear specialist whose children attended the school.

this proposal and, at least within the faculty, we need to arrive at a common perspective. For that reason, I have asked Dr. Karutz to spend the first hour of our meeting with us, so he can give us more information on what he wrote in his letter, and so that we can clearly understanding his request. ( The letter is read aloud. ) Now that we have all heard the letter, we can see this is a question we must discuss in regard to basic principles. It would certainly be difficult to carry on a considered and objective discussion during the parent evening, and, since I cannot attend, I would like to discuss the question here. I would like to ask you to say what you would like to say first.

Dr. Karutz says his proposal has a cultural, not a political, intention. His objective is that the parents make a unanimous decision that the French language should no longer be required. He proposes Russian as a replacement.

Dr. Steiner: This question has a number of different aspects. The first is on the cultural side, and any serious pedagogical system must take that into account.

We see in the current activities of the French something that fundamentally cannot be explained from the outside. 245 It is inexplicable because anyone should be able to see, even from the French perspective, that France will not reach its own goals by what it undertook today. We should not view this merely from a

245 . The occupation of the Rhineland is referred to here.

cursory political standpoint, but from a historical political perspective. What France is doing today is something like death throes—of course in history such things last a longer time—the death throes of a people in decline and in the process of disappearing from earthly development. Such views arise, of course, from spiritual observation of European history. The French nature is, in a sense, an initial wave of the demise of Romanism—the demise of the Romantic peoples of Europe.

Naturally, the Spanish and Italian portions have somewhat more life than the French, who have the least life among the Romantic population.

We can clearly see the decadence of French culture in the language. Among the common languages of Europe, French is the language that, in a sense, most forces the human soul to the surface. It is the language in which it is possible (and this is a paradox) to lie in the most honest way. In that language, it is easiest to lie in the most naïve and honest way, because it lacks any real connection with the inner human being. French is spoken entirely at the surface of the human being.

Consequently, the French language, and thus the French nature, has a certain attitude of the soul. The attitude of the French soul is directed by the French language, whereas in German, the soul controls the inner configuration of the language, the mobility of the language. The French language is currently something that paralyzes—it directs the soul. It rapes the soul, and thus makes the soul hollow, so that French culture is hollowed out under the influence of the French language. Those who have a feeling for such things can see that the soul does not speak in French culture, only a petrified formalism has a voice. The difference is that, in speaking French, the language rules the speaker. The infinite freedom possible in German, and that we should use more than we normally do, that enables you, for instance, to put the subject in any position, depending upon your inner life, does not exist in French.

The reason Germany has brought French into education is not due to pedagogy; we do not teach French in our schools for any pedagogical reasons. We teach it because what was considered useful for a certain group of young people was modified and masked when the old college preparatory high school system was replaced by a number of modern institutions. It is significant that people believed what was available in the old system through Latin could be found in French. People had assumed French had a pedagogical effectiveness similar to that of Latin. That is, however, not true. Latin has a kind of inner logic and brings logic to people instinctively. That is not true of French, which has slipped into clichés and is no longer based on logic. It is only clichés—such things must be stated in a radical way—so that learning French brings a great deal to the surface in children, and that is why a desire to remove French from education has gradually arisen. It is obvious that French will disappear from education in the future.

In the Waldorf School, which exists to make a radical new beginning, we have a different perspective. The school can make a beginning only through the understanding our teachers have for the character of the French language, in that they teach it with an awareness that they are actually teaching something decadent. You do not have to tell that to the children, but we certainly should be clear about it. We are clear about it, but from a different perspective, it is completely out of the question that we here at the Waldorf School begin by fighting to remove French from the curriculum. We cannot do that for purely external reasons. We do not yet have an independent cultural life. We have, of course, a Waldorf School pedagogy based upon the idea of an independent cultural life, but that is only an ideal that we cannot completely implement under the present conditions.

For that reason, we had to sign a declaration when we founded the Waldorf School in which we agreed we would always meet the learning goals of the public schools at appropriate stages. For instance, we have to insure that our nine-year-old children meet

the learning goals of the public third grades. We are pedagogically free for periods of three years. In general, we would place ourselves in an impossible position if we did not fulfill these responsibilities. We cannot keep our children from being able to transfer to another educational institution through testing. If we did that, we would rob our children of the possibility of finding their own path in life. There is, therefore, nothing we can do other than attempt to bring as much of the ideal Waldorf pedagogy as possible into the school. We cannot go further than the possibilities allow. If the building in Dornach had not burned down, we would still have been far from obtaining accreditation for the Dornach University. We could not have given doctoral diplomas. Since we must take into account that those children who complete our school may transfer into other learning institutions and universities, we have to allow them to meet learning goals at a particular age.

All this assumes that we teach foreign languages the way we do for inner pedagogical and psychological reasons. Seen from outside, people could say we do not need to begin teaching foreign languages as early as we do. If, however, we are to achieve in a pedagogical way what eighteen-year-old boys and girls need of foreign languages for their final examinations, there is nothing else we can do. Under the assumption that it is justifiable that our children achieve a certain level of education, we must form foreign language instruction as we have. We must swallow the bitter pill of French until we can do something else.

That brings me to what is of primary importance for the work of our movement. You see, well-intended people are always asking our movement to undertake this or that remedy. In the area of medicine, people make all kinds of demands. We need to take the position that we cannot do such things individually, but only through major movements. We have begun to develop medicine in the light of an independent cultural life. Thus, in such a question where we can best find the pedagogical basis through the practical

experiences of the Waldorf School, a major movement would need to begin. A single private school, where the light of life could be instantly snuffed out if it undertook such things, cannot do it.

Aside from that, we could not accomplish much. Whether or not our students learned French would make little difference in the cultural status of the German empire. In contrast, a major cultural deed could occur if people overcame all the things connected with the false valuing of French in Middle Europe through a genuine understanding of the things I mentioned and Dr. Karutz also indicated. If people saw that and it became part of their flesh and blood, and if, therefore, the French language disappeared from the schools in a healthy way, then that would be a path toward a major cultural deed. A cultural movement directed toward removing French from the schools could begin that in a proper way while retaining a proper appreciation of French itself. Today, it is no longer valid to teach French for practical reasons. I do not believe that was true even before the war. In countries outside France, people respected French and valued it in teaching, not because of its commercial significance, but because it was used as the language of diplomacy, and because it was used in conversation in the salons of the socalled better circles in society. That, too, came from using French in diplomacy. If this was done with the necessary force and motivation, it could kill two birds with one stone by hitting the decadence of both French and diplomacy. It could show that diplomacy is just as decadent, because it is necessary to lie when being diplomatic. In war, success results in surrounding the opposing forces. The technique of winning a war is to mislead the opponent. Diplomacy is well described by a peculiar statement, namely, “War is the continuation of policies by other means,”

something as insightful as “Divorce is a continuation of marriage by other means.” Diplomacy consists of using the same means, but at a different level, as those used to mislead the opponent in war.

In this case, a language that can mislead others is required.

Nietzsche made a major error when he spoke of the German

language as the language of deception. The French language is not the language of deception, but the language of stupefaction that actually brings people outside themselves. Someone who is enthusiastic about speaking French seems like someone who is not quite in control of themselves. That is, of course, expressed in an extreme way. You need to look at things that way, otherwise you will not come to the subtle feelings you need to present in teaching French.

The parents of the Waldorf children can be very sure that we will contribute nothing to the false estimation of the French language. However, we do live under the compulsion of the state and, for that reason, cannot include anything in the constitution of our Waldorf School that would do anything against the French language. We depend upon the creation of a major cultural movement in this regard, one that is objective, one that at some time can also present these views and that values spirituality. If we were to once begin such an action, then we would see that a much different culture would replace today’s. It is important to put forward the differences in evaluation of the languages. We would win some trust and strength from certain people for the mission the German language still has in Western civilization. However, people would still need a feeling for what is declining or rising in the language. In the German language, many elements are still positively developing, although, since High German entered, there is much that can no longer develop. We still have the inner strength to transform words. Under certain circumstances, we can still transform words that have petrified in the substantive into verbs. I have used the word kraften as a verbal form of kraft.246

And we may also do similar things. People understand them.

German still has a lot of inner strength. French no longer has that.

246 . Kraft is “strength,” “force,” or “power”; kraften is not a “real” word, but could mean “to do strongly.” The English equivalent of what Steiner is doing would be like making the word music into a verb: “I music today.” — TRANS.

Everything is prescribed. When language takes over everything, it corrupts the human soul.

That is what I have to say, Dr. Karutz. You see, we understand your request, but our hands are tied. At the moment, we cannot really discuss the question.

A teacher: The public schools in Bavaria no longer require French.247

Dr. Steiner: We will have to wait until Württemberg does something. Since things can quickly change from one day to the next, we will have to make our decisions accordingly. I am not sure that, if French were removed today, it would not be included again later if something did not take hold of human souls at a deeper level.

A teacher: The decision in Bavaria occurred several years ago.

Dr. Steiner: It occurred only now. We will certainly shed no tears about the French language if it comes to that here. Perhaps some of the teachers would like to say something about French.

A teacher: It would not be so easy to do here.

Dr. Steiner: We will address these questions when they become more pressing.

A teacher: I thought it was easier to comprehend the spirit of a language when it is in the process of dying.

Dr. Steiner: That is the case with human beings, but not with languages. The French language is now more dead than Latin was in the Middle Ages when it was already a dead language. There was more spirit living in Latin when it was clergy-and kitchen-Latin than lives in the French language now. What keeps the French language going is the furor, the blood, of the French. The language is actually dead, but the corpse continues to be spoken. This is

247 . This is an error; French was in fact required in Bavarian schools at the time.

something that is most apparent in French nineteenth-century poetry. The use of the French language quite certainly corrupts the soul. The soul acquires nothing more than the possibility of clichés. Those who enthusiastically speak French transfer that to other languages. The French are also ruining what maintains their dead language, namely, their blood. The

French are committing the terrible brutality of moving black people to Europe, but it works, in an even worse way, back on France. It has an enormous affect on the blood and the race and contributes considerably toward French decadence. The French as a race are reverting.5

Marie Steiner: You can notice the superficiality and hollowness of the language when you compare it with Italian. In Italian you can still present the spirituality of the content. That is often lacking in French, the depth disappears.

Dr. Steiner: We had the strangest experiences. Mrs. Steiner translated two major works by Schuré. At the time, there were some reasons for the translation, but we always had a feeling that only through the translation was the actual content of these two works apparent. The reason for that was Schuré’s own development. His

5. Any reader who has read thus far in these transcripts will know how direct and spontaneous they are; but even a prepared reader may be surprised by this session.

All along we have struggled, as publishers, with the issue of whether to let the record stand intact or whether to edit it, never more so than in the case of the present conference. After much soul searching and discussion, we have felt that we would better serve by letting the document stand exactly as it is published in German. This is not the place to enter into a detailed interpretation of this passage. Suffice it to say that, throughout his entire life of service to humanity, Rudolf Steiner stood for the “universal human,” for the substance of the earth becoming love, and for the overcoming of racism and the concept of race. For instance: “. . the anthroposophic [Theosophical] movement. . must cast aside the division into races. It must seek to unite people of all races and nations, and to bridge the

divisions and differences between various groups of people. The old point of view of race has a physical character, but what will prevail in the future will have a more spiritual character. That is why it is absolutely essential to understand that our anthroposophic [Theosophical] movement is a spiritual one. It looks to the spirit and overcomes the effects of physical dif erences through the force of being a spiritual movement. .

“(December 4, 1909) Interpretation, like communication, is never a simple matter. It is especially difficult when the issues touch deep into the things that are the most important to us. Without openness, faith, and trust, however, neither true communication nor interpretation is possible. For the sake of these—and readers to come—we leave this passage unedited.—PUBLISHER

first work was L’histoire du Lied, in other words, a history of German lyrics written in French. He was thinking in German but wrote in French. He thinks substantially in German, and had his first cultural impressions from the Wagnerian school. I still remember Mrs. Schuré’s genuinely French fury when she told me that as a student he had sold his gold watch in order to be able to go to Tristan. You can see how the translations of these two works appears as though they were translations into the original language, that is, as though they had originally been written in German. They are thought in German, and the French can feel that in Schuré’s work.248

A teacher mentions that German style was transformed by Heine and anti-romantic journalism.

Dr. Steiner: The effects of Heine and Börne have been very colorfully described by Treitschke. 249 There is a wonderful chapter in one of Treitschke’s books on history about the rise of journalism. In it you can see all of Treitschke’s fury. He could be very radical and was often not very tactful.

248 . Edouard Schuré (1841–1929) author of Les Enfants de Lucifer (1903; see The East in the Light of the West and Children of Lucifer); and Les Grands Initiés (1889) translated by Marie Steiner as Die großen Einqeweihten (1907).

249 . Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896). Author of Deutsche Geschichte im 19.

Jahrhundert (German history in the nineteenth century, 1886).

We once both received an invitation in Weimar, where he saw me for the first time. He couldn’t hear, and you had to write everything for him. He always asked where people came from, and he said that the Austrians are either very clever people or scoundrels.

A teacher: I would like to say how it is for me when I teach French.

I overdo it. I get right into it, but nothing is so strenuous as teaching French.

Dr. Steiner: If you meant that in a good sense, I would advise you to overdo yourself in other things more.

Marie Steiner: It is very funny how that affects Rostand in Chantecler.250 It is a real mess.

Dr. Steiner: The conclusion we should draw is that as long as we have French, we should teach it with the proper attitude and under the proper estimation of its pedagogical value. The remainder we must leave to the future.

Dr. Karutz leaves.

Dr. Steiner: We needed to take care of this matter or it would have come up at the next parent meeting, and I must admit it does not seem right to me to broach the question at this quasi-public occasion. We may not expose ourselves too much in regard to such current questions. This is not a question where we can make compromises. The fact is, we can only maintain our general direction and path if we do not put hurdles in our own way and do not allow ourselves to be drawn into such current questions about pedagogy. If we do, the light of our lives will be snuffed out. We must take this position also regarding less significant questions.

Today’s questions about elementary schools will find their answer the moment there is support for the Waldorf School method.

Discussions over such things really become quite trivial. When

250 . Edmond Rostand (1868–1918), French dramatist, author of Chantecler (1910).

such problems come up, we can certainly participate in the discussion, but we must maintain our position.

Is there anything else to discuss? There is not enough time for a lecture on medicine. Perhaps you could bring some current problems for discussion in the time remaining.

They discuss the many children who are absent from school.

Dr. Steiner: That is certainly something to be concerned about. In the first grade, I found only nine of twenty-seven children. That is really terrible. How is it in the other classes?

A teacher: In the 1b class, I had only half the children.

Dr. Steiner: These things are connected with the general state of nutrition. 251 We should be aware that such things appear as illnesses about three and a half years later, that is, malnutrition then appears as an illness. That is something reasonable physicians were aware of at the beginning of the war. Only Abderhalden claimed that hunger during the war had no effects, though he was sometimes reasonable about other questions.

The school doctor: The children’s health is getting continually worse.

Of six hundred and fifty children, about one hundred and eighty are severely undernourished.

Dr. Steiner: When we think about the physiological corruption of the children’s organism, we now need to try to make those forces that support the necessary functions of the human organism more effective. We need to make those forces more effective. We need to be aware that the correct view of the human organism views human nutritional and growth forces as located in a kind of reservoir. The way we should imagine that reservoir is a question that leads deeply into occult physiology. Actually, you need to

251 . This refers to the widespread malnutrition in Germany during the war.

think of a created reservoir out of which the forces for nutrition and digestion and rhythmical processes arise.

Perhaps you can best understand that if I draw your attention to the difference between vegetarian and meat nutrition.252 If you look at a plant, you will see that the plant completes the mineral and vegetable processes to a certain point, so that as a human being we have to work further upon what the plant has made of earthly substances. We must further transform the substances into the form they should have in the human body. Thus, when I eat plants, I must further transform the final stages of plant existence into what is necessary for human existence. These forces are available in various ways in the human organism, that is, there are forces that create sugar, transform fat or protein. The salts are used in a certain almost physical-chemical way in the organism. These forces exist.

If I eat meat, the mineral and vegetable processes have been continued beyond the stage reached by the plant to that of the animal, and I do not need to change the meat in the same way I need to change plants, because that has already happened in the animal. The animal has already made the changes I should undertake. Thus, if I eat, say, some grass or something like that, I would have to do what a cow would otherwise do. But, if I eat some beef, the cow has relieved me of this inner work. In a sense, I thereby leave the work of the cow in my reservoir of forces. Thus, I fill myself with unused forces. I leave those unused forces within me. Actually, I carry them with me.

That was not meant as some sort of fanaticism for vegetarianism. This can definitely have to do with heredity.

Nevertheless, it is correct that when people eat meat, they do not fully use their inner functions. They sentence themselves more easily to gout than when they train their inner functions so that they become vegetarians.

252 . See Rudolf Steiner, Health and Illness, volume 2, lecture 5.

Under some circumstances, the work required with fruit is even greater because it has to be transformed backwards. If you can perform this reverse transformation, you awaken even more forces within your organism. You should, however, not believe that awakening such forces is tiring. Under some circumstances, allowing forces to lie fallow is much more tiring because those forces collect. Thus, you can see that we either fully use the forces in that reservoir, or we leave them unused. I have mentioned all this only as a kind of discussion of how forces act in the organism.

All the aspects of human nature, the I, the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, participate in using those forces. The situation in the human being is such that, in general, the development of forces acts in what we might call a centrifugal manner, that is, from within, outward, and from below, upward, depending upon the various parts of the physical body. In general, the development of those forces follows the path of the blood, and it is their responsibility to carry what lies in the blood’s path.

There exists another force counter to those forces, one that goes parallel to the paths of the nerves and is particularly important for the child’s organism,. Everywhere within the human being you will find these two extremes. For example, the blood moves from within toward the outside in the eye, whereas you observe the nerves properly only when you consider that they go from outside, inward. The centripetal forces go parallel to the nerve pathways.

These two forces achieve their general harmony through the breathing and circulatory systems and are the two poles of the human threefold organism. The nerves act centripetally. The metaboliclimb system works centrifugally, parallel to the path of the blood. What is important is that the liveliness of all inner functions depends upon the proper interaction of these two systems, and thus these two forces. The centrifugal and centripetal forces need to be properly activated in each individual organ.

Malnutrition during and after the war caused what I saw yesterday in a little child in the first grade. The centrifugal forces

in that child have developed only to a dangerously weak point, so that those forces need to be enlivened by support from the outside.

That was why I advised giving the child those baths, since they support the centrifugal forces from outside. Those are things that are important when dealing with such acute cases, but of course, they must be applied very individually.

On the other hand, it is necessary to work on improving general nutrition in Germany and Austria. There we can enliven both sides, namely, the centrifugal and centripetal forces. We can enliven the centripetal forces, so that they support the blood stream, primarily through dietary means or through providing medications based upon calcium phosphate. In the reverse situation, we can enliven the centrifugal forces by using calcium carbonate. I said in the reverse situation because calcium carbonate enlivens the nerve system and enlivening the nerves achieves a greater activity in the centrifugal forces. Calcium phosphate enlivens the centrifugal forces, the blood, and thus has a reverse effect upon the nerves.

The effect of the carbon is to enliven the centrifugal forces through the nerves. You can see this enlivening in a coarse way when you simply drink some carbonated water. There, it is the carbon that has the effect. Since we are using a calcium compound, people will have to work with things right into their bones. You can see quite clearly that the bones are included, and that is why this compound should be used, so that people can work right into their bones. This may seem like a strange statement, but physiologically it is correct to say that the bones are the final extension of the nerve system. The nerves are bones at the lowest level of development. They are bones that have been stopped from developing into bones. Nerves tend to become bone-like, only they have been stopped at a very early stage. For that reason, calcium carbonate enlivens the nervous system right into the bones. In contrast, calcium phosphate enables the bones to participate in distributing the blood. The bones play a role in the

formation of red blood cells, and that can be increased through calcium phosphate. Oyster shells are an empirical proof of that.

Oysters have no blood, which is why we find only calcium carbonate in them.

What you can see from all this is that if you properly combine calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate, you can enliven the organic functions and thus strengthen the organism when it is too weak to digest what comes into the stomach.

That is the cause of modern malnutrition. The problem is not that there is no food, but that the food is not used beyond the intestine because the organism is so weak. The body actually takes in only a little bit of the chyme. That could be improved if we strengthened those forces related to organic forces.

This needs to be done alternately, so that the calcium carbonate is taken at the night and the calcium phosphate is taken in the morning so that it is effective during the day. Thus, the calcium phosphate would be connected with the activity of the nervous system, and the calcium carbonate active during the night will strengthen the blood system.253

I think that a sufficient dose of calcium carbonate would be 5%

and of calcium phosphate, .5% at a potency of 5X or 6X. In connection with calcium phosphate, the higher the potency, the better, but calcium carbonate is allopathic.

What we actually have here is a genuine illness that we should, therefore, heal. No one should complain that we want to give all the children some medicine. Since we actually have an epidemic, we should undertake mass treatment. That is a commandment of genuine love of humanity.

A teacher: We would have to discuss that with the parents.

253 . A compound based on this insight, Calcon, is available by prescription in the United States at anthroposophic pharmacies. — TRANS.

Dr. Steiner: That is something we cannot easily do in a parent evening, although I think it would be basically proper.

Nevertheless, we should not become too prominent, so you should speak with the parents individually.

The school doctor: If we did that on a broad scale, we could discuss it with the parents. There are some financial difficulties, and we would also be entering the realm of the local doctors.

Dr. Steiner: We can expect the support from the Clinical Therapeutic Institute. The other thing is, it is advisable not to treat such things as medicine at all. Nevertheless, some of these things lie right at the limits of diet, so we do not really have to consider this a question for physicians. To restate it, first, Palmer at the institute could give us some support, and second, we do not need to see this as medicine. It is a dietary question and therefore we do not need any medical justification. The third thing is that the parents would pay nothing for it. Doctors start to get nasty if you require payment. I think it would be difficult to use genuine medications. In connection with calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate, we could take the position that they are simply dietary supplements. We could even extend this and make it into a kind of popular movement, so that people simply received a dietary supplement through one of these preparations at the table, just as we might put salt on the table. You certainly do not need a doctor for that.

Today, I wanted to handle only the general question. This is how we would have to take care of it if we are to handle public questions with the slightest bit of reason.

A teacher presents the request of a mother who wants to have her son put in a parallel fourth-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: The lady told me she believes that her child cannot work in the present class, and the class teacher also wants the child to leave. She is not bothered by that, but now she is asking that he

be put in a parallel class. I have nothing against that if it is best for the child. My only question is whether Mr. K. would take him. He is one of the few boys who does not want to be taught by a female teacher. If the parallel class were also taught by a woman, he would have no interest in it. Now that we have the request, and you don’t have anything against it, perhaps it is best to do it.

Is there anything else we need to do?

A teacher: S.R. does not want to participate in shop because of his music instruction.

Dr. Steiner: If such things come up often, then we will have to create a category of special students who can have such changes, and whose parents are ready to be responsible for the student not meeting the goals of our teaching. We would have to handle each case that way. We would have to treat him as a special student.

A teacher: The children often ask what is the deeper meaning of learning to spin yarn.

Dr. Steiner: It is something that enhances the life of their souls, and they also learn something about genuinely practical life through spinning. You cannot really learn anything about practical life by just watching how something is done, only by doing it the way it is really done. The children should also notice that you can learn to make a pair of shoes in a week, but a shoemaker’s apprenticeship lasts three years.

A teacher asks how to present The Song of the Niebelungs in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You have already done that, haven’t you? You need to first teach the children about the whole context of The Song of the Niebelungs, so that they understand how it fits into the historical perspective. You should do that as pictorially as possible, similar to the way I did Parzival and Christianity in Dr. Stein’s class. It took place during the time of the Great Migrations. Present it in a very lively way and then give the children some examples. Teach it so

that the children first have a complete picture, not with boring lectures, but in an exciting, pictorial way. Give them a picture of what you will read to them as an example. Above all, see to it that you are not the only one who reads. The children should also read in a way that is not boring, through the way you gave them a proper picture. It is not possible to read in a boring way if you have given them the proper picture. Stop for a moment at some of the interesting passages where you can say something about the beautiful words. It is possible to create some real excitement and illuminate the whole scene from some individual words or phrases.

If you do that, you will have given the children enough.

A teacher: What could I use as a historical source?

Dr. Steiner: You can use any book on the history of the Middle Ages. The history has been so worked over that any fool could do it in the same way. A person would not need to be particularly insightful. Those history books are all the same.

A teacher asks whether a book on mathematics should be written for the use of the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: A teaching guide for mathematics and geometry in the upper grades would be good. You would need to write it so that the material is presented in a very clear way, so the reader does not drown in the amount of material and important things are not missing. All textbooks are really unusable. They are not very helpful. It should be a text without any remarks or figures that you can read like a novel.

As a boy of about fourteen or fifteen, I once wrote one myself, because all of the geometry books were so boring. It is too bad I no longer have it. It was not bad, you could read it like a novel. It might be interesting if you put it together as connected text that reads like a novel. It does not need to be as voluminous as things are today, and we could even have one edition for teachers and a still shorter edition for children, like a short story. Children would

be very thankful if every day in class they could read a page or two about geometry written in a readable form. There are no good books anymore. The books on geography are horribly written. The grammar books are terrible. This is something that The Coming Day publishing company could do.

A teacher asks about speech exercises for a child in the first grade who has a very soft voice.

Dr. Steiner: I would have to see and hear him. Perhaps you could show him to me when I am here for the delegates’ conference.

.

Thursday, March 1, 1923, 6:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m.

At the beginning, Graf Bothmer gave a lecture about teaching gymnastics with approximately the following content:

Exercises: Conscious penetration of the body with the child’s forces of life. The close connection to eurythmy. Eurythmy enlivens, gymnastics carries those forces into the outermost limbs through the will. Eurythmy is not done as consciously.

There are movements that can give the impression of death or make things alive. The relationship of gymnastics to experiencing growth and to opening of the body. The gymnastics teacher works like a sculptor with the child.

Guidelines about how to act in the class. Children doing gymnastics feel their way into the room. Children should have a strong inner contact with the dimensions of the room. Squatting to the Earth or springing away from it.

Experiencing inhaling and exhaling. “I tell the children to straighten up your head, straighten your back, straighten your shoulders because children have a tendency to let them hang. But, I am not certain if I should say such things.”

In gymnastics, we are particularly concerned with will.

Exercises using equipment: Modern equipment is mostly dead. Usually, it is quite abstract, for example, the parallel bars. Fortunately, we do not have a

climbing pole. They are completely dead in comparison with the rope. Today, gymnastics on equipment is quite simply routine. With such dead things, the children are not there with their whole being. In order to encompass their whole body, you can combine two devices, for example, the horizontal bar and the horse. If you combine two movements at the same time or one directly after the other, gymnastics is much more lively, particularly outdoors. The most beautiful thing is jumping over a ditch and over a hedge. Our children do not have much opportunity to exercise in that way.

Games and sports: Dr. Steiner has said that too many games make children too soft. We don’t have time for that. Sports such as swimming, shot-put, throwing the discus or javelin should be emphasized over other, more external, sports. Emphasize the beauty of the movement and not simply breaking a record.

Should boys and girls participate together or exercise in the same room, but separately? Girls hold the boys up. Should we group the children according to their temperaments? That would be the ideal.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps I can say something more general about gymnastics later. When we have time before the beginning of the new school year, I can discuss gymnastic exercises 254 in relationship to the child’s age and how to make them whole. That is what we will do. Today, I would like to speak about what you just presented. Please consider what I do not speak about as meaning I agree with what you said. I will not emphasize anything I agree with.

Concerning the relationship of gymnastics to eurythmy, there can actually not be any conflict between gymnastics and eurythmy.

In general, we can generally see gymnastics exercises and how they are presented as a continuation of eurythmy exercises. Suppose we take a particular movement of the arm in eurythmy and a corresponding movement in gymnastics. In eurythmy we need to take care that the form of the movement itself lies nearer the center of the body than it would in gymnastics. Thus, there can actually be no conflict.

You can best understand that when you realize that in eurythmy you are primarily concerned with that part of the human organism that is directly connected with the inner breathing process. Thus, what an arm or leg, a finger or toe does in eurythmy is directly connected with what plays out as the inner breathing process, that process of the transition from air to blood. On the other hand,

254 . The discussion did not take place.

what happens in gymnastics is primarily connected with the human organic process basic to the transition from blood to muscle. That is primarily physiological and sheds complete light upon what we develop. As soon as we understand that instinctively or intuitively, we will see that every movement in gymnastics is connected with strengthening the muscles, with their growth, and with making them elastic by forcing blood into the muscles. The more you understand that, the more you will be able to develop free exercises.

We can say the same thing from a different perspective.

Eurythmy is primarily a pliable forming of the organism. Or, I could also say that eurythmy exists in the sculpting of the organism. Gymnastics lives in the statics and the dynamics of the organism. Of course, you, Graf Bothmer, felt that when you mentioned that the children feel the room during gymnastics. You can best understand that through the picture of how an arm or leg moves in space, or their relationships to weight.

That we do not have any conflict with eurythmy, we can see if we take character into account. We do that much too little in pedagogical eurythmy because it is not so important in artistic presentations, but it is much more important in pedagogy. If you have seen the eurythmy figures, you will have noticed that we differentiate between movement, feeling, and character. In movement and feeling, which you have taken into account almost exclusively, things are going well. However, character has not permeated eurythmic movements to any great extent. That is natural because it has no great importance in artistic eurythmy that is viewed by others.

In contrast, the character of a movement should be a significant part in pedagogical eurythmy. A person doing the eurythmy should feel how a movement or position flows back into their own feeling.

For example, such a person should feel the pressure of one limb upon another in a eurythmy movement and how that pressure flows back into the center of the body. For that reason, I colored

the eurythmy figures so that it would be clear. You will find three colors in all the eurythmy figures. One is for the movement, the second, which is like a veil over the first, is for feeling, and the third is for character. For a person doing eurythmy, it indicates the specific part of the body where the muscles should be tensed, and the feeling that muscle tension should produce. That is part of the life of eurythmy within the form of the body.

The students have asked if we could present the figures during the pedagogical week at Easter, so I will bring them here. We should have such a series here. The Waldorf teachers should study those figures because they are also important for a more psychological physiology. The Waldorf teachers should study them to gain greater understanding of the human organism. At the same time, they can form the basis of a more general feeling for art, for a greater understanding of the inner aspects of the human organism.

We can, therefore, say that the gymnastics teacher should have an idea of the spiritual relationship of statics and dynamics in the human organism. The gymnastics teacher should have a clear picture of what it means to raise a leg or to drop an arm in relationship to gravity. On the other hand, the eurythmy teacher should have a strong feeling for what will develop the limbs sculpturally. It is incorrect to say that the gymnastics teacher is like a sculptor. That would be true for the eurythmy teacher. The work of gymnastics teachers is to picture an ideal human being in terms of lines, forms, and movements to which they must develop these lazy, sloppy people they have before them. You were certainly correct when you mentioned how children should carry themselves. Whereas the eurythmy teacher should work so that the muscles feel themselves, feel how they gain strength through the character of the movement, the gymnastics teacher should feel how people can properly perceive the heaviness or lightness of a limb. The child should learn, not through reason, but instinctively, how to perceive the lifting of an arm or leg in relationship to

gravity. Children should, for example, develop a feeling for how their foot becomes heavy when they stand on one leg and lift the other.

The task of the gymnastics teacher is, therefore, to place the dynamic ideal human being he or she carries in his or her soul into another person. Of course, the artistic must also play a role, since we can realize human statics or dynamics only through artistic feeling. Whereas, artistic feeling plays a major role in eurythmic sculpturing, it must precede the forms the gymnastics teacher creates statically and dynamically.

Concerning the question of breathing, it is significant that eurythmy lies closer to the breath, whereas gymnastics lies closer to the blood process. Aside from the fact that the tempo of breathing increases during the course of the exercises, something that is a physiological process, it is important that we should develop gymnastic technique in such a way that it does not affect the breathing process. We could call a gymnastics exercise incorrect if, while maintaining the proper physical position, the exercise negatively affects the breathing process. We should exclude those gymnastic exercises that disturb the breathing process, even though the body is properly held. Now that I have seen everything you are doing, it seems to me that all the breathing exercises in modern gymnastic methods are directed toward maintaining proper posture, and that breathing is treated as a reaction. I have noticed that all the things presented are directed primarily toward creating proper posture, at least to the extent it is expressed through the breathing process. That is something Swedish gymnastics for the most part takes into account. That is what I want to say about that.

In gymnastics, it is important that we take the will into account.

The teacher must, therefore, whether instinctively or intuitively, live directly into the connection between movements of the body and expressions of the will. The teacher must have a feeling for what the connection between movement and will is. In eurythmy,

there is also a development of will, but one that uses a more indirect path through inner feeling and occurs at a level where will is expressed through feeling. That is what I just referred to as character, and it is the experience of feeling in an act of will.

The gymnastics teacher works directly with the act of will, but the eurythmy teacher works with experiencing the feeling in an act of will. You can see how there is everywhere a very strict separation and we need to take that into account when developing a curriculum. Perhaps we cannot immediately do that, but we should certainly see it as our ideal. Then, from these two things we will clearly see why it is much easier for girls in eurythmy and for boys in gymnastics. Things are more clearly differentiated with boys.

For that reason, we will, in fact, have to allow the boys and girls to do their gymnastics in the same room, but in different groups. The girls can form a group for themselves and do those exercises that create a relationship between them. If we do such exercises that are modified for boys and girls, they will enjoy them more.

I think we will see that when we discuss the curriculum in detail.255 That is also true of the differences in age.

Concerning exercises with equipment, I would like to remark that we could modify the form of the equipment and make it more appropriate. In that way, at least to an extent, we can make the most common pieces of equipment not quite so bad, so we can do something with them. Although I do not want to be fanatical about this, I would also like to see that we have no climbing poles, but I don’t want to complain about them too much.

Those people who have observed what boys in the villages do when a tree is brought from the woods and placed atop a pole on a church holiday will know how valuable such climbing poles can be. Up there, a few branches remain with a small kerchief, a piece of candy, or maybe a small bottle of wine, and the boys have to climb their way up to that little tree attached to the top of the pole

255 . The gymnastics curriculum was not completed.

from which the bark has been removed. The victor is the boy who brings it down. That very strongly connects the activity of the will to the nature of the body. We do this same thing artificially with a climbing pole. It is certainly better when the children have to learn how to climb a rope. The pole has a rather limited significance in gymnastics, I would say, but I do not want to completely remove it. With the parallel and high bars, with the horse and so forth, if they are properly used, you can certainly gain something from them.

I also agree you should do the exercises, at least to an extent, by combining the different pieces of equipment, because that emphasizes what equipment exercises should achieve, namely, more presence of mind. That has a secondary effect of also strengthening the muscles. The children thus develop proper strength and elasticity.

I also agree that the high bar should be more prominent, and that it will gain that through a kind of observation, not an observation with the eyes, but through bodily feelings. One useful exercise would be to have the children swing so they must then catch the bar. They would need to hold themselves in the air. That is only an example to give the direction I am thinking of. It could be done with the hands or also with the entire arms, but the movement really becomes significant only if it is done with the arms. You could, however, allow the children to begin with their hands.

These things that allow the children to feel the device with their entire body can also give them a greater sympathy for the

equipment. That is particularly true with the high bar when the children learn to work on it with their legs. You could combine exercises with the high bar by first having them do what I mentioned above and then having them “walk” the bar with their legs dangling.

All that simply gives the spirit of the direction. I don’t think I need to speak about dead equipment and simple routine. That is the way things were, but things do not need to be routine when we emphasize this way of experiencing the equipment. The children can use their legs in wonderful ways on the bars.

I completely agree with what you said about games and sports.

Our gymnastics should lead to what you described.

We want to discuss the gymnastics curriculum at the next opportunity. Then, we will also consider the temperaments at various ages.

The school doctor: Some of the anemic older girls often become tired easily.

Dr. Steiner: This is where the pathology and therapy of gymnastics begins. What you have termed “gymnastics pain” arises because the process between the blood and the muscles in such children leads to the crystallization of uric acid. What is important is that we combat this nearly inorganic metabolic process through diet.

That is, of course, a task only when we see that gymnastics tires the children beyond a certain degree. At that point, we need to try therapy. Through gymnastics we can most easily see whether a child is healthy or not. If you wanted to determine whether someone will have gout in three years, you could have that person do some physical exercise, and if he or she shows some kind of gout-like feelings, that person will most certainly have gout within three years. Today, when children are so malnourished, many of them will have such symptoms because the process between the blood and muscles no longer functions properly.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to do something.

Mrs. R. gave me a donation. I have discussed the matter with her, and these million Marks should be used to start a fund so that something can be done about the children’s nutrition. I would like to see these million Marks she gave used to improve the children’s health. We should create such a fund, and this could be its foundation.

A teacher asks about how to occupy the children during breaks and on field trips.

Dr. Steiner: The question of children’s play is certainly appropriate.

We should not overdo play since it could soften the children. It is valid to object if there is insufficient time for play, but we could also make a valid objection now. Nevertheless, I would say that it is not sufficient to speak just about play. When the children need a break, what is important is to allow them to sit. First, they need to sit and eat. They need to be able to occupy themselves with that, but quite consciously and with real appetite. When they have fully satisfied their hunger, you can allow them to play, as you have done. If you lead this activity, you must try to see to it that they eat as slowly as possible, so that they use the time available for eating to savor every bite.

Games where the children just crawl around are not very good.

Children’s play should require their attention, and their games should offer them some enjoyment. What you have described gives them some enjoyment because of their anticipation.

Amusement is necessary in games. You also need to be sure the children drink, so they have fluid throughout their bodies before you continue the field trips. There is no harm in allowing them to drink when they sit down during a break. During the break, they should begin with eating, and drink at the end. The time in between should be amusing, so that their souls are occupied with anticipation, with solving a problem, with excitement or disappointment. That is how we should include the element of

entertainment. What you are doing now is simply boring. Sports are not particularly exciting, they are actually boring. In games, we need to avoid being like the English. Our games should not be influenced by the West. They should be healthy, entertaining games.

I certainly do not want to imply that the old games are very good simply because they come from older times. They need to be replaced. Blind Man’s Bluff or such things are the right thing. Or, A-Tisket, A-Tasket. In other words, games that do not require a lot of effort, but that are amusing. When the children are resting, they should first have something good to eat. I would also have them stretch, or perhaps sing. After they have played for a while, they could sing, have something to drink, and end the break.

A teacher asks about marching and singing.

Dr. Steiner: These military or war-like games can be done in a healthy way if they are done artistically. What was done where I grew up was pure nonsense. Someone composed some sentences, and then two from the group of children shouted out one sentence. The others standing further away could no longer understand what was said. We need to drop things like that. On the other hand, if we connect something genuinely rhythmic with walking as a group or with marching, that is quite proper. When art plays a part, you can allow people to do something as a group, allow them to think together, or something of that sort. It is important that there is no fooling around. Playing Cowboys and Indians and so forth is healthy if it is done with spirit. We can differentiate among all those things, between play at the right time and sport. Healthy play occupies you with something you enjoy because of the movement in healthy thinking and feeling. Sports are so bad because you simply move without any thinking, and thus become lazy in your thinking. People want to do things so they do not have to be mobile in their thought and feeling. It would

be good if we could remove from our bodies those things that exist in the English-speaking world due to their belief in sports.

A question is asked about cooking outdoors.

Dr. Steiner: That is good to do since it extends mealtime, that is, it extends the time used for eating. There is nothing better. When you take the children outside, you should extend their mealtime during rest period as far as possible. It is best if you make them as uncomfortable as possible, so that they have to make some effort.

A teacher: Should we have swimming in school?

Dr. Steiner: That would hurt nothing and could be quite good.

However, I think that for technical as well as scheduling reasons, it would not be possible. We need to do what is possible under present circumstances.

The gymnastics teacher: Could we arrange to have showers?

Dr. Steiner: That would be good. The only problem then is that when it becomes known that a child is lacking in that area, then people think that the child has to be bathed. If we had showers, we would have to avoid that kind of negative thought, but that is, of course, often difficult to do. If we had a boarding school, we could do all sorts of such valuable things. I have, however, found no way of avoiding such negative thoughts. We should see to it, however, that the children come to school properly dressed and washed. There would be no negative opinions if we required children to come to school clean and well-kept. In such cases, there is sometimes something pathological present. There are people who cannot avoid looking dirty and smelling bad even when they are washed. I would agree to having showers, but we would have to find some way to connect it with a moral perspective.

A teacher: Should I take up Virgil in Latin? Perhaps the Fourth Song of the Aeneid.

Dr. Steiner: That would be very good if you could connect it with other things. Very good indeed.

Thursday, March 8, 1923, 5:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We want to take a look at how things should run.

They decide upon a provisional assignment of subjects for the coming school year.

Dr. Steiner: We have always divided the subjects beginning with the ninth grade, so that the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades have separate subjects. We have had some difficulties in that regard, and I would ask you to look into them. We are still missing eight hours of ancient languages since we are missing one teacher.

Tittmann is coming to teach modern languages. If possible, I would like to have Dr. Lehrs teach mathematics and natural sciences for the higher grades. I think that Lehrs could also teach Latin for the lower grades. He has much goodwill and is also very capable in mathematics and physics, so I think he will do well here.

We have still not decided upon the 1a, 1b, and 3b classes. Miss Bernhardi could still take over one of the lower grades, and we are also considering two other ladies. For the upper grades, we will need to find some way of unburdening the teachers. In any event, we will still have Tittmann and Lehrs.

Now I can think about other things. In handwork, I am thinking of Miss Christern. Mrs. Baumann will not return until fall. Mrs.

Fels will continue with her class. The question now is whether the one more teacher can handle remaining periods.

Marie Steiner: I would suggest Miss Wilke.

Dr. Steiner: She could teach for the time being and replace Mrs.

Husemann who had been substituting for Mrs. Baumann.

Aside from the question of scheduling, I would like to know if there are any other wishes.

A teacher: The twelfth grade are anxious about their examinations.

Dr. Steiner: We still need to discuss the schedule for the twelfth grade. It would be good if someone got a description of the standard college preparatory teaching goals for the twelfth grade.

I would then arrange the class plan so that we could promise people—of course, they could always fail, we cannot guarantee anything.

The difficulty is that there is much too much lecturing, and in spite of the fact that we have often discussed this, you are still not having the students participate enough. We therefore need to be certain that the students in the twelfth grade participate more. We cannot say they are incapable, but what they have learned doesn’t stick to them strongly enough for them to get past their anxiety about the upcoming examinations. They cannot get past their anxiety. Those wonderful lectures are quite nice for the students, but they do not retain them.

It would be a good idea if you gave me the standard teaching goals for the eleventh and twelfth grades when I am here tomorrow, so we can see how things actually are. We need to see if we can help the children past their anxiety.

We have no reason to have a thirteenth grade as they do in Bavaria.256 Imagine the problems we would have if we had to say we needed a thirteenth grade.

I don’t think the question of the examination problem will change. We will, however, have to limit our lecturing and allow the students to participate more.

A teacher asks about admitting the students to anthroposophical lectures.

Dr. Steiner: The school cannot possibly state it agrees with that.

256 . There were thirteen grades in Bavarian schools. A thirteenth year was later added in the Württemberg schools as well.

It would be difficult to keep them out according to the Society regulations, but this must not be a school question. The school could even raise an objection.

It is not a good idea that they attend Society lectures without being members. Earlier, very young members were also accepted.

It is a shame the Waldorf School cannot raise an objection, since it is actually nonsense for the middle-grade students to attend the lectures.

Marie Steiner: It seems that some of the children have witnessed the self-destructiveness present in the Society. It might be possible for the Society to object to their presence.

Dr. Steiner: It would be best if such young children did not attend things not intended for them. In the Waldorf School, we assume they do not do such things, but if we forbid it, there will be a revolution. We need to assume that the children are so occupied by the Waldorf School that they could not possibly meet the learning goals if they also attended other lectures. That is an obvious perspective. We may expect that Ch. O., now in the first grade, will be listening to anthroposophical lectures. Part of the regulations of the Anthroposophical Society is that only adults are accepted, and minors are accepted only with the approval of their parents.

Marie Steiner: How can children who are not members get in? At occasions such as this, we can certainly see how idiotic that is. It is disastrous. This is impossible.

Dr. Steiner: The school should advise against it and we need to have at least enough connection with the students that that has an effect, but we cannot simply throw out those who are already members.

A religion teacher: We are introducing the 8a and 8b classes to the Youth Service. H.R. and L.F. would like to be confirmed in the Christian Community, and that is also their parents’ desire.

Dr. Steiner: That does not concern us here. Those children who participate in the Independent Religious Instruction can be confirmed there when they have reached the required age. It is, of course, also possible that they do not want that, but if they do, why shouldn’t we allow them to participate? If they do not want to, then they do not need to. But if they want to participate in both of the youth services, we can do nothing about that. There isn’t any real difference. It’s all the same to us what occurs there. In the end, what is important is whether the children want to participate in the Sunday services. We can leave it up to the children whether they want to or not. We cannot require them to go to the Youth Service.

The answer to the question is obvious. We cannot discuss it. We have no reason to negotiate with the Free Religious Movement.

We can do what we want, and they can do what they want. The children would then have it twice. I have always understood that we do not need to worry about it because it is a question for the Free Religious Movement. We cannot stop parents from sending their children there to be confirmed. Religious instruction is not obligatory. We cannot make any draconian rules. The children will certainly stay away if we make draconian rules. Someone might participate in the Independent Religious Instruction without going to the Youth Service, but not the other way around. That girl can certainly participate in both. If she does not do something, it would not be good if she went to our Youth Service, but perhaps the father doesn’t notice that at all. It is the parents who are responsible, not us.

A teacher: One girl occasionally faints at the Sunday service.

Dr. Steiner: We should do it twice, one for each half of the children.

A teacher: The tenth and eleventh-grade children could come to the sacrament.257 Should the ninth-grade children also participate?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, they can. We can divide the Youth Service by class.

Mr. Uehli will be the main celebrant at both.

A teacher: Should B.B. receive additional instruction? Also, N.N.?

Dr. Steiner: This all began last year. Is it possible he could be handled alone? Perhaps he would realize he is not really very nice at school. Perhaps we could give him individual instruction for the remainder of the year. It looks as if that would have a purpose, but only if we were to make it so that he realized he had done something wrong here at school, so that for the weeks until Easter, he has to attend such a class. I think that he is really a very nice boy, but he is asleep. In this way, he may wake up.

There are a lot of new bright children around. The question is whether they are really so bright when you ask them to do something. Concerning N.N., he is not very good in handling money. B. needs individual instruction. I will take another look at these two boys.

A teacher asks about two students in the fourth grade who are completely incapable in foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We could ask the parents if they would forego the language class. That is something we could ask parents. In fact, that is something we can generally do for the children in the remedial class. A teacher: P.M. in the fifth grade cannot add.

Dr. Steiner: We could ask the parents if they would allow him to repeat the class.

A teacher: L.B. has been mistreated and is afraid.

Dr. Steiner: Treat her with patience.

257 . At this time (Easter 1923), the tenth and eleventh grades were the two highest classes. Later, only the eleventh and twelfth-grade students participated.

A teacher: A girl in my eighth-grade class has only attended a country school in Silesia.

Dr. Steiner: We will need to carry her along. She should remain in the class, and she will find her way.

Friday, March 30, 1923, 9:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.

This meeting took place following the Pedagogical Conference.258

Dr. Steiner: The first thing I would like to say is that we can be deeply satisfied when we look back over the previous years. The conference was extremely satisfying. The way the Waldorf School was described, the way the various subjects were presented, the way individual speakers gave their presentations, made the conference very good both inwardly and outwardly. The conference most certainly made a great impression upon the visitors. We will undoubtedly overcome the difficulties we confront, particularly the financial difficulties, through presenting such conferences, if we can just hold out long enough to reach as many people as possible.

We certainly need to be thankful to all those who worked to make the conference such an extraordinary success. We need to recognize the significant efforts you made for the conference in spite of all the work you have to do in the school during the year.

I only hope that you are not too tired to make this new school year just as good as the ending of the last. You can, of course, assume I fully support everything you have done. I particularly want to thank the people who organized the conference for their enormous work. I think the entire faculty needs to be very thankful to those individuals.

258 . See Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 2, lectures 3 and 4.

There are two things I believe are important to say now. I want to mention them to the extent that they are appropriate within the faculty. The first concerns general anthroposophical activities, and the second relates to what I believe may be important for future conferences. Nevertheless, I want to expressly emphasize that this past conference was extraordinarily successful.

The first thing I would like to say is that if we want future conferences to be successful, we will need to really understand what is going on in Stuttgart when such a conference is held. In particular, we will need to understand what happens within the Anthroposophical Society itself. If we do not understand the environment in which we live, we will run a certain risk. The Waldorf School did not create this difficult situation, but in the future we must see that the school reaches an understanding with the Society so that if the majority of participants at our next conference are anthroposophists, they will not be in the position of having no opportunity to hear anything specifically anthroposophic. That is, we must avoid having people travel a long distance to a conference where nothing is said about Anthroposophy. This completely ignores the anthroposophical movement as such. That situation clearly formed the background and significantly affected the whole conference, which was itself the result of enormous effort and sacrifice. It would, of course, have been an enormous advantage had someone asked for a specifically anthroposophical session during the conference.

Of course, the anthroposophical committee (actually, there are two) gave no thought to the fact that such meetings would be entirely appropriate, even though they knew a large number of anthroposophists would be here.259 You should have no illusions about that. A large number of people came with the justifiable expectation of meetings more connected with anthroposophy, an expectation that would be unjustifiable if the conference did not have an anthroposophic background.

You will find genuine supporters for the Waldorf School only among people who understand anthroposophy. You should not expect that the impressions of the moment will have any lasting

259 . “Actually there are two”—the board of directors (or Vorstand) of the “old”

Anthroposophical Society and that of the “independent” Anthroposophical Society.

effect on others or that this conference will not give rise to opposition, which will then be unloaded on me. Even the most wonderful conference, if we forget such things, will give rise to opposition that will be unloaded on me. Things will be better in such cases if we are careful to create an understanding within the Anthroposophical Society. Then we could show that anthroposophy exists within the school, but because of its nature, anthroposophy does not tend to turn what it creates into something specifically anthroposophical. Anthroposophy exists to make something more generally human.

Dr. Schubert emphasized that very well. If you create wonderful rules and find them to be very valuable, but then put them over a hole, you will soon find that those rules no longer exist. That is what we do not consider. We create the most beautiful things, but they exist without any foundation. The foundation must be the anthroposophical movement. We are slowly coming to the same place as the old Austrian empire when the various realms disintegrated and the empire no longer existed. We are faced with the absurdity that there are two newsletters containing absolutely nothing.260 We face the danger of the Anthroposophical Society disintegrating into a number of individual movements. We face the danger that we will have the Waldorf School, The Coming Day, and so forth, but no longer an Anthroposophical Society. In that situation, there will no longer be any interest for our movement as a whole.

We can be polite to school officials, but you should not expect any success through them. If you believe they can be a source of our success, you are creating an illusion for yourself. That is just the problem, we create illusions. That is something we should not do, or else one day we will find the most beautiful forces poised

260 . Issues No. 2 and 3, March 1923, of the Mitteilungen des Zentralvorstandes der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft (Newsletter of the central committee of the Anthroposophical Society) contained only reviews of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures.

over a hole. That is something we must avoid, something we must seriously consider. We should not limit the future of the whole movement by allowing the brilliance of such a conference to blind us.

I would also like to mention that in the future we must avoid emphasizing the negative and critical aspects too strongly. The first mention will not have much influence because the people who heard it will soon forget it unless opposition was lying dormant in their souls. That negative aspect existed in even the best lectures, and is something we must significantly reduce. I am certainly not against hitting people with a sledgehammer, but we should avoid being negative. Dr. N.’s lecture was filled with negative examples.

Such things eat away at people if they hear them repeatedly. You spoke about experience in history, but then argued horribly against documents in connection with Herman Grimm.261Grimm often stressed that we can speak about history only to the extent we have material about it. If you tell people they should base history upon inner experience and ignore documents, they will object, saying, “What does this Dr. N. know about history? He never even studied it!” Then, what you said simply collapses. (S peaking to another teacher) On the next day, you had to show that you do use documents.

In such cases, we certainly need to place documents in the proper light. You can tell people only that we must first illuminate every document. The sun that sheds light on a document cannot come from the documents themselves. If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, you give people new points of attack at each step. Without documents, you cannot do the least thing in history.

You can do nothing unless you develop a counterpoint and show

261 . Grimm states in his introduction to the second edition of Zehn ausgewählte Essays zur Einführung in das Studium der Neueren Kunst (Ten selected essays as an introduction to the study of modern art, 1883): “Study the sources and know them thoroughly in the sense of a trained historian.”

that each document has its proper value only when properly illuminated. Such negative situations are enormously detrimental because they continue to grow. It was quite good that you ( speaking to another teacher) corrected the situation in a mild way. It was necessary to say that an error had occurred, so that you could present the whole thing as a complete picture. It needed to be corrected from a different perspective. You seem to have been quite near, but could not say something positive about the documents. You should have done that.

Another thing that was a kind of error was to try to enliven the discussion of religion in the lecture “The Artistic Element in Religion Class.” You didn’t say anything in the lecture about the artistic presentation of religion, so the title was not justified. You didn’t connect the discussion about teaching religion with that.

Such things simply have a negative effect.

We must make a serious effort to avoid such negative situations.

I intentionally wrote an essay about Richard Wahle262 because I wanted to show how the Anthroposophical Society should interact with the rest of the world, both verbally and in writing. I wrote that essay to illustrate the attitude we should have. When you read the essay, I would ask you to recognize that it handles the question of how we should orient ourselves when working with people in the world outside.

We have to take the positive things into account also; otherwise we will never get past our illusions. It is destructive to work with illusions, and we cannot permit ourselves to be devoted to them in our judgments. We need to be clear that we can move forward only through people who come to us as spiritual virgins. We can move forward only with such people. If you think all of your politeness can change the opinion of a school official, then you

262 . See Steiner’s essay “Meine ‘Zustimmung’ zu Richard Wahle’s ‘Erkenntnistheorie und Anthroposophie’” (My “agreement” with Richard Wahle’s “Theory of knowledge and Anthroposophy”), March 1922, in Die Drei, vol. 2, no. 12.

have one of the strongest illusions, one that can be terribly harmful. It is important that you keep people’s good intentions, but have no illusion that they will help you. At best, they may help in externalities by not forbidding that you do something. We might summarize the school officials’ impression as, “Things are not so bad at the Waldorf School. It, of course, represents things we believe in.” If you think that opinion is true, then we should close the Waldorf School tomorrow. It would not have been necessary to have started it at all.

You must have no illusion. It is easy to criticize. You do not need to avoid criticizing, but you should allow the criticism to result in something positive. It is important to use these things we learn clairvoyantly to illuminate these things that approach us from outside. If you understand the intent of Truth and Science, you will find that reality lies in the interpenetration of perception and the results of human activity.

Well, that is what has happened recently, at least to the extent that the Waldorf School is affected, and I want to do everything to bring our movement forward. What we need, however, is some kind of communication with the central directors, in the normal sense of the word, about anthroposophical work. That is slowly disappearing in spite of the fact that important members of the committee are on the faculty. You seem to forget you are anthroposophists the instant you become Waldorf teachers. That is not acceptable.

The major failing of the conference was that no one thought of doing something for these anthroposophists who had traveled here from afar and to whom we should have brought something more anthroposophical. It is very curious that we are approached from all sides to convey something about anthroposophy. It is really so; I couldn’t take a step without someone saying something, and those who volunteered to direct such activities did nothing to meet the concrete wishes of members of the Society. On the contrary, they did not even take their own wishes into account.

They certainly have wishes themselves. That would change immediately if the various streams, such as the pedagogical, suddenly shifted toward the other side. Now that we have finished the conference, we need to be conscious about taking that into account in the future.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: Now we need to make a final decision about the classes.

The main problems are the 1a and 1b classes. Before Miss Hofmann can continue her work here in the Waldorf School, she will need a year to recover.263 She cannot use her strength here until she has recuperated for a year. I therefore propose that Dr.

von Heydebrand take over the 1a class. I believe that is also her desire. I think we can resolve such problems in this way. The question of who teaches the classes needs to be considered by the whole faculty. I would ask that you say everything you have to say about who teaches each class, both for and against. In the case of Dr. von Heydebrand, there is, of course, no “for” or “against.”

Everyone will be happy if she takes over the 1a class.

Are there any proposals for 1b? I ask that all of you say what you have to say, since the faculty as a whole needs to agree with who teaches each class.

There is some discussion about Miss N.

Dr. Steiner: Much of the problem lies in the fact that you cannot speak. You can never teach in that way. You really need to get used to the idea of taking a course in speech. You did not complete last year because of the way you present yourself, how you used to present yourself. You cannot speak. When you stand in front of the class that way, you will never finish. Z. says something about that.

263 . Miss Hofmann had been a substitute teacher.

Dr. Steiner: That is true for many. Mr. Z. does not understand that because he has developed a language for himself that works right down into the fibers. You should not underestimate what a difference working to develop your speech makes. If someone does it instinctively, as you do, and it is certainly positive that your voice is so effective, then you should not be surprised that the subject comes up here. Miss N. will have difficulties as long as she does not accept the need of taking a course in proper speaking.

( Speaking to Mr. Z. ) Your speech carries, and so much depends upon the speech. ( Speaking to Miss N. ) You will see that you will have a completely different attitude after you have taken some instruction in speech. The one you have now gives the children the impression you are a dried-up old lady. That is what is important.

Mr. Z. makes the impression of a lively young man. Why shouldn’t we say such things? So much depends upon these things in pedagogy. You need to get used to them if you are to make any progress in putting aridness aside.

If you took some good speech instruction, you would not have as many colds. I am not at all surprised. Do not underestimate the hygienic influence proper speech can have. Being able to speak properly is very significant. As long as you cannot use your organs of speech properly and one thing runs into another, as long as you do not properly cultivate your organs of speech, you will have colds. I think it is terrible that so many of you have colds. If people would properly “onion” themselves264 by learning how to speak, colds would disappear.

Marie Steiner: Proper speech often helps getting past colds, but not always.

264 . Chopped-onion compresses are said to be an effective remedy for some cold and earache symptoms. — TRANS.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the fact is that we really need to do something in this direction. I don’t mean that in a moral sense, but aesthetically.

There is a discussion about whether Miss N. could or should stay at the Waldorf School. Some of the teachers object to her teaching.

Miss N.: I would find it most valuable if you, Dr. Steiner, would say something.

Dr. Steiner: I already said what I think. If things continue in this way, then we will have enormous difficulties. I would like you to recall, however, that what happens to A could also happen to B. I think that if we continue with this depressing way of looking at things, we could close.

The general opinion has been that I should select the teachers.

We should continue with that, but now the problem is that although that opinion has not changed in fact, it has changed in feeling, in how we look at the situation. I may have to pose the question now of whether the faculty members want to select the teachers themselves.

On the other hand, today’s discussion has not changed the fact that it may be better if you were to go to C. I think that might be better. It is not easy to overcome such a mood. That just occurred to me.

It is too bad. How can we make a decision when you want to discuss everything within the faculty? This could happen to anyone tomorrow. In deciding who will take a position here at the Waldorf School, there are so many things to consider that are no longer the same thing when they are spoken in words. It is really very difficult to do when things are said such as, “A person is completely unfit to teach a class.” That is something that could happen to someone else tomorrow, and should not happen here. One such case is enough. It is terribly sad that we have even one such case. I do not think it is completely unfounded, though. Miss N. has been unable to gain the sympathy of a number of colleagues, not just in the

question concerning her class. That, however, could happen to any of you.

For those who have experienced the things I have, this may be an interesting story. In Vienna there was a lecturer, Lorenz, who was appointed as the rector, and who then gave a speech about Aristotle’s view of politics.265 He was now God. His predecessor was a theologian. The assistant rector was very much disliked for a speech he had given in the state assembly. The students decided to stamp him out.266 This situation was now presented to the rector for a decision. Lorenz went into the class and was greeted with, “Rise.” 267 He said, “Gentlemen, your ‘rise’ is quite insignificant to me. Your ‘rise’ is quite unimportant to me after you have trampled out a man who, regardless of his political opinion, is such a scientific great, someone standing far above me.” Then the students shouted, “Die, Lorenz!” You can learn a great deal from this story.

The question is, therefore, who will take over the 1b class.

Perhaps we should leave it open for now.

Dr. Steiner reviews the teaching schedule for the 1923–1924 school year and makes a number of decisions.

Dr. Steiner (speaking to one of the teachers): You need to go on vacation for a year. I cannot take the responsibility for your taking a leave due to illness and then reappearing here shortly afterward. When you have been as sick as you were, then you were so sick that I would ask you to go on vacation for a year. Since you participated

265 . Ottokar Lorenz, 1832–1904, historian. See Steiner’s lecture “Autobiographical Sketch” of Feb. 4, 1913, Mercury Press, 1985.

266 . The students were seated in a lecture hall that had a wooden, tiered floor.

“Stamping out” means to stamp one’s feet on the floor, which became very loud until the speaker simply gave up and left. — TRANS.

267 . Each class had an appointed representative who would call the class to order when a teacher or speaker entered. In this case “Rise” was not only a signal that the class should stand, but also an honorific salutation. — TRANS.

in the pedagogical conference, it is clear you could have waited to take your sick leave. I am affronted by the fact that you went away and caused so much confusion, then returned and participated in the conference; I cannot say I have very much trust that you will be able to take up your teaching at the beginning of school. I can only suggest that you take a year off. The whole thing is a ridiculous situation.

I have to say that from my perspective, the situation was such a major disappointment that I no longer believe you will be able to teach successfully. This is not a severe rebuke. The work here in the Waldorf School is not a game. We cannot allow people to take things lightly.

You can see that it is not easy for me to take up a second case.

Of course, we had to bow to health, but then you must want to become healthy again. It is not a harsh decision to ask you to go on leave for a year.

Anyone can attack me through their personal ambition.

Everyone can trample around on me. Those are things I don’t discuss with others. Before 1918, I did not need to speak in that way. Things are terribly misused. This is no harsh rule. It was enormously foolish for you to come again. You really need to gain some strength, and you should not undertake such foolish things again. Were you to continue to teach as you have, I could have no trust. The events have shown that you needed to leave, but then you come back at a time when it is silly to return.

I know those sayings. When people want to come to such a conference, they say it is terribly important. You need to be clear that I can do nothing more than say you need to recuperate for a year. I do not understand why you find that so difficult. You need to get used to undertaking things conscientiously and to feeling responsibility, and not simply skip recuperating because you want to hear certain things now. If you have something important to do, you should also be careful with your health. I am saying that in a very decent way and have good intentions toward you.

Nevertheless, you need a year’s leave. ( Speaking to one of the upper-grade elementary-school teachers) There is a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction with you. A whole group of parents think that you are rude and that the children cannot handle the way you present yourself. That saddened me because I thought the way you taught botany was very good. It is difficult, because people do not see that things come from various directions.

A teacher: I will try to improve that.

Dr. Steiner: I think you should not be too childish in the way you present things to illustrate the subject. It seems to me that you underestimate the children’s souls. You do not live with their souls at the stage in which they now exist. You need to teach without presenting things too childishly.

I wonder if we need to change things in the ninth grade so that we no longer have the normal main lesson. The eighth grade is really the last year of elementary school. In the following grades, we change teachers. It is a question whether we can continue. Let’s take a look at the teachers.

Dr. Steiner discusses in detail the teaching schedule, the subjects, and the class schedule.

Dr. Steiner: In the upper grades a thorough review of mathematics268 would be included in main lesson. Two hours would be enough for that. If the mathematics teacher takes over the main lesson, then we do not need more time for review.

( Concerning a new teacher) X. will come and be integrated here so that he is not ruined by having to go through the Stuttgart system.

It would be good if he could jump in wherever we need a replacement in academic subjects. First of all, we would then have a substitute teacher, and second, he might effectively take over teaching academic subjects in the upper grades. He would have to

268 . See the faculty meeting of October 28, 1922.

be guided if he were to take over such a class. We could achieve some kind of relief if we used him to continue what was introduced by one of you teaching a core subject. Otherwise, we could not develop new teachers. This is something that might work well. The problem with these subjects is that there is not enough time for preparation; the teachers are simply not well enough prepared.

That is the situation. We can only improve that if you are relieved.

I would like to have X. here for that reason, but there is an additional reason. X. may really achieve something someday. I don’t see that the Research Institute is in such a condition that we should send him there. If we did, he would only stand around. We cannot afford to simply throw young people away when we can include them here. He will do something. That needs to be our standpoint, as then we can properly fill out the positions for teaching academic subjects.

A teacher says something.

Dr. Steiner: ( During the discussion concerning hiring somebody to teach humanities) Could your wife take over teaching the humanities in the ninth grade? I have not proposed that as yet, because I thought she had too much to do with the children. We cannot allow it to become common that man and wife are both employed here.

When the children are no longer in diapers, it would be a good idea if she could take over literary history and history.

We need to fulfill other conditions when we are under the pressure of having to prepare the twelfth grade for their final examinations. In that case, the teaching has to be very concentrated. We will have to take up the question of final examinations soon. We will have to ask the students questions in such a way that they can easily fail.

The best thing would be if we were in a position to work only with those students who really want to take the final examination.

This final examination question is really a burden for us, but there

will probably not be very many who really want to take it. Are there many girls who want to take the final examination?

A teacher: In the other upper grades, there are many who want to go into eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Then they should not take the final examination. When the eurythmy school is halfway established, we will have to form eurythmy more completely.12 It cannot remain the way it is now, but will have to be more completely developed. When someone wants to become a ballet dancer, she must undergo training for seven years. We also need to have some supplementary subjects.

In time, it will be absolutely necessary to have a genuinely human education there. Related arts such as dance and mime will also have to be taught. If the eurythmy school is to be successful, we must develop it further. Such training will most certainly need five years.

We cannot afford to just wildly produce eurythmists. Those who are later to become teachers certainly need to have a complete education. They need to know something about the human being, also. They will need an education in literary history, for example.

Slowly, we will have to develop a proper curriculum.

The question now is whether we could free those who are to become eurythmists from those classes they do not want to take.

They could then go over to the eurythmy school and learn there.

It would be best if we did not split the curriculum at the Waldorf School with eurythmy. We would have to do things so that when there is a split, those who are moving on would not take the final examination. That is, those who want to have further education in art could not take Latin and Greek.

A teacher asks if the twelfth grade should learn bookbinding and working with gold leaf.

Dr. Steiner: It would be wonderful if we could continue with that.

12. See the faculty meeting of June 12, 1920.

Tuesday, April 24, 1923, 4:30–7:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I think it would be good if we took care of the formal things today. If there is still something to say about the beginning of school, it might be better to do that after we have taken care of the formal things. We will probably need to meet again tomorrow to speak about the beginning of school from a more spiritual perspective. Today, I think we should try to take care of the various needs that have arisen from the faculty.

The classes and the foreign language classes are assigned.

Dr. Steiner: The question now is if anyone has a particular wish regarding these assignments.

Changes are made to meet some expressed desires.

A teacher: I would like to ask if we can define an order of presentation for art. I thought that I would begin tomorrow in the ninth grade with those things connected with the curriculum as a whole, that is, related to history and literary history. I want to show how art arose from mythology.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to bring the art class into step with history and literary history. You could try to make a transition from Germanic mythology to art and then remain with that for a time.

Then, perhaps you could show how the Germanic myths reappear in a different artistic form as aesthetics. You could certainly show, for example, the connection between Dürer and German mythology. They are fifteenyear-old children. You could use this

as an occasion to show how the old Germans painted their gods just as Dürer painted his figures later.

You could then go on into the tenth grade, since the curriculum depends upon the previous year. In the tenth grade, we have

Goethe’s poems and style, and that can stay. In the eleventh grade, summarize music and poetry.

Dr. Steiner confirms the teacher’s understanding about art instruction in the previous grades. The same teacher now proposes artistically treating what is done in the twelfth-grade German class, literature beginning in 1740, in preparation for the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: Then, we would no longer need a special literary history class. We need to see to it that the students learn the things they may be asked. In connection with modern literary history, they will certainly be asked about things that began with Gottsched and Bodmer and what followed them. German and art class can certainly cover the same material.

In order not to make compromises, I think it would be good to recognize that a large number of Goethe’s works are based upon impressions of paintings, and also that we can trace back much romantic art to musical impressions. Try to develop how the arts are intertwined.

An essay by Burdach, “Schiller’s Chordrama und die Geburt des tragischen Stiles aus der Musik” (Schiller’s choral drama and the birth of the tragic style from music) in the Deutschen Rundschau (German review) is mentioned.269

Dr. Steiner: Burdach’s research has a problem in that it has an underlying tendency. He wants to show that somehow certain themes arise out of some primal forces, and then he follows them further. This is really very contrived. Schiller was certainly not as dependent upon earlier streams as Burdach claims. We certainly cannot ignore Schiller’s dramatic experimentation and the fact that he created a choral drama after many attempts. In Demetrius, he created a romantic drama in a style much like Shakespeare’s. You cannot ignore the details Burdach cites, since they may be useful.

269 . Konrad Burdach (1859–1936), German language scholar.

However, you will probably arrive at a different conclusion, probably that Schiller would have created something quite different from The Bride of Messina had he really swum in that stream.

That essay belongs with the series of things Burdach has produced. He has an idée fixe. He wants to show that a theme arises out of a subhuman source. All these things are similar, so you need to be cautious with Burdach. He also wrote other things where he derives the minstrel from Arabic provincials by finding the original impulse in the middle of the Middle Ages and using it as the beginning of the literary stream. Faust and Moses also belong in this group, as do Shakespeare’s dramas.

A teacher speaks about his tenth-grade class in Western history and Middle High-German literature.

Dr. Steiner: You need to do that harmoniously. Even if you do not like the material, we have to begin with what you have already done as a basis. There is nothing from the present we could use as a basis. We have to use an older historical picture as our basis and then present our perspective as history. Couldn’t you use Heeren as a basis?270 You could just as well take Rotteck, though he is a little bit old-fashioned and one-sided.271 It would also be good if you brought out the correspondences with artistic styles. Young people today could learn a tremendous amount if you were to read some chapters from Johannes Müller’s Vierundzwanzig Bücher allgemeiner Geschichte (Twenty-four books of history) with them.

That is historical style, almost like Tacitus. Such attempts to work in a unified way have been made time and again, something that needs to be renewed from our perspective.

If you lean too heavily upon geology, you are in danger of taking the basement, leaving out the ground floor, and then taking the

270 . Arnold Hermann Heeren (1760–1842).

271 . Karl von Rotteck (1775–1840).

second floor, whereas you should actually begin with what geology offers for historical themes, such as the Great Migrations and dependence upon territory. My public lectures in Stuttgart could be helpful for that.272 Of course, you cannot present that in class.

It was intended for enlightened older people in Stuttgart. You will need to translate it for the students and, in the future, be sure to leave out the Chymical Wedding.

If you begin preparing for this now and immediately begin with literature, you will have to use something like Heeren, Rotteck, or Johannes Müller. It is certainly not right to transform history into religious history alone. That is something for the religion teachers.

I will give you the curriculum tomorrow.

A teacher: Where should I begin in this class?

Dr. Steiner: You said yourself you wanted to begin with the dependence upon the Earth. Therefore, you should take the climates of the various regions, today’s cold and temperate zones, and geological formations as a basis for history. Show how a people changed when they moved from the mountains down into the valleys, but do all this from a historical perspective, not a geographical one, so that you speak about a particular people during a particular period. Show, for example, why the Greeks became Greeks. Here, you could use Heeren as a guide. What is important is that things be done properly.

A teacher ( who is to take over teaching history and German in the ninth grade) : I would like some guidance for ninth-grade history. What should I particularly emphasize?

Dr. Steiner: You need to deepen their understanding.

272 . See Steiner’s lecture of March 10, 1920, “The People’s of the Earth in the Light of Anthroposophy,” Anthroposophical Quarterly, vol. 3, 1928.

The previous class teacher: In the eighth grade I presented history in pictures and biographies. I particularly emphasized cultural history in the nineteenth century.

Dr. Steiner: According to our curriculum, the children in the eighth and ninth grades should gain a picture of the inner historical themes, the major movements. They should learn how the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought an enlarged viewpoint to human beings, an increase in all directions, geography and astronomy. They should learn how that played out historically.

Then they should learn how the effects of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century enlightenment played out in history and how, in the nineteenth century, the integration of peoples and nations had an effect. Taking each century, you can present the facts from these perspectives.

Regarding your preparation, it would be very good if you could create a picture for yourself of what story would result if Schiller’s History of the Thirty Years War were continued to the present time, that is, what modern history would be like. In regard to Middle Europe, Treitschke’s summaries are very good. 273 In the first chapter of his German History, he brought all the threads together.

A teacher wants to begin the twelfth grade with series and then go on to integral and differential calculus.

Dr. Steiner: Differential and integral calculations are not really demanded. If you want to do this efficiently, you can begin integration earlier, and use series to explain both. I would try to get far enough that the students can use differential and integral computations with curves. That is sufficient for the final examination. If the students can work with second-and third-degree equations, that is enough. The problems that will be given are published.

273 . Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896).

Dr. Steiner learns that there are also more difficult problems.

Dr. Steiner: I would certainly like to know what is left to learn at college. There is really not much more. In any event, you can begin tomorrow with series.

A teachers asks about chemical formulas.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to find out what is required for the final examination. That is the problem; we start making these compromises, but we need to go far enough that the students can pass the final examination. This is terrible.

There would be some sense in it if they at least used stereometric formulas, but they mostly use planar formulas, which is quite senseless. The students need to know the processes. All this is senseless and very sad, but we have to take it into account.

Tomorrow, we can meet again at the same time to discuss questions concerning the curriculum, but for now I would like to take care of any other questions and desires.

A teacher asks about texts for English. Dickens’s Christmas Carol is too difficult for the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You can be certain that you can read Dickens with children who know almost nothing, and what they need to learn, they can quite easily pick up. Tell them how the story goes on.

Perhaps you could solve the problem if you first told the children about the content and selected some simpler excerpts for them to read. You can certainly overcome such difficulties. These texts are the very best for those children who cannot read English.

An eighth-grade teacher: E.B. is not very happy with me.

A teacher: One of his comrades would like to be in your class because it is more artistic.

Dr. Steiner: You could exchange the two.

There are problems with the class schedule, and the religion classes are too large.

Dr. Steiner: It cannot be any different than last year. There must be some way of solving the scheduling problem. I cannot imagine that we cannot solve it. There should be no more than fifty students in a religion class.

A teacher asks about a deaf-and-dumb child in the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: She is not deaf. She can hear and can also be taught to speak. She is only a little slow. She does not respond, so you wil simply have to try everything. You need to say something slowly, then have her speak it after you. Continue in that way; first speak slowly, then increase the speed so that she gradually needs to understand things more quickly. You could also do the exercise by speaking loudly, then having her speak softly, and then the other way around. You could do it slowly and have her do it quickly. Do variations of that. If possible, use a series of words that have some connection. Do them forward and backward in order to develop the center of speech. I would also have her do the curative eurythmy exercises connected with the head. She should do them daily, even if for only a short time.

( Speaking to the school doctor) She should also receive edelweiss at 6X potency, which is an effective means for healing the connection between the hearing nerves and the hearing center. It has a strong effect and is effective even when the hearing organs are hardened.

The hardening has a relationship to edelweiss; it absorbs the flowers. You will find that the relationships that exist within this mineral, but not mineralized, material are within the flower also, and that they have an extreme similarity to the processes that constitute the hearing organ. We have used this remedy for ten years. Be sure to soak the flowers well first.

A teacher asks about decorating the room for religious services.

Dr. Steiner: For the time being, the room can remain as it is.

Wednesday, April 25, 1923, 4:30 –7:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, our main problem is that we must give up the Waldorf School ideal for the twelfth grade. We cannot base the twelfth-grade curriculum upon our principles. We simply have to admit that we must take all the subjects in other high schools into account during the final year. I am looking with some horror at the last semester, when we will have to ignore everything except the subjects required for the final examination. It’s inconceivable that we can work any other way if the students are to pass the final examination. This is really a problem. After thinking about it a long time, I do not think there is much to say about the curriculum for that class except those things we already considered, such as chemical technology and such.

The students are about eighteen, and at that age it is best if they attain an overall understanding of history and art. We should give them an understanding of the spirit of literature, art, and history without, of course, teaching them about anthroposophy. We must try to bring them the spirit in those subjects, not only in the content but also in the way we present them. With the students, we should at least try to achieve what I have striven for with the workers in Dornach, pictures that make it clear that, for instance, an island like Great Britain swims in the sea and is held fast by the forces of the stars.274 In actuality, such islands do not sit directly upon a foundation; they swim and are held fast from outside. In general, the cosmos creates islands and continents, their forms and locations. That is certainly the case with firm land. Such things are the result of the cosmos, of the stars. The Earth is a reflection of

274 . See Steiner’s lecture of April 21, 1923, in The Nature of Christianity, manuscript.

the cosmos, not something caused from within. However, we need to avoid such things. We cannot tell them to the students because they would then need to tell them to their professors in the examinations, and we would acquire a terrible name. Nevertheless, that is actually what we should achieve in geography.

In physics and chemistry, we should try to cover every principle that reveals the whole system of chemistry and physics as an organism, a unity, and not simply an aggregate as most people assume. With the twelfth grade, we have a kind of conclusion, and we must draw conclusions everywhere. We must give answers to the questions that arise, for instance, in mineralogy, where the five Platonic solids manifest. We should do that when we study minerals and crystals.

In art, we can only continue what we previously did in music, sculpture, and painting. That can never be concluded.

Unfortunately, we can do none of that. The only new thing we can do is one hour of chemical technology. Elsewhere, we will need to make sure that we simply bring the students far enough along that they can answer the questions on the final examination.

This is terrible, but there is nothing we can do to avoid it.

However, we should follow our curriculum as exactly as possible until the students are fourteen. As far as possible, I would ask you to consider up to that year all the things that have fallen by the way. We need to strictly carry out the curriculum until the students are fourteen.

I am telling you all this so that you will know how you would need to think were it possible to apply the principles of the Waldorf School with eighteen-year-old students. Eighteen-yearolds need to understand the various historical periods in a living way, particularly regarding the “getting younger” of humanity.275

That would have an important influence upon people. In the

275 . Steiner spoke of this mostly in 1917; see, for example, Aspects of Human Evolution, lectures 1, 2, 3, and 7.

oldest periods of humanity, people could feel the development of their souls until the age of sixty. Following the Mystery of Golgotha, they could feel it only until the age of thirty-three, and today that is possible only until twenty-seven. Students need to comprehend this ongoing decrease before they begin their studies at an institution of higher learning. It is something that belongs in the general education in a Waldorf school and would have a tremendously beneficial effect upon the students’ souls.

The situation is as follows. When we look at the learning goals of the twelfth grade, we need to imagine that the students will continue at a college, and we also need to imagine that they have completed their general education. We can find our teaching goals in the following circumstances. Today, you can represent anthroposophy to the world such that people with sound human feeling can understand it. (Sound human understanding does not exist today.) They can understand it through feeling. Today, however, if those who have gone through a modern high-school education do not have a particular predisposition, it is impossible for them to comprehend certain anthroposophical truths. Today, they have hardly any possibility of understanding such things.

If you consider Kolisko’s chemistry, it is clear that it is unimaginable for modern chemists.276 You can teach students that kind of imaginative capacity until the age of eighteen or nineteen, that is, until the completion of the moon cycle, which then begins again. If people are to comprehend certain concepts, they must achieve a particular development during that period.

Compared to other people today, you are all a little crazy. You all have something that sets you apart from the current general development, something that is present to a greater or lesser extent in each of you. You have a certain kind of eccentricity. You are, in a certain way, not quite normal. Those who are normal, that is, “normal people,” cannot understand some things. Chemists with

276 . See the faculty meeting of October 6, 1922.

a normal education cannot understand Kolisko’s chemistry. They simply have no concepts for it. Our goal should be to make that understanding possible for our students. However, we cannot achieve that when we are forced to work toward ruining brains in exactly the same way that modern schools work toward that goal.

Souls cannot be ruined. They undergo a self-correction before the next earthly life, although if things remain as they are today and continue into the next earthly life, humanity will degenerate. We cannot do these things. It is simply impossible.

Even people like Herman Grimm could maintain themselves upon their islands only by brusquely brushing away certain concepts. People like him simply went past others, but they were the last who had such concepts. Those people, who were quite old during the 1890s, were the last who had them, and that possibility died with them.

It is particularly difficult with today’s youth. Today’s young people, as we have seen quite clearly in our anthroposophical youth movement, have a tendency to reject all ideas. They are not interested in ideas and, therefore, to the extent that they do not accept anthroposophy, become disorganized. Today’s young people are forced into a terrible tragedy, particularly if they are academically inclined and have gone through our college preparatory schools. We can achieve more for those students who go into practical life at the age of fourteen.

It is impossible, for example, to develop a spatial concept as I described it in the recent teachers’ course in Dornach, that is, the three dimensions, up-down, left-right, front-back.277 That is why it is so difficult to give people an understanding of anthroposophical truths. No one today is interested in things for which there should be broad public interest. I have said that everything connected with the will works three-dimensionally in

277 . See The Child’s Changing Consciousness As the Basis of Pedagogical Practice, lecture

1.

the earthly realm. Everything connected with feeling is not three-dimensional, but two-dimensional, so that when you move from willing to feeling in your soul, you have to project the third dimension onto the plane in a direction that corresponds with front to back. We need to remember that we cannot simply—we can reduce it to the symmetry of the human being, but we cannot limit it to only that. This plane is two-dimensional everywhere— thinking then leads to one dimension and the I to zero dimensions.

When we do that, the situation becomes quite clear. Now I ask you, how can such elementary things be presented in a lecture?

There is simply no possibility of making that plausible to the modern public. No one is interested in it.

It would certainly be wonderful if, for example, in addition to the normal perspective of orthogonals, planes, and centers, people understood perspectives of three dimensions to two, from two dimensions to one, and then from one to the zero dimension. It would be wonderful if people could do that so that we could differentiate a point in many ways.

I am telling you all these things so that you can see how things need to be in the future and how we should form a school that would really educate people. Today, socalled educated people are really very undeveloped because today’s students are required to know many things in a certain way, but they really need to know them in a quite different way. I think we should try to do as much of that as possible in the lower grades, but in the upper grades, we must be untrue to our own principles, at least for the most part.

We can only include one thing or another here and there.

Even someone like J.W. can say to me that she would take the final examination if she thought she would pass. I told her that would be sensible only if she is certain she will pass. If she failed, it would not be good for the school.

The worst thing is that if we could convince the state to accept our reports, our students could very well follow a course of study at the university with what they would learn from our curriculum.

Everything connected with the final examination, which causes such misery in modern school life, is absolutely unnecessary for studying at the university. Students could take up Kolisko’s chemistry as a subject. They would at first be surprised by chemical formulas, of course, but they could learn that later. It is much more important that they understand the inner processes of materials and the relationships between them. These are the things I wanted to say. I would like to discuss this whole question further. I would have completed the curriculum, but it has no meaning for the twelfth grade. We already know what we must do.

The students need to complete all the practical subjects insofar as possible. That is something you will feel after a time. So that the children have some sense of security, I would like to ask them about these subjects. I had the impression a while ago that the children thought the questions were unusual when you stated them poorly.

A teacher: Could we split the classes?

Dr. Steiner: We would need to have parallel classes from the age of fourteen, but we do not have enough teachers. The problem is financial. I would like to know how the finances are now. We should always keep that in mind.

There is some discussion about the financial situation.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the important thing is not that we have a financial report, but that we always have what we need in the bank. We can certainly continue, but we will have to do something. Otherwise, it will be impossible to do what needs to be done. For now, we cannot consider such a split.

At the college level, we cannot reach our goals for a very long time. The Cultural Committee might have done that, but they fel asleep after a few weeks. We might be able to achieve the things we want so much if we had the situation that existed in Austria for many private high schools. There many parochial high schools had

the right to give and grade the final examinations, and technical schools could provide an accepted final report. I believe there are no such institutions in Germany. We would need a state official to be present, but the teachers would actually do the testing. A state official, while certainly causing many difficulties in our souls, in the end would have little effect on the grades if the final examination was held by our teachers.

A teacher: I believe we should speak to the students who will not be able to pass the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: That depends. People will say the faculty is at fault if more than a third of the class do not achieve the learning goals. If it is less than a third, the fault is thought to be the students’, but when a third or more do not achieve what they should, then it is seen as the faculty’s problem. You know that, don’t you?

In general, no one who has had good grades fails. The problem is, that is not taken into account. A further point is whether we could avoid using those really unpedagogical textbooks. The teacher could, of course, use them for preparation. Most of those texts are simply extracts from various scientific books. I have noticed that the questions come from such books and that there are readings from them, also. That can, however, cause many problems. We need to get away from using such references. We can use Lübsen’s books since they are quite educational, although the last editions have been somewhat ruined. His books are very pedagogical through all the editions before those made by his successor. Imagine for a moment the wonderful value of calculus in pedagogy. His analytical geometry is also pedagogically wonderful, at least the older edition, as well as his volumes on algebra and analysis. He has, for example, a collection of problems that are extraordinarily good because the methods required to solve them are very instructive.

A teacher: Should we throw out all the textbooks?

Dr. Steiner: For translation, they are not so bad. However, for German readings, you should not use normal textbooks. They are quite tasteless. Perhaps we should write down our lesson plans for the following teachers, so they could at least have some material for reading. There are so many people here who can type. Why can’t we prepare documents that people can read? The offices are filled with people, but I have no idea what they do.

A teacher: The students in the twelfth grade would like an additional hour of French.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to make everything possible. It is terrible that the twelfth-grade students will not receive an introduction to architecture. If everyone teaching languages helped, it might be possible.

An English teacher asks about prose readings for the twelfth grade, about Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History , and about the English art and literature magazine The Athenaeum . 278

Dr. Steiner: The Athenaeum is edited very practically. You should not give it to the students, but instead use some individual essays. You could also use it in the eleventh grade. We do not have such well-edited magazines in Germany anymore. This is an old magazine, a humanistic magazine par excellence. There was a terrible German imitation called Literary News. 279 Zarnck’s Literarisches Zentralblatt (Literary journal) was also a terrible imitation. It was a magazine for people who do not exist even in England.

A teacher: We have done enough of Tacitus and Horace. Should we take up Sallustius?7

278 . A weekly magazine for literature, science, and art.

279 . Blätter für Literarische Unterhaltung.

Dr. Steiner: Sallustius and Tacitus. I think the Germania would be enough. You could have them read a larger piece from that and then give them a test.

A teacher asks about music for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: A feeling for style, as such, an awareness of how Bach differs from others, is the main thing for the twelfth grade. At worst, you will have a problem at Christmastime if we see that we cannot continue all of the art instruction. Do not consider it an impossibility that we have to stop all art instruction at Christmas.

Other people make fun of our things.

A teacher asks about religious instruction for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should go through religious history and give an overview of religious development. Begin with the ethnographic religions and then go on to folk religions and finally universal religions.

Begin with the ethnographic religions such as the Egyptian regional gods, where the religions are still quite dependent upon the various tribes. There are also regional gods throughout Greece.

You need to do this in stages. At first, we have the religions that are fixed at a given location, the holy places. Then, during the period of wandering, the tent replaces the holy places, the religion becomes more mobile, and folk religions arise. Finally, we have universal religions, Buddhism and Christianity. We cannot call any other religions universal.

In the ninth grade, read the Gospel of Luke, which is a pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

A teacher asks about the Apocrypha.

Dr. Steiner: The children are not yet mature enough to go through the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha contains many things that are

7. Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–34 B.C.). Roman historian and literary stylist.

more correct than what is written in the Gospels. I have always extended the Gospels by what we can verify from the Apocrypha.

Sometimes there are strong conflicts. When they take up the Gospels, the children must grasp them. It is difficult to explain the contradictions, so if they took up the Apocrypha nothing would make sense anymore. I would simply study the Gospels.

A teacher asks about religion in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Following St. John’s Gospel, a number of paths are possible. You could do either the Gospel of St. Mark or Augustine, selecting some sections from the Confessions where he speaks more about religion.

A teacher asks if they should teach zoology and botany in the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Those subjects need to be included if our reports are to be officially recognized. We study zoology in the fifth grade, then the human being, then zoology again. If we did not have this problem of final examinations, I think it would be wonderful to present zoology to the children in the course of three weeks. That would be eighteen mornings to handle the twelve groups of animals. 280 In the twelfth grade, we should limit zoology to categorization; the same is true of plants.

The students already know about skeletal structure, since you have already done anthropology. The most important thing is that they gain an overview about how we classify animals. You should begin with single-celled animals, then go through the worms. You will have twelve if you consider the vertebrates as one class.

A teacher asks about how continents swim.

Dr. Steiner: Usually people do not think about how it looks if you move toward the center of the Earth. You would soon come to

280 . See the faculty meeting of July 12, 1923.

regions where it is very fluid, whether it is water or something else.

Thus, according to our normal understanding, the continents swim. The question is, of course, why they don’t bump into one another, why they don’t move back and forth, and why they are always the same distance from one another, since the Earth is under all kinds of influences. Why don’t they bump into one another? For instance, why is a channel always the same width?

We can find no explanation for that from within the Earth. That is something that comes from outside. All fixed land swims and the stars hold it in position. Otherwise, everything would break apart. The seas tend to be spherical.

A teacher asks for more details. Dr. Steiner takes a teacher’s notebook and draws the following sketch in it while giving an explanation.

Dr. Steiner: The contrast is interesting. The continents swim and do not sit upon anything. They are held in position upon the Earth by the constellations. When the constellations change, the continents

change, also. The old tellurians and atlases properly included the constellations of the zodiac in relationship to the configuration of the Earth’s surface.281 The continents are held from the periphery; the higher realms hold the parts of the Earth. In contrast, the Earth holds the Moon dynamically, as if on a leash. The Moon goes along as if on a tether.

A teacher asks about drawing exercises for fourteen-and fifteenyear-olds.

Dr. Steiner: You should have the children paint the moods of nature. The continuation students in Dornach have done wonderful work in painting. I had them paint the difference between sunrise and sunset, and some of them have done that wonderfully. They should learn those differences and be able to paint them. Those are the kinds of things you could work with, for example, the mood of rain in the forest. In addition, they should learn the differences between painting and sculpting.

In the lower grades, take care, when things get out of hand and you cannot get through the material, that you do not rashly reach for a substitute and simply tell the children a story to keep them quiet.

I hope to be here again tomorrow morning.

281 . “Tellurian” (from tellur, or “Earth”) is an apparatus for showing the causation of day and night by the Earth’s rotation on its axis and the seasons’ relationship to the Sun’s declination. — TRANS.

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Thursday, May 3, 1923, 9:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We want to take care of the things that need to be done today with questions and answers. I do not have time for longer discussions. We want to handle all your wishes and intentions. I do not want anyone leaving something weighing on their soul that they cannot present.

A teacher proposes creating a division between the pure Waldorf School and a college preparatory school. The parents would then decide which their children will attend.

Dr. Steiner: The result would be that we would carry out the school principles and then subject the children to a kind of cramming course.282 The main problem is that if we did that as thoroughly as necessary, people would still not understand the idea of the Waldorf School. I believe people will understand the idea of the Waldorf School if we make no compromises, which includes not running through things half-heartedly. Instead, we need to show how impossible it is to have a reasonable school system under current conditions. I have never favored slipping through the back door when difficulties arose for the elementary school. I have always favored making it clear to people how things are. You can never do that if you do not energetically work for the idea of the Waldorf School. I do not believe we could ever achieve anything important by slipping out through the back door when difficulties arise.

There is another thing we need to take into account. If we took the standpoint you spoke of, we would have to carry out the idea of the Waldorf School much more broadly and completely than

282 . Later, a preparatory class was created.

we have done to date. We should have no illusions, and this is something that requires absolute secrecy, that, in fact, our students know anywhere near enough for us to say that the Waldorf School gives them what a human being needs to know by the age of eighteen. They know far too little. We have been, up to now, unable to bring a sufficiently large number of students up to the level of our learning goals. That is the first requirement we need to fulfill for the parents and the world, if we want to offer the world what you have just proposed. It is a simple matter to find a number of things within our teaching goals that have not been achieved through the idea of the Waldorf School. We need to achieve those things, and we must take that into account.

From the results of our teaching, I do not believe we can stand on a corner and shout to the world. The whole question of passing the final examinations is, in the end, a problem, since we need to assume that an ill-willed examination board could fail an entire class. There is almost nothing we can do about that. Were that to occur, all we could do would be to rework the entire curriculum for the last four years—not in art, but in Latin and Greek, for example. Our present Latin and Greek classes were created under the assumption that the students should pass their final examinations. We have always spoken of those classes in that way, namely, how should we create them so that the students can pass their final examinations? I cannot imagine that we could do other than make that compromise, and we need to do it. In that way, we can show that to really achieve the ideal of the Waldorf School requires more than just a controlling will. What you proposed would leave only the question of whether the cramming class would be held here at school or elsewhere. If we create the cramming class here, it would at least have some humor; but if we leave the students at the mercy of an outside cramming class, that would be tragic. That would lead only to a weakening of the Waldorf School idea. All that would gradually lead to an opinion that the Waldorf School is full of odd ideas. The parents would say

we know we are not teaching the children enough, and so are turning to an outside cramming class.

A teacher: What should happen concretely in the twelfth grade?

Dr. Steiner: As we said in the last meeting, we will have to meet with the school officials. That is all we can do, but even that may not happen. When the time comes, we could also register our students for the final examination.

A teacher: We would like to know how we could still take the desires and views of the Ministry of Education into account.

Dr. Steiner: That is something we can do or not. You need only look at the curriculum and a number of questions asked on the final examination.

A teacher: It would make taking the final examination easier.

Dr. Steiner: That is superficial and would lead, via a detour, to having our twelfth grade directed by the ministry. It would also be more comfortable for the people there than for us. The main question is whether we want to prepare our students for the examination or not. If we do not prepare them, we could eventually close the last four grades. Parents would not send their children. There seems to be no understanding. The parents connect a large part of the Waldorf School idea with their children being able to take the examination just like anywhere else, only they believe it will be ten times easier in the Waldorf School. They think we can wave a magic wand and make it easier for the children. We should have no illusions about people today, so I see no possibility of doing anything other than that compromise.

Dr. Steiner gives some examples of questions from examinations.

Dr. Steiner: If we interrupt the Waldorf School principle to take up other required subjects, it won’t be too difficult to prepare the students so that they can do the same as others. The students won’t know what we are doing.

I have twice attempted to explain the compromises necessary, once in Dornach, during a course for Swiss and Czech teachers, and a second time when I held a lecture in Prague.283 At that time a large number of people remained and did not want to go home, so we met together in another room where I gave a second lecture about the idea of the Waldorf School, emphasizing this compromise. Those people understood then that we need to look at things from a very different vantage point. Generally, speaking, we can achieve some understanding for the fact that we need to make compromises.

We need more understanding, but, in order to show how absurd the situation is, we cannot get it through the back door. We need to stand firmly upon our principles and say we are making compromises where necessary.

A teacher: In other schools it is normal to state by a certain deadline who will be allowed to take the examination. We should tell the students before summer vacation begins whether they will be allowed to take the examination or not.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, but we should not do that before we allow the students who were rejected to repeat. However, we cannot do that because it will cause us great problems in the following years.

A teacher: If we allow all the students to take the examination, we risk having 60 percent fail.

Dr. Steiner: We would have to give those students a poor report for the year so the officials will reject them. A rejection by the faculty has no legal consequences. We also cannot register any students.

283 . See The Child’s Changing Consciousness, lecture 3; see also Steiner’s lectures of April 27 and 30, 1923, in Was wol te das Goetheanum und was sol die Anthroposophie?

(What is the purpose of the Goetheanum and the goal of anthroposophy?

GA 84; unavailable in English).

Legally, only the students themselves can do that. We cannot prohibit anyone from registering themselves for the examination.

Thus, if some we do not think are capable register, we need to protect ourselves by giving them a poor year-end report. Then, we can say that there is a poor report for one or another. Theoretically, that is the only position we can take since we cannot forbid any of our students from registering for the examination. That is completely out of the question. The situation is that everyone who has reached a certain grade can register. Probably the examination committee will require that such students prove they have completed the necessary courses. Our reports must include a remark that in our opinion, the student is not proficient. The later we ask parents whether their child should take the examination, the easier it will be for us to advise against it.

We can, therefore, not decide other than we did last time. We can, however, try to follow the Waldorf School principle. Of course, in many of our subjects that are not taught elsewhere, our students are, in our opinion, not sufficiently far along. We need to try to find a balance between what we present, that is, what we want to teach in the class, and the students’ work. It is not always the case that the students work enough. In some of the higher grades, they sometimes sit there and doze the whole period. It is true, isn’t it, that there are students who have no idea what you presented when you ask them. That was something that happened even before we spoke about final examinations.

We already determined the instruction for the twelfth grade, but we could include philosophy in the last semester so that they have an acquaintance with scientific gibberish. It is certainly better if the twelfth graders are far enough along in the first semester to take the examination than to wait for the second semester. Usually, the students are prepared during the first semester.

A teacher asks about a continuation school at the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: Those who leave school at the age of fourteen need to go to the continuation school; however, they can do that only if we can obtain recognition for our continuation courses. The character of a unified school would be lost in the normal continuation schools the students are required to attend. They have no significance for us here, since we divide our curriculum according to the needs of human nature. Of course, we could stir things up in that regard, but that would mean the beginning of the end. That would mean that we would have to subject ourselves to the Ministry of Education for all grades above fourth grade. We can exist only because there was a hole in the Württemberg Elementary School Law that made it possible to create schools with teachers who are not certified by the state. We could not have done that if we had wanted to create a middle school. In that case, the officials would have demanded that our teachers be certified.

We are living in a hole in the law that existed before Germany was “liberated,” that is, under the old regime. Today, it would no longer be possible to create a Waldorf School. People go along with us because they think they are not going along with us. But, in schools where similar things are tried in other places, it is basically nonsense. They have to have certified teachers. Under present-day conditions a second Waldorf School would not be allowed.

A teacher: Is it possible to extend our continuation courses? There are many fourteen-year-olds leaving this year.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do that at the drop of a hat. Intentions are not enough, we also need teachers. I don’t know if we can even maintain the continuation courses without additional faculty. We also have other things to do.

A teacher: There are so many slow children in the classes.

Dr. Steiner: We could easily decline to accept students who show no promise. We could say at the very beginning that we cannot accept them since we could not achieve our teaching goals with

them. We could easily throw out the students who we do not think will meet the class goals. We must be more careful in accepting new students.

It is a different question with foreign languages. We cannot do that there since that would give the officials a reason to take the four lowest grades from us. We need to take children into the fifth grade. We might want to keep the whole foreign language question separate so that we could put such students in with the younger ones. We need to arrange things so that those students are with the lower grades for foreignlanguage class. Such children will simply have to go into the next lower grade. Every child fits into some grade. Perhaps we could also create beginning courses.

It will hardly be possible to say anything during the first three weeks. You need to create your tests positively and ask each child what he or she knows in order find out the child’s capabilities.

Always try to determine what a child can do. You should not simply ask questions. Try to determine what a child can do, not what he or she cannot do.

A teacher asks about curative eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: We should maintain the principle of not hacking off some part of main lesson and tacking it on somewhere else.

A teacher asks about a student who has large swings in mood.

Dr. Steiner: He is not enthusiastic. You’ll need to separate him from his mother. You should discuss such things in your faculty meetings. She is unpredictable, someone who suddenly jumps from ninety to one hundred ten degrees in her soul, and he imitates her physically. The situation was always that way. I once said to his mother, who creates a major commotion at every opportunity, that she should distance herself from him. He is a very sensitive boy. It is impossible to imagine anything less rational than the upbringing that exists in that home. It is absolutely impossible. We are powerless, however, because there is no solution other than to free

the boy from his mother. We simply need to see some things as karma. The boy was never in a proper school and was always taught sloppily. This is a karmic question.

A teacher asks about visitors.

Dr. Steiner: We should limit visitors to what is absolutely necessary, but we can make some exceptions. We need to get used to asking ourselves what the purpose of the visit is and also to achieve greater respect.

The best would be to print up a form so that people will see we are overrun. In the form, we can state that we can accept visitors only when they explicitly state their reasons and goals.

A teacher: I have gone through the Early and Late Stone Age and then took up the Bronze Age.

Dr. Steiner: You do not need to create analogies between them. It is very good that you present them with those divisions. Cultural periods develop the soul.

A teacher: How should I proceed with history in the twelfth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Give them an overview of all periods so that the ladies and gentlemen know something.

A teacher: In chronology, perspective is most often missing.

Dr. Steiner: Earlier historians did what was necessary. Rotteck has synchronized tables.

The children do not work hard enough in gymnastics, except for maybe a few. They need to learn to tone their muscles. You need to remind them. The children have gone too long without gymnastics, but they are capable. You can do nothing other than to remind them. You need to tell them individually.

A German school essay is mentioned, “The Camel as a Link between the Land and Human Activity.”

.

Friday, May 25, 1923, 8:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: School has just begun, and we want to see how things go. This is likely to be a very important year. What do you have to report?

A teacher asks about purchasing a history textbook for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it’s true the students must know something. In the last grade of high school, history class is mainly a kind of review. That is also the case here. Couldn’t you teach from your notes so that a textbook would not be necessary?

You see, what is really very important is that you summarize everything they need to know as efficiently as possible. I happily remember how, when I was in school, we did not have any geometry books. The teacher summarized the important things in dictations. A self-written book gives you reason to know what is in it. Of course, when the children first had to learn everything they need, we could not do it that way. If such things are to be fruitful, it must be possible to summarize what they need to know.

Everything they will be asked about history in the final examination can be written down on fifty or sixty pages. It is clear that no one, not even an expert in history, remembers everything in Ploetz.284 Giving children such textbooks is illusory. They just have chapter titles, but you could summarize all of the material in fifty or sixty pages. It is possible that all the subject teachers would want textbooks, but we should try to avoid that.

284 . Karl Ploetz, 1819–1881, author of Auszug aus der alten, mittleren und neueren Geschichte (Extracts of ancient, medieval, and modern history, 1863). It remains the standard history reference in Germany.

In such questions, an efficient summarization is what is important. Other schools have the children underline the things they need to study. They also need to cover things in a given amount of time. You should dictate such history notebooks beginning in the tenth grade.

A middle-grades teacher asks about notebooks according to blocks.

Dr. Steiner: You should give a dictation at the end of the period about what was just covered. Create the dictation with the children. You can summarize the material in a written form during one period and review it in the next. Use key sentences rather than key words.

How are things going in twelfth-grade mathematics?

The mathematics teacher: Very well. We have covered nearly everything.

Dr. Steiner: I have no doubt that they can well understand these elementary concepts of higher mathematics. I would ask the twelfth grade if they can easily solve such examination questions as: Given an oblique circular cone with axis A making an angle α

to the base, with a radius ρ, compute the height of the cone and the length of the longest and shortest slant heights.

9x2 + 25y2 = 225. The coordinates are, x = 5, y = 2.

Determine the equation of the tangent and its length. They may also need to solve construction problems: Construct the locus of all points equidistant from a given point and a given plane.

Another question might be: Construct the shadow of a surface of a plane bounded by a circle upon a cone.

Or further: Draw a cycloid.

The children also need to become accustomed to writing German essays. You could use what you teach in class for such essays.

A teacher: I think we need to teach the children a little about the technique of writing such essays.

Dr. Steiner: You can show them that by correcting their errors. That is true of style also. I would not give any theoretical discussions about that, as they will be disappointed when their essays are poor.

A teacher: They have poor punctuation.

Dr. Steiner: It will not be easy to find a reasonable way to teach punctuation to children. We need to look into this question further, including the reasons for punctuation. This is a question we need to examine pedagogically, and I will prepare that for our next meeting. There does not appear to be any natural way of justifying punctuation. Our German punctuation is based upon the Latin and is very pedantic. Latin has logical punctuation. It arose in Medieval Latin at the beginning of the Middle Ages. There was none in Classical Latin.

Morgenstern wrote a poem about that, “Im Reich der Interpunktionen” (In the realm of punctuation marks).

Punctuation is something that cannot be understood before a certain age because it is very intellectual. Children can understand putting a comma before an and only after the age of fourteen, but then they understand it quite easily. A book from Herman Grimm shows that there is actually no higher law in regard to these things.

You cannot say they are incorrect. You should read the beginning of Herman Grimm’s book about Raphael. He uses only periods.

You should also read one of his essays about how a schoolmaster corrected his errors. Grimm gives an answer to that. He gives a very interesting picture in his volume of essays, in the last one.285

285 . Aus den letzten zehn Jahren (From the last ten years, 1890).

You can also learn a great deal by looking at a letter by Goethe.

Goethe could not punctuate.

A teacher asks about seating boys and girls together.

Dr. Steiner: It is better to take such dislikes into account when they exist.

A teacher of one of the middle grades asks about “round writing.”286Dr.

Steiner: They can do that.

A class had been divided and the new class teacher thought that he had received almost all the poor students.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand how this opinion could arise. Why didn’t we divide the class such that it would be impossible for such an opinion to arise? There is no reason for dividing in any way other than alphabetically. That is better than when all the good students are put in one class, and the other has only the poor students.287

A gymnastics teacher: C.H. does not want to participate in gymnastics and does not want to do eurythmy because of his inner development.

Dr. Steiner: When little H. begins such things, he is starting along the path of becoming like his older brother. He needs to be moved to participate in all the classes. That is simply nonsense. If you give in, he will be just like his brother. None of the students can be allowed not to participate in all the classes without good reason.

286 . A style of German script. — TRANS.

287 . See the faculty meetings of June 17, 1921, and September 18, 1923; Dr.

Steiner gives different instructions on how to divide a large class. Also see alphabetical method mentioned in the meeting of January 14, 1922. — TRANS.

A gymnastics teacher: The upper two grades do not want to take gymnastics. The way they come to class makes me really feel sorry for them.

Dr. Steiner: Part of the problem is that the children did not have gymnastics before. They do not understand why they should take it now. That is something we cannot overcome. It was an error when the Waldorf School was started, and something will always remain of it.

On the other hand, it is quite possible to do something we thought was important several years ago when Mr. Baumann was teaching deportment, namely, to have the children learn manners.

That is completely lacking in the upper grades. However, if it is taught pedantically, though we do not need to do it that way, they will become uncomfortable, particularly the boys. We must teach them manners with manners, with a certain amount of humor. I still find that quite lacking. We need to bring in more humor. It is important that you bring more humor, not jokes of course, into the school and into your teaching. You are really too reserved in that regard.

The spirit of the Waldorf School is certainly here, but on the other hand, overcoming human weaknesses through anthroposophy—which itself is a human being—is not something general, but something unique for each person. You could become something very different through anthroposophy. A great deal could occur in that regard, so that it is not Mr. X. or Miss Y. who stands before the class, but Mr. X. or Miss Y. transformed through anthroposophy. I could, of course, just as well mention other people. We must continue to free ourselves from this heaviness.

There is a feeling of heaviness in the classes, and we must remove it. Seriousness is correct, but not this lack of humor. People need to lose this humorless seriousness. We need to overcome ourselves through our higher I so that the children cannot come to us and justifiably complain about our behavior. The faculty needs to

round off the rough edges of one another. You should, of course, not allow things to go so far that one person allows everything to slip by while another continually complains. With X., you could certainly put your hands in your pockets, but not with Z. That would not be appropriate. There must be a style in the school that acts to bring things together so that there is a real cooperation.

This might be a topic for a meeting when I am not here.

A teacher reports about the behavior of one of the older girls.

Dr. Steiner: The girl will say, “Thank God.” She probably had an afternoon tea, and I could well imagine that she did not want to do gymnastics. That has nothing to do with gymnastics. You need to get past some of the children’s selfishness. X. would think it quite funny of the girls, whereas you think it is bad behavior. It has often happened that other teachers are not the least disturbed by such things, so the children do not understand the problem. We need to teach them social forms with some humor. Good social forms are something that influence moral attitudes and affect moral development later in life. They do not need to be carved in stone.

We must pay more attention to overcoming what is human through our higher self. That will become more possible as our workload decreases. In Norway, the teachers have thirty hours.

This year, we will be in a position where some teachers have less than twenty hours. The fewer class hours we have, the better we can prepare, which also includes overcoming our individual idiosyncrasies. We do not need to overcome our individuality, only our idiosyncrasies. We may not let ourselves go. That is something that may not happen in any event.

The gymnastics teacher: Should P. I. do gymnastics?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, and he should also do some curative eurythmy. He should do all of the consonant exercises in moderate amounts. Do them all, but not for too long. He is inwardly crippled.

A teacher asks about a student in an upper grade who speaks very softly.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to have him memorize things. See to it that he learns things from memory, but says them poetically, or at least in well-formed language.

A teacher asks about gardening class for the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: We offer gardening class only until the tenth grade. We should leave gardening out of the upper grades. The children would like to learn grafting, if you can guide them into its mysteries.

The school doctor: One hundred seventy children have taken the remedies for malnutrition. 288 I have examined one hundred twenty, and most of them look better. Eighty have gained two to five pounds.

Dr. Steiner: That is not bad for such a short time.

The school doctor asks about tuberculosis of the lungs.

Dr. Steiner: Children who have tuberculosis of the lungs often have infected intestines as well. We should examine those who show the effects in their lungs for tuberculosis of the intestines, because intestinal tuberculosis does not often arise by itself at that young age. In that event, it would be best to try to heal the intestines first.

For cases of tuberculosis in the intestines and the pancreas, put the juice from half a lemon in a glass of water and use that in a compress to wrap their abdomen at night. Give them also the tuberculosis remedies one and two. As far as possible, they should eat only warm things without any animal fat, for instance, warm eggs, warm drinks, particularly warm lemonade, but, if possible, everything should be warm.

288 . See the faculty meeting of February 14, 1923.

The school doctor: It is difficult to differentiate between large-and small-headed children.289

Dr. Steiner: You will need to go more thoroughly into the reality of it. So many things are hidden. It sometimes happens that these things appear later with one child or another.

I would now like to hear about the first grade. Are the children taking it up? We need to follow the psychology of this first grade.

Every class has its own individuality. These two first grade classes are very interesting groups.

A teacher: The little ones are quite individualistic. They are like sacks of flour, yet individualistic.

Dr. Steiner: You need to be clear that all their shouting is just superficial. You need to find out what excites them.

A teacher asks whether the tendency toward lefthandedness should be broken.

Dr. Steiner: In general, yes. At the younger ages, approximately before the age of nine, you can accustom lefthanded children to right-handedness at school. You should not do that only if it would have a damaging effect, which is very seldom the case.290Children are not a sum of things, but exponentially complicated. If you attempt to create symmetry between the right and left with the children, and you exercise both hands in balance, that can lead to weakmindedness later in life.

The phenomenon of lefthandedness is clearly karmic, and, in connection with karma, it is one of karmic weakness. I will give an example: People who overworked in their previous life, so that

289 . See the faculty meeting of February 6, 1923.

290 . See the faculty meeting of December 18, 1923. The notes of one teacher at the December meeting relate the following: “That [the need to switch to the right hand for writing] is not true for clearly lefthanded people. Those who are clearly lefthanded should be allowed to write with their left hand.”

they did too much, not just physically or intellectually, but in general spiritually, within their soul or feeling, will enter the succeeding life with an intense weakness. That person will be unable to overcome the karmic weakness in the lower human being. (The part of the human being that results from the life between death and a new birth is particularly concentrated in the lower human being, whereas the part that comes from the previous earthly life is concentrated more in the head.) So, what would otherwise be strongly developed becomes weak, and the left leg and left hand are relied upon as a crutch. The preference for the left hand results in the right side of the brain, instead of the left, being used in speech.

If you give in to that too much, then that weakness may perhaps remain for a later, a third, earthly life. If you do not give in, then the weakness is brought into balance.

If you make a child do everything equally well with the right and left hands, writing, drawing, work and so forth, the inner human being will be neutralized. Then the I and the astral body are so far removed that the person becomes quite lethargic later in life.

Without any intervention, the etheric body is stronger toward the left than the right, and the astral body is more developed toward the right than the left. That is something you may not ignore; you should pay attention to it. However, we may not attempt a simple mechanical balance. The most naive thing you can do is to have as a goal that the children should work with both hands equally well.

A desire for a balanced development of both hands arises from today’s complete misunderstanding of the nature of the human being.

They discuss a girl. She needs to be immunized since she just went through a bad case of flu.

Dr. Steiner: That lames the senses under the quadrigeminal plate.291This is not an easy situation.

A school-age child needs to sleep eight to nine hours. We need to take care of these things individually. I wanted to show only that a child who sleeps too little will have insufficient musical feeling, and that a child who sleeps too much will be too weak for all the things that require a more flexible imagination.

That is how to tell whether the child sleeps too long or not enough. Those who sleep too much will have little capability with forms in geometry, for example. Those who sleep too little will have difficulty understanding music and history.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: B.B. is periodically rude. He will have times when he is better and others when he is worse. Realistically, it will take many years for that to improve.

291 . An area in the middle brain. –TRANS.

Thursday, June 21, 1923, afternoon

Dr. Steiner: There are some things that are troubling me about the school, so I think I need to spend two days here next week. There are two things I think we need to discuss, but today we can do nothing but address more pressing problems.

Certainly, all of the points we discussed yesterday are important.

The first thing troubling me, particularly after what I saw this morning in various classes, is the issue of punctuation. The second thing we need to resolve is a kind of running wild here at school, which we can certainly not take lightly.

Let’s take that as our starting point. Let’s start with the 9b class.

The teachers have described some things to me, but this morning the 9b class was very well behaved. The only thing that troubled me was how they write. It cannot continue that way.

Regarding unruliness, I would ask those of you who have some concerns to present them objectively.

A number of teachers speak about the class and the particularly difficult students F.R., T.L., D.M., K.F., and J.L. Regardless of what the teachers attempted, they were unable to create a respectful attitude toward the great artists. F.R. incited the boys to a pogrom-like attitude. They also wrote some obscene things on the door to the teachers’ bathroom.

Dr. Steiner: First, I would like to say that F.R. suffers from a persecution complex and, aside from that, hates women. T.L.

appears to be somewhat weak minded, as are D.M. and K.F. Here we have some psychological problems, and F.R.’s hatred of women affects the others. That is the situation. It would be interesting to know if a large part of his misbehavior is related to

that question. The misbehavior I saw certainly comes from that direction.

This is not an easy case. F.R. came to us first in the fourth grade, after having been beaten at home. In addition, he felt he was treated extremely poorly by the fourth grade teacher, and many of the things he told me took on particular nuances in his fantasy.

From what he told me, it seems he made an unsympathetic impression upon the teacher, and she took it out on him. Now he feels at least subjectively justified in thinking that the teacher had her favorites in the class, and that he was set back because he was one of the most disliked. At the time, all this created a small crisis, particularly because the teacher was not firm enough. She had to retract much later. In the fourth grade, the boy was not properly handled, so we were not able to move him into the fifth grade.

That caused some trouble for me at the time. However, you had him for quite a time. How did it go?

A teacher: In the fifth grade, I had no problems with him. He was strongly impressed then.

Dr. Steiner: At that time, he was four years younger and the impression he got was that there is still some justice. Possibly that was weakened later, but that was the impression he had then. His feeling was that the world was unjust, but that there is still some kind of justice. Now he has some psychological problems.

Certainly, since that time it seems to me that the boy—well, what should we do? We can only treat him if he trusts someone. The teachers’ viewpoint may be justifiable, but what he lost is trust.

Somehow, he lost trust again.

T.L. is the boy who, when he reads or hears something, becomes possessed. He is possessed by good and by evil. When something dramatic occurs, he is possessed and speaks in that way.

When he talked back to you, he did so out of that state. It is really a problem.

K.F. is not exactly honest, either. It is not only that he misstates things, but he has a tendency toward absolute lying. He needs a strong hand. It is not easy, you see, because we are not in a position of following things with greater energy.

There is something else we need to take into account. If you think F.R. would write a good essay about Raphael and Grünewald in the ninth grade, you will never come to terms with him. That is completely impossible in his present incarnation. He cannot do it, nor can he understand it. It is something that lies outside his field of vision. When he realizes he cannot understand it, he dries up inwardly and the bad juices, the etherically bad juices, rise and push him on so that he becomes vengeful. The recurring theme of his thinking is that he is unjustly treated.

There is nothing more I can do other than speak with these five boys. It is something that could make the 9b class impossible. I will speak with them next week. We need to have some order here.

There is little possibility of doing very much. All these things point to something below the surface. We need to recognize that many of these things are only symptoms. The obscene things you mentioned are only symptoms of something lying deeper within him. He probably did that as revenge against a teacher.

I once knew a class who had to write some letters. You should have seen what the boys thought up as names for the writer. They really thought up some names. They made up names by abbreviating first names in unthinkable ways, when you read the first and last name together, so that the result was a cynical provocation. Everyone in school knew about it.

We really cannot take such things seriously. The situation often depends only upon how you laugh. You need to get used to laughing at such things. If you get angry—well, fifteenyear-old boys are a particular kind of human being. We need to look into the situation further.

The transition years are difficult for these children, and we can see we need to do something. There is not enough energy, not

enough punch in the German class in the eighth and ninth grades.

That is something the children miss in their German class. We must teach them in an interesting way about the structure and style of sentences. You need to develop a feeling for style through essays.

That should begin at the age of twelve. I mentioned these things in the course about adolescents.292 You should discuss forming pictures with them, metaphors, similes, and anecdotes. I have noticed that this is missing. We will never be able to introduce them to punctuation if they do not comprehend the value of a word in style.

The fact is that the way you are teaching German, they will never understand style and essays. In the ninth grade, they do not even know what a sentence is. They write in such a way that it is clear they have no idea what a sentence is. They have no feeling for style.

That is something you must include in your teaching. German class is not quite what it should be, and that has tremendous significance for these developmental years. The boys and girls are changing the inner style of their sentences just as they are changing their speech.

If you do not take that into account, they will have an inner deficit.

The important thing is that if you ask yourselves how many of the students in the entire Waldorf School are such that you would have such critical opinions of them, you will find it is nowhere near 5 percent.

I would also like to draw your attention to something else. All kinds of things occur in the Society. Recently, a man came to an official of the Society and said, “I know you have great ideas. The ideas are very good, but no one in the Society has the proper will.

The reason for that is that you people in the Society do not take care of the egotists in the proper way. I am a prime example of a real egotist. I have no ideas, although I would like to have some.

However, I do have will. A couple of people like myself,”—and

292 . See Education for Adolescents.

you should take note of this—“three or four students like me could get all the students and faculty to do what we want, and in the end, the school inspector too.”

Three or four can dominate an entire class, even the whole school. The school cannot go under simply because of them.

There are some other things also. The 3b class is really horrible, but there is a way to improve it by taking two of the boys out and putting them into the remedial class. We need to make the remedial class not only for those who are intellectually weak, but also for those who are morally weak. That would be good for the 3b class.

The two boys, K.E. and R.B., should go immediately into the remedial class. They are infecting the whole class. The class would not be so bad, but then we have these two boys. As long as they are there, you will be unable to do anything with the class.

Tuesday, July 3, 1923, 9:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We need to speak about the class you complained about. I haven’t looked at the ninth grade, yet. What I say to the children must be in harmony with the teachers. I couldn’t have done that today because I did not have a clear picture from our last meeting about what the problem really is. I’m having difficulty understanding what I should tell the children is wrong, and I need to be careful about that. In such discussions it is possible to make things worse than they already are. I would like you to explain things very concretely, so that I can say something to the children in such a way that their replies will not be an accusation against the teachers. The children should not be able to answer by accusing the teachers. This problem is not easy to solve. Today, the children were quite well-behaved. I would particularly like to hear what is bothering K.F. The children are generally well behaved. There are also some slower students. F. has some physical problems, and he does certain things because of that. I must be able to tell the children some things are wrong without them coming back with a report that such and such occurred. We need a good understanding of what happened. Today and the last time I was there, they were very well-behaved.

The teachers report that a group of ninth graders wanted to have F.R. removed.

G.T. spoke for the group.

Dr. Steiner: A grudge may be involved here. After it becomes known that students were thrown out because of statements made by other students, then a group may decide they want to get another student thrown out. This conspiracy has gone a little too

far. You also said that during other periods they were screaming like wild savages.

A teacher tells about students spitting out cherry pits.

Dr. Steiner: Today, such things will change only as the students gradually become accustomed to the teacher. We cannot change them overnight. The class was not like that before. They did not do such things. Before, some students were simply not very attentive, or disturbed the class by chattering. The children now know that there are some complaints against them. However, they will know we have talked about them in our meeting only when I call them to me tomorrow. Before that, they will know nothing.

Why are they making so much noise in eurythmy? Something must be bothering them. Aren’t these the things you can best cure with humor? F.R. is such a difficult boy because he is treated so poorly at home. T.L. is very gifted.

You also have some complaints about both eighth-grade classes.

We should not be surprised by their attitude. It’s not necessarily the children, but it is surprising that it is so strong during class.

They seemed very sneaky as they sat there today.

The ninth-grade children should not feel that their teacher is uncertain, that he is not absolutely certain about what he is teaching. They may not have that feeling. I would advise you not to say, “I do not know that.” You should avoid saying you do not know something, especially when you do not know it. You need to be particularly careful when you do not know something. You can bring about that feeling even at an age when children are so critical. At that age, it is very important that they never look at you skeptically. You need to have some humor about such things. I will speak with the children about it; however, I fear it will not go well and they will become still more inwardly critical instead. I find it very difficult that the children will feel that you complained about them to me. Had you not complained, I would have nothing against them. Except that they know nothing about punctuation, we could say they are generally moving along well. They are about fourteen years old. The things you are doing with them assume a

level of concentration of which they are capable, so that laziness is only a secondary problem. That cannot be the main problem.

Throughout the class, the children are doing things that it is not particularly easy to imagine a fourteen-yearold child doing. So much for the ninth grade.

I will take a look at the young men you mentioned, but I want nothing to do with the group who complained. That is simply the beginning of the same goings-on as last year.293 I will have a look for myself to see what can be done with those young men. I had a brief look at the eighth grade. I think the children should not paint when their paper is not properly stretched; their work will be messy. They need to learn how to properly stretch and secure their paper. Allow them to work with paint only on stretched paper. It will hurt nothing if some time is needed for such preparation. The children will learn a great deal if you do it properly with them. The children in the 8a class do things much too quickly. They also paint too hastily. Their notebooks look as if they would give the children terrible ideas.

A teacher comments about B.B.

Dr. Steiner: If he develops some trust, things will improve. He still has quite a number of classes ahead of him, so if he develops some trust, things will change. A particular way to treat him? You would have to give him private instruction. He will sometimes run wild.

A teacher asks about German and history in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: Now you need to give them an overview of literature.

You cannot leave everything for the twelfth grade. Why don’t you simply continue? You can do what needs to be done in literary history in a few sentences.

The plan for history is that you continue with what you have already begun. In those periods where you have nothing to teach

293 . See the faculty meetings of October 4 and 6, 1922.

about history, you should try to move on to the next section through a transition. The tenth grade closes with the Battle of Charonia. In the eleventh grade, you need to cover medieval history. You will not be able to give the boys an understanding of Parzival if you do not give them an overview of history. You will need to make a connection with the historical time.

A teacher: That means I would have to finish the history of the Middle Ages now?

Dr. Steiner: Actually, history should come first. Today, you spoke about Barbarosa, so you are already speaking about the history of the Middle Ages. The curriculum even says that you should handle such

literary-historical

questions

with

a

historical

overview.294There are also literary themes that point back to history, for example, Alexanderlied (Song of Alexander), or Lied von Troye (Song of Troy). There is a great deal of historical material from this period.

The main problem now is that if the children go to their final examinations with the punctuation they now know, it could be very bad. They use no punctuation at all in the 9b class. Teaching them punctuation depends upon discussing the structure of a sentence in an interesting way. That is something you can do well in the course of teaching them literature.

For example, if you begin with older German language forms, you can show them in an intriguing way how relative clauses arose slowly through the transformation of writing into Latin structure.

That could provide the basis for studying commas. You can teach the use of commas when you first show the children that they need to enclose every relative clause within commas. It is interesting to discuss relative clauses because they did not exist in older German.

They also do not exist in dialect. You could go back to the Song of

294 . The curriculum was given verbally in the faculty meeting on June 21, 1922, but not recorded.

the Niebelungs and so forth and show how relative clauses began to come into the language and how it then became necessary to bring this logic into the language. After you have shown how relative clauses are enclosed with commas, you can go into a more thorough discussion of the concept of clauses. The children then need to learn that every kind of clause is set off by some sort of punctuation. The other things are not so terribly important.

From there, you can go on to show how elements of thought developed in language, and thus arrive at the semicolon, which is simply a stronger comma and indicates a greater break. They already use periods.

There is certainly sufficient time to begin that in the ninth grade.

You need to develop it through a positive structuring of language, by going into the intent. It is something that you especially need to do with some excitement; you cannot do it in a boring way.

Grammar alone is one of the most boring things.

When you speak in dictations, you must make it clear when sentences end and begin. You should not dictate the punctuation to them. The children will have more when they become accustomed to learning punctuation by working with sentences. It would be erroneous to dictate punctuation. I would never dictate punctuation, but instead have them hear it through my speaking.

It would be much better, however, if we could do something else.

It would be better if we could divide things as was done in old German, but is no longer done in our more Latin writing—they wrote sentence per sentence, that is, one sentence on each line.

You can discuss the artistic structure of a sentence with the children in an unpedantic way. You can give them a feeling for what a sentence is. You can make them aware of what a sentence is. You should also make them aware that well-formed sentences are something positive. You could, for instance, do something like using Herman Grimm’s style to show them the form of a sentence, how a sentence is pictorially formed. Now, he really writes sentences. You do not find sentences in the things most people

read, just a string of words. Sentences are completely missing. Give them a feeling for well-formed sentences. Herman Grimm writes sentences. They must learn to see the difference between Grimm’s style and the things we normally read, for instance, normal history books. You can do that in the ninth grade by giving them a certain kind of feeling for the difference between a complete sentence and an interjection.

The curriculum contains something else that would be very helpful, which is poetics. That is completely missing. You are not taking it into account at all. I have noticed that the children have no feeling for metaphor. They should know metaphors, metonyms, and synecdoches. The result will be wonderful. That is all in the curriculum, but you haven’t done it. Teaching the children about metaphors helps them learn how to construct a sentence. When you bring metaphors and figures of speech into the picture, the children will learn something about sentence structure. You can explain these with some examples. You could explain, for example, the meaning of, “Oh, water lily, you blooming swan! Oh, swan, you swimming lily!” That is a double metaphor. Through such examples, young people gain a clear feeling for where the sentence ends, due to the metaphoric expressions.

With those who have good style, it would not be at all bad to try to frame the sentences rather than using commas and semicolons. You can do this well with Herman Grimm’s sentences and a red pencil. Circle the sentences and then circle twice the things that are less necessary for content, once with red and then with blue. In that way, you will have a nicely colored picture of an artistically formed sentence. You could then compare such sentences with those that are normally written, for instance, in newspapers. The weekly Anthroposophie was no exception to this. It used to go on and on just like some boring German, but now it is better.

This is something we most definitely need to do. You should teach the children punctuation to give them some feeling for logic.

Such things can also be quite exciting. If you first get the children used to enclosing relative clauses with commas, then everything else will fall into place. You need to go far enough that they understand that a relative clause is basically an adjective. You could say, “a red rose.” You need no punctuation there. But, if you say, “a rose, red,” then you need to place a comma following rose because red is an appositive. If you say, “a rose that is red,” it is quite clearly an adjective.

If you give them such enlivened examples, learning will not be so boring. In dialect, people say, “the father what can write.” The relative clause is an adjective, that is, the clause as a whole is an adjective. This view of relative clauses is also very important for learning foreign languages.

A teacher mentions Philipp Wegener’s opinion that relative clauses developed from interrogative clauses.

Dr. Steiner: The interrogative could be the basis. Every adjective is actually an answer to a question. However, with “Here are some beautiful apples, give me some,”295 there can hardly be any talk of a question.

Researchers in languages are sometimes curious. I know of a number of papers about it—“it is thundering,” “it is lightning.”

Miclosich wrote long papers about it.296 That is interesting, but the German it is nothing more than a shortened form of Zeus.297

It has the same meaning as Zeus, the god: Zeus thunders, Zeus

295 . As presented here, this sentence lacks a relative clause in German and English.

— TRANS.

296 . Franz von Miclosich, 1813–1891, Slavic language scholar.

297 . Es, or “it”; Zeus, or “Zeus.” From this viewpoint, es would be a contraction: e’s. —TRANS.

lightnings. It is a stunted form. Many German words need to be traced back to their Greek origins. The German word for it is actually Zeus. The English word it needs to be sought also. It is based, in fact, on something lying in the spiritual. Hopefully, Wegener did not want to say that the relative clause is an interrogatory clause.

Well, that is what we want to do, to begin with the relative clause and go from there into clauses that are abbreviations or indications of an adjective. Beginning with that, which is something we need to emphasize, we can then go on to the semicolon, and finally arrive at the period, which is simply an emphasis or a pause. It is easy to convey a feeling for colons. The colon represents something not said, that is, instead of saying, “the following,” or instead of forming a boring relative clause, we use a colon. We express it in speech through tone. For instance, the way every student should name the animals is, “The animals are: the lion, the goose, the dog, the Bölsche,” and so on. The teacher asks, “What is that, a Bölsche?” “It says here on the book, ‘Bölsche, Das Urtier.’”298

The school doctor speaks about some medical cases.

Dr. Steiner: That little girl L.K. in the first grade must have something really very wrong inside. There is not much we can do.

Such cases are increasing in which children are born with a human form, but are not really human beings in relation to their highest I; instead, they are filled with beings that do not belong to the human class. Quite a number of people have been born since the nineties without an I, that is, they are not reincarnated, but are human forms filled with a sort of natural demon. There are quite a large number of older people going around who are actually not human beings, but are only natural; they are human beings only in

298 . Das Urtier (The archetypal animal) by Wilhelm Bölsche (1861–1939).

regard to their form. We cannot, however, create a school for demons.

A teacher: How is that possible?

Dr. Steiner: Cosmic error is certainly not impossible. The relationships of individuals coming into earthly existence have long been determined. There are also generations in which individuals have no desire to come into earthly existence and be connected with physicality, or immediately leave at the very beginning. In such cases, other beings that are not quite suited step in. This is something that is now quite common, that human beings go around without an I; they are actually not human beings, but have only a human form. They are beings like nature spirits, which we do not recognize as such because they go around in a human form. They are also quite different from human beings in regard to everything spiritual. They can, for example, never remember such things as sentences; they have a memory only for words, not for sentences.

The riddle of life is not so simple. When such a being dies, it returns to nature from which it came. The corpse decays, but there is no real dissolution of the etheric body, and the natural being returns to nature.

It is also possible that something like an automaton could occur.

The entire human organism exists, and it might be possible to automate the brain and develop a kind of pseudomorality.

I do not like to talk about such things since we have often been attacked even without them. Imagine what people would say if they heard that we say there are people who are not human beings.

Nevertheless, these are facts. Our culture would not be in such a decline if people felt more strongly that a number of people are going around who, because they are completely ruthless, have become something that is not human, but instead are demons in human form.

Nevertheless, we do not want to shout that to the world. Our opposition is already large enough. Such things are really shocking to people. I caused enough shock when I needed to say that a very famous university professor, after a very short period between death and rebirth, was reincarnated as a black scientist. We do not want to shout such things out into the world.

Thursday, July 5, 1923

Thursday, July 5, 1923

Discussion between Dr. Steiner and the Executive of the Administrative Committee

Dr. Steiner reported about his meeting with the students in the 9b class.

Dr. Steiner: They are wonderful boys. T.L. spoke for them and also K.F. They realize they are not angels and admit their misdeeds. It was unconscious boisterousness. F.R. could not write the essay because he did not know enough. They want to work together better and try to create a better tone. The boys are really very reasonable, but that is not being brought out.

Thursday, July 12, 1923, 8:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: First, I would like to return to the situation in the 9b class. Although I already spoke about this, I want to return to it because that situation has some principle significance. First, I would like to say that the discussion with the boys occurred, and I would like to hear what consequences it has had in their behavior.

The discussion also showed that something we could expect at this age is present in the boys, namely very strongly developed intellectual forces. These intellectual forces become apparent at puberty. Particularly with boys, this often arises as a certain subconscious desire to exercise their intellectual strength. It is natural that, when left to themselves, boys see rowdy behavior as the only possibility of expressing those intellectual forces. If we do not want them to do that, we must direct them toward other things. Intelligence is simply bursting out of those five boys, though to the least extent with K.F., and it demands to be freed.

At that age, pedagogical activity needs to take a different direction, as I have mentioned in some lectures. The boys must learn to take interest in something that will use their intellect.

Otherwise, it remains unused and will live itself out in such things as we have experienced. The main thing is that we work with the boys during the course of instruction so they can exercise their intellect in a way that brings it into a kind of tension and then finds resolution. That is something you can weave into every lecture.

You can pose questions that lead to a kind of tension and then allow the students to experience the resolution. Particularly at this age, simply listening has an unfavorable effect. There is no doubt that in the 9b class, you have counted too much upon their simply listening, at least at times. As soon as the boys are occupied, they become well behaved. If they have to just listen, that changes because their intellect, their inner strengths, stagnate.

It would be good if you recognized that their behavior was not the result of disrespect, but arose from a genuinely appropriate human standpoint, and that they denied nothing. You should also be aware that they did not try to gloss over anything. They were quite convinced that they had done quite useless things and that they really should not have done them. They showed an honorable human perspective when they described how T.L. made himself into their spokesman in a most natural way. He began by stating that he actually had no right to speak about the situation since he was the one who had most misbehaved. But, since things had gone so far, he wanted to speak. He spoke very reasonably. They are really very good boys, including F.R. In regard to their understanding of themselves, many adults could learn something from them. They do not embellish things. They recognized that it was very wrong to write on the bathroom doors. Something goaded them on. All the other bathrooms were smeared, and that one was still clean. They did not see why they should not decorate that one, too. When such thoughts arise out of latent intelligence, then that intelligence forces them to smear over blank surfaces so that they are like the others. In that case, a certain attitude has taken over, which we cannot say arises out of boredom.

They said that the school administration signed other documents, so when they wrote something, they thought it should also be signed by the administration. In all these things, we can see that they acted with a great deal of style. The boys were as though possessed, and now they are all very sorry about it. All these things are moods we need to look into, but we need to have some humor; otherwise the boys will get us down.

The boys see the actual cause of the problem in the statement by the 9a class teacher that the 9b class was worthless. They said that if he came into their class, which he knows nothing about, he would learn what it is like. That is quite intelligent. They are filled with a kind of feeling for truth. The boys are not dumb. If we can guide their intelligence in the proper direction, they may, without doubt, be able to achieve a great deal. They are really wonderful

boys. I have to say that if you judge them too harshly, then, in my opinion, you have forgotten your own youth some fifteen years ago. Things are different, but if you can remember, some of you will certainly have been there. The main difference is that some years ago, boys did such things more secretively, but now they are more open.

To me, the important thing is that we can expect no improvement if we do not succeed in getting the boys to use their intelligence in class. The situation is such that we must find a way to use their intelligence in our teaching, otherwise it will remain unoccupied and they will use it for getting into trouble.

I asked F.R. how it was that he came to place the discussion between Raphael and Grünewald in the Marquardt Hotel in his essay. He said he knew nothing about Raphael or Grünewald, so he wrote it that way. T.L. then added that he had written something reasonable later.

I said they should let me see something they had written on the walls, but they said they could not say such things to a polite person. They are ashamed and trying to behave.

I would now like to hear what has happened since then. They promised me they would behave as proper young men with the teacher and would be polite to the girls.

A report is given about what occurred in the class since then.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot give the children riddles. I tried that with the anthroposophists in Dornach. You need to use their intelligence as you teach. A great deal is needed to direct your teaching toward the thinking of children at that age and then to maintain that.

In the humanities, there is a danger of teaching unprepared.

That is, you are in danger of leaving the material as you know it now, as you learned it yourself. You need to rework it. That is one problem.

The other problem is that you are often too anthroposophical, like Mr. X. Yesterday, I was sitting on pins and needles worrying

that the visitors would think the history class was too religious. We should not allow the history class to be too religiously oriented.

That is why we have a religion class. The visitors seem to have been very well-meaning people. Nevertheless, had they noticed that, they could easily have categorized the Waldorf School as being too anthroposophical and of bringing that into the classroom.

I came into one class, eurythmy, and it was immediately obvious not only that the students were well behaved, but that they had behaved well before I arrived. We could present such an exemplary class as the 9a eurythmy class to the entire world. You could quite clearly see the class had been well behaved before I came in. You can easily see if a class begins to behave well only when you step into the room. That was a very exemplary class.

Concerning the 8a and 8b classes, I could not see that they were such terribly clever misbehaved children. Initially, you will have to reach B.B. in the only way you can reach him, through his intellect.

You cannot reach him through commands. On the other hand, if you make it clear to him that what he wants to do is nonsense, he will do what you ask of him. You could explain things to him as I recently did. He had written in his notebook with a pencil. There is no sense in telling someone with his temperament that he may not write with a pencil. If you do so, you can be certain that things will get worse. I told him he had smeared over everything, and that it looks horrible. I had barely turned around before he picked up his feather, prepared it, and then began to write in ink. Everything depends upon the way you present it. You need to meet the boy with what he understands and does not understand. He is a troubled boy. Sometimes it will occur to him to make a face, but he is a very well intentioned boy. You need to teach him that his faces do not look good. At the proper time, you need to teach him that he looks ugly when he does that. That is something you need to take into account at this age. They no longer accept commands.

The power of authority quickly diminishes just when you have become strongly oriented in that direction. Then you encounter

opposition. You need to be observant there. I would recommend that you read the four lectures I gave about adolescents.299 Read them and you will find all kinds of ways you can avoid that. I hope we can move beyond it.

A teacher gives a detailed report about a visit Dr. Steiner and three teachers made to the Ministry of Education and about what they learned regarding the requirements in the various subjects of the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: They are also tested in freehand drawing. Mr.

Wolffhügel should take that up in the twelfth grade. I told the men that after we have sufficiently developed our curriculum, I would attempt to develop the teaching of freehand drawing using Dürer’s Melancholia as a basis.300 It contains all possible shades of light and dark, and it can also be transformed into color. If the children really understand that picture, they should be able to do everything.

In order to find something out, I asked whether, aside from the condition that the student must be eighteen years old, a student who had studied completely privately, who had never gone to school, would be allowed to take the examination. I was told that such a student would be admitted. From that, he admitted that we are not required to obtain official certification from the school board. I asked this question to see if there was some possibility that people could force us to come under the control of the School Review Board. Aside from some of the things that have occurred, the Education Law in Württemberg is one of the most liberal. No other place in Germany or Switzerland has such a liberal education law. Nevertheless, things could change for the twelfth grade.

Now that we know the students will be tested only on the material from the twelfth grade, I think it would be advisable to complete everything else and then begin on what the people there want.

299 . See Education for Adolescents, lectures 5–8.

300 . See the faculty meetings of December 9, 1922 and February 5, 1924.

We need to do a little more to complete chemistry and then go on to more of what is required in the final examination. We have done little in geology and the children learn about geological formations only very slowly. Before the holidays, we should at least awaken a little geological thinking, so they know what geological formations are, what kinds of stone and fossils they contain. We could give an overview before the holidays so that the students could learn the details afterward. We need to limit some things.

Technology and eurythmy will end in February, as will religious instruction.

You could give some work to X. (a newly hired teacher). I have hired X. so that he will find support within the faculty. If he wastes his time, I will hold you responsible for it. He is so talented that you could give him work; he can do it if he wants to. The whole faculty is responsible for looking after him. For the time being, you need to try to finish chemistry. Before the holidays, give the students an overview about geology up to the Ice Age. Afterward, we will have to teach them about alcohol, the nature of alcohol, concepts about ethers, the nature of essential oils, then the nature of organic poisons, alkaloids, and some idea about cyanide compounds in contrast to organic compounds. They need to understand qualitative relationships. They can understand all of it from that perspective.

When speaking about geology, I recommend you go backward, beginning with the present, the alluvial period to the diluvial. Then discuss the Ice Age. Use the change in the axis of the Earth to give them an idea of the relationship of such events as the Ice Age to things outside the tellurian, without tying them to specific hypotheses. From there you can go back to the Tertiary period.

Explain when the second and first realms of mammals arose.

When you get back to the carbon period, you can simply teach the change. It would be better if you made the transition in the following way. In the later formations, we have the minerals precipitated out and the vegetable and animal fossilized. Now we are back in the Carboniferous period. What could be fossilized of

animals does not exist. We only find fossilized vegetable material.

The Carboniferous period is all plant. There is no differentiation, as nothing more than plant material exists. We can go still further back where we find things completely undifferentiated.301 Tell them in that way.

Perhaps you could give a lecture of mine. I once explained geology to the workers in a living way.302 I told them everything about geology in two hours. Those two lectures were certainly important. You could find them and work in the same way.

Earlier forms were only etheric. We should imagine the Carboniferous period such that we recognize that the individualization of plants was not nearly so strong as people imagine. Today, people think there were ferns, but actually what petrified was a much more undifferentiated soup. The etheric was continuously active in that soup, resulting in secretions that precipitated and held the organic mass in a nascent state, which then petrified.303

I would like to take this opportunity to give you, with some reservations, the divisions that can serve as a theme. Though there are some limitations, you could treat the entirety of zoology by dividing the animals into three groups with four divisions each, resulting in twelve classes or types of animals.

301 . The use of the words animal and vegetable does not refer to “zoological” and “botanical,” even when the word plant is clearly used. The invertebrates and lower vertebrate animals that predominated during the Carboniferous period show hardly any of the inner astrality so typical of higher forms of mammals and birds commonly called “animals.” Those earlier forms are much more strongly a product of their environment, particularly in terms of maintaining body temperature and in their reproduction. Plantlike forms, therefore, are characteristic of both animal and plant life during the Carboniferous period. The heavy-boned mammal-like reptiles of the Permian period, with their grotesque forms, represent a completely new, animal direction in evolution.

302 . See Steiner’s, 1922, in The Human Being in Body, Soul, and Spirit, lectures 7–70; and lectures of July 9–August 5, 1924, in The Evolution of the Earth and Man.

303 . This word was unreadable in the original transcript.

FIRST GROUP

1. Protists, completely undifferentiated infusoria, and

protozoa

2. Sponges, corals, and anemones

3. Echinoderms from sea lilies to sea urchins

4. The ascidians, in which a proper outer shell is no longer present, that is, the shell formation has receded.304

SECOND GROUP

5. Mollusks

6. Worms

7. Articulates

8. Fish

THIRD GROUP

9. Amphibians

10. Reptiles

11. Birds

12. Mammals

In discussing the zodiac, you should begin with the mammals, represented by Leo; then birds, Virgo; reptiles, Libra; amphibians, Scorpio; fish, Sagittarius; articulates, Capricorn; worms, Aquarius.

Then continue on the other side, where you have the protists, Cancer; corals, Gemini; echinoderms, Taurus; ascidians, Aries; mollusks, Pisces. You should realize that the zodiac arose at a time when the names and classifications were very different. In the Hebrew language, there is no word for fish, so it is quite reasonable that you would not find fish mentioned in the story of creation.305

304 . See the faculty meeting on April 29, 1924.

305 . In the Hebrew story of creation, there is no actual word for fish. It is circumscribed in Genesis 1:20. “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,” whereas, immediately following, the word fowl is used.

They were seen as birds that lived in water. Thus, the zodiac is divided in this way, into seven and five parts for day and night.

There is also something in that which corresponds to the threefolding of the human being. The first group are the animals related to the head, namely, the protists, sponges, echinoderms, and ascidians. The second group are the rhythmic animals, the mollusks, worms, articulates, and fish—that is, the middle part of the human being and the head. The third group are the animals of the limbs, so you can see how each aspect is added. Thus, we have the limbs, the rhythmic system, and the head. These all tend toward a threefolding, but are not yet complete.

If you look at it from the perspective of the human being, the head corresponds to the first group, the human rhythmic system to the second group, and the human limbs to the third group.

From a geological perspective, things begin with the head. You need to follow geological formations through the twelve stages.

You should begin with the first group, go on to the second, and then to the third. You need to complete that with geological formations. The infusoria go back to the beginning and are the first group. The forms of that first group that still exist are degenerated forms of the etheric forms from very early times. The forms of the second group are half degenerated. Actually, only their antecedent nondegenerated forms belong to that. Only in the third group do we find really primary forms not yet degenerated, which therefore form the basis for teaching about formations.

When teaching animal geography, you need to consider the zodiac in connection with what I have just said, that is, look at the projection of the zodiac upon the Earth. You will then find the areas of the animal groups on the Earth. You have some globes where the zodiac is drawn upon the Earth. They will provide you with what you need.

Also, Leviticus 11:9, “These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.”

In general, the word dag appears for “fish,” whereas thanninîm, translated as “whales,” are mythological sea creatures.

We can actually not speak about volcanic formations, only volcanic activity that goes through geological formations.

We should also try to bring the plants into twelve groups.306 I will do that later.

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: You have already read nineteenth-century German literature. You should, of course, try to give the students some examples. You could read Tieck’s Phantasus and some small pieces from Zacharias Werner. They should also read from Wilhelm Müller, Novalis, Immermann, Eichendorff, Uhland, including some small examples from Herzog Ernst, then Lenau, Gustav Schwab, Justinus Kerner, Geibel, Greif, Heine, but only his decent things, Hebbel, a little of Otto Ludwig, and Mörike. That is approximately what they need. Also, Kleist and Hölderlin. I would advise some of the other things in the curriculum for other classes, namely, Lessing, Herder, and Klopstock. Logau was good—better sayings were never written. He makes up wonderful sayings. Then, also, Gottfried Keller and Grillparzer. From the poets that I mentioned, use only lyric examples. The students need to read something from Keller, but tell them Der grünen Heinrich (Green Henry). Read Richard Wagner also.

[ That was all given as preparation for the final examination. ]

Dr. Steiner: I wanted to discuss the zoological division and the curriculum. What remains to discuss?

A teacher: What should we tell students about the examination?

Dr. Steiner: You need to tell them only that we are completely informed about it. There is a basic inner rule of pedagogy that those being taught should never know or discuss the secrets of education. That has become a problem here and must be eliminated as quickly as possible. It cannot continue. The

306 . This was not done.

perspective which has slowly arisen that no differences of age are taken into account has led to the children’s thinking about how they are taught and the methods used.

We could tell them the following: You need to be eighteen years old, and you need a report from us. We could go on to say that we know what is needed, and that if they study industriously, they will pass the examination. What more can we do? We can say only external things. It is not good for the children to become accustomed to having conferences with us. They should feel that the teachers will do what is right. They are afraid they will miss a number of interesting things.

A number of classes were cancelled because of the heat.

Dr. Steiner: Those are natural events. Winter will certainly be cold again.

( Speaking to an eighth-grade teacher) The children should know that when you are occupied with one or two, others may still be questioned. The children should be interested in the others in the class. Basically, when it is not a question of helping with an arithmetic problem, but is some instruction that can be heard by the others, it should be interesting not only to one individual, but to everyone. They should expect to be called upon at any time.

You should do it in such a way that you continue with one of the others who has been inattentive. Then, they will get the feeling that they may be required to continue with the reading at any time.

When you ask about material previously covered, you must do it in a different way. You must ask the questions so that the children can answer. In time, you will learn how to do that in practice, but you will need to be lively in your manner. You should skip from one student to the other so that the children notice that you are skipping around. You now have a contact with the students that a few years ago you did not have at all. On the other hand, I think you too often “show them how.” Many classes are terribly restless because they are always being shown how to do

something. That should be limited. You can do that by calling more often upon specific students who are able to respond.

One thing is troubling me, and that is the question of how to solve the problem of painting in the notebooks. The children should paint only on stretched paper. We cannot afford painting boards because they are too expensive. We could just use smooth boards. Wouldn’t it be possible in the shop class to make smooth boards for stretching the paper? It is not good to have the children paint in their regular notebooks. When they begin painting, they should also stretch their paper.

Ch.O. has a dangerous condition. He is clearly malnourished, and he will soon have a blood problem. When you go through these classes and look at the children, it is terrible. We need to determine which children are right on the edge. The real problem is not how much they eat, but that they digest it properly.

There are also a number of troubled children we need to give some attention to. St.B. in the first grade sees astral flies. He needs to be treated with something. His whole astral body is in disarray.

There is a strong asymmetry of the astral body in all directions. Try to have him do some curative eurythmy exercises where he has his hands behind his back. Have him do exercises we normally do toward the front, but have him do them toward the back.

Tuesday, July 31, 1923

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I could not be here at the end of school. It was not possible, though I thought we would be able to meet at that time. You have told me there are a number of things we need to discuss, so I would like to begin there.

A teacher reads a letter from F.R.’s father. The boy had stolen sixteen silver spoons, and his father wants to keep him home.

Dr. Steiner: This story about the spoons is old. The boy’s relationship to his father was never any different. The father would like to take him out if he will go. We need to find a way to work with the boy. We can certainly not throw him out. The boy needs a little moral support at these times. We have to give him some moral support. He is only in the ninth grade, and the children in that class need some moral support. They need a certain relationship to the faculty. They need to love the faculty. I think you have lost contact with the whole ninth grade. The boys immediately see that is very wrong. I think this whole theft problem has caused an enormous amount of remorse in F.R. We need to help him. Under no circumstances can we allow the boy to be taken out. We should not give any cause for removing him from school. We need to work with him.

Doesn’t G.T. have a little tendency to fool himself? He seems to play the part of a pleasant boy.

You need to avoid expressing subjective judgments. If you use such expressions, you will have a subjective relationship. Even when the boys do the worst things, you need to stick to the facts and never relate them to the person. If you reprimand the boys, you can achieve nothing more.

Certainly old R. is someone who cannot control his anger. His treatment of the boy is such that you can almost understand when

he exhibits such behavior. When the situation is like that at home, we can only feel sorry for the boy.

We need to have more contact with the students in the upper grades. At that age students cannot stand going through a whole morning of class without any personal contact. They want you to be interested in them personally. They want you to know them, to be interested in them, that is what they want. In those grades this is still a school, not a college; the class is too much like a college, like a seminar, and not enough like a school. They want some contact with the teacher.

I already said it was five, but these five are not just some boys we can throw out into the street. If we threw them out into the street, it would be an unnecessary loss for humanity. We cannot allow that to happen. F.R. is not nearly so talented as T.L.

The father can do what he wants, and we can only try to help.

It is crazy to say we should try to force him. The father can do what he wants during the holidays. I think we need more personal contact with the students in the upper grades. It is important that we attempt to have a more personal relationship with them.

One of the ninth-grade teachers says that he would like to visit the class of the previous teacher.

Dr. Steiner: You could make some interesting observations if you visited, but it is very important that you have no difficulties when you stand before your class. During your free time, you should have worked through the material so completely that it causes you no effort while you are teaching, so that you can give all your attention to how you are teaching. The material should be second nature. This whole discipline question is primarily a question of good, methodical preparation. That is true for all the subjects in all grades. It is a question of preparation. Perhaps a basic question is whether there is enough time for preparation. Many of you have told me that there is not enough time for proper preparation. It is obvious that here in the Waldorf School we must do what is

necessary to prepare thoroughly, so that the material itself gives us no difficulty when we stand before the class. The students notice very quickly when that is not the case. Then they feel themselves to be above authority. That’s when the problems start.

I can see nothing more than that these five boys are really very good. F.R. is a little weak. He is quite dependent upon being treated such that he feels that you mean what you say honestly.

This is a feeling he does not have with his father. He is always wondering subconsciously whether things at school will be the way they are at home. He wants to be understood, but he thinks he is treated without any understanding. His father does not know he is so angry. Everything depends upon the interest the boys have for the content of your teaching. They all pay attention in algebra.

They have not been so bad. I have often observed how you can work quite well with them.

It is silly that the father wrote this letter. He did so even after I told him that the way to avoid such problems is for no one to speak about them, not to anyone, and that we have to teach the boy that he should also not speak about them to anyone. Then the father did this anyway. The old man is less well behaved than the boy. This is all very difficult. The boy does not lie to anyone, even when he has to admit some misdeed, but the old man lies all the time. The problem is that the boy knows his father lies every time he opens his mouth. He knows that from his own experience. It would have been best if the boy had seen that, as bad as his action was, we still have so much sympathy for his moral situation that we will cover it up. He can only lose more if we hang it from the bell tower. It would be best if we could remove F.R. from his parents.

All kinds of problems are coming up. I have a new student to enroll, S.T. He is sixteen and will go into the ninth grade. The boy is very well versed in philosophy, knows Plato and Kant and also Philosophy of Freedom. He is good in mathematics, but poor in Latin and German, poor in history, knows a little about geography and

natural history, and is horrible in drawing. We need to take all of that into account, but we cannot put him in the eighth grade, since he has already attended the ninth grade at another school. He would also be too old. We must find a place for him to stay, somehow we need to find one. Since there is no room with the teachers, we need to see if we can’t find somewhere else where he can stay.

A teacher mentions there is always so much noise in the eighth grade. She wants either to teach two students separately, or to divide the class.

Dr. Steiner: Taking them aside is not a particularly good method.

You need to try to stop their running around. You could give them some extra help, but it is not good to teach them separately. You can divide the class if that is possible. The class is too large for the situation as it is. It would be quite good if you were to give them some extra help, but do not take them away from the class. Such things will always arise, that you have students who are difficult to handle. In normal schools you would not have such students, but with us, they need to move with the class. I think, however, that things would go better if you were better friends with them.

A teacher asks about B.B. in the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Such people exist, and your task is not simply to rid yourself of them, but to really work with them. I do not believe we should try to influence them. What the mother wants to do is another thing. Just because we see there are some difficulties, we cannot simply remove a student from school. You need to interest him. You can work with him if you give him some reason. B. said he didn’t take any of the plums, but when Mr. S. asked him if they were ripe or not, he said Mr. S. was really very sly. He gave the impression that he was defeated.

You must give him some reasons for turning inward, otherwise his thinking will always be like nailing a box shut with a hammer that is always falling off the handle. There are clumps of fat

between the various parts of his brain, so that he cannot bring them together. If you get him to really think, he withdraws, but in that way he can get through the fat. I am convinced that he is a good boy, and that you can work with him.

You need to try to move him on so he can move to the next class. You still have five weeks. You can learn to be sly also.

Nettle baths would be useful for him. It might also be useful to add some lemon juice to the bath; in any event, bitter things, bitter plants. I could even say sauerkraut. If possible, use a mixture of all three, but no licorice. Do this three times a week, but not too warm. He should not eat too many desserts. If he has bread, try to toast it, so it has as little water as possible. He has a tendency to form fat, and we must eliminate that. He is also lazy. You could also do the standard curative eurythmy exercises for fat with him.

You can also give him some coffee.

A teacher: How can I learn to be sly?

Dr. Steiner: Did you read the issue of Das Goetheanum that contained Brentano’s riddles?307 Try to get the book and then solve all the riddles. I am serious about that. I selected the four most difficult for the article. That is all there is to say about being sly with B.

A teacher: The Association for School Reform has invited us to participate in a pedagogical conference.308

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether you have any interest in going there and speaking. It is senseless. Anyone who would write such a letter was not born to be a school reformer. This is all just nonsense. On the other hand, though, our perspective could be that we would just say something. We could take the standpoint

307 . “Der Philosoph als Rätselschmied” (The philosopher as a riddlesmith, in Das Goetheanum, vol. 2, no. 48, July 8, 1923, untranslated).

308 . This organization attempted to reform the public schools according to the ideas of the Social Democrats.

that we would say as much as possible about the subject. Someone who is not afraid of doing that could go and speak about our work, although what you would say would serve no real purpose.

Someone who would write such a letter has not been called to that task. It is all just show. That is immediately clear from the letter.

A teacher asks about participating in the art conference in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: Only the things we initiate under our full control have any real purpose. Participation in such a conference would make sense only if you took the standpoint that you wanted to go and talk about our work. Someone could become aware of our Waldorf School method in nearly every kind of gathering. Of course, it would have to be people with whom you could achieve something, as at the English conferences. We need to see them in a different way. This stuff here is just garbage, so we need to view it without any great expectations. If you have no particular desire to go, then simply write that in the near future we are so occupied with developing the Waldorf School and its methods that we need to devote our entire attention to it. That would be more useful than such a conference. We need to be careful to look at what people’s real interest is, otherwise we would degrade the Waldorf School.

We can easily reply that we have no time because we need to further develop our methods. I don’t think it is very pedagogical simply to put children’s paintings on display.

We cannot discuss any principle questions today. Perhaps there are still some questions about the material to be taught or how to treat the children.

A teacher asks about algebra in the eleventh-grade curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: What I said was that you should go far enough for the children to have an understanding of Carnot’s theorem and how it is used. That essentially describes the whole curriculum. A great deal of algebra is involved. They will need to understand a lot of algebra, series and functions. The curriculum can stay with that.

They should be able to solve problems requiring the use of Carnot’s theorem in all its aspects.

( Speaking about a new teacher) I have made the whole faculty responsible for his education as a human being. You need to be careful that he does not deviate.

A religion teacher: What should I use as examples for folk religions?

Dr. Steiner: The Old Testament. The Hebrew people.

Teachers ask about art class, Goethe’s poetry in the tenth grade, and metaphors.

Dr. Steiner: That material is included in almost all the grades. Of course you can teach them about metaphors and similes. You can teach them a feeling for poetic forms. We cannot say that Goethe could do that only after a certain age, that he could write a verse only after the age of forty. If we do, the students will ask themselves why they should do it when Goethe could do it only at the age of forty. Such things cause reactions, and you need to be very careful. Nevertheless, you can do it. In art, the problem is the material. You can, however, be guided by what the students understand.

A teacher asks about King Henry II.309

Dr. Steiner: What I said was that it was his desire to found an ecclesia catholica, non Romana. That is a wellknown story. You can certainly find a description of Henry II. Lamprecht is not a historian, he is a dilettante.310 He is interesting as being characteristic of the development of historical science. You will need to find some source book about Henry II. It is all written down. It is not some

309 . See lecture of March 13, 1924, in Die Geschichte der Menschheit und die Weltanschauungen der Kulturvölker (GA 353, not in English).

310 . Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915), author of Deutsche Geschichte (German history, 1891).

phrase, but something he really felt. Henry II introduced the Breviary as something holy. In that connection, we can always say that at that time it was possible for someone to come to the Divine Office who wanted a catholic, but not a Roman Catholic, church.

Lamprecht is more appearances, he has no real feeling. He is always speaking so smugly.

A teacher: What do Parzival’s words lapsit exillis mean as the name for the Grail?

Dr. Steiner: No one knows that now.311

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: The main thing is that you recover, refresh yourself. It is important that your enthusiasm blossom during the holidays, and that the flower will have become a fruit when you return again, particularly where the class is not so good. The children are already happy to know you will be here again.

The situation in Germany has become increasingly worse, and it will be complete chaos.

The lectures from Oxford should be printed. 312 We are considering one thing. This morning Leinhas said to me that, in his view, there are so many people who have so much to say, but who write nothing. Why don’t they write anything? Even Das Goetheanum is slowly beginning to suffer from a deficiency of material.

A teacher asks how the pedagogical lectures should be prepared for publication.

Dr. Steiner: The pedagogy should be published independently, much as Steffen reproduces my lectures. Those working with the material should prepare it. You should speak about your personal

311 . A likely meaning is “banisher of sin.” — TRANS.

312 . The Spiritual Ground of Education.

experiences. Support and describe those areas of the Waldorf School that you have as an ideal, so that what results is a living discussion of the pedagogical principles of the Waldorf School.

You could write some beautiful essays about art instruction. Das Goetheanum needs some real essays. There must be a real desire to do something independent, even if it is only an independent honoring of things already begun. But do something.

Where do all these useless manuscripts come from? Are they also coming from the Society? Sometimes they print really useless things. It would be good to present the things that arose in the art conference in a more universal way. Why shouldn’t that be the occasion for giving special presentations.

There is also a possibility of discussing very interesting questions of method, for example, questions like those I spoke about in Dornach. 313 There is too little literature about the Waldorf School available to the public. Couldn’t you write something about your principles of teaching? We have forty-two teachers, almost enough that four could write something for each issue. These things need to develop here. We need to develop a feeling for how to present things from various perspectives. I wanted to give an example of that in the introductions to the various eurythmy performances, when I attempted to present something from various points of view. That is what I tried to do with the eurythmy introductions. 314 When I gave such an introduction recently, people stood outside and did not come in to listen. That was during the General Meeting, after a session where the German delegates had distinguished themselves so much by saying that the Goetheanum was already in ruins before it burned.

Four hours of pure rubbish were spoken during that session. It was just dirty garbage, four hours long.

313 . The Child’s Changing Consciousness and Waldorf Education.

314 . An Introduction to Eurythmy.

I hope you will refresh yourselves in every way. In all the various areas of the anthroposophical movement, we need a renewal of our strength. It is really so that we should give consideration to renewing our strength, just as plants renew themselves each year.

We need a new inner enthusiasm, a new inner fire. Of course, living conditions are difficult, and they become more so each week.

Now the Mark has no value whatsoever; it is only a means of computing. There is no way to foresee what chaos we will slide into. Our monthly budget is now about DM 400,000,000. By August, it could easily be two billion, perhaps even more.

A man in Austria wrote me that he had completed a business transaction for which he will be paid in dollars. He wants to keep only six hundred dollars for himself, and what he receives beyond that he wants to give us. That will apparently happen. I asked him to contact the Waldorf School. That is about DM 500,000,000, but it is really only a drop in the bucket. It is totally crazy, the situation.

I think that for a while, it will be just as necessary to have outside money for the Waldorf School as it is for the Goetheanum. This is something we should present properly. It was not done properly in Dornach. Now we need to close.

Tuesday, September 18, 1923, 6:30 –10:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Before I leave, we need to discuss the fate of the fifth grade, and I would also like to hear about your experiences.

The teachers who went to England will tell you about their experiences themselves. Haven’t you already reported your successes? It is a fact that the teachers’ activities made a great impression; seen from behind the scenes, each Waldorf teacher is a person who made a great impression. Everyone did that individually.

Baravalle made an enormously deep impression with his presentation of the metamorphosis of surfaces, which merges into the Pythagorean theorem. Miss Lämmert’s presentation on teaching music also made a very deep impression. Dr. Schwebsch then made an impression through his knowledge and ability, and Dr. Schubert was very convincing about the truth of the Waldorf School as a whole. We must, of course, say the same about Dr.

von Heydebrand, an impression so large that most people said they would like to have their children taught by such a person. That was the impression she made. Miss Röhrle was more active behind the scenes, and I think she could tell you about her success herself.

Is the last issue of The Goetheanum here? I would like to recommend that you all read the book by Miss MacMillan, Education through the Imagination. In my copy, I wrote something I did not include in my essay: “It is as though someone were very capable of describing the dishes on the table without knowing how they were prepared in the kitchen.” What is so interestingly described in the book is the surface, an analysis of the surface of the soul, at least to the extent that it develops imaginative forces, but she does not describe the work that gives rise to them. It is excellent as a description of the child’s soul, only she does not understand the

forces that give rise to it. I think that if you apply the foundation anthroposophy offers, it would illuminate everything. Every anthroposophist can gain a great deal from that book because a great deal of anthroposophy can be read into it. It is a sketch everyone can develop wonderfully for themselves—it is a reason for working thoroughly with anthroposophy.

Miss MacMillan would like to come with some assistants at Christmas. I would ask that you treat her kindly. For some, she is one of the most important pedagogical reformers. If you go into her school, you will see a great deal, even if the children are not present. She is a pedagogical genius. She wants to arrange things so that she will see some of your teaching. I already told her that if she looks at our school without seeing the teaching, she will get nothing from it.

We had planned the Zurich course, but when Wachsmuth and I came back from England and heard that it was being seriously undertaken, we both nearly fainted. We will need to change it to Easter.315 We will also present an Easter play for the first time. I have already arranged for that. It will be at Easter.

Perhaps the teachers who were in England would like to say something.

A teacher asks whether such things as sewing cards are proper to use at the age of twelve for developing the strengths of geometry.

Dr. Steiner: That is correct. After twelve, they would be too much like a game. I would never use things at school that do not exist in real life. The children cannot develop a relationship to life from things that contain nothing of life. The Fröbel things were created for school. We should create nothing for school alone. We should bring only things that exist in real life into school, but in an appropriate form.

315 . The course was given in Bern instead as The Roots of Education.

Some teachers report about their impressions of England.

Dr. Steiner: You need to take into account that the English do not understand logic alone, even if it is poetic. They need everything to be presented in concrete pictures. As soon as you get into logic, English people cannot understand it. Their mentality is such that they understand only what is concrete.

A teacher thought that the people organized through improvisation. He had the impression they were at the limits of their capabilities.

Dr. Steiner: All the anthroposophists and a number of other guests drove from Wales to London. All of the participants were from Penmaenmawr. There was an extra train from Penmaenmawr. We had two passenger cars and a luggage car. The train left late so it could go quickly. The conductor came along, and the luggage was still outside. Wachsmuth said it needed to be put aboard. The passengers saw to it that the train waited. That is something that is not possible in Germany. At some stations there was a lot of disorder. Here, people don’t know what happens, and there you have to go to the luggage car yourself. In Manchester, two railway companies meet, and the officials there had a small war. One group did not want to take us aboard, and the other wanted to get rid of us. They often lose the luggage but then find it again. These private companies have some advantages, but also disadvantages. No trains leave from such stations on Sunday because the same people who own the hotels also own the railways. People have to stay over until Monday because there are no trains on Sunday. I discussed the inner aspects of Penmaenmawr in a lecture.316

A teacher: In England they spoke about the position of women in ancient Greece and how women were not treated as human beings.

Schuré describes the Mysteries in which women apparently played a major role.3

316 . See Rudolf Steiner, The Evolution of Consciousness, lectures 6, 8, and 9.

Dr. Steiner: Women as such certainly played a role, particularly those chosen for the Mysteries. They were, however, women who did not have their own families. Women who had their own family were never brought into public life. Children were raised at home, so everyone assumed women would not participate in public life.

Until the child was seven, he or she knew almost nothing of public life, and fathers saw their children only rarely. They hardly knew them.

It was a different way of life that was not seen as less valuable.

The women chosen for the Mysteries often played a very important role. Then there were those like Aspasia.

We need to divide the fifth grade. I would have liked to have a male teacher, if for no other reason than that people say we are filling the faculty only with women. However, since we don’t have an overwhelming majority of women and the situation is still relatively in balance, and, in fact, I was unable to find a man, we can do nothing else. As I was looking around for someone capable, I put together some statistics. I looked at how things are. It is the case that in middle schools women have a greater capacity. Men are more capable only in the subjects that are absolutely essential, whereas women can teach throughout. Men are less capable. That is one of the terrible things of our times. Thus, there was nothing to do other than to hire this young woman. I think she will make a good teacher. She did her dissertation on a remark in one of my lectures about how Homer begins with “Sing me, Muse, of the man,” and on something from Klopstock, “Sing, undying soul!”

The 5c class will thus be taken over by Dr. Martha Häbler. I think she is quite industrious. I want you, that is, the two fifth grade teachers, to make some proposals about which children we should move from the current classes into the new class. We will take children from both classes. Dr. Häbler will be visiting, and I will introduce her

3. See Education and Modern Spiritual Life, lecture 3.

when I come on the tenth. She will immediately become part of the faculty and will participate in the meetings.

That leads me to a second question. I am going to ask Miss Klara Michels to take over the 3b class. I have asked Mrs. Plinke to go to Miss Cross’s school in Kings Langley.

The gardening teacher asks whether they should create class gardens.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against that. Until now the garden work has been more improvised. Write something up. It can go into the curriculum.

The science teacher: From teaching botany, I have the feeling that we should grow plants in the garden that we will study in botany.

Dr. Steiner: That is possible. In that way there will be more of a plan in the garden.

A teacher asks about handwork.

Dr. Steiner: Mrs. Molt can turn over her last two periods in handwork to Miss Christern.

Since we have let a number of things go, I would ask you to present them now.

I would like you to take a serious look at S.T. He is precocious.

He is very talented and also quite reasonable, but you always have to keep him focused. I gave him a strong reminder that he needs to take an interest in his school subjects. He has read Plato, Kant, and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom. He pretty much has his mind made up. If you think he needs some extra help, he should receive it. He would prefer that you analyze esoteric science for him. He has gone from school to school and was in a cloister school first. He will be a hard nut to crack.

A teacher asks about a second conference for young people and also about lectures for anthroposophical teachers outside the Waldorf School.317

317 . This did not occur.

Dr. Steiner: We are planning another conference for young people, but you will need to decide how you want it. It is all the same to me, as I can adjust my lectures accordingly.

It would be good if we arranged to have lectures just for the teachers of the Waldorf School during the school year. That would be good. But it does not appear possible during the holidays. I don’t know about such a conference when so many deadly thoughts fly around between such beautiful ones. Those four days were terrible. Such conferences are not very useful for what we need here at school.

It seems to me, and I think we should discuss this, as though a somewhat different impulse is living here. That is what I think. I believe that an entirely new feeling of responsibility will arise out of the seriousness with which the pedagogy was taken up in England. That clearly indicates that we must develop very strong forces. I certainly think we need something. From the perspective of the entirety of Waldorf pedagogy, it would be desirable for us to speak about the effects of moral and religious impulses upon other subjects. We should speak about direct teaching experience, which we could do more easily at a youth conference. The youth conference will have open meetings. I think that is easier than if we have a conference where people sit from morning until evening. I will be here again from the tenth to the fourteenth of October, so we can plan to speak about this question in more detail then. Other than your participation, you will not have much to do with that conference. Since today’s youth want to be let loose, I think I will not have very much to do with such a conference either. It might be possible to have no school during those days, so that it would be easy to give a lecture.

I cannot easily be here at any other time; I have too many things to do. If we are to build, I must be in Dornach. During the fal holidays, we can speak about higher pedagogical questions, but only Waldorf teachers can attend. The public could attend the conference. We could arrange things so that everyone gets

something from the conference, the parents as well as the teachers, but what they receive would be different. If I can present everything I have to say as something living, it will be that way.

( Speaking about a newly hired teacher, X. ) I was satisfied with the periods I observed. He is really serious about the work and has found his way into the material well. The students understand him, but he needs some guidance. I have not allowed him here today because I wanted to say that. He needs to feel that you are al behind him. He needs to remain enthusiastic, which he is very much so now.

The music teacher asks about presenting rhythms in music that are different from those in eurythmy. He uses the normal rhythms and would like to know whether only the two-, three-, and four-part rhythms are important, or whether he should go on to five-and seven-part.

Dr. Steiner: Use five-and seven-part rhythms only with the older children, not under fifteen years old. I think if you did it with children under fifteen, it would confuse their feeling for music. I can hardly imagine that those who do not have the talent to become musicians would learn it alone. It is sufficient to go only up to four-part rhythm. You need to be careful that their musical feeling remains transparent as long as possible, so that they can experience the differences. It will not be that way once they have learned seven-part rhythm. There are certainly pedagogical advantages when the children actively participate in conducting— they participate dynamically, but everyone should do that. You can use the standard conductor’s movements.

The music teacher: Until now, I have only done that with all of them together. Should I allow individuals to conduct in the lower grades?

Dr. Steiner: I think that could begin around age nine or ten. Much of what is decisive during that period comes out of the particular relationship that develops when one child stands as an individual

before the group. That is also something we could do in other subjects; for example, in arithmetic one child could lead the others in certain things. That is something we could easily do there, but in music it becomes an actual part of the art itself.

A teacher asks about the order of the eurythmy figures.

Dr. Steiner: I had them set up so that the vowels were together, then the consonants, and then a few others. There are twenty-two or twenty-three figures.

You could, of course, put the related consonants together, in other words, not just alphabetically. It would be best to feel the letter you are working with and not be completely dependent upon some order. You should perceive it more qualitatively, not simply as a series of one next to the other.

If this were not such a terribly difficult time, I believe there would be a great deal living here. The difficulties are now more subtle. Before the children have learned a specific gesture, they cannot connect any concept with the figure, but the moment they learn the gesture, you should relate it to the figure. They must recognize the relationship in such a way that they will understand the movement, not just the character and feeling. The feeling is expressed through the veils, but the children are too young for veils. Character is something you can gradually teach them after they have formed an inner relationship to the movement. When they understand what the principle behind the figures is, that will have a favorable effect upon the teaching of eurythmy. Over time, they will develop an artistic feeling; when you can help develop that, you should do so.

How is the situation in the 9b class?

A teacher: T.L. has left.

Dr. Steiner: That is too bad.

A teacher: L.A. in the fourth grade is stealing and lying. She also has a poor memory.

Dr. Steiner: She is lying because she wants to hide that. It would be good if, and this always helps, you could dictate a little story to her so that she would have to learn it very well. The story should be about a child who steals and then gets into an absurd situation.

Earlier, I gave such stories to parents. Make up a little story in which a child ends up in an absurd situation due to the course of events, so that this child will no longer want to steal. You can make up various stories; they could be bizarre or even grotesque. Of course, this helps only when the child carries it in a living way, when she has to review it in her soul time and again. The child should commit the story to memory just as she knows the Lord’s Prayer, so that the story lives within her and she can always bring it forth from her memory. If you can do that, that would really help. If one story is not enough, you should do a second. This is also something you can do in class. It would hurt nothing if others also hear it. The child should repeat it again and again. Others can be around, but they do not need to memorize it. You should not say why you are doing it, don’t speak with the children about it at all. The mother should know only that it will help her child. The child should not know that, and the class, absolutely not. The child should learn in a very naïve way what the story presents. For her sister, you could shorten the story and tell it to her again and again.

With L.A., you could do it in class, but the others do not need to memorize it.

A teacher asks whether an eighteen-year-old girl who is deaf and dumb can come to the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against it. However, it would be good if she remained at the commercial art school and took some additional classes here, for instance, art or eurythmy. She is completely deaf. An association can develop just as well with the movements of the limbs as with the movements of the organ of speech.

A teacher asks about the groups of animals and whether that should be brought into connection with the various stages of life.

Dr. Steiner: The children first need to understand the aspects of the human being. What follows is secondary. You can do that after you tell them about the major divisions of the head, rhythmic, and metabolic animals, but you cannot do it completely systematically.

A teacher asks about Th.H. in the fifth grade, who is not doing well in writing.

Dr. Steiner: It is quite clear that with this child certain astral sections of the eye are placed too far forward. The astral body is enlarged, and she has astral nodules before her eyes. You can see that, and her writing shows it also. She transposes letters consistently. That is why she writes, for example, Gsier instead of Gries. I will have to think about the reason. When she is copying, she writes one letter for another. Children at this age do not normally do that, but she does it consistently. She sees incorrectly.

I will need to think about what we can do with this girl. We will need to do something, as she also does not see other things correctly. She sees many things incorrectly. This is in interesting case. It is possible, although we do not want to do an experiment in this direction, that she also confuses a man with a woman or a little boy with an older woman. If this confusion is caused by an incorrect development in the astral plane, then she will confuse only things somehow related, not things that are totally unrelated.

If this continues, and we do nothing to help it, it can lead to grotesque forms of insanity. All this is possible only with a particularly strong development of the astral body, resulting in temporary animal forms that again disappear. She is not a particularly wideawake child, and you will notice that if you ask her something, she will make the same face as someone you awaken from sleep. She starts a little, just as someone you awaken does.

She would never have been in a class elsewhere, that is something possible only here with us. She would have never made it beyond the first grade. She is a very interesting child.

A teacher: Someone wants to make a brochure with pictures of the Waldorf School.

Dr. Steiner: I haven’t the slightest interest in that. If we did that, we would have The Coming Day print it. If we wanted such a brochure, we would publish it ourselves. Aside from that, we cannot go so far as to create competition for our own companies.

It would be an impossible situation to undermine our own publisher by having publications printed somewhere else. Under certain circumstances, it could cause quite a commotion.

Considering the relationship between the Waldorf School and The Coming Day, it would not be very upright. If we were to make such a brochure, I see no reason why we should not have it published by The Coming Day. We would earn more that way. For now, though, it would not be right.

Did one of the classes go swimming? I am asking because that terrible M.K. who complains about everything also wrote me a letter complaining about the school. I didn’t read it all. He is one of those sneaky opponents we cannot keep out, who are always finding things out. He is the one I was speaking of when I said it is not possible to work bureaucratically in our circles as is normally done, by having a list and sending things to the people on it. The Anthroposophical Society needs to be more personal, and we do not need to send people like M.K. everything. We need to be more human in the Anthroposophical Society. I mean that in regard to how we proceed, whether we are bureaucratic about deciding whether to send something to someone or not. He just uses the information to create a stir and to complain. He complains with an ill intent, even though he is a member.

Tuesday, October 16, 1923

Tuesday, October 16, 1923, 4:30 p.m.

Following the three lectures of Deeper Insights into Education . 318

Dr. Steiner: This morning we created the third fifth-grade class, 5c.

You all know Dr. Häbler, their new teacher.

There is something weighing heavily on my heart, which I would like to discuss first. That is all the events surrounding the very disturbing letter Mr. X. wrote me, saying he no longer wants to be active in the administrative committee. He does not think there is enough of the trust he assumed existed between himself and the faculty. I know the faculty has asked him not to leave, but as I told him, it is really very important in our faculty that not only the external forms of interaction, but also the basis of those interactions, be healthy. It will be impossible for us, as I just discussed in the lecture, if all the underlying principles of the faculty are not healthy, that is, if everyone will not work together, both inwardly and outwardly. We need to pay much more attention to that in our school. If you go to a teacher in another class, you should always be able to know and feel what that teacher is doing. Sometimes when I visit one or another class, I have to admit that such and such could not occur if the right things were being done in another class. If all of you go your own way and do what you want, we will never be able to fulfill our task. So, this is not a solution. Instead, I would ask each of you connected with the matter to state clearly what, from your perspective, happened, both inwardly and outwardly.

The current administrator: I do not think I am so much personally responsible as it is that the position itself undermines trust. It would be good if something happened that would really guarantee our

318 . See Deeper Insights into Education.

forward movement. That is more important than what is connected with my own person.

Another teacher: You ( the teacher who just spoke) said that our meetings were not as you would like them. You did not think you were able to enliven our meetings. But, that is something none of us could achieve. Due to its size, the faculty has become somewhat unresponsive.

Dr. Steiner: I do not quite agree that enthusiasm should suffer as the faculty grows. That would be a sad thing. New teachers should become a source of new enthusiasm. If you want it brighter in a room, you do not turn out the lamps. Instead, you turn on more.

Have any significant things occurred?

There are shouts of “No!”

Dr. Steiner: Well, I do not understand why you would resign if there is no real reason. Resigning cannot be right if you say nothing important has happened. We need to take things seriously.

The current administrator: I have lost trust in the will of the faculty and in the cooperation within the meetings. They proceed in such a way that I had to admit to one faculty member that he was right when he said he would not attend because nothing would be accomplished anyway.

A teacher: You need to tell us why you are not satisfied with our meetings.

Dr. Steiner: I wanted to ask that also, namely, to what extent you feel the meetings are not fruitful.

The current administrator and a number of teachers speak about things that have happened.

Dr. Steiner: You can either discuss or not discuss things like those you have mentioned. During such a discussion, it is possible that people might shake their heads, as happened in the situation concerning Miss A. However, discussing them shows that differing but complementary feelings can lead to a conversation. It might be a good idea to discover why such things are discussed at

Tuesday, October 16, 1923

all. I think much has resulted from misunderstandings, but all those come from being for or against one another.

A teacher: I have tried to create a picture. The current administrator feels responsible for creating a certain kind of discipline within the faculty, and, given people’s temperaments, that has created misunderstandings.

Dr. Steiner: There you have touched upon something I would like to discuss with you. In my lecture today, I mentioned that we need to find our way past the temperaments.319 The goal of my lecture was to show how to come to an inner understanding that lies beyond people’s temperaments. I would like to hear about how these misunderstandings due to temperaments arose. If I were to restate what you just described, I might say that you think the administrator wanted to create a thirteenth grade within the faculty. The faculty, however, was not pleased by that and rejected the pedagogical method of that desire.

A teacher describes some of the events.

Dr. Steiner: I can see such things only as sparks falling on a powder keg. What I wanted to hear was more about what lies behind such events.

A number of people give their impressions.

Dr. Steiner: The question has only been put off, not resolved. The present administrator is resigning at the end of his period of activity.

The other two members of the committee will have the position for the next four months. The question is whether we can live in such a difficult time with this thorn in our sides, which is what putting things off would be. During this next period of time, which will be so difficult because we do not know if we can create a truly lively

319 . See Deeper Insights into Education.

relationship between Dornach and Stuttgart, we really do need a solution. It would not be good to have only a provisional decision during these difficult times.

A teacher reports about the previous meeting.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that things have come to such a pass as a result of the last faculty meeting; otherwise the administrator would have simply finished out the remaining two weeks of his activity, and then thought about whether he wanted to take it up next time.

The current administrator speaks about how the situation has now changed and the possibilities he sees of continuing. He wants to see how the next two weeks go.

Dr. Steiner: It seems to me that you have given a certain indication of agreement regarding the thirteenth grade.

A teacher: We decided to trust the current administrator in spite of the thirteenth grade.

Many teachers comment about that.

Dr. Steiner: Now that I have listened to the discussion for some time, it still seems to me that there are some underlying reasons. I understand neither the objective starting point nor how it could lead to such results. I can only believe that the real problem lies in more personal things that could not be brought up here, where we need to remain objective.

The current administrator is asked to continue and he agrees.

A teacher: Which subjects should we drop in the twelfth grade so that we can prepare the students for their final examinations?

Dr. Steiner: Sadly, technology and shop, as well as gymnastics and singing. We cannot drop eurythmy or drawing. Religion will have to be limited to one hour, but in the morning. The twelfth grade will take religion for one hour with the eleventh grade.

Tuesday, December 18, 1923, 9:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: We should talk about everything that has happened during this long period.

They discuss a letter to the Ministry of Education about the students who will take the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: Why was it necessary to add that it lies in the nature of block instruction that some subjects have not been taught? In such official things, the smartest thing to do is not to get people upset by telling them things they don’t want to hear.

What still needs to be done in literature?

You need to proceed efficiently. Some of the things you want to teach should be taught, but for the examination you do not need to teach the students anything about Goethe as a natural scientist, nor will they be asked questions about his letters on aesthetic education. His poetry will cause them some pain because it is not so easy. Hauptmann’s Hannele is better than Die Weber. They don’t have any idea about Goethe as a natural scientist. For such examinations it would be a mistake to feel you need to set up such a curriculum. Those things are not expected even for someone who is working toward a doctorate. They cannot be done in two years in school. Look here, here we have Faust, Part I .

I would like to know how you could do all that in school. Do you think you will find some themes for German in them? You need to cover what will come up in written examinations.

If you go to the ministry too often, they will think you have a bad conscience, and will get the feeling that things are not going right here. You should not go into such things so much, but only

answer when the ministry writes. We will see how things go, we can always withdraw.

In the last part of school, you need to be sure that the students write and answer as much as possible themselves. They need to be much more active individually. If a student does not already know something, you should not be so quick to help. They need to develop their will and find the answers themselves. This is much better than it was before, when the students had to do nothing more than listen. I need to go through all the classes again and will do so at the next opportunity.

They present a letter inviting the Waldorf School to present some student work in Berlin.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if we had more exact information.

You need to find out what he wants. Exhibits of student work have a real purpose only when a course is being undertaken, that is, when the entire context and content of the Waldorf School are presented. But just displaying work? As long as people do not know exactly what the goals of the Waldorf School are, those who look at the work will not know what we expect of the students. It is the same as if we said we want to present only the pictures from an illustrated book of children’s tales. People will not understand anything. The people in Berlin need to say whether they will support the Waldorf School.

They discuss C.H. in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: His relationship to the class needs to come from his character. You should have him draw what is on the object, not the object itself. How light affects the object. The illuminated side and the shadow side. Not the table, but the light upon the table and the table’s shadow. He lacks a sense of perspective in painting.

It is a clear defect, and it is good to work on his deficiencies. Let him try to draw a human face, but he should not draw a nose, only the light upon it and the shadows from it. You need to try to speak

with him about things. He is disturbed. You need to make him imagine things sculpturally. He will be better in arithmetic than geometry, so you will need to make sure he understands geometry and isn’t just doing it from memory.

Cliques in the eleventh grade are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: Give them “Outsiders and Sociable People” as an essay topic, so that they have to think things through.

A teacher asks about eleventh-grade English. They have read Macaulay’s Warren Hastings.

Dr. Steiner: You could also read some English poetry, for example “The Sea School.” In addition, you could give them some characteristic prose, for example a chapter by Emerson such as the ones about Shakespeare and Goethe. Have them read that and then try to show the abrupt changes in the style of his thoughts.

Discuss aphoristic and nonaphoristic styles and things in between, and show the relationships of those styles, how they arise. You should discuss that with the students and bring in a little psychology also. Emerson’s method of writing was to take all the books out of his library and spread them in front of himself. He then went around, walked around the room, read a sentence here or there, and wrote it down. He did the same thing again and then wrote down another sentence, independent of the first, and so forth. He found his inspiration in the library, and you can see the resulting jumps in his writing. Nietzsche wrote about the things he read by Emerson, for instance about Nature.320 In his own copy, Nietzsche circled certain things and then numbered them.

Anyway, read poetry and Emerson.

320 . Nature and Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson described several wellknown people, including Shakespeare and Goethe.

A teacher: What should we read in tenth-grade French? Could we read Poincaré? A number of students want to leave.

Dr. Steiner: That is still a dangerous, a strange thing. In principle, you could do that, but not with Poincaré because there is so much untruth in it.

For those who want to leave, perhaps you should choose something that appears to be foreign to life, but actually leads to it. Something like Bulwer-Lytton’s Vril.321 That could be read in the tenth grade.

There is a collection of French essays by Hachette that contain essays by the other Poincaré, the mathematician. There is also a second part about technical thinking. That is something that might be useful.

For twelfth-grade English, you might also consider MacKenzie’s Humanism.322 We cannot go along with dropping French as they are doing in public schools.323

A eurythmy teacher asks about difficulties with the upper grades. Some of the students want a different teacher.

Dr. Steiner: You need to treat that with some humor. Appear to agree and then develop it ad absurdum. There are always some students who want a different teacher. You need to be firm in your position and take it with some humor. You could perhaps ask, “What do you have against me? I am really a very nice lady; there is no reason for you to hate me.” Sometimes, you can quiet things in a couple of minutes that way.

A teacher asks about P.Z. in gymnastics class.

321 . Vril: The Coming Race, by Edward Bulwer, Earl of Lytton (1803–1873).

322 . J. S. MacKenzie, Lectures on Humanism with Special Reference to Its Bearings on Sociology (1907).

323 . This was being discussed at the time but was not done.

Dr. Steiner: He does not align the main direction of his body with gravity. You should try having him do exercises on the high bar so that he hangs. I mean that literally. Such an exercise would free his astral body. Sometimes you have children who look as though their astral body is too large, so that it is like a loose-fitting cloak around their I. Through such exercises, the astral body will become more firmly connected with the I. They feel good when their feet are off the floor, for instance, when they climb a ladder and sit there quietly. With such children, you will usually notice that they have something like oily or fatty skin when they hang their astral body.

It will be like that in some way. Or, they may have wrinkled and loose skin.

Perhaps you can arrange gymnastics class so that groups of children do what is necessary according to their temperaments.

A teacher asks about the dramatic presentations done by the children at Miss MacMillan’s school.

Dr. Steiner: They do many things there that are not appropriate for the age of the children. It is impossible to put on dramas with children younger than ten, though afterward that goes quite well.

It is not the method, but Miss MacMillan’s strength and spontaneity, that is effective. The method is strongly affected by the English tendency to do things too soon. That arises from the unusual relationship English people have to their experience of themselves as human beings. They want to be seen as human beings, and that is something taught them through such things.

Such people have a strongly developed astral body, which limits their I to a certain level. That is not the case in other European countries. Spiritually, Englishmen look like human beings who go around not fully clothed, who do not have a collar. That is how their I lives within them and how they are in their surroundings.

They have a certain human sociality in their character that makes up their national character. They like dramatic presentations of the

human being, also Bernard Shaw. They want to do something that has validity, something others will recognize.

A teacher: S.T. in the ninth grade is very clumsy in his written expression. Should I have him do some extra work in writing essays?

Dr. Steiner: You should work with his handwriting, very basically, through exercises. As an extra task, you could have him write a quarter page while paying attention to how each letter is formed.

If he would do that, if he would pay attention to forming each letter, it would affect his entire character.

Aside from that, his lines of vision converge at the wrong place.

His eyes do not properly fix upon the object. We should correct that. Remind him often so that his eyes look in parallel. You can also have him read as though he were shortsighted, although he is not. His eyes droop just like he droops when he walks. He does not walk properly, he drags his feet. Have you ever noticed, for example, that when he is at the playground and wants to run from one place to another, he never does it in a straight line, but always in some kind of zigzag. You should also look at how his hair always falls across his forehead. He also has no sense of rhythm. If he has to read something rhythmic in class, he gets out of breath. In gymnastics, you could have him move firmly, stamp his steps along.

Karmically, it is as though he has two different incarnations mixed together. In his previous incarnation, his life was cut off forcefully. Now, he is living through the second part of that incarnation and the first part of the present incarnation at the same time. Nothing fits. He has already read Kant. He cannot do things any other child can do, but he asks very unusual questions that show he has a very highly developed soul life. Once, he asked me if it is true that the distance between the Sun and the Earth is continually decreasing. He asked whether the Sun was coming closer to us. He asked such questions without any real reason.

You need to show him other perspectives, and have him do odd things in a disciplined way, for instance, some mathematical things that pique his curiosity, that are not immediately clear to him. You could, for example, have him make knots with a closed loop.

Oskar Simony discusses that in his paper on forming knots with closed loops.

Since this was unknown to most of the teachers, Dr. Steiner showed how a strip of paper pasted together to form a closed loop crossed itself in the middle when twisted one, two, or three times. One twist resulted in a large ring; two twists resulted in two rings, one within the other. With three twists, the result was a ring knotted in itself. While doing this Dr. Steiner discussed Oskar Simony in detail.324

Dr. Steiner: Simony counted the prime numbers. He once said that in order to bear occult events, you need a great deal of humor.

That is certainly true.

Simony was like S.T. He drags himself around, has little sense of rhythm and needs to learn to observe what he does. Everything he does that causes him to think about what he has done is good.

St.B. should do eurythmy exercises in which he has to pay attention to forming the letters with his arms toward the rear. He should pay attention to doing the exercise without it becoming a habit. He cannot integrate his etheric body into the periphery of the astral body.

We cannot consider K.F. a Latin student. Perhaps it is quite good for him to sit there like a deserted island. Sitting there in isolation may not be bad at all. I just now am clear that it is good if he is isolated.

A report is given about L.K. in the first grade. She does not like fairy tales or poetry.

324 . Oskar Simony (1852–1915), professor of mathematics in Vienna. See also Steiner’s lecture of July 11, 1916, in Toward Imagination.

Dr. Steiner: She should make the letter i with her whole body, u with her ears and forefinger, and e with her hair, so that she does all three exercises with some sensitivity. She needs to awaken the sensitivity of her body, so she should do that for a longer period of time.

A teacher: S.J. in the seventh grade is doing better writing with her left hand than with her right.

Dr. Steiner: You should remind her that she should write only with her right hand. You could try having her lift her left leg so that she hops around on her right leg, that is, have her jump around on her right leg with her left leg drawn up close to her. She is ambidextrous.

If there are children who are clearly lefthanded, you will need to decide. That is something you can observe. You need to look at the left hand. With real lefthanded children the hands appear as though exchanged; the left hand looks like the right hand in that it has more lines than the right hand.325

This could also be done through the eyes. You could have children who are really lefthanded raise the right hand and look at it with both eyes. Observe how their eyes cross as they move their gaze up their arm until they reach the right hand and then move their gaze back. Then have them stretch their arm. Do that three times.

325 . The notes of one of the teachers contained the following: “That is not true for clearly lefthanded people. Those who are clearly lefthanded should be allowed to write with the left hand.” In other words, only cross-dominant lefthanded children were to be taught to write with the right hand.

Tuesday, February 5, 1924, 8:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I could not come sooner, but it was not possible. We have a number of things to catch up on, and I am really very happy to be here today.

A member of the administrative committee: (After greeting Dr. Steiner) After we came back from the Christmas Conference in Dornach, we felt responsible for doing everything to make the Waldorf School an appropriate instrument for its new task. I have been asked to tell you that the members of the administrative committee now place their positions in your hands. Since it seems possible that the relationship of the school to the Anthroposophical Society may change, we would like you to redetermine from this new standpoint how the school should be run.

Dr. Steiner: I certainly understand how this view could arise among you, since the intent of the Christmas Conference was to do something for anthroposophy based upon a complete reformation, a new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society.

On the other hand, the Christmas Conference gave the Anthroposophical Society an explicitly esoteric character. That seems to contradict the public presentation, but through the various existing intentions, which will gradually be realized over the course of time, people will see that the actual leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, the present board of directors [ Vorstand] in Dornach, will have a completely esoteric basis. That will also effect a complete renewal of the Anthroposophical Society.

Now, it is quite understandable that the various institutions connected with anthroposophy ask themselves how they should relate to what happened in Dornach. In my letter to members

published in our newsletter, I said that the conference in Dornach will have a real purpose only if that purpose is not forgotten for all time. The conference will realize its complete content to the extent individual anthroposophical institutions slowly make the intent of the Dornach conference their own.

The Christmas Conference was the second part of a decision in principle. The first part was that if anthroposophists want it, the board of directors will do some things from Dornach, and that includes a continuous questioning of life within the Anthroposophical Society. In principle, there is a decision that— to the extent that this intention is realized, that we bring it into reality— the board of directors in Dornach is justified in taking over the responsibility for anthroposophy, not just for the Society.

That is the esoteric purpose, but of course the esoteric impulses must come from various directions. I would like to ask the individual institutions to understand that whatever emanates from Dornach always has an esoteric background. It is, of course, just as understandable that the Waldorf School particularly, and its representatives, question its relationship to Dornach and to the Free School of Spiritual Science.

Perhaps, as you have considered the question in more detail, you already feel there are some significant difficulties, particularly concerning the final decision about the administrative committee.

The situation is this: First, we must find the form through which the Waldorf School can make the connection to the School of Spiritual Science. Formally, the Waldorf School is not an anthroposophical institution; rather, it is an independent creation based upon the foundations of anthroposophical pedagogy. In the way it meets the public, as well as the way it meets legal institutions, it is not an anthroposophical institution, but a school based upon anthroposophical pedagogy. Suppose the Independent Waldorf School were now to become officially related to the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. Then the Waldorf School would immediately become an anthroposophical school in a formal,

external sense. Of course, there are some things that would support making such a decision. On the other hand, though, we must consider whether the Waldorf School can fulfill its cultural tasks better as an independent school with an unhindered form than it can as a direct part of what emanates from Dornach.

Everything that emanates from Dornach is also collected there. If the Independent Waldorf School entered a direct relationship to Dornach, all activities of the Waldorf School falling within the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society would also be the responsibility of the leadership of the School of Spiritual Science and fall within their authority. In the future, Dornach will not be simply a decoration, as many anthroposophical institutions have been. Dornach will be a reality. Every institution belonging to Dornach will, in fact, must, recognize the authority of the leadership in Dornach. That will be necessary. At the same time, the leadership of the Waldorf School would then take on an esoteric character.

On the other hand, given the state of the world today, we could certainly weigh the question of whether the Waldorf School could best achieve its cultural goals that way. This is definitely not a question we can immediately brush aside. Weighed with nothing but the most serious feeling of responsibility, the question is extremely difficult since it could mean a radical change throughout the Independent Waldorf School.

Pedagogical life in the modern world may still be subject to the error, or better said the illusion, expressed through the various goals of all kinds of pedagogical organizations. However, everything in those pedagogical organizations is really nothing more than talk. In reality, pedagogy is increasingly falling prey to three factors of development, two of which are making giant steps today. Anthroposophy, the third factor, is very weak; it is only a shadow and is not seen by opponents as anything of any importance. Pedagogy is slowly being captured by the two main streams in the world, the Catholic and the Bolshevik, or socialist,

streams. Anyone who wants to can easily see that all other tendencies are on a downward path in regard to success. That says nothing at all about the value of Catholicism or Bolshevism, only about their strength. Each has tremendous strength, and that strength increases every week. Now people are trying to bring all other cultural movements into those two, so it only makes sense to orient pedagogy with the third cultural stream, anthroposophy.

That is the situation in the world.

It is really marvelous how little thought humanity gives to anything today, so that it allows the most important symptoms to go by without thinking. The fact that a centuries-old tradition has been broken in England by MacDonald’s system is something so radical, so important, that it was marvelous that the world did not even notice it. 326 On the other hand, we from the anthroposophical side should take note of how external events clearly show that the age whose history can be written from the purely physical perspective has passed. We need to be clear that Ahrimanic forces are increasingly breaking in upon historical events. Two leading personalities, Wilson and Lenin, died from the same illness, both from paralysis, which means that both offered an opening for Ahrimanic forces. These things show that world history is no longer earthly history, and is becoming cosmic history. All such things are of great importance and play a role in our detailed questions.

If we now go on to the more concrete problem of the administrative committee putting their work back into my hands, you should not forget that the primary question was decided through the conference in Dornach. From 1912 until 1923, I lived within the Anthroposophical Society with no official position, without even being a member, something I clearly stated in 1912.

326 . At the beginning of 1924, Ramsay MacDonald became prime minister of England. He was a member of the Labor Party and, therefore, did not come from either of the previously controlling parties.

I have actually belonged to the Anthroposophical Society only as an advisor, as a teacher, as the one who was to show the sources of spiritual science. Through the Christmas Conference, I became chairman of the Anthroposophical Society, and from then on my activities are those of the chairman of the Society. If I were to name the administrative committee now, that committee would be named by the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society. The highest body of the Independent Waldorf School would thus be designated by the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society. That is certainly something we could consider, but I want you to know that when we go on to discuss this whole problem. If the Waldorf School and Dornach had that relationship, then the Waldorf School would be something different from what it is now.

Something new would be created, different from what was created at the founding of the Waldorf School. The Christmas Conference in Dornach was not just a ceremony like the majority of anthroposophical activities, even though they may not have a ceremonious character, particularly in Stuttgart. The Christmas Conference was completely serious, so anything resulting from it is also very serious.

The Independent Waldorf School can relate to Dornach in other ways. One of those would be not to place the school under Dornach, but instead to have the faculty, or those within the faculty who wish to do so, enter a relationship to Dornach, to the Goetheanum, to the School of Spiritual Science, not for themselves, but as teachers of the school. The Waldorf School, as such, would not take on that characteristic, but it would emphasize to the outer world that from now on the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum will provide the impulse for the Waldorf School pedagogy, just as anthroposophical pedagogy previously provided it. The difference would be that, whereas the relationship to anthroposophical pedagogy was more theoretical, in the future the relationship would be more alive. Then, the faculty as a whole or as individuals would conform to the impulses that would result

when one, as a teacher at the Independent Waldorf School, is a member of the School of Spiritual Science. That relationship would make it impossible for the Goetheanum to name the administrative committee. The committee would, of course, need to remain as it is now because the thought behind it is that the committee was chosen, even elected, by the faculty. It may not even be possible from the perspective of the legal authorities here for the administrative committee to be named from Dornach. I do not believe the laws of Württemberg would allow the administrative committee of the Independent Waldorf School to be chosen from the Goetheanum, that is, from an institution existing outside Germany. The only other possibility would be for me to name the new administrative committee. However, that is unnecessary.

These are the things I wanted to present to you. You can see from them that you should consider the question in detail yourselves. Now I would like you to tell me your thoughts about the solution of the question. Whether you want to give me more or less control over the solution, whether you want me to decide how you should operate. You do not need to do this in any way other than to say what you have already discussed in the faculty, and what led you to say what you said at the outset.

A teacher: For us, the question was whether the Christmas Conference in Dornach changed the relationship of the Waldorf School to the Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: The Waldorf School has had no relationship to the Anthroposophical Society. Because it was outside the Society, the Christmas Conference has no significance for the Waldorf School.

That is the situation. It is different, though, for institutions that arose directly from the Anthroposophical Society. That is quite different. The Waldorf School was founded as an independent institution. The relationship that existed was unofficial and can continue with the new Society. The relationship was completely

free, something that came into existence each day because the vast majority of the teachers here belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and because anthroposophical pedagogy was carried out in a free manner, since, as the representative of anthroposophical pedagogy, I also was chairman of the faculty. We need change none of that.

A teacher: How should we understand the Pedagogical Section?

Dr. Steiner: We can only slowly put into practice the intentions of the Christmas Conference, particularly those of the School of Spiritual Science. To an extent, that is because we do not have enough money right now to construct all the buildings that we will need for everything we want to do. What we need will gradually be created. For now, the various sections will be created to the extent possible with the people and resources available today. My thought was that the basis for creating the Independent University as an institution of the Anthroposophical Society would be the membership of the School of Spiritual Science. I have now seen that a large number of teachers of the Waldorf School have applied for membership; thus, they will also be members and from the very beginning become a means for spreading the pedagogy emanating from the Independent University. We will have to wait and see which other institutions join the Independent University.

Other institutions have often expressed a desire to form a relationship with Dornach. The situation is simple with those anthroposophical institutions that have either all the prejudices against them or none. For example, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute here in Stuttgart can join. Either it has been fought against from the very beginning as an anthroposophical institution, in which case no harm is done if it joins, or it has been recognized because people are forced to see that the healing methods used there are more effective than those found elsewhere, in which case it is obvious that it joins. That institution is not in the same

situation in regard to the world as a school. The clinic can join without any further problems.

However, if a school suddenly became an anthroposophical school, that would upset both the official authorities and the public. There is even a strong possibility that the school officials would object. They actually have no right to do so, and it doesn’t make any sense to object to the pedagogical methods, which can certainly be those of anthroposophy. There is also no reason to object even if all the teachers personally became members of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. That is of no concern to the officials, and they can raise no objection to it. However, they would immediately object if an existing relationship between the Waldorf School and the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum required the Waldorf School to accept pedagogical decisions made there, so that, for example, those in Dornach controlled the curriculum here. That is certainly true for the first eight grades. If we had only the higher grades, from the ninth grade on, hardly any objections could be raised except for possibly not allowing the students to take their final examinations, but the officials would hardly do that. Nevertheless, they would not allow it for the elementary school grades.

The basic thought of the School of Spiritual Science is that it will direct its primary activity toward insight and life. Thus, we can say that every member has not only the right, but, in a certain sense, a moral obligation to align him-or herself with Dornach in regard to pedagogical questions. Certainly, there will be people at the School of Spiritual Science who want to learn par excellence.

However, once having learned, they will remain members, just as someone who has earned a diploma from a French or Norwegian or Danish university remains a member of the university and has a continuing relationship with it. In France, you do not simply receive a piece of paper when you earn a degree, you become a lifelong member of the university and retain a scientific connection to it. That is something the old Society members who will be

members of the school under the assumption that they already know a great deal of what will be presented there should consider from the very beginning. The school will, however, continually have scientific or artistic tasks to resolve in which all members of the school should participate. To that extent, the life of each individual member of the school will be enriched. In the near future, we will send the same requests to all members of the other sections that we have already sent to the members of the Medical Section, requesting that they turn toward Dornach in important matters. We will also send a monthly or bimonthly newsletter, which will contain answers to all the questions posed by the membership. However, you would not be a member of the section, but of the class. The sections are only for the leadership in Dornach. The board of directors works together with the sections, but the individual members belong to a class.

A teacher: Should we work toward making it possible for the Waldorf School to be under Dornach?

Dr. Steiner: As with everything that can really be done, the moment we wish to join the school with Dornach we are treading upon a path we once had to leave, had to abandon, because we were not up to the situation when we undertook it. That is the path of threefolding. If you imagine the Independent Waldorf School joined with the School of Spiritual Science, you must realize that could only occur under the auspices of what lies at the foundation of threefolding. We would be working toward a specific goal if all reasonable institutions worked toward threefolding. However, we have to allow the world to go its own way after it intentionally did not want to go the other one. We are working toward threefolding, but we have to remember that an institution like the Independent Waldorf School with its objectively anthroposophical character, has goals that, of course, coincide with anthroposophical desires.

At the moment, though, if that connection were made official, people could break the Waldorf School’s neck. Therefore, the way

things presently are, I would advise that we not choose a new administrative committee; rather, leave it as it is and decide things one way or another according to these two questions. First, is it sufficient that the teachers here at the school become individual members of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach? Or, second, do you want to be members through the faculty as a whole, so that you would have membership as teachers of the Independent Waldorf School? In the latter case, the Pedagogical Section in Dornach would have to concern itself with the Waldorf School, whereas it would otherwise be concerned only with general questions of pedagogy.

That is certainly a major difference. Our newsletter might then have statements such as, “It would be best to do such and such at the Independent Waldorf School.” In a certain sense, such statements would then be binding on the teachers at the Waldorf School, which would be connected with the School of Spiritual Science. There is no danger in joining all branches and groups with the Anthroposophical Society. Actually, they have to do that. All such groups of many individuals who fulfill the requirements, and such institutions as, for example, the biological institute, the research institute, and the clinic can join. You could have problems otherwise. The difficulties that would arise for the Waldorf School would not be of concern there. When the school was founded, we placed great value upon creating an institution independent of the Anthroposophical Society. Logically, that corresponds quite well with having the various religious communities and the Anthroposophical Society provide religious instruction, so that the Society provides religious instruction just as other religious groups do. The Anthroposophical Society gives instruction in religion and the services. That is something we can justifiably say whenever others claim that the Waldorf School is an anthroposophical school. Although anthroposophy believes it has the best pedagogy, the character of anthroposophy is not forced upon the school.

That is a very clear situation. Had The Coming Day approached

the Anthroposophical Society for exercises everyone who wanted to could do, then the remarks in the Newsletter would not have been necessary.2 We can clearly see the real formalities through such things.

A teacher: Hasn’t a change already occurred since you, the head of the Waldorf School, are now also the head of the Anthroposophical Society?

Dr. Steiner: That is not the case. The position I have taken changes nothing about my being head of the school. The conference was purely anthroposophical and the Waldorf School had no official connection with the Society. What might happen if, in the course of time, the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach takes over the guidance of the religious instruction, is a different question. Were that to occur, it would be a situation of organic growth.

A teacher: Is the position we took at the founding of the Waldorf School still valid today?

Dr. Steiner: When you present the question that way, the real question is whether it is even appropriate for the faculty to approach the question, or whether that is actually a question for the Waldorf School Association. You see, the outside world views the Waldorf School Association as the actual administration of the school. You know about the seven wise men who guide the school.

This is a question we should consider in deciding whether the Waldorf School is to be joined with Dornach or not, that is, should the faculty of the Waldorf School decide whether to join as a whole or as individual teachers? Everything concerning pedagogy can be decided only in that way. Under certain circumstances, this is a professional question. The Waldorf School is as it is, outside of that. You need to look at things realistically. What would you do if you, here in the faculty, decided to connect the school with Dornach, and then the school association refused to

2. The Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 4 mentioned that the workers at The Coming Day read a verse by Steiner each morning, and continued, “Doing the exercises mentioned above at the beginning of each work day is certainly well intended.

The Vorstand of the Anthroposophical Society does not, however, agree with the form since meetings of this sort can be authorized only by the Anthroposophical Society itself, and then groups or individuals can decide for themselves whether they want to undertake them or not. This is true in all cases.”

pay your salaries because of that decision? That is something that is at least theoretically possible.

A teacher asks about the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with the question of the final examination, which is purely a question of compromise, what would change through the connection to the Society?

The teacher explains his question further.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the only other viewpoint would have to be that we absolutely refuse to take into account whether a student wishes to take the final examination or not, that we consider it a private decision of the student. Until now, no one has been thinking of that, and the question is whether we should consider that as a principle. Thus, all students’ parents would be confronted with the question, “Do I dare consider sending my child into life without having taken the final examination?” Of course, we can do that, but the question is really whether we should do that. All that is quite independent of the possibility that we may have no students at all or only those who cannot go anywhere else. It seems to me very problematic whether we can bring that question into the discussion of final examinations. I do not believe a connection with Dornach would change anything in that regard. In some ways, we would still have to make a compromise.

I believe we first need to choose a form. Such things are not permanent; they can always be reconsidered. I think you should decide to become members of the School of Spiritual Science as

individual teachers, but with the additional remark that you want to become a member as a teacher of the Independent Waldorf School. I think that will achieve everything you want, and nothing else is necessary for the time being. The difference is that if you join as an individual without being a member as a teacher, there would be no mention of the Waldorf School in our newsletter, and, therefore, questions specifically about the Waldorf School would not be handled by Dornach. Of course, if you add that you are joining as a teacher, that has no real meaning for you, but for the cultural task of the Waldorf School it does have some significance, because all other members of the School of Spiritual Science will receive news about what those in Dornach think about the Waldorf School. The Independent Waldorf School would then be part of anthroposophical pedagogical life, and interest would spread to a much greater extent. Everywhere members of the School of Spiritual Science come together, people would speak about the Waldorf School: “This or that is good,” and so forth.

The Waldorf School would thereby become a topic of interest for the Society, whereas it is presently not an anthroposophical activity. For you, it is all the same. The questions that would be discussed in Dornach would of course be different from those that arise here. It could, however, be possible that we need to discuss the same questions here in our meetings. For the Society as a whole, however, it would not be all the same. It would be something major for anthroposophical pedagogy, and in doing that you would fulfill the mission of the Independent Waldorf School. Through such an action, you would accomplish something you actually want, namely, making the Independent Waldorf School part of the overall cultural mission of anthroposophy. It could, for example, happen that a question arises in the faculty meeting in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart that then becomes a concern of the School of Spiritual Science.

A teacher: That would mean the school would send reports about our work for publication in the newsletter.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to make reports about the pedagogical methods so long as they do not concern personnel questions, unless, of course, these had pedagogical significance.

The teachers ask Dr. Steiner how he envisions the Easter pedagogical conference and ask him to give a theme for the conference.327

Dr. Steiner: The only thing I have to say is that the conference at Easter must take into account that there will also be a pedagogical course in Zurich beginning Easter Monday.328

I would like to bring up another question, which relates to something we mentioned earlier. What we can do from the Waldorf School is the following, although I need to consider what I’m now going to mention in more detail. There is another way that could immediately bring you closer to achieving your intention of a complete connection with the anthroposophical movement.

The proposal is that the Waldorf School declare itself prepared to host a conference that the Anthroposophical Society would present at Easter at the school. No one could complain about that.

Certainly, the Independent Waldorf School could hold an anthroposophical conference on its own grounds. That is something we can do. I would like to think some more about whether this is the proper time. However, I do not think there will be any public objection, and the officials at the ministry will not even understand the difference. They will certainly not understand what it means. That would be a beginning. I will set up the program.

There is one other thing I would like to say. The Youth Conference of the Christian Community in Kassel was quite in character in terms of the desires you now bear in your hearts. What happened was that the Christian Community priests held small meetings from Wednesday until the end of the week with those who wished an introduction to what the Christian Community, as

327 . See The Essentials of Education.

328 . The course occurred during Easter week in Bern. See The Roots of Education.

a religious group, has to say. The whole thing closed with a service for the participants of the conference. The last two or three days were available for open discussions, so that the people who attended had an opportunity to meet officially with the Christian Community and see that it is independent of the Anthroposophical Society.

I should mention that the participants consisted of young people under the age of twenty, and others who were thirty-six and older, so that the middle generation was missing, something characteristic of our time. They participated in a Mass, followed by open discussion that assumed the topic would cover what had been experienced.329 What actually happened, however, was that what had been experienced awakened a longing for something more, so that the anthroposophists present then spoke about anthroposophy. It could be seen that all of what had occurred had anthroposophy as its goal. That was a very characteristic conference because it shows that what is objectively desired is a connection with Anthroposophy. There will be something about the Kassel youth conference in the next newsletter.330

A teacher discusses the question of the final examination and says that some students will be advised to not take it.

Dr. Steiner: The question is how we should give the students that advice. If you handle the question from the perspective you mentioned, the principles will not be readily apparent when you give that advice. I would like to know what you have to say about the principles.

A teacher: If students are to take the final examination at the end of the twelfth grade, we cannot achieve our true learning goals in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. Instead, we will have to work

329 . “Mass” refers here to the “Act of Consecration of Man” of the Christian Community. — TRANS.

330 . January 2–8, 1924.

toward preparing the students to pass the examination. They should take both a thirteenth school year and the examination at another school.

Dr. Steiner: On the other hand, the whole question of final examinations arose from a different perspective, namely, that the students wanted to, or their guardians wanted them to, take the test. Has anything changed in that regard? The students, of course, are unhappy, but students in other schools are also unhappy that they need to learn things they don’t want to learn. I mean that our students are unhappy about the same things all other children with the same maturity at eighteen or nineteen years are unhappy about.

The question of final examinations is purely a question of opportunity. It is a question of whether we dare tell those who come to us that we will not prepare them for the final examination at all, that it is a private decision of the student whether to take the final examination or not. That is the question. For the future, it would be possible to answer that question in principle, but I do not think it would be correct to decide it for this year at the present stage.

A teacher asks whether it would be better to have the students take a thirteenth school year at another school and take their examinations there. Should a note be sent to the parents with that suggestion?

Dr. Steiner: You can do all that, but our students cannot avoid having to take an entrance examination. The question is only whether they will fail the entrance examination or the final examination.

Most of the parents want their children to have an opportunity to attend a university, in spite of the fact they gave the students to us. Both parents and students want that. At the beginning, the children did not believe it would be a problem. Their concern was that they would be able to take the final examination. That is certainly a possibility, and they can try it, but we cannot solve the

problem simply by sending the students to a thirteenth school year at another school. The question is only whether we can solve it in the way we already discussed but found very problematic and therefore rejected. If we are firm about completing the school, the question is whether we could consider the alternative of creating a preparatory session in addition to the school. We rejected that because we thought it very unpedagogical. The question is whether to create a preparatory group or ignore the curriculum. I think it would be best if we did not send the students to another school.

They would then need to take an entrance examination. However, if we completed the curriculum through the twelfth grade, we could use a thirteenth year to prepare them for the final examination.

Let’s consider the question pedagogically. Suppose a child comes into the first grade at the age of six or seven and completes the twelfth grade at the age of eighteen or nineteen. At that time and not later, the child should actually begin the transition into the university. Adding another year then is just about as smart as what the state does when it believes there is more material to be learned and adds an additional year for medical education. Those are the sorts of things that can drive you up the wall. Those who do not want to attend the university will need to find their own way in life.

They will be useful people in life without the final examination, since they will find what they need for life here. Those who are to go to the university can use an additional year to unlearn a little. I think we can certainly think of the thirteenth year as a year of boning up. Nevertheless, we will certainly need to be careful that they pass, since we cannot put the children in a different school.

We will need to separate it in some way from the Waldorf School, and we could hire instructors. We would have to enlarge the faculty to include the thirteenth grade. If we hired such people and the faculty kept control of things, we could possibly do that. That is what I think.

A teacher asks about the students who are not yet ready for the examination.

Dr. Steiner: We could suggest that, in our judgment, they are not yet ready. At other schools, the question of taking the final examination is also handled by advising the relatives of such students in the last grade not to enroll them, but to wait a year. We could also give such advice, and tell the officials that we gave it.

You have always said something that is true: we have had these students only from a particular grade. We could give the ministry a report stating that it was impossible for us to properly prepare the students for the final examination during the time they were with us. We believe they need to wait a year. You should try to advise them against it, but if they want to enroll for the examination, you should inform the officials in the way we discussed by saying we think the students need to stay in school one more year.

A teacher asks about counseling students for choosing a career.

Dr. Steiner: That can be done only in individual cases. It would hardly be possible to do it in principle. In most instances, the school has little influence upon their choice of career. Determining that is really not so simple. By the time a boy is eighteen or nineteen, he should have come to an opinion about which career he should work toward; then, based on that desire, you can counsel him. This is something that involves much responsibility.

A teacher asks about pedagogical activities relating to writing essays and giving lectures.

Dr. Steiner: That would be good in many instances, particularly for eurythmy students. I think that if you held to the kind of presentations I gave in Ilkley, it would be very useful.331

331 . See Education and Modern Spiritual Life.

I do not know what you should do to revise my lectures. It is not really possible to give a lecture and then tell someone how to revise it.

A teacher asks about reports on work at the school.

Dr. Steiner: Why shouldn’t we be able to report on our work? I think we should be able to send reports to the Goetheanum on things, like those, I believe it was Pastor Ruhtenberg, has done about German class. You could give the details and the general foundation of what you as a teacher think about the specific subject. For each subject you could do things like what Ruhtenberg did and also a more general presentation about the ideas and basis of the work done up to now.

It would probably be quite good if you did some of these things the way you previously did. Keep them short and not too extended, so that the Goetheanum could publish something more often, something concrete about how we do one thing or another.

the Goetheanum now has a circulation of six thousand, so it would be very good for such reports to appear in it or in some other newspaper.

A shop teacher thinks it is too bad that painting instruction cannot be done as regularly and in the upper grades as often as in the lower grades. He also asks about painting techniques for the lower grades.

Dr. Steiner: It does no harm to interrupt the painting class for a few years and replace it with sculpting. The instruction in painting has a subconscious effect, and when the students return to the interrupted painting class, they do it in a more lively way and with greater skill. In all things that depend upon capability, it is always the case that if they are withheld, great progress is made soon afterward, particularly when they are interrupted.

I think painting instruction for the lower grades needs some improvement. Some of the teachers give too little effort toward technical proficiency. The students do not use the materials

properly. Actually, you should not allow anyone to paint on pieces of paper that are always buckling. They should paint only on paper that is properly stretched. Also, they should go through the whole project from start to finish, so that one page is really completed.

Most of the drawings are only a beginning.

Since you are a painter, what you want will probably depend upon your discussing technical questions and how to work with the materials with the other teachers. No other practical solution is possible.

In the two upper grades, you could have the talented students paint again. There is enough time, but you would have to begin again with simpler things. That could not cause too many problems if you did it properly. With younger children, painting is creating from the soul, but with older children, you have to begin from the perspective of painting. You need to show them what the effects of light are and how to paint that. Do all the painting from a practical standpoint. You should never have children older than ten paint objects because that can ruin a great deal. ( Dr. Steiner begins to draw on the blackboard with colored chalk.) The older the children are, the more you need to work on perspective in painting.

You need to make clear to them that here is the sun, that the sunlight falls upon a tree. So, you should not begin by drawing the tree, but with the light and shadowy areas, so that the tree is created out of the light and dark colors, but the color comes from the light.

Don’t begin with abstractions such as, “The tree is green.” Don’t have them paint green leaves; they shouldn’t paint leaves at all, but instead areas of light. That is what you should do, and you can do it.

If I were required to begin with thirteen-or fourteen-year-olds, I would use Dürer’s Melancholia as an example of how wonderfully light and shadows can be used. I would have them color the light at the window and how it falls onto the polyhedron and the ball.

Then, I would have them paint the light in the window of Hieronymus im Gehäus. And so forth. It is very fruitful to begin with

Melancholia; you should have them translate the black and white into a colorful fantasy. We cannot expect all the teachers to be well-versed in painting. There may be some teachers who are not especially interested in painting because they cannot do it, but a teacher must be able to teach it without painting. We cannot expect to fully develop every child in every art and science.

A teacher: Someone proposed that the school sell the toys the shop class makes.

Dr. Steiner: I do not know how we can do that. Someone also wanted to sell such things in England, with the proceeds going to the Waldorf School, I believe. However, we cannot make a factory out of the school. We simply cannot do that; that would be pure nonsense. This idea makes sense only if someone proposes building a factory in which the things we make at school would be used as prototypes.332 If that is what they meant, it is no concern of ours. At most, we can give them the things for use as prototypes. However, I did not understand the proposal in that way, so it really doesn’t make much sense. In the other case, someone could make working models. If someone were to come with a proposal to create a factory, we could still think about whether we wanted to work that way.

A teacher requests a new curriculum for religion class in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: We have laid out the religious instruction for eight grades in two groups, the first through fourth grades in the lower group, and the others in the upper. The religious instruction is already arranged in two stages. Do you mean that we now need a third?

332 . Beginning in 1927, such toys were produced by the Waldorf Toy Company.

A teacher asks whether the curriculum could be more specialized for the different grades, for instance, the fifth, eighth, and twelfth grades.

Dr. Steiner: You can show me tomorrow how far I went then.

A teacher asks about the material for religion class in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: St. Augustine and Thomas à Kempis.

A teacher asks if Dr. Steiner would add something more to the ritual services throughout the year, for example, colors or such things.

Dr. Steiner: The Youth Service for Easter is connected with the entire intention of youth services. I am not certain what you mean.

Were you to do that, you would preoccupy the children with a suggested mood. That is not good while they are still in school.

Through that, you would make them less open. Certainly, children need to remain naïve until a certain age, to do things without being fully conscious of them. Therefore, we should not have a complete calendar of the year, as that would suggest certain moods. Children need to be somewhat naïve about such things, at least until a certain age. You certainly could not have a small child who has just learned to walk, walk according to a vowel or consonant mood.

You can work only with the Gospel texts in the Mass. I think that in the Youth Services we can proceed more objectively. The Mass is also not given according to season; it does not adhere strictly to the calendar. What was done historically comes in question only for the reading. During the period from Christmas until Easter, there is an attempt to present the story of the birth and suffering, but later, we can only take the standpoint that the listeners should learn about the Gospels. I don’t think we can do this strictly according to the calendar.

A teacher asks about creating new classes at Easter.

Dr. Steiner: It is a question of space and even more so of teachers.

The problem is that there are no more people within the

Anthroposophical Society who could teach within the Waldorf School. We can find no more teachers, and male teachers are nowhere to be found within our movement.

A teacher asks what they can do about the poor enunciation of the children.

Dr. Steiner: You mean you are not doing the speech exercises we did during the seminar? You should have done them earlier, in the lower grades. I gave them for you to do. It is clear the children cannot speak properly. You should also do the exercises for the teachers, but you need to have a feeling for this improper speaking.

We have often discussed the hygiene of proper speech. You should accustom the children to speaking clearly at a relatively early age.

That has a number of consequences. There would be no opportunity for doing German exercises in Greek class, but it is quite possible during German class. You could do speech exercises of various sorts at nearly every age.

In Switzerland, actors have to do speech exercises because certain letters need to be pronounced quite differently if they are to be understood, g, for example. Every theater particularly studies pronouncing g. Concerning the course by Mrs. Steiner, you should never give up requesting it. At some time you will have to get it from her. If you request it often enough, it will happen.

Some teachers ask about the school garden and how it could be used for teaching botany.

Dr. Steiner: Cow manure. Horse manure is no good. You need to do that as well as we can afford to do. In the end, for a limited area, there can be no harmony without a particular number of cattle and a particular amount of plants for the soil. The cattle give the manure, and if there are more plants than manure, the situation is unhealthy.

You cannot use something like peat moss, that is not healthy.

You can accomplish nothing with peat. What is important is how you use the plants. Plants that are there to be seen only are not

particularly important. If you grow plants with peat, you have only an appearance, you do not actually increase their nutritional value.

You should try to observe how the nutritional value is diminished when you grow seedlings in peat.

You need to add some humus to the soil to make it workable.

It would be even better if you could use some of Alfred Maier’s manure and horn meal. That will make the soil somewhat softer.

He uses ground horns. It is really a homeopathic fertilizer for a botanical garden, for rich soil. In the school garden, you could arrange the plants according to the way you want to go through them. Sometime I will be able to give you the twelve classes of plants.333

Thursday, March 27, 1924, 10:00 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to propose that we begin today with the disciplinary problems.

A teacher: F.R. threw a stone at another student and hit him on the head. He has been suspended.

Dr. Steiner: I do not agree with the proposal that was made to deal with this problem. It would look as though we thought we could have a strong effect upon such boys by dealing with them in a way that is something of a caricature. We actually know only from what other students have said how bad the situation was. Now, however, things are better. We can hardly do more than require F.R. to appear before a committee or perhaps the entire faculty over Easter, and then we can question him. I would like to speak with him then, also. Has his father reacted?

333 . This was never done.

A teacher: The father has given up leaving him at school.

Dr. Steiner: I think we should decide that I will speak to F.R. when I come. The situation is, of course, not good, but I would not recommend expelling him. He always behaves well after you speak with him, and that lasts for a time. There is always a reason when he behaves like that, but afterward he is sorry.

A teacher speaks about a girl, S.F., in sixth grade. She ran away from the people she was living with and tried to walk to where her mother lives, a long distance away. The police found her while she was walking there. Dr. Steiner received a letter from her uncle mentioning that the housemother had spoken deprecatingly about the girl.

Dr. Steiner: Are we simply here to marvel at all the good children?

Children are not the way we would like to have them. This whole

situation shows only that Mrs. N., her housemother, doesn’t know how to handle her. It is quite clear she hasn’t the least idea about how to handle the girl. Our task is to educate children, and not to judge how good or bad they are. This situation shows that we should not send any more children to live with Mrs. N. Her uncle has certainly maintained a good attitude. Of course, it would make someone angry when such things are said about a child. To call her a whore is so silly that I am at a loss for words. We cannot allow Mrs. N. to mix into our affairs here. The girl has a very good character. Physically, she is not quite normal and is a little smaller than she should be. All these things show that she needs to be treated carefully. We should just leave things as they are with her and simply tell her that after Easter she will be moved to a better home. It would also be good if we wrote to her uncle and told him that we do not agree with Mrs. N.’s behavior. We still do not have sufficient contact with the children here. Although we are very careful with our methods, we should not simply leave the children to themselves. They need contact with the faculty. With the methods we use, we cannot, as a faculty, live in Olympian heights, above the private situations of the children. The children also need a little human contact with the faculty.

A teacher reports about N.N. who had stolen something and had behaved very poorly.

Dr. Steiner: His is a difficult case. We need to remember that no father is present. His mother, who has always been a rather unfortunate woman with no inner fortitude, hangs onto the boy.

She does not know what to do and has always been disturbed by every message she receives from Stuttgart. She also did not know whether she had enough money to leave him here. With her, all this insecurity is constitutional. She is quite unstable psychologically. That is clear from the fact that she is now here in an insane asylum. That is something that could have just as easily occurred earlier. She may well return to her earlier situation.

This woman’s entire psychological makeup was transferred from her astral body into the boy’s etheric body. He has absorbed it organically, so that his behavior is a genuine picture of his mother’s psychological situation. In the astral body, it is only an insecurity in making decisions, in not knowing what to do. With him, it results in a desire to show off. Take, for instance, one of the worst cases, when he acted shamelessly in front of a window.

His mother’s psychological situation remains in the realm of judgment, so that allowing her soul to be seen in a shameless way is a psychological illness. With the boy, it has gone into physical exhibitionism. Here you can see how heredity actually proceeds.334

The things that exist in the parents’ souls can be seen in the physical bodies of the next generation. That is something that is known medically.

It is quite clear to me that it is important for us to treat this boy with good intentions until he reaches the age of eighteen or nineteen, when his conscience will speak. First, he needs to properly integrate the part of his I from his previous incarnation that is the basis of his conscience. It is not yet properly integrated, so his conscience does not play the same role as conscience does in others who are further along. He experiments with all kinds of things. People always experiment with their higher self when their lower self does not yet contain what keeps them firm and strong.

This will last until he reaches eighteen or nineteen. You need to treat him with good intentions, or you will have it on your own conscience that you allowed him to be corrupted; and what develops in that way will remain corrupted. He is really very talented, but his talent and his moral constitution are not developing at the same rate. Today, he has an organic moral insanity. We need to carry such children past a certain age through our well-intentioned behavior without approving of what they do.

334 . See the lectures on heredity in The Education of the Child and Early Lectures on Education.

Conscious theft was not at all present in the case where they hid some money, and so forth. Keep him in the remedial class; that will be good for him. We should continue to treat him in the same way.

The situation with his mother is much more unpleasant for us as anthroposophists. Her coming to the place she had always dreamed of certainly caused her present situation. She had always dreamed about Stuttgart.

We have other situations that are a result of current events and the effects of German nationalism upon the school. I have already been told about them. I do not feel that this trend began with one boy alone. The question is whether the boys do this just because they have too much time on their hands, or whether they belong to some group. This situation is difficult to understand. You can do something positive here only by undertaking things that would tend to include these boys and girls. Recall for a moment that nationalism does not need to play a very large role at that age. What attracts them is all the fanfare. They have the impression that our Waldorf teachers sit at home on Sundays making long faces down to their waists and meditating and so forth. The preacher is something else, again. “What kind of people are these, anyway?”

If we do nothing about that, the problem could increase, under certain circumstances. The impression that the faculty sits on Olympic thrones has spread too far.

You can do something else to counter that. Of course, you don’t need to do everything yourself, but you could support Dr. X. so that the children have something to do. I thought it was a very good idea to carefully choose a number of our younger people from the Society and ask them to undertake some trips with the students. Surely even Waldorf School teachers could learn something from that about what is needed to arrange such things.

Otherwise, the perception of your sitting on an Olympic throne will remain. Of course, the first responsibility of the faculty will always be leadership of the school, but you should still do

something like that. These nationalistic things could have a far-reaching impact—we might end up with a corps of ruffians. I am not so afraid of the attitude as I am of the children turning into ruffians. If the students know we are together with them, they will not be caught by such things.

This also played a major role in the debates we had in Dornach about founding a youth section. Somehow, we must find a way within the Youth Section to create some kind of counterforce against all these other movements. You need only think about the youth groups within Freemasonry that use nationalistic aspirations everywhere.335 Here, under the careful guidance of the faculty, we must find a way to bring the youth movement into a healthy whole.

Here, everything is still much too individual, too atomized. Our faculty needs to counter the general principle in Stuttgart of never working together, always working separately.

A teacher asks about the upcoming final examinations.

Dr. Steiner: The children in the twelfth grade have written that they wish to speak with me.336 I can do that only when I am here Tuesday for the conference. I would like you to tell the whole class that.

In general, I think the results of the final examination have shown unequivocally that everything we have discussed is still true.

It would, of course, have been better had we been able to add a special class and keep the Waldorf School pure of anything foreign to it. Everything we discussed in that regard is still the same and should not be changed. Nevertheless, the statistics seem to indicate that the poor results were due to the fact that the students

335 . See Steiner’s lecture of June 4, 1924, in Asia and Europe, Ancient Knowledge and Cult, manuscript, GA 353.

336 . This refers to the students of the new twelfth grade, which began at Easter 1924. Rudolf Steiner spoke with them on April 30, 1924. See the faculty meeting on April 9, 1924.

were unable to solve problems for themselves because they were used to solving them as a group. You know it is very useful to have the children work together, and we have also seen that the class gives a better impression when they speak together than when they speak individually. We were somewhat short on time, but it seems you did not have the students work enough on solving problems alone. They did not understand that properly and were thus shocked by tasks to be solved alone. I have the impression that you overdid what is good about speaking together. For example, if a few were causing some trouble, you quickly changed to having them all speak together. It has become a habit to work only with the class as a whole. You did not make the transition into working with the children individually. That seems to me to be the essence of what was missing. We should have no illusions: The results gave a very unfavorable impression of our school to people outside. We succeeded in bringing only five of the nine students who took the test through, and they just barely succeeded. What will happen now with those who did not take the final examination or who failed it? When I am here on Wednesday, we need to discuss all these things with the twelfth-grade teachers.337

A teacher requests some guidelines for the pedagogical conference to be held at Easter in Stuttgart.338

Dr. Steiner: The basis of the Vorstand’s decision about the conference was that the conference should express the significance of the Waldorf School within all of modern education and that we should clearly demonstrate the importance of the Waldorf School principle. In other words, you should say here and there why the

337 . This concerns the first meeting with the present twelfth grade students, some of whom had already taken their final examinations and left the school. This meeting took place on April 10, 1924.

338 . See The Essentials of Education.

Waldorf School and its methods are necessary. Such a presentation gives people the opportunity to notice the difference between Waldorf School pedagogy and other reform movements. Another perspective is that we can demonstrate what we have said to the youth movement in our letters to the newsletter.339

The second letter to young members says that human beings presently do not do at all well to be born as children. It is really the case that now, when human beings are born as children, they are pushed into an educational method that totally neglects them and requires them to be old. It does not matter whether someone tells me about the content of today’s civilization when I am eighteen or when I am seventy-five. It sounds just the same, whether I hear it at eighteen or at seventy-five. That is either true or not. It can be proven or refuted logically. It is valid or not. You can grow beyond such a situation only after eighteen, so you might need to decide not to come into a child’s body at all, but instead to be born as an eighteen-or nineteen-year-old body. Only then would things work.

An initiate from an earlier time, if born today, could not be an initiate again if he or she had to go through our present-day schools. I discussed that in Dornach in my lectures about the Garibaldi incarnation. He was an initiate, but his earlier initiation could appear only after he became separated from the world, a practical revolutionary.340 Garibaldi is only one example of how people today cannot express what exists within them. We must give children back their childhood. That is one task of the Waldorf School. Today’s youth are old.

We received a number of replies from young people in Dornach following the announcement of the Youth Section. They were all very honestly meant. The main thing I noticed was how old even the youth in Dornach are. They speak about old things, they

339 . See The Newsletter, vol. 1, nos. 7 and 9-12.

340 . Dr. Steiner discussed Garibaldi further, but there only fragmentary notes exist. See his lectures of March 22 and 23, 1924, in Karmic Relationships, vol. 1.

cannot be young. They want to be young, but know that only in their subconscious. What has gone into their heads is mostly old.

They are so clever, so complete. Young people must be able to be brash, but everything they say is so reasonable, so thought out, not at all spontaneous. I am happiest when spontaneous things happen; they may be unpleasant, but I like them best. What we spoke about at a youth meeting in Dornach a short time ago was so well thought out that it could have been said by professors. I made a joke about something, and they took it seriously. They have put on a cloak of thoughtfulness, which is ill-fitting at every point.

You can see that in the way they speak. You feel very much like a child when today’s youth speak.

Regarding such things, you should express the responsibility of the Waldorf School to today’s youth with some enthusiasm at the Easter conference. We should not simply give clever lectures; we need some enthusiasm. We need to have some wisdom about how we speak of the relationship of the Anthroposophical Society to the school so that we do not offend people. We do not want them to say that we have been able to accomplish what we wanted since the beginning of the school, namely, an anthroposophical school.

We need to show them that we have extended anthroposophy in order to do the things that are genuinely human. We need to show them that anthroposophy is appropriate for presenting something genuinely human, but we must do that individually. We should not give too strong an impression that we are lecturing about anthroposophy. We should show how we use anthroposophical truth in the school, not lecture abstractly about anthroposophy.

That is the perspective we had at the time. The board of directors in Dornach follows such things with great interest. They want to be informed by everyone and to work on everything, but we need to round off some rough edges. The letters in the newsletter will, over time, discuss all aspects of anthroposophy.

The people in Bern are not asking the Waldorf School teachers for detailed lectures at the Easter pedagogical course. What they

want are introductory remarks that will lead to discussions as they are usually held.

A teacher asks whether the present two eighth-grade classes should be combined in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: We need a third fifth grade class more than a second ninth-grade class. We could combine them. The children are fourteen or fifteen years old. You should be able to keep them under control. It is difficult to find an appropriate teacher, though I have tried. We can discuss the whole thing later.

A teacher asks whether it would be better pedagogically if the upper grades also had one class teacher for the whole time, like the lower grades.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do what is necessary simply by having one class teacher, if that teacher does not do what is really necessary.

What we need is that everyone concerned with the upper grades wants to do what is necessary. I do not believe it is very important to have a single class teacher. If we all want a better relationship with the children, I do not see why we would need to restrict it.

A teacher asks about a possible summer camp in Transylvania.

Dr. Steiner: That may be possible, but I find it difficult to imagine how. The situation there is quite different. It is very much in the East. You can have some strange experiences there. I went to a lecture in Hermannstadt in the winter of 1888-89. When I arrived in Budapest, I was unable to make my connection. I had to travel via Szegedin and arrived at about two in the afternoon in Mediaš.

I was told I would have to remain there for some time. I went into a coffee house in town where you had to scrape the dirt away with a knife. A number of players came in. There was something Vulcan-like and stormy in their astral bodies; they were somehow all tangled together. Everything went on with a great deal of activity and enthusiasm. The room was next to a pigsty and there was a horrible smell. You can get into such situations in that

region, so we would have to protect the children from such experiences.

Everyone gets bitten by all kinds of insects as well.

There had been some difficulties with Mr. Z., one of the teachers.

Dr. Steiner: I had the impression we should offer Mr. Z. a vacation to give him an opportunity to collect himself. My impression was that he needed some rest. The question now is to what extent we can still keep him in school. If he intensely felt how he is, we might be able to keep him. X. says he is unstable. We really can’t do anything other than send him on a vacation and bring him back again.

Concerning the entire matter, I would like to say that it seems to me that we must direct our attention toward not allowing such things as discussions with the students to develop. Where would we be if we had more discussions where the students can complain about the teachers? We cannot allow that. It was already very bad in the other case, which resulted in our expelling the students.341Now, it is coming up again—a few students come and want to discuss things with the teachers. We cannot allow that. Z.

does do all these things, but we cannot allow the students to undermine the authority of the teacher. That would result in the students judging the teachers, which is really terrible. Students sitting as judges over the teachers. We have to avoid that. Of course, one teacher yells at them more and another less, one is more creative, another less. However, we really cannot take such discussions seriously, where the students put the teacher before a tribunal. That doesn’t work. Were that to occur, what would happen is what they once proposed, that the teachers no longer give grades, but the students grade the teachers each week. After Easter, we have to see if we can have him work only in the lower grades. There is not much more we can do.

341 . See the faculty meetings on October 4 and 6, 1922.

I fear Z. will always fall into such things. He will need to feel that behaving that way does not work, but that will take a longer time. You need to make the situation clear to him and tell him we may have to send him on a permanent vacation. He is a real cross to bear, but on the other hand, he is a good person. He did not find the right connection, and that has happened here also. A time may come when we can no longer keep him in school, but now we need to give him an opportunity to correct his behavior. I fear, though, he will not take it up.

In such cases, there is generally nothing to do but hope the person finds a friend and makes a connection, and that the friend can then help the person out of such childishness. In a certain way, everything he does is rather childish. In spite of his talents, he has remained a child in a certain area. He is at the same stage as the students, and that causes everything else.

His living conditions seem to be horrible, but I do not see the connection between his behavior and his living conditions. Others could have even worse living conditions and still not come up with the idea of doing such things in school. I feel sorry for him. He needs to find a friend, but has not done that. He would then have some support. There is no other way of helping such people.

Apparently, he has nowhere to turn. It was perhaps a karmic mistake that he came into the faculty. If he found someone he belongs with, what I said would probably occur. I do not think, however, that there is anyone within the faculty that Z. could befriend. It is, perhaps, something like it was with Hölderlin, but not as bad.

Wednesday, April 9, 1924

Wednesday, April 9, 1924, 11:00 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: I am meeting with the students who took the final examination tomorrow at noon. The teachers who taught the twelfth grade should also come.

A teacher: We have received complaints about two grade reports.

Dr. Steiner: I have the impression that the style used in the reports was rather sloppy. We should not do that. When we write such a report as we discussed, we should make an effort to express things so that someone else can make something of it. That was not the case with these two reports. To my horror, I noticed that the name of one student was incorrectly spelled. To do that, you would really have had to have been very superficial. The two reports really depressed me. Actually, you need to rewrite these reports. You simply cannot use such phrases as, “He is not exactly the best.” Yes, it is difficult to write such reports, but if we cannot find some way of doing it, we will have to stop writing them. I understand it is difficult. Regardless of how terrible normal grading is, it does have the advantage that people cannot criticize it in this way. I also understand that there are things playing in the background, but I do not understand their playing a role in writing a report, particularly in a case where the children will be moving to America. If you want to make the report more personal, you must take that into account.

Americans wouldn’t know what to do with such a report. If the children go to an American school, they will be treated like pariahs from the very beginning because of this. Perhaps we need to look into the case in more detail. In any event, I think you should rewrite the reports. People cannot get a picture of the children through these reports, but providing such a picture is exactly what they were intended to do. You can see you need to write them in a different

style. The facts do not need to be changed. That is not what I mean at all, but you need to choose a different style. You need to take more care in writing the reports, otherwise such personal reports will not have the value they should have.

A teacher: What can we do about student tardiness?

Dr. Steiner: When the students are tardy in the morning, it has a bad effect on your teaching. Sometimes when I came here early, I had the impression that the way class was begun in the morning left much to be desired of the teachers. I thought someone should be in the corridor, so the children wouldn’t play hide and seek there. You should not be surprised that when children are left to themselves, they become excited in their play. We all would have done that. It seems to me there is something behind all this, leading me to believe that it was not just by chance that the few times I came early, there was no teacher, far and wide.

A teacher: Before class, we say the weekly verse together.

Dr. Steiner: Couldn’t you arrange to read the verse so that the school does not suffer? Anthroposophists commonly use esoteric things as an excuse. Esoteric practices exist so that other people will not see them. However, people see them quite clearly when everything becomes chaotic because the teachers want to prepare themselves in the proper way. I was also here once when the verse was spoken, but I did not find that it offered much esoteric deepening. I also noticed that a number of people were not present. I have to admit that I think the problem is that the teachers get up too late. It’s like old Spielhagen said, “I never leave a dinner party without being last.”342

For teachers, the exact opposite would be proper, namely, that they are always first at school. I don’t think that is the case here. What do you think about this?

They divide the classes and subject areas among the various teachers.

342 . Friedrich von Spielhagan, 1829–1911, novelist.

Dr. Steiner: We need to consider one other thing. It is connected with all the possibilities of development within the Anthroposophi-Wednesday, April 9, 1924

cal Society, and the effects they can have. I would like to have Dr.

Röschl come to Dornach for a while and do some work that is quite necessary if the pedagogical work is to continue. She should begin teaching at our continuation school there to create a form of “youth anthroposophy.” I have often spoken of the need to rework anthroposophy for youth. Anthroposophy as it is now is intended for adults. For grown-up young people, anthroposophy is, of course, good. What I am speaking of here is an anthroposophy appropriate for the rough-and-tumble years. That needs to be developed through genuine instruction. For that reason, I and the Vorstand intend to call Dr. Röschl to Dornach. We could do that by giving her a sabbatical, since noncitizens cannot be hired in Switzerland. She would, therefore, receive her salary from here. So, we need to find a replacement for Latin and Greek, as well as a teacher for the fifth grade.

A teacher reports again about the situation with F.R. and reads a letter signed by eight parents.

Dr. Steiner: This is a difficult case to decide. For now, only eight people signed, but if a larger number want F.R. expelled, it will be difficult to get around it. It is difficult to throw a child out, particularly when we have had him for as long as we have had F.R.

He has been here five years. If we did that, we would also be throwing ourselves out, because it would show we did not know how to work with him. I also need to mention that the physician’s bill was only fifteen Marks, which is objective proof that the situation cannot be so bad. We need to remain objective, and I can see no real reason that would force us to throw the boy out. There is no really accepted authority in that class.

We should not take such things so seriously. I once experienced a similar situation in a class on drawing theory. The teacher was leaning

over the drawing board and had a rather short frock coat on. One of the students gave him quite a slap on the part of the body that is normally hit. The teacher turned around and said to the student, “You must have confused me with someone else.”

A teacher makes a comment.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t know whether we should bring cramming into this or not. That is something we could consider for the next school year, but in that case it would be important for the children in the twelfth grade to participate. The main question is whether we should retain the Waldorf School method to the end and then add a cramming year. We could do that only for next year, since those now going into the twelfth grade would first have to complete the twelfth grade.

The difficulty with adding a cramming year is that we would not have enough teachers. We cannot just create another grade with the teachers that we now have. We would need quite a few new teachers.

A teacher asks about the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach.

Dr. Steiner: You should not imagine the school in Dornach as a replacement for other universities. Rather, it is a place where the things other universities do not teach are offered. It is not as though we would train doctors in Dornach. Imagine what a task that would be for Dr. Wachsmuth, to be in so many places at once. It is not as though we will transform the Scientific Section into a scientific faculty. That is particularly true since the Science Section is the newest member of the Vorstand. How should Dr. Wachsmuth, who is not so very big, do all that? I think Dr. Mellinger should spend half her time in Dornach in order to work with the social-economic questions we have decided upon. The truth is that it is ridiculous to continually start such things and then let them lie. The socioeconomic course exists, and it would be a good idea if we could create a fund here that would pay Dr. Mellinger so she could lecture on socioeconomics here a quarter of a year and then work a quarter year in Dornach.343

343 . Rudolf Steiner, World Economy.

The university exists in Dornach and must begin to really work.

It must begin to do something.

Tuesday, April 29, 1924, 9:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: The classes are overfilled in the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. In the eighth grade and above, there are still some openings. We are limited by law in grades one through four; however, we will petition to be allowed to increase the number of students. We have had a number of new enrollments due to the conference. There are enough rooms.

They make a list of class teachers for the coming school year.

Dr. Steiner: You should telegraph Dr. Erich Gabert in Wilhelmshaven that he is to take over the 5c class, but he should first visit us for three weeks. The children should remain in the 5a and 5b classes until, but we will have to put sixty in each class. We will need to do that until he has settled in.

By Thursday we should hire Miss Verena Gildemeister to teach Latin and Greek.

The next question is what we do in the upper grades, nine through twelve. We can divide the ninth grade.

They divide the main lesson blocks for the upper grades among the teachers.

They also assign teachers for foreign languages, religion, and eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have the question of what to do about the final examinations for this coming year. Do we want to continue as in the past or keep the twelve grades pure and then add a thirteenth year? In that event, the question will not arise this year. For now, we need to know what the students want. A large number want to take the final examination.

The students from the first grade will come tomorrow at 9:00, and the opening ceremony will be at 10:00. I will meet with the

students of the present twelfth grade at 12:00 in one of the classrooms.

I will find out to what extent they want to take the final examination. The teachers should also attend the meeting. If the students expect to take their final examinations this year, we will have to swallow the bitter pill. That would ruin the twelfth grade.

If possible, we should try to avoid the final examination this year and create a cramming class for next year.

A teacher asks about the physics curriculum for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: We need to develop the twelfth-grade curriculum. We still need to discuss that.

We teach the following in physics: In the ninth grade, the telephone and steam engine; the theory of heat and acoustics. In the tenth grade, mechanics as such. In the eleventh grade, modern electrical theory. So now in the twelfth grade, we should teach optics.

Use pictures instead of rays. We need to emphasize the qualitative. Light fields and light-filled spaces. Do not talk about refraction, but about how a light field is compressed. We need to remove discussions about rays. When you discuss a lens, you should not show a cross section of a lens and this fantastic cross section of rays. Instead, you need to present a lens as something that draws a picture together and compresses or expands it. Thus, you should remain with what can be directly shown through vision. Leave rays out entirely. That is what you should do in optics. Other things need to be considered in other areas, but what is important is to remain within the qualitative. I do not mean the theory of color, but simply the objective facts. Don’t go into some thought-up picture, remain with the facts.

Concerning optics in the broadest sense, it is important to present:

1. Light as such, that is the first thing. Then the expansion of lightand how the intensity decreases in relation to the expansion, that is, photometry.

2. Light and matter, what is often called refraction.

Enlargementand reduction of pictures and distortions.

3. How colors are created.

4. Polarization.

5. Double refractions, as they are called. That is, things associatedwith incoherence and the way light expands.

In the first section on how light expands, you should include mirrors and reflections.

Optics is very important because so much of it is connected with spiritual life. You can certainly see why there is so little understanding of the spiritual. That understanding could exist.

There is so little understanding of the spiritual because there is no real epistemology. Instead, there are only abstract, crazy ideas. But why is there no genuine cognitive theory? It is because since Berkeley wrote his book about vision, no one has properly made the connection between seeing and knowing.1

If you were to seek the connections, you would not explain what occurs in a mirror reflection by saying, “Here is a mirror and a light ray falls upon it perpendicularly.” Instead, you would say, “Here is the eye,” and then you would explain that when the eye looks in a straight line, nothing happens other than that it looks in a straight line. You need to present a picture that shows that a mirror basically “draws” a picture of the object for the eye.

1. George Berkeley, 1685–1753, Essay toward a New Theory of Vision, 1709.

You therefore have a subjective attraction. You need to begin with vision, and then all optics will present itself to you differently.

If you look straight at something, then your view is in balance.

However, if you look at something in the mirror, your view is no longer balanced, but one-sided in the direction of the object. The minute you have a mirror, your vision is polarized. One aspect of the spatial dimension disappears when you look into a mirror. I discussed this to an extent in my lectures on optics.

A teacher asks about history for the twelfth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Well, you have already gone through everything, so now the twelfth grade needs to gain an overview of the connections within history. As you know, I discuss in my pedagogy that at about age twelve, children should begin to understand causal concepts. Instruction in causal relationships would then continue until the twelfth grade, but you must enliven it and make it personal. In the twelfth grade, it is important to go a little below the surface, to try to explain some of the inner workings of history.

By presenting the entire picture of history in outline, you can show, for example, how the Middle Ages and more recent history are contained within ancient Greece, in a certain way. Thus, the Homeric period contains aspects of the time of the major tragedies of the Middle Ages, and the time of Plato and Aristotle relates to more recent times. The same is true for the Age of Rome. Thus,

you should use individual peoples and cultures to treat history such that you show how things come together. You can show that ancient periods contained a Middle Ages and a more recent period.

Therefore, show an ancient period, a middle period, and a recent period in each culture. The beginning of the Middle Ages is just as much an ancient period as the one in Greek history beginning with the ancient Greek myths.

Then you could also bring in broken cultures or incomplete cultures, like that of America which has no beginning, or the Chinese, which has no end, which ends in petrifaction, but is actually only the ancient period. Present the life of a cultural group in that way. Spengler was a little aware of this.344 Begin from the perspective that it is not just a sketch of historical events, but that different interwoven pieces have a beginning, middle, and end.

A teacher asks about twelfth-grade art class.

Dr. Steiner: The most proper thing to do would be to take Hegel’s aesthetic structure, symbolic art, classical art, romantic art. 345

Symbolic art is the first, the art of revelation. Classical art goes more into external forms, and romantic art deepens that further.

This can be seen in the art of various peoples. We find symbolic art with the Egyptians. We find all three in Greece, though symbolic and romantic art come up short. In more recent times, we find more classical and romantic art, and symbolic art comes up short.

Hegel’s Aesthetics is interesting even in the details. It is really a classic on aesthetics. That would be something for the twelfth grade. Symbolic art is typified in Egyptian art, where the other two were very rudimentary. Classical art is developed in Greece, where the forms that came before and after come up short. More modern

344 . Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), The Decline of the West, 2 vols. (1918, 1922).

345 . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Lectures on Aesthetics (1835).

art is classical and romantic, as Hegel describes. The most modern is actually romantic.

We begin instruction in the arts in the ninth grade, don’t we?

A teacher reports on how they have taught art in the past. In the ninth grade, specific areas of painting and sculpting; in the tenth grade, some things about German classical poetry; in the eleventh grade, how the poetic and musical elements are interwoven. One theme was to see how poetry and music since Goethe’s time move together under the surface.

Dr. Steiner: Work toward what I said for the twelfth grade; otherwise, what you have done until now is quite good. You should introduce them to the basics of architecture. If someone is teaching about architecture and construction in the twelfth grade, you could continue that discussion into architectural styles.

We begin technology class in the tenth grade. We have weaving in the tenth grade, and you should show them how to make simple woven cloth. A sample is sufficient for that. In the eleventh grade, we have the steam turbine. They should have two hours a week in the tenth grade and one hour in the eleventh and twelfth grades.

A teacher asks about the ascidians as one of the twelve categories of animals.

Dr. Steiner: Those are the tunicates and salpas. Until now people have not seen them as being a separate genus.

A teacher asks about a student, B.K.

Dr. Steiner: I do not think it is really so terrible if such a boy is simply there. That will not pass by without a trace. The subconscious hears it. You will have to wait until he is fourteen.

He should be unburdened as far as possible, so give him only a little bit to learn, but that should have a strong effect. His mother lies terribly. He should be required to paint at home.

A teacher asks about P.Z. in the sixth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Pay no attention to him. Let him play his tricks until he becomes tired of them. You should also see that the others pay no attention to him, so that he does his things alone.

A teacher: How should we seat the children in language class?

Dr. Steiner: In foreign languages, you could arrange the seating so that those who are interested in the sound sit together, and those who are interested in the content of the language sit together. In that way you would have groups of children you can treat differently and balance against one another.

Wednesday, April 30, 1924, 8:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing I would like to discuss is my discussion today with the present twelfth-grade students. With one exception, the students stated they did not need to take their final examinations at the end of this year, but could wait a year. At the end of the Waldorf School, they would go through a cramming class. It was important to them, however, that this cramming for the final examination be taught by the Waldorf School.

A teacher comments.

Dr. Steiner: The point is that we said we wanted to resolve this matter after meeting with the twelfth-grade students. We cannot handle such things if someone comes afterward and says there is still one more thing. If arguments are always presented about everything after it is done, then we will never finish anything.

Things will only become confused. How is it that now there are suddenly two? Where did that come from? The problem is, that was overlooked. It makes no sense that such things occur suddenly. Is the faculty in control, or the children? The results should remain as they were today at noon, and that girl will need to have some sort of private instruction. In general, we should teach the class in a way appropriate to a twelfth-grade Waldorf School class.

The first thing we need to consider for the curriculum is literary history. Yesterday, I mentioned that, in general, they should have already covered the main content of literary history. A cursory survey will have to suffice for the things they have not learned. On the other hand, you should undertake a complete survey of German literary history in relation to things that play into it from outside.

Therefore, you have to begin with the oldest literary monuments and work them all into an overview. Begin with the oldest literary monuments, starting with the Gothic period, then

go on to the Old German period and continue into the development of the Song of the Nibelungs and Gudrun. Do that in a cursory way, but so that they get a picture of the whole. Then, go on to the Middle Ages, the pre-classical period, the classical and romantic periods, up to the present. Give them an overview, but one that contains the general perspectives. The content should enable them to clearly know what they need to know about such people as Walther von der Vogelweide, Klopstock, or Logau. I think you could cover that in five or six periods. You can certainly do that.

I would then follow that with the main things they need to know about the present. You should discuss the present in much more detail with the twelfth grade. By present, I mean you would discuss the most important literary works of the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, then follow that with a more detailed treatment of the subsequent movements, so that they would have some insight into who Nietzsche and Ibsen were, or such foreigners as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and so forth. The result should be that we graduate welleducated people.

Next is history, which you should do in a similar way. Start with a survey of history as a whole, beginning with the history of the East, which then gives rise to Greece and more modern Christian developments. You can surely go into these things without teaching anthroposophical dogma. You can present things that have a genuine inner spirituality. At the workers’ school, for example, I once showed how the seven Roman kings followed the model of the seven principal aspects of the human being, since that is what they are.346 Of course, you cannot simply say that Romulus is the physical body, and so forth. Nevertheless, Livius’s History of Kings has that in its inner structure. We find that the fifth

346 . What Steiner had to say about this at the workers’ school in Berlin was not recorded. He did, however, speak about it in earlier lectures—for example, in his lecture of June 4, 1907 in Theosophy of the Rosicrucian.

king, Tarquinius Priscus, is clearly a person of intellect, corresponding to the I. He brings a new impulse, just as with the spirit self, the Etruscan element. You should treat the last one, Tarquinius Superbus, such that the highest we can reach sinks in most deeply, as it, of course, did with the Roman people, where it sunk into the Earth.

In the same way, you can very beautifully develop oriental history.347 In Indian history, we find the formation of the physical body, in Egyptian history, the etheric body, and in ChaldaicBabylonian history, the astral body. Of course, you cannot teach it in that form. You need to show how those human beings living in the astral developed astronomy, how the Jews have the principle of the I in the principle of Yahweh, and how the Greeks for the first time developed a true understanding of nature from a human perspective. The viewpoint of the earliest peoples was still within the human being.348 You could give them an overview you can be proud of. Historical events form a complete series.

Geography class will also consist in giving them an overview. In both history and geography, what is important is to give them an overview. They can then search out the details by themselves.

You could divide aesthetics and art class as we discussed yesterday: into symbolic, classical, and romantic art. You could also treat not only the science of art by saying that in Egypt it was symbolic, in Greece classical, and in what followed, romantic, but also, the arts themselves, in that architecture is a symbolic art, sculpture is a classical art, and painting, music, and poetry are the romantic arts. Thus you can view the arts themselves in a way that offers a kind of inner division.

347 . See Steiner’s lectures of March 1, 1924 in Three Lectures to Workmen (manuscript) and March 5, 1924 in The Birth of Christianity.

348 . It was only with the Hebrew experience of Yahweh and the Greek experience of nature that an experience of the world beyond the human organism became generally available to human beings. — TRANS.

In teaching aesthetics and art, you can treat the elements of architecture so that the young people will have a proper understanding of how a house is constructed, that is, you could include construction materials, the construction of a roof, and so forth, in aesthetics.

Then we have languages. There, it is better if we describe the goals by saying that in English or French the students should get an idea of modern literature.

Now we have mathematics. How far did the eleventh grade come in mathematics?

A teacher: In the eleventh grade we got as far as indeterminate equations in algebra. In trigonometry, aside from spherical trigonometry, they went as far as computing acute-angle triangles.

In complex numbers, as far as Moivre’s theorem, then polynomial equations. In analytic geometry, we went as far as working with second-order curves, but we worked in depth only with the circle.

In constructive geometry, we did sections and intersections.

Dr. Steiner: Our experience with last year’s class has shown that we cannot do it that way. It is too much for the human soul to do such things.

What is important is to go through spherical trigonometry, that is, the elements of analytical spatial geometry, in a way that is as clear as possible.

In descriptive geometry we have Cavalieri’s perspective. The students should be able to draw a complicated form, such as a house, in Cavalieri’s perspective. The inside as well as the outside.

In algebra, you need only cover the beginnings of differential and integral calculus. They do not need to be able to compute maximums and minimums. They will learn that in college. You should teach them only the basic concepts of calculus, but do that thoroughly.

You should emphasize spherical trigonometry and how it is used in astronomy and geodesy in a way appropriate to their age, so that they have a general understanding of it.

Spatial analytical geometry should be used to teach them how equations can express forms. I would not be afraid to complete this subject by giving them examples of questions like, What curve is represented by the equation

x2/3 + y2/3 + z2/3 = a

which results in an astroid. The main thing is to make equations so transparent that the students have a feeling for how things are hidden within equations.

You should also do the opposite. If I draw a curve or place a body in space, they should be able to recognize the general form of the equation without necessarily having it correct in all details, but at least have an idea of what the equation would be.

I don’t think the normal mathematical education that connects differential and integral calculus with geometry is particularly useful. I think it should be connected with quotients instead. I would begin with the quotient

y/x

then make the dividend and the divisor smaller and smaller, simply as numbers, and then go on to develop differential quotients. I would not begin with the idea of continuity, because you do not really get an idea of differential quotients that way. Don’t begin with differentials, but with differential quotients. If you begin with a series, then go on to geometry only after you have presented tangents, that is, move from the secant to the tangent. Go on to geometry only after the students have completely comprehended differential quotients purely as numbers or through computations, so that they are presented with the picture that geometric visualization is only an illustration of what occurs numerically. You can then teach them integrals as the reverse process. Thus, you will

have a possibility of showing them that the computation is not a fixing of geometry, but that geometry is an illustration of the computation. That is something people should consider more often. For example, you should not consider positive and negative numbers as something in themselves, but as a series of numbers such as

(5 - 1), (5 - 2), (5 - 3), (5 - 4), (5 - 5), (5 - 6).349

In the last instance, I do not have enough, I am missing one, and I write that as (-1). Emphasize only what is missing without using a number line. You will then remain within numbers. A negative number is the amount that is not present. It is a deficiency of the minuend. There is much more inner activity in working that way. You can excite some of the students’ capacities in a much more real way than when you do everything beginning from geometry.

A teacher: Where should we begin?

Dr. Steiner: Now that the class is ready for spherical trigonometry, you will need to move from trigonometry to developing the concept of the sphere qualitatively, that is, without starting computations. Instead of drawing on a plane, they need to begin drawing on a sphere, so that they get an idea of what a spherical triangle is, that is, how a triangle lies upon a sphere. You need to make that visible for the children, then go on to show them how the sum of the angles is not equal to 180°, but is larger. They need to really understand triangles on a sphere, with their curved lines, and then begin the computations. In geometry, the computation is only the interpretation of the sphere. I do not want you to begin by considering the sphere from its midpoint, but from the curvature of the surfaces. Then you can go on to a more general discussion of the nonlinearity, how you could look at a

349 . See Discussions with teachers, discussion of September 5, 1919.

corresponding figure on an ellipsoid, or how it would look on a paraboloid, where it is no longer completely closed. Don’t begin with the center, but with the distortion of the surface; otherwise you will have difficulties with other solids. In a way, you will need to think of yourself on the surface; in a sense, you will have to form a picture of what you would experience if you were a spherical triangle. You need to ask yourself, What would I experience as a triangle on an ellipsoid?

In that connection, you will also have to show the students what would happen if you used the normal Pythagorean theorem on a spherical triangle. You cannot, of course, use squares for that.

Doing things this way has an effect upon the general education, whereas normally they affect only the intellect.

You can cover permutations and combinations quickly, and, if there is enough time, the beginnings of probability theory, for instance, the life expectancy of a human being.

In the eleventh grade, you need to go through sections and intersections, shadows and indeterminate equations, and analytical geometry up to conic sections. In eleventh-grade trigonometry, teach the functions in a more inner way, so that you present the principle relationships in sine and cosine. There, of course, you will have to begin from geometry.

Begin twelfth-grade physics with optics, as we discussed yesterday.

Natural history. We have already discussed zoology. In geology and paleontology, begin with zoology, since only then do they have some inner value. You can begin with zoology, go on to paleontology, and arrive at the various layers of the Earth. In botany, you can begin with flowering plants (phanerogans), and then also go on to geology and paleontology.

Chemistry. We want to consider chemistry in its innermost connections to the human being. In the twelfth grade, our students already have an idea of organic and inorganic processes. It is now important to go on to those processes found not only in animals,

but also in human beings. We can speak without hesitation about the formation of ptyalin, pepsin, and pancreatin. You should teach the metallic processes in the human being by developing things from principles, for instance, something we could call the lead process in the human being, so that the students understand them.

You need to show that within the human being all materials and processes are completely transformed. In connection with the formation of pepsin, what is important is to begin with the formation of hydrochloric acid, showing that it is lifeless. Then go on to consider the formation of pepsin as something that can occur only within the etheric body, even though the astral body has some effect upon it. In other words, show how the process completely disintegrates and then is rebuilt. Begin hydrochloric acid, with the inorganic process using salt. Discuss all the characteristics of hydrochloric acid, then go on to show how that differs from what occurs in an organic body. The result should be the demonstration of the differences between vegetable protein, animal protein, and human protein, so the students have an idea that there is a progression of protein based upon the various structures of the etheric body. Human protein is different from animal protein. You can also begin with differences by looking at a lion and a cow. In the lion, we find a process that is much more directed toward the circulation than in a cow where the entire process is more directed toward the metabolism. In the lion, the metabolic process is formed together with the breathing, whereas in the cow, the breathing is supported by the digestion. This will enliven the processes more. You need to have an inorganic, an organic, an animal, and a human chemistry. Some examples for children might be hydrochloric acid and pepsin, or blackthorn juice and ptyalin. Then they will get the picture. You could also use the metamorphosis of folic acid into oxalic acid.

A teacher asks whether to include quantitative chemistry.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is certainly very difficult to explain these things with what you can normally assume. You need to begin with cosmic rhythm to explain the periodic system. That is the way you need to go, but you cannot do that in school. It is complete nonsense to begin with atomic weights; you need to begin with rhythms. You can explain all of the quantitative relationships through harmonics. The relationship between oxygen and hydrogen is, for example, an octave. But, that would go too far. I think you should develop the concepts we mentioned before and that will be enough for the twelfth-grade curriculum.

Eurythmy is not intended for the final examination.

Religion class. In general, the character of religious instruction is already in the curriculum. I can certainly not add much to what you have already presented. There is nothing we really need to change. The question is what to do in the upper grades. In the end, you should be able to give the twelfth grade a survey of world religions, but not in a way that gives the children the idea that some of them are untrue. Instead, you need to show the relative truths in their individual forms. That would be the ninth level.350In the eighth level, you need to go through Christianity so that it appears in the ninth level as the synthesis of religions. Develop Christianity in the eighth level, and in the ninth level emphasize world religions so that, once again, their high point is Christianity. In the seventh level, you should present a kind of evangelical harmony, present Christianity in its essence and in the way it appears. By then, the children will all know the Gospels. Therefore, at the seventh level, a harmony of Gospels, at the eighth, Christianity, and at the ninth, world religions.

350 . At the time, religion classes were divided into Level 1 (first and second grades); Level 2 (third and fourth grades); Level 3 (fifth grade); Level 4 (sixth grade);

Level 5 (seventh grade); Level 6 (eighth grade); Level 7 (ninth grade); Level 8

(tenth grade); Level 9 (eleventh and twelfth grades).

I will prepare the curriculum for modern languages in the ninth through twelfth grades and give it to you at a meeting about the foreign language classes.

There is a discussion about the university classes in Stuttgart.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to hear whether you think what has been proposed for the courses is too much or not. I would like to hear what you expect. What you thought of for the course that is just beginning and will continue until the next summer vacation? If we want to avoid a terribly chaotic situation, we certainly should not do things more than five days a week. I thought of doing a five-lecture series; Wednesday and Friday are not available. I could give lectures on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and two on one day.

I think we should present only five areas. We cannot present social understanding yet. It would also be very good to teach some practical subject, say, geodesy. We don’t want to have any specific themes. I think Dr. Schwebsch could teach aesthetics and literature; Stein, history; Unger, epistemology; Baravalle, mathematics; and Stockmeyer, geodesy.

It seems that one error has been that there is too much lecturing.

Sometime we will also need to present something about music theory. We should do that in the course next winter. So that there will be a certain amount of liveliness, I propose that wherever possible, you bring the most recent events into the discussion. It would be good, for example, to work through our perspective on aesthetics as I discussed in the two little essays. Since there is only one lecture per week, you can only give a sketch. You should, for instance, handle the theme “Beauty arises when the sense-perceptible receives the form of the spirit” as I did that in my essay “Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetic.”351 You could show

351 . See Steiner’s lecture of November 9, 1888, in Michael Howard’s Art as Spiritual Activity: Rudolf Steiner’s Contribution to the Visual Arts.

that for the various arts, for architecture, painting, and so forth. In literature, I think you should discuss the most recent publications, namely, how Ibsen, Strindberg, and so forth reveal an unconscious movement toward a certain kind of spirituality, and then also, of course, the pathological, like for instance, Dostoyevsky.

Marie Steiner: Shouldn’t we also discuss Morgenstern, Steffen, and Steiner?

Dr. Steiner: You could extend Steffen’s characterization of lyrics.

In history, you could present an overview of the period from 1870 until 1914, stopping at that point. People would leave with rather long faces saying that you have only gotten to the World War and now they need to give some thought to the war itself. Go only to the assassination at Sarajevo.

In mathematics, you will have to orient yourselves by what was presented previously. I think it is important to treat the most important mathematical things. ( Speaking to Dr. von Baravalle) You could present the things you have in your dissertation. It would also be very good if you developed mathematical concepts, such as those of normal functions or elliptic functions, in a visual way.

Don’t just drone on about formal mathematics. Present how things are qualitatively. It would also be good to use that as a starting point to go into the entirety of relativity theory, how it is justifiable or not. I think people should have an idea of the following: You could present the question of relativity theory through the example of a cannon that is shot in Freiburg. It can be heard at some distance and you can compute the distance. You would then go on to compute how the time would change if you moved toward or away from the noise. The time it takes to hear the noise would lengthen if you moved from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt. If you then moved in the opposite direction the time would shorten until it was zero when you heard the cannon in Freiburg itself. You could then continue past Freiburg, so that you would have to hear the cannon before it was shot. That is the basic

error of the theory of relativity. 352 It can’t be so difficult to develop this mathematical concept of movement.

I think the problem with these courses is that they are actually unnecessary. With some differences, you have simply continued what other popular lectures offer, which is unnecessary; there is no real need for them.

What is important in geodesy is to get away from presenting a copy of the Earth. For example, if you begin, as people do, to try to avoid error through differential methods, you will need to explain geodetic methods to a certain extent. You will then have asymptotic methods. You could then discuss to what extent human beings depend upon approaching only certain things. You can show how extremely useful it is not to think in a determined way about some things, such as the character of a human being, but to think in a way similar to the way you measure with a diopter, where there is always some small difference.353 You can come closer to the truth in that way than you can when you state everything in specific words. We should characterize people only by looking at them from one side and then another. A person can be a choleric and a melancholic at the same time. This is the perspective you should bring to the fore. If you use geodesy as a basis for explaining the problems of the Copernican system, you can achieve a great deal.

You should form the lectures series by using such titles as: “What Can Aesthetics and Literature Add to Life?”; “What Can History Add to Life?”; “What Can Epistemology Add to Life?”; “What Can Mathematics Add to Life?”; and “What Can Geodesy Add to Life?” Under that, you could put “The Board of Directors

352 . See Steiner’s lecture of February 27, 1924, in Natur und Mensch in geisteswissenschaftlicher Betrachtung (Nature and the human being according to spiritual science, untranslated, GA 352).

353 . An optical invention by Hipparchus for reading altitudes and leveling.

of the Anthroposophical Society and the Faculty of the University Courses,” and above it, as a title, “Goetheanum and University Courses.”

These proposals are being made to you from Dornach.

Monday, June 2, 1924, 10:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m.

A teacher reads aloud the ninth lecture from Practical Advice to Teachers and the curriculum directions given until this time as summarized by Mr. B.

Dr. Steiner: The foreignlanguage teachers were interested in hearing what directions have already been given. We should not forget there has been a certain difficulty in the foreign language class. In the past, students of the most differing ages came to us, so that we also needed to take new students in the higher class. We could assume that if a nine-year-old child came, he or she had already learned a certain amount. That was, however, not the situation with foreign languages. Children who had never learned a single word of French or English came into the fifth grade, so we could not establish a strict curriculum. It is still a question whether we are able to set up a specific curriculum for a given year or whether we can have only a general perspective we would follow as best we can throughout all the classes when we accept new children into the first grade.

Our teaching of foreign languages is somewhat independent.

We consider what is taught in the first two hours to be the basis of education. In the future, we must treat our foreign language teaching somewhat more freely.

In general, we should teach a child in the first grade a foreign language, and we should teach foreign languages through speaking until the end of the third grade. We should avoid having the children learn words or phrases through translation. Instead, they should learn things directly from the word or phrase. Therefore, we should not associate a foreign word with the corresponding German word, but with the subject itself, and should always speak in the foreign language. That is particularly important until the end

of the third grade. During that period, they should not even notice that grammar exists.

In working with longer pieces, do not be disturbed if the children learn a verse or a poem purely by sound, even though they may have little understanding of the content. In an extreme case, a child may learn four, six, or eight lines that he or she remembers only by the sounds. Under some circumstances, that could be of considerable help in learning the language, since the child would later learn to understand things memorized by sound. Quite clearly, poetic material is to be preferred over prose during the first three years. It is quite clear from this that we cannot view the individual years separately. Instead, we must handle them completely equally.

We now come to the fourth grade. Then it is best to no longer avoid the beginnings of grammar. However, do not make the children learn rules, but make visible the texts they have already learned. Thus, you develop the rules of grammar inductively, and once they have been formed, you should require the children to remember them, so that they then have rules. You should not fal prey to the extreme by thinking that children should learn no rules at all. Instead, you should develop the rules inductively, so that they will know them by heart. Remembering rules is part of the development of the I during the period from nine to ten years. We can support the development of the I by giving the children the rules of grammar in a logical way based upon the structure of the language.

You can then go from poetry to prose. Until the end of the third grade, you should hold prose to a minimum. Beginning in fourth grade, you can choose material such that the grammar and the material can be learned in parallel. For that, you should select only prose. We would make poetry pedantic if we only used it for abstracting grammatical rules, but prose can certainly be used for that. While using prose, you can gradually move into a kind of translation.

Of course, the foreign language teachers have tried to teach in this way until now. Nevertheless, it has come up that the teaching has been more from the direction of lexicography, and that you have not sought the connection between the subject and the foreign word. Instead, you made the connection between the German word and the foreign word. That is easier for the teacher, but it results in teaching languages in contrast to one another, so the feeling for the language is not properly developed.

We need to begin that in the fourth grade, but we need to limit ourselves primarily to teaching how words are formed.

In the fifth grade go on to syntax, continuing with it in the sixth grade into more complicated syntactic forms. The readings would, of course, follow in parallel. You should not have the children translate from German into the foreign language. Instead, have them write short essays and such things. You should work with such translations only by saying something short and then having the children express the same thing in the foreign language. Thus, you would have them say in the foreign language what they have heard in German. That is how you should work with translations until the end of sixth grade. In any event, you should completely avoid having them translate longer German passages directly into the foreign language.

On the other hand, the children should read a great deal, but their readings should contain much humor. The class should have an enjoyable discussion of everything connected with the readings, particularly concerning customs. You should discuss the living situations and attitudes of the people who speak the foreign language. Thus, you should include, in a humorous way, a study of the people and customs in the fifth and sixth grades. Also take idiomatic expressions into account in the fifth grade by including the sayings and idiomatic expressions contained in the foreign language, so that the children have a corresponding saying in that language for the various occasions in life where they would use a German saying. These are often expressed in a much different way.

For the seventh grade, the instruction should take into account that a large number of children will leave the school following the eighth grade. In the seventh and eighth grades, you should emphasize reading and working with the character of the language evident in sentences. Of course, it is important that they learn about the things that would occur in the everyday life of the people who speak the language. They should practice by reading texts and retelling things in the foreign language so that they gain a capacity for expression. You should have them translate only rarely. Have them retell what they have read, particularly dramatic things. Do not have them retell lyric or epic readings, but they can retell in their own words the dramatic things they have read. In the eighth grade, you should also teach them rudimentary things about poetry and meter in the foreign language. Also, in these two last classes, you should give a very brief overview of the literary history of the respective language.

We now have ninth grade. There, you need to review grammar, but do it with some humor by always giving them humorous examples. Through such examples, you can go through all the grammar of the language in the course of the year. Of course, you do that in parallel with the exciting readings the class does.

In the tenth grade, emphasize the meter of the language by reading primarily poetry. In the eleventh grade, the readings should be mostly drama in parallel with some prose texts and a little about the aesthetics of the language. You can develop poetry from the dramatic readings, and you should continue that into lyric and epic poetry for the twelfth grade. There, the class should read a number of things related to the present and to the area where the foreign language is spoken. The students should, therefore, have some knowledge of modern foreign literature.

That is, then, the general curriculum we will want in the future.

You should never read anything without making the children aware of the entire content. In the fourth and fifth grades, you can

begin with the basics of grammar, but see that the children also speak.

I would like to say something else in regard to drama in the seventh and eighth grades. You could find, for example, some longer passage from one of Moliére’s comedies that you want to read. In a humorous way, you need to tell the children the content—be as detailed and dramatic as possible—then have them read the passage.

In the course of the past years, we have made small additions to what was said earlier, and we should leave it that way, in principle.

They should begin their written work only at that stage presented in the course.

The teaching of ancient languages has, of course, a particular position, and it actually needs a special curriculum, which I will work out in more detail and give to you. You probably already know what we did previously and the things we slowly changed.

A teacher requests a seminar on languages and Dr. Steiner agrees.354

Dr. Steiner: I would now like to hear about some of your teaching experiences since Easter.

A teacher asks about Bible stories for the third grade.

Dr. Steiner: I have seen that some of you use the Hebel edition of the Bible. My feeling is that we should use only the Schuster edition because of its exemplary structure. It is better not to work exactly with the text of the stories, but to present them freely. You should give only free renditions to the children, and the book itself is only a help for remembering and reviewing. In that case, the older Schuster edition is still the best; the new edition is not nearly so good. As interesting as it may be to read Hebel, if you want to read something you already know, it is not appropriate for teaching about the Bible, quite aside from the fact that the printing in the

354 . The course was not held.

present edition is terrible. I think we should stay with the old Schuster edition. Its structure is really very good. On the other hand, it is rather pedantic and Catholic-oriented, but I do not think you run any danger of being too Catholic.

A religion teacher asks about the difference between working with the Bible stories in religion class and in the main lesson of the third grade.

Dr. Steiner: You can learn a great deal if you recall the principle for working with Bible stories in these two different places. When we teach Bible stories in the main lesson, that is, in the actual curriculum, we treat them as something generally human. We simply acquaint the children with the content of the Bible and do not give it any religious coloring at all. We treat the stories in a profane way; we present the content simply as classical literature, just like all other classical literature.

When we work with the Bible in religion class, we take the religious standpoint. We use these stories for teaching religion. If we approach this difference with some tact, that is, without giving any superficial explanations in the main lesson, then we can learn a great deal for our own pedagogical practice by working with this subtle difference. There is a difference in the “how,” an extraordinarily important difference in “how.”

What was told before is then read so that it is firmly seated. I cannot believe the Schuster Bible is poor reading material. The pictures are quite humorous and not at all bad. Perhaps a little cute, but not really sentimental. It is good enough as reading material for the third grade and can also serve as an introduction to reading Fraktur.355

A teacher asks about difficulties with new students in the stenography class.

355 . Fraktur is a typeface used in older German books, similar to old English printing. It is ornamental and difficult to read without practice. —TRANS.

Dr. Steiner: The only thing we can do is to make stenography an elective. We will make it something the children should learn.

Suppose a student comes into the eleventh grade. In previous years, he had a Catholic teacher for natural history. Now he comes and says he wants to learn only Catholic natural history. There is nothing we can do to free him of that.

We are teaching the best stenographic system, Gabelsberger’s, and it is obligatory because in our modern times it is needed for a complete education. I do not think it is prejudice at all. It is the only system that has some inner coherence. The others are all simply artificial. We need to think about having this class in a lower grade.

A teacher: Don’t the first-grade children have too much school because of the language class?

Dr. Steiner: If you see the children are tired, it would be better to drop that subject in the first two grades rather than to try some sort of tricks. I would prefer that we teach the little children only two hours a day if that were possible.

The school doctor asks about curative eurythmy exercises.

Dr. Steiner: That can be only a question of using the time most efficiently. Some children are given curative eurythmy exercises for a particular period, and they should be done daily. The children will have to leave class for that. If they are doing some curative eurythmy exercises, then they are sick. Since it is a therapy, you should be able to remove the children from class at any time except during religion class. If they miss something in class, it is just karma. There can be no difficulties if curative eurythmy is given the importance it is due. No one should hold curative eurythmy in such low regard that a child is not allowed to go.

A teacher asks about Cavalieri’s perspective in twelfth-grade geometry.

Dr. Steiner: Cavalieri’s perspective is more realistic. In it we see everything in small pieces. That perspective should be used wherever possible. It is designed for architecture. The architrave in the first Goetheanum was done in Cavalieri’s perspective, as though you were walking around a room while looking at the walls.

I want the children to have an equal opportunity to do all of the geometric constructions, for example, the sections through a cone, to sketch them freehand. They can do the actual drawing, the real construction, with a compass and a ruler.

A teacher asks about year-end reports.

Dr. Steiner: There is not much to say about the reports. The first school-year reports were really very interesting. Not giving grades was new; instead you evaluated the children in your own words.

Many people received that in a very good way. You wrote the sentences with tremendous love. If you look at those reports today, you will see they were written out of love.

When I read some reports because someone complained, I found that for a large number of teachers writing the reports had gradually become a burden, just as in other schools, so that the teachers were happy when they were done. You can see they are no longer written with love. They have been formulated in the driest prose. It would be better if we used the 4, 3, 2, 1 grading system. We need to be more careful about how we write and be somewhat more creative. You should be more diligent and more loving, otherwise the result might be something like, “Can’t do anything, but will be better,” or, “Behavior leaves something to be desired,” and so forth. Then, the reports would no longer serve any purpose. I have nothing against it if you think it is too great a burden. Then we will have to swallow the bitter pill and give regular reports. That would be a shame, though. We cannot allow them simply to be written in the last week, but we cannot have any rules about them, because we would need a special rule for each student.

I was disturbed by S.T.’s report. When I decided to accept him, I said explicitly that we could not do so if we were going to be stuffy about it. We would have to be more open. That was when I was in

J. We cannot have a Waldorf School and depend upon support if we set ourselves outside the world. It would have been much easier to say that we cannot accept such a student. The question was one of solving a more difficult problem, and thus that young boy came to us. I certainly did not hide the fact that we were subjecting ourselves to a real problem. I said all of that at the time. We needed to solve a problem: a boy who was very gifted for his age came into the ninth grade. Look at the questions he asked, but on the other side, he couldn’t do anything. He was lazy in every subject.

But then he received a report that neglected everything that was said at the time. This drives me up the wall! It was written very pedantically, with no consideration of the special circumstances, and with no consideration of his psychology. I was just mortified by the faculty here. The report had no meaning for the boy, and his mother lost her head. The report was a wonderful example of disinterest. In this case, you did not seem to be as talented as usual.

You wrote in the style of a very average middle school teacher.

You should write the reports for those who are to learn something about the child. You can tell the children what you have to say in a much more direct way throughout the year. The reports are for others to read. This report gives no indication whatsoever that the boy went through the most important year of his life and was very different at the end of the year than he was at the beginning. The positive things that occurred are not at all visible.

We did not need to bring him to the Waldorf School to get such a report. Of course, you can take the position of a schoolmaster, but we should actually be much more open.

You need to write the reports with more love. You did not do that. You need to look at the individual students with more love.

This report is sloppy, even superficially. Something like this looks

bad. A report like this should be well organized and carefully written. You may have to describe the inner development of some children. If our teaching fails, it would be better not to take any risks if we fear things will get worse because the care needed for such an individual is not here.

A teacher asks whether L.K. from the third grade should go into the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: Her mother is horrible. She was that way already as a young girl. It would not be appropriate to put the child into the remedial class where we should really have only children with some intellectual or emotional problems. K. is simply bad, and that would only be a punishment. She would not fit into the remedial class. Don’t put everyone in the remedial class.

A teacher: Should we consider K.E. in the fourth grade as normal?

Dr. Steiner: What is normal? You cannot draw some line. K.E. is not abnormal, but under such circumstances, you could put such a child in a lower grade.

A teacher asks about R.A. in the fifth grade, who had stolen something.

Dr. Steiner: For four years he has stolen nothing, but now he is beginning to steal. It is our task to make him into a proper young man. There must be something missing in the contact between the faculty and the children. If the children have genuine trust in the teachers, it is actually not at all possible for such moral problems to arise. You should certainly keep him in the class. He is not a kleptomaniac. He did it alone. You need to understand the children’s psychology better. It is possible that sometimes children do things because of a dare. It is also possible a hidden laziness exists. I certainly told him my mind quite clearly.

A teacher asks about a course in voice eurythmy.356

Dr. Steiner: The eurythmy teachers and Mr. Baumann should have been at the tone eurythmy course in February.357

In this case, the question is somewhat different. I began tone eurythmy in 1912. At that time a number of students came, Kisseleff, Baumann, and Wolfram. The course expanded when a number of eurythmists also came. Lori Smits continued it, but something foreign came into it then.358 This course should be used to make a new beginning. We will have to see how far we get.

This is something that could be especially important. Since eurythmy is also done here in school, it could lead to closing the eurythmy class.

Dr. Schubert, Dr. Kolisko, and anyone else who can should attend the curative pedagogy course.359

Miss Michels will go to the agricultural course.360 Someone will have to take over the children at that time.

356 . See Rudolf Steiner, Eurythmy as Visible Speech.

357 . See Rudolf Steiner, Eurythmy as Visible Song.

358 . Lori Maier-Smits, one of the original eurythmists.

359 . See Rudolf Steiner, Curative Education.

360 . See Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture.

Thursday, June 19, 1924, 9:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, I could not visit the classes, but you could tell me about them. I have not finished the curriculum for the ancient languages yet.

A teacher asks whether there will be levels of grammar in the foreignlanguages classes like those in German.

Dr. Steiner: Well, this is the situation. What I gave was according to the needs of the respective ages of the children. What they need is that you give them the nuances of the state of their souls at their age. Children learn how to enliven such nuances most easily through their mother tongue. It is best to make a connection with other languages after they have learned things in their mother tongue, for instance, to show how differently other languages express the same mood of soul. You can certainly make comparisons like that.

You should not begin teaching them grammar before the age of nine or ten. Develop your language teaching during the earlier stages purely from speaking and from the feeling for what is spoken, so that the child learns to speak from feeling. At that age, which is, of course, not completely fixed but lies between the age of nine and ten, you should begin with grammar. Working with the grammar of a language is connected with the development of the I. Of course, it is not as though you should somehow ask how you can develop the I through grammar. Grammar will do that by itself. It is not necessary to have specific teaching examples in that regard. You should not begin grammar earlier, but instead, attempt to develop grammar out of the substance of the language.

A teacher: You said that in eighth grade we should begin to give them the basics of meter and poetics, and then in the eleventh grade, the aesthetics of the language. What did you mean?

Dr. Steiner: Metrics is the theory of the structure of verses, the theory of how a verse is constructed. Poetics is the various forms of poetry, the types of lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry. That is what metrics and poetics are. You can then go on to metaphor and figures of speech. Always give the children some examples.

The children have a rather large vocabulary, German, French, and English, which you can use as a basis for comparing the different languages. Teaching the aesthetics of a language means that you draw their attention to such things as whether a language is rich in the o and u vowels or in the i and e vowels. You can then try to give them the feeling of how much more musical is a language that has many o and u sounds than one that has e and i sounds. You can try to give them a feeling for how the aesthetic beauty of a language decreases when the possibility of inwardly transforming words in various cases is lost and when endings disappear. Thus, the structure of the language is part of its aesthetics, whether it is flexible or more lyrical and musical, whether it can express complicated interjections, and so forth.

That is different from actual metrics and poetics. The aesthetics of a language is concerned with the actual beauty of the language.

Sanskrit is very rich in a’s. U and o make a language musical. E

and i make it discordant. The German language is discordant.

Sanskrit is somewhat monotonic due to the predominance of a, but lies between the musical and flexible. It has a strong tendency to be musically flexible, that is, not to be unmusical in its plastic forms. That is how a works. It stands in the middle. It is particularly characteristic to find a vowel next to an a in Sanskrit.

It is very characteristic, for example, to hear an Indian say, “Peace, peace, peace,” since an a comes first and then there is a soft hint, almost a shameful hint, of the I. That is because they say, “Shanti, shanti.” I is the most egotistical vowel. It is as though the Indian immediately becomes red in the face from shame when he says i.

A teacher: The Finnish language also has many a’s.

Dr. Steiner: That is true, but you should also consider how long a language has been at the stage of this particular peculiarity. There is something hardened in the a of the Finnish language, which, of course, relates to its tendency toward consonants. It is a kind of hardening that begins to become sympathetic. All these things are based upon a subtle aesthetic feeling for the language, but such subtle feelings are no longer natural for people today. If an Englishman spoke the ending syllable of English words the way a German-or a French-speaking person does, that would be a hardening for the English person. English-speaking people have begun to drop the end syllables because they are moving out of the language. What is a hardening for one can be something quite natural for the other.

A teacher asks another question about metaphors and figures of speech.

Dr. Steiner: Metaphors correspond to the imagination, figures of speech, to inspiration. First you have what is absolutely unpoetic and characterizes the greatest portion, 99 percent, of all poetry.

You then have one percent remaining. Of that one percent, there are poets who, when they want to go beyond the physical plane, need to strew pictures and figures of speech over the inadequacies of normal prose. How could you express, “Oh, water lily, you blooming swan; Oh swan, you swimming lily!” That is a metaphor.

What is expressed is neither a water lily, nor a swan; it floats between them. It cannot be expressed in prose, and the same holds for figures of speech. However, it is possible to adequately express the supersensible without using a picture or a figure of speech, as Goethe was sometimes able to do. In such cases, he did not use a picture, and there you find the intuitive. You stand directly in the thing. That is so with Goethe and also sometimes with Martin Greif.361 They actually achieve what we could objectively call lyric.

361 . Martin Greif is a pseudonym for Herman Frei (1839–1911).

Shakespeare also achieves it sometimes with the lyric poetry he mixed into his drama.

In the pedagogical course given by Dr. Steiner in Ilkley in August 1923, he characterized four languages in the eleventh lecture without naming them. A teacher asks which languages he meant.

Dr. Steiner: The first language is English, which people speak as though the listener were listening from a distance, from a ship floating on the waves of the sea, struggling against the wind, struggling against the movement and spray of the sea, that is. The second language, which has a purely musical effect when heard, is Italian. The third, which affects the intellect, which comes through reasoning and is expressed through its logical forms, is French.

The fourth, which sculpts its words, is German.

A teacher: What is the basis of French meter?

Dr. Steiner: As hard as this may be to believe, the basis of French meter is a sense of systematic division, of mathematics in language.

That is unconscious. In French meter, everything is counted according to reason, just as everything in French thinking in general is done according to reason. That is, of course, somewhat veiled since it is not emphasized. Here, reason becomes rhetoric, not intellect. Rhetoric is audible reasoning.

A teacher asks which texts they should use for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We have already spoken a great deal about the twelfth grade, and I gave you some suggestions, for example, MacKenzie.

In the preceding grades, it would depend a little upon what the teacher has already read and what the teacher likes, and for that reason, I gave only the qualities. For the tenth grade, you should certainly consider older and more recent lyric poetry.

A teacher says that he began with lyrics from Milton’s time.

Dr. Steiner: You should do it in the following way. In the tenth grade, read the lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s time and then give

a short review in the twelfth grade. We cannot completely ignore lyric poetry from Shakespeare’s time because it gives a curiously deep indication of the period of European development when the Germanic languages were much more similar to one another than they are only a few centuries later. English lyric poetry is still unbelievably German. If you read Shakespeare’s lyrics, you will see they are not at all un-German. We can show that in the twelfth grade, so that a feeling will arise that is very important for humanity in general.

Thus, for the tenth grade, Robert Burns, some things out of the period of Thomas Percy. Some things from the Sea School, for example, Coleridge, and then Shelley and Keats. You will, of course, need to be selective, but do what you prefer, since you will then do it better. You could also present some particular points of view. There is, however, one thing in these lyrics that you will find throughout almost all English lyric poetry, namely, that where it is good it has a sentimental element. Sometimes that is very beautiful, but there is certainly a sentimental element throughout.

Something else is that when the English way of thinking becomes poetic, it is not at all appropriate for representing humor.362 English then becomes trivial and has no humor in a higher sense. There is not even a word for it. How could you say “humor” in English? The way Falstaff is handled would not represent humor today. We would, of course, say there is much humor in it, but we would not refer to the way the whole thing is presented as humor itself. What is apparent to us is how precise the characterizations are. We perceive what is human, but in

362 . Throughout this paragraph and the next, Steiner merges the meanings of the word humor. On the one hand he uses it to refer to what is commonly referred to as humor today—something comic or whimsical. On the other hand, he reaches back into the much older meaning of the word (a cognate in German and English), which refers to the medieval four basic “fluids” of the four temperaments. He is thus saying that this form of presentation would no longer be a true characterization, nor would it be comic at a higher level. — TRANS.

Shakespeare’s time it was not perceived in that way. The well-roundedness and exactness of characterizations was unimportant for people in earlier times. What was important then was that the humors be good for presentation on the stage. People thought much more as actors at that time.

Today, we can no longer call Falstaff humorous. By the word humor, we mean someone who dissolves in a kind of fog, that is, someone not so well defined in regard to his temperament. Humor is the kind of temperament someone has. The four temperaments are humors. Today, you can no longer say that someone has a melancholic humor. Thus, someone whom you cannot really quite grasp, who dissolves in the fog of their temperaments, has humor.

In drama, you should show that the development of the English people resulted in the height of English drama being reached by Shakespeare, and that since then nothing else has reached the same height. It is, of course, interesting, but you should draw the students’ attention to how development proceeds only in the twelfth grade. You can mention how in Middle Europe, the German Reformation kept its basic religious character through the great importance of church lyric. In France, the Reformation does not have a religious character; it has a social character, and this can be shown in the poetry. In England, it has a political/moral character, something we can see in Shakespeare. That is connected with the fact that for a long time the English did not have an idealistic philosophy, so they lived it out in poetry. That gives their poetry a sentimental tendency. That is what made the rise of Darwinism possible.

A teacher: We still need to group the three fifth-grade classes for Latin and Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether Mr. X. will take over that instruction.

A teacher asks about religious instruction in the Waldorf School and in the Christian Community.

Dr. Steiner: One thing we need to consider is that the Christian Community also gives religious instruction to the children. There are continuing questions. First, how is the independent religious instruction in the Waldorf School connected with the religious instruction of the Christian Community, and, second, how are the school’s Sunday services related to the Christian Community Sunday services? I would like to hear your feelings about these things. I would also like to say beforehand that we cannot object in principle to the children participating in both the Waldorf School religious instruction and the Christian Community instruction and also attending both services. Our only possible objection might be that it might be too much. You should speak about it, though, as we should not decide something dogmatically.

The situation is this: We have seen how the Christian Community has grown out of the anthroposophical movement.

There cannot be any discrepancy within the content of the two.

The question concerning religious instruction is that if the Christian Community were to request to instruct the children who belonged to the Christian Community, we would have to give them the same rights as other confessions. The children who do not belong to the Christian Community will, in the majority, have the independent religious instruction. Thus, we will have just one more religion class. But why should we allow an extra religion class for the Christian Community other than the independent religious instruction? I do not actually see how we can decide this question in principle, since we cannot put ourselves in the position of advising someone not to participate in our religious instruction. To do that would be incorrect.

Take, for instance, the situation of a Catholic father saying that he wants to send his boy to the Catholic religious instruction as well as to the independent religious instruction. We could certainly not say anything against that if it was possible to schedule things that way. We cannot decide it, the Christian Community must decide it for themselves.

[ There is a break in the transcript here, and the following is not completely clear. ]

It should not be possible for a child to make comparisons and conclude that the religious instruction given by the Waldorf teacher is not as good. The school exists within the framework of anthroposophy, so if a child makes such a comparison of which teacher is better, it should be obvious that due to the nature of the subject, the Waldorf teacher is better.

A teacher asks about the selection of a new religion teacher.

Dr. Steiner: This situation could someday cause us very large problems, greater than all previous ones. As you know, it was very difficult to find religion teachers. The teachers here are more concerned with their own specific subjects, and there is a certain prerequisite for teaching religion. It might occur that we will need to find a religion teacher for the school within the Christian Community. I would try to avoid that as long as possible, but it may someday be necessary. I do not see why we should be so exclusive. We can leave it up to the parents and children whether they want to participate here and there; however, I think it would be good if they participated in both, so that there would be a harmonious discussion of the material by the religion teacher here and the religion teacher there.

You should also not forget that the priests of the Christian Community are also anthroposophists, and they have made great strides in a very short time. The priests are not the same as they were, they have made enormous progress in their inner development. They have undergone an exemplary development in the life of their souls during the short time the Christian Community has existed. Not everyone, of course, but it is true in general, and they are a great blessing in all areas. There was a youth group meeting in Breslau, and two theologians worked with them.

That had a very good effect. Young Wistinghausen is a blessing for the youth there.363

A teacher: What should we do with the newly enrolled students?

They have already been confirmed by the Christian Community.

Should they immediately go to the Youth Service?

Dr. Steiner: That would not be good, as they would not begin the Youth Services with an Easter service. It is extremely important that they begin the Youth Services at Easter. You should make it clear to them that they should attend the Youth Services somewhat later. You could allow them to attend as observers, but not for a whole year. Those children should attend the Youth Services beginning at Easter when they have completed the eighth grade.

The Youth Service has its entire orientation toward Easter.

A teacher: What should we do with those who have gone through the Protestant confirmation or Catholic First Communion?

Dr. Steiner: The main problem is that these children have been confirmed or have taken First Communion, and now they are taking independent religious instruction. By doing that, they lose the entire meaning of confirmation or First Communion; they negate it and strike it out of their lives. Once they have been confirmed or have taken First Communion, they cannot simply take independent religious instruction. Being confirmed means to be an active member of a Protestant church, so they cannot participate in the independent religious instruction because that negates the confirmation. That is even more true with First Communion. Our task is to indicate to the children in a kind way that they need to first live into their new life, so that it will not be so bad if they do not participate in the Youth Service until next Easter. You need to prepare them for renouncing their faith and direct them to something quite different. These are things we

363 . Kurt von Wistinghausen was at that time a priest in the Christian Community and a member of the Anthroposophical Society in Breslau.

should take quite seriously. At worst, these seven will have participated too early, but not too late if they come only at Easter.

We should perhaps consider this if a dissident is there.

A teacher asks a question.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand at all why someone who was confirmed by Priest K. should not go through the Sunday services for a year, since he had not been confirmed before. In his case, our only question is whether he should go to the Sunday services for a year.

If you look at the inner meaning of our Youth Service and that of the Christian Community, you will see they are compatible. The inner meaning of our Youth Service is to place a person into the human community, not into a specific religious community, whereas the Christian Community’s is to place the person into a specific religious community. It is, therefore, completely compatible for someone to attend the Christian Community Youth Service after attending our youth services; that is not a contradiction. The other way around, for someone who is confirmed before attending our Youth Service, is not compatible.

However, the first way is compatible. Parents from the Christian Community have asked me about this. First, the children should go to the youth services here, and then go through confirmation in the Christian Community. If a child attends the Christian Community youth services, we should not object. It is compatible because we do not place the children into the Christian Community. I did not say they must be confirmed into the Christian Community, rather, they may. Our Youth Service does not replace that of the Christian Community because it does not lead to membership in the Christian Community. If children have been confirmed in the Christian Community, they will need to wait here until next Easter.

A religion teacher says the older students do not like to go to the services for the younger ones. They think they are too old for that.

Dr. Steiner: They completely misunderstand the service. They have a Protestant understanding of ritual, which means a rejection of it.

It is possible to attend the service throughout your entire life. Their understanding is based upon the perspective that these teachings are preparations, not a ritual. We need to overcome that Protestant understanding.

A teacher asks how to handle students who only audit the classes.

Dr. Steiner: That is a question we can decide quite objectively, but then there can be no differing opinions. The instruction we give in the Waldorf School assumes a certain methodology. We present the material according to that methodology, and we cannot take other circumstances into account. Those who audit the Waldorf School need to assume that they will be treated according to that methodology. We cannot answer this question with a subjective opinion. You cannot modify the methodology by saying you will ask one student and not another, since you would no longer treat the students according to the Waldorf methodology. As long as he is in the class, you have to treat him like the others.

I do not understand why his report is not different from the others. If someone attends all the classes, I do not see why he is an auditor. His report should clearly state that he took only some classes. That should be summarized somewhere. At the end of the report, you should state that the student did not receive remarks about all subjects because, as an auditor, he did not attend all classes. The reports are uniformly written, and it should, therefore, be evident that the student was an auditor unless we have cause to view him differently. We spoke about this when we discussed how the reports were becoming more bland and that we should stop that. If you do not write them with enough care, they no longer have any real meaning. I do not see why that should be any different now. If we give an auditor a report—to the extent that

we can give such a report—we should do it according to the principles of the Waldorf School or not at all. That is really selfevident.

The only question could be whether he should automatically receive a report, or only if he requests it. That is not a major question and has no further consequences. Certainly, you could give him a report regardless of whether he asks for it or not, and he might tear it up, or you could ask him and if he does not want it you simply save yourself the work of writing the report; that is really not so important. If he is to audit, then he must be an auditor in the Waldorf School. To treat him differently would not correspond to teaching in the Waldorf School. His extended leaves from school are a different question.

There is further discussion about S.T. Some letters to his mother are read aloud.

Dr. Steiner: I recently discussed this whole matter very clearly and said that when he was enrolled I assumed he would be treated according to his very specific nature. I continue to assume that, otherwise I would have advised him not to come to the Waldorf School. At that time, I said it was absolutely necessary for him to live with one of the Waldorf School teachers. I also said he does not tend to progress in individual subjects in a straightforward fashion, but we have not gotten past that problem. We appear to have characterized him, but that is really not much more than just giving grades. He has not been treated as I intended he should be treated. In a certain sense, the way T. has been treated is a kind of rejection of me by the faculty. That is something that is actually not possible to correct. These letters are simply a justification of his report. I do not agree with the report nor with your justification of it. You have not taken his particular situation into account. He is difficult to handle, but you also have no real desire to work with him as an individual. I need to say that in an extreme way as otherwise you will not understand me clearly. You could have said

everything in his report differently. Now there is nothing to do other than to send this letter. What else can we do? I think, however, that we can learn a great deal from this report because most of what is in it is said in a devious way. He is also now living in R.’s boarding house.364 You have done nothing I wanted. Some of the students are living with teachers.

I do not think we can achieve more by rewriting the letters.

What we should have achieved should have been done throughout the year. What is important is to be more careful in carrying out the intentions. Otherwise, we should not have accepted him.

A teacher: Should we advise an eleventh-grade student who wants to study music to no longer attend school?

Dr. Steiner: As a school, we can really not say anything when a student no longer wants to attend. We do not have compulsory attendance. However, as the Waldorf School, we can certainly not advise such a young student that he should no longer attend. That is something we cannot do. We need to take the viewpoint that he should continue and finish. That is the advice we can give. If it is necessary for the boy not to complete the Waldorf School in order to become a musician, then we will lose him, and his mother will not be able to keep him, either. If he is to become a good musician, we cannot advise him not to continue in school.

A teacher asks about a child in the third grade who has difficulties concentrating and cannot make the connections necessary to write short essays.

Dr. Steiner: Have the child repeat a series of experiences forward and then backward. For instance, a tree: root, trunk, branch, leaf, flower, fruit. And now backward: fruit, flower, leaf, branch, trunk, root. Or you could also do a person: head, chest, stomach, leg,

364 . A boarding house owned by The Coming Day.

foot. Then, foot, leg, stomach, chest, head. Try to give him some reminders also.

A teacher: How often should we have parent evenings?

Dr. Steiner: When possible, parent meetings should be monthly.

Tuesday, July 15, 1924, 8:30 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: I had thought a meeting with the faculty would not be possible during this short visit. In light of the bad news I received today, though, I thought it was absolutely necessary to have this meeting and discuss the latest events. We cannot have a long meeting, since I have another meeting right after this one.

However, we need to discuss the events of the past days. Before I go into the situation, I would like you to tell me about the events first.

A report is given about a theft by S.Z. and W.R.

Dr. Steiner: Aren’t both boys in the eleventh grade? Have you noticed anything unusual recently?

A teacher: Not in school. W.R. was very active in class, but S.Z. is less interested in learning.

Dr. Steiner: S.Z. lived with Mrs. A. and W.R. said they wanted to look at her furniture. That is undoubtedly when the boys took the key; now we have the question of whether Z. himself was truly active or whether R. is the real instigator, as appears to be the case.

How long have the boys been in the school?

A teacher: S.Z. has been here for three years and W.R. for four.

Dr. Steiner: W.R. also stole some money. Which teachers worked with him?

A number of teachers report.

Dr. Steiner: These cases certainly give us a lot to think about. Now that I have heard what you said, there is even more to consider.

These are symptoms of something that has recently become quite visible in other areas.

Through our Waldorf School methods, we bring children very far in one respect, which is in regard to intellect and spirit. Our students are very much farther along than other students of the same age. That is something no one can deny. From eighth or ninth grade on, the whole student body consists of very different young human beings than those in other schools. Now, of course, the human being is a whole, and bringing people forward in an intellectual/spiritual way requires that we also bring their souls just as far along morally. No one can deny that what we achieve in teaching in the Waldorf School is primarily limited to the period the children are actually in school, and that the relationship to the students primarily results from what happens during classroom hours. That is the relationship that results, and we can hardly change it when the faculty is so overworked that personal relationships to the children don’t actually arise as they should in order to achieve a moral and soul development parallel to the intellectual and spiritual development. Beginning in the eighth grade, the moral influence of the faculty upon the students is very much lacking. There is also no contact between the students and teachers outside class of the sort that should exist, so when the students of the eighth grade have certain tendencies, they are left too much to themselves morally. We do not speak about the students in the way we would if we had closer contact with them.

The letter you wrote me about R. resulted from your classroom relationship. There was nothing visible in it to indicate that you had a personal relationship to the students. It was also quite clear from your verbal reports today that you have no real contact with the students. I can certainly see that there is not enough time and that the teachers are overworked; on the other hand, it is an objective fact that things have been this way for a long time. What we are missing is something that should absolutely occur through the attitude of the Waldorf School pedagogy; an exact psychological picture of the students should live within the teachers, but a detailed psychological picture of the students does

not live in the teachers’ souls. I do not know how the way you have developed this student psychology in your recent faculty meetings compares with the way it could have developed in meetings with me. You could have given some of the students in the higher grades some special attention here. I don’t know to what extent you do that when you meet by yourselves, but what exists is certainly not what it should be.

We now have these three children, N.N., S.Z., and W.R. There was a slight limitation in N.N.’s mental capacities, which could have been healed through energetic and longer-lasting psychological treatment. Whenever we spoke about N., I said that if he were treated such that he developed some trust, then he would be able to come to a teacher when he was in need and relate to that teacher as he would to a father. That would have improved the situation. My impression is that you did not do that, so N.N., who would have been easy to treat, in fact did not develop the deep love for a teacher that would have enabled him to improve.

In such cases, discussions about morality do not help. The only thing that can help is for the student to form such a close relationship with a teacher that he or she feels especially drawn to that teacher. However, such contact has not developed, though I had hoped it would. Now he has left, but we have certainly not earned any medals for helping him firm up his moral stance.

Now we come to S.Z. Although I do not know him as well, it seems he has a moderate moral and intellectual weakness. He seems to be a boy who is intellectually weak and easily influenced.

Probably he is relatively suggestible, so that a strong moral influence would affect him just as much as a less-good one. As things stand, he is to a large extent morally ruined, and the effects of this have been going on for several months, so that the moral problem exists in addition to the moderate intellectual weaknesses.

Now we have W.R. He is clearly not just moderately, but extremely weak intellectually. In saying this, I need to remind you that young people can be extremely weakminded in that they

cannot use their intellects for doing anything more than busywork well. Such people can create basic and exact judgments and can seem quite clever. Nevertheless, in W.R. we have an absolute and constitutional weakmindedness. We could have held him only if there had been an inner harmony between the care he receives at school and where he is living, so that he would have been strongly influenced by the school and by where he lives. Neither of these happened. Both where he was living and the school left him to himself in regard to his morals. No one worked with him. R.’s inner problems are therefore extremely great. These are things we must clearly examine from a psychological perspective. If the Waldorf School is to continue to exist, we need to think seriously about how we can overcome them. If the Waldorf School is to continue, everyone’s goodwill must act together, perhaps by having, prior to a new school year, a series of teachers’ meetings where we discuss the moral position of the school. We cannot move forward otherwise. We have a major deficiency in that regard. My first thought is that you have forgotten there must be a strong contact between the teachers and the students, and that concerns the school.

Concerning the two students, Z. and R., in spite of the fact that they were in the Waldorf School, they have come to behave as they did recently, and we have no real hope of favorably influencing them if they continue at the Waldorf School. Your lack of contact has become too great to have any real effects upon them. Thus, after what we have seen, we must unfortunately say, and this is quite painful, that if these two students remain in the Waldorf School, they will become worse and worse from a moral standpoint, and, in addition, they will infect others. What you have said in this meeting completely proves that. There is no possibility of thinking anything other than that they will become more and more morally depraved. We are faced with the fact, at least from our present knowledge of the situation, that we might be able to work with Z., but most certainly not with W.R. Z. may improve,

and that is something we could attempt. Due to his suggestibility, we may be able to achieve an improvement with S.Z. We could consider that. As long as we had to deal only with Z., I said we should keep him, and I wanted to do that even against his father’s wishes. However, if both boys remain, they will most certainly become worse. There can, however, be no discussion about W.R.

remaining in the school. The situation is extremely tragic, primarily because it is a question of conscience for our school. We need to admit that we presented the school to these two boys in such a way that the school was incapable of improving them morally.

Neither of the boys is a kleptomaniac. They are weakminded, not kleptomaniacs, and they have an intellectual and moral weakness in addition to the weakness in their souls, which makes the problem particularly difficult. If they were kleptomaniacs, we could consider giving them some therapy, but since they are weakminded, there is nothing we can do but put them in a class for weakminded children. That, however, is unthinkable.

The way things now stand, we have no real authority with W.R.

It is quite clear that there has been an inner corruption of both boys for several months. Therefore, there is nothing we can do with R. other than advise that he be removed from the school.

We could give S.Z. a short probationary period during which we would really have to pay attention and try to work with him. With W.R., the situation is difficult. He should go someplace where there is a systematic working toward moral improvement. Of course, I don’t mean a normal juvenile home. If he remains in the school, he will become worse than he already is. If he leaves school and is left to himself, he will become even worse than if he remains in school. He needs to be placed with a family who will improve him morally, or maybe in some institution. There is nothing more that can be done with this boy. You need to accept his situation by recognizing that his inner moral corruption has reached an enormous level as a result of his intense constitutional weak-

mindedness. It would be dangerous for both the school and the boy himself for him to remain in school in the same situation.

We should look for a family.

We cannot protect the two boys from the juvenile court. They will most certainly be sentenced. Is there some way we can involve an expert in the sentencing? In such a situation, we would have to find a local doctor willing to be an expert for the cases.

I have to admit it is, in a certain sense, very strange that it is particularly the children of anthroposophists who develop so poorly in the Waldorf School. The children who were expelled some time ago were also children of anthroposophists.

What I mentioned before from a general perspective, namely, that you lack contact with the children, is something we should concern ourselves with. That weighs on me heavily, and I have also noticed it through other symptoms. The faculty has not developed a sufficiently penetrating psychological view of the individual students because—the problem is not that you need more time, but that you need to develop a desire for this contact, so that what the teacher wants is also wanted by the students. That is a quality you can learn, but now you engage in a certain distancing.

When I was going through the classes, I also noticed a tone I have often mentioned, an academic tone, which has increased rather than decreased. You are lecturing. To an extent, you make some attempts to use the Socratic method, but take a closer look at what often occurs. You lecture and ask questions now and then, but the questions you ask are generally trivial. You delude yourselves when the students answer such obvious things correctly. You simply throw everything else at the children in overwhelming lectures. There is a major difference in the way the lower grades are taught, but beginning with the eighth grade, you no longer have any appropriate intimate contact with the students.

So far, there is no lecturing in the little children’s classes. There, things are considerably better. This certainly lies heavily upon my heart. I have often mentioned it, but you have not really done

much to relieve the situation. You should say what you wish now; then we need to discuss some other things.

A teacher: What exists in the constitutions of these children? You spoke of a constitutional weakmindedness.

Dr. Steiner: Where kleptomania is present, the situation is such that the human being has polaric constitutional aspects. The head tends to want to assimilate everything. The head is one pole, whereas the metabolism, which carries moral perception, is the other. It is possible to show that schematically by drawing a lemniscate. The head does not recognize property rights, it recognizes only an absolute ownership of everything that comes into its realm. The other pole recognizes morality. When, however, the function of the head enters the will, kleptomania results. This illness results because the aspect that belongs in the head exists in the will.

Stealing is something quite different from a tendency to kleptomania, which is expressed through mental absences during stealing. The person takes things upon seeing them, because the item stolen seduces the person into doing clever things to obtain it. The symptoms of kleptomania are clearly delineated.

The situation with N.N. could have been a borderline case of kleptomania; with the other two boys, though, we are dealing with moral insanity, an absolute inability of the physical functioning of the head to comprehend lying. They have not fully come into their etheric and physical bodies. This is not a sudden event like epilepsy, but a continuous mental absence.

W.R. is someone who is never quite here. He does not go around like other people, but more like a sleepwalker. He even soaks up the rays of light that fall upon him from the side. He does not see like other people. The position of his eyes is quite abnormal. Also, his temples have hardened, so the astral body cannot enter. There is, therefore, a clear case of weakmindedness inherited from both the father and mother, which inhibits him from comprehending what is allowable or not. He cannot grasp it,

it always slips away from him. It is like trying to grasp a piece of glass that has been covered with oil. Since intellectual judgments occur within the etheric body and are then reflected back by the astral body, he can be quite extraordinary intellectually. If a human being is to develop moral impulses, the etheric body must grasp the physical body, but that is not the case with him. He is incapable of saying this is good so I may do it, and that is not, and so forth.

In order to form a judgment, it is necessary to do more than simply to connect the subject and the predicate. An intense strength is also needed to feel or live your way into the judgment. He can certainly connect subject and predicate, but only in pictures, not in the will. That is why he is unable to develop a sense of morality.

Just think for a moment how strong the hereditary influence is in him. It is really very strong.

Why does he lie? He lies because it is not possible for him to judge something due to the weakness of his will power, and thus he cannot develop a sense for truth. It does not matter to him whether he says something is white or black, whether he says yes or no. It has nothing to do with the integrity of his insight. You need to differentiate between integrity of insight, which can be completely present, and the intensity with which judgments can be grasped and held. Weakminded people are lacking in their capacity to retain judgments. They simply cannot grasp the judgment. That has nothing to do with logic. It is a purely psychological phenomenon.

A teacher: What should we tell the class?

Dr. Steiner: You should tell the class that R. can no longer be in the class because of what he has done. You do not have to moralize about him. You could mention that in human society we must respect property, and that that is necessary in earthly life. As much as we like him, it is impossible for him to remain at the school.

S.Z. is a little weakminded.

I need to give things a new direction. At the beginning of September, I will be giving two courses in Dornach, one about pastoral medicine and the other on theology.1 I will be here later in

September to give a seminar on these questions.2

A teacher says it is difficult to develop contact with the students in the short period of time available and asks Dr. Steiner to help.

Dr. Steiner: I will do what I can, but do not forget that the problem is primarily a question of your interest in the children and young people, and is a question of enthusiasm. It is not without reason that I emphasize at every opportunity that we cannot move forward in any area without enthusiasm and without some inner flexibility. Actually, if I—I mean it is really bad. I do not see any of that enthusiasm. I do not see you making any effort to really create it. If I could actually do everything I need to do, I would, for example, look to see how many chairs I could find pitch on following a teachers’ meeting. It seems to me as though you are glued to your seats, you are tired. You cannot be tired if you are to live in the spirit. Being tired is simply a lack of interest. These are things that must be said.

You have to use some pedagogical tricks to get a psychological picture of the students, and we want to speak about those later.

The most important things, however, are enthusiasm and interest, but enthusiasm cannot be taught. I have a slight impression that for some of you, teaching has become boring. You have not the least interest. We need enthusiasm. We have no need for superiority or clever thinking. We need to use the method upon ourselves in order not to become tired. You are also tired in the classroom when you should be teaching. That cannot continue.

That is the same as if a eurythmist sat through rehearsal. This picture is terrible; it is without any style.

A teacher: What is actually an “old member”?

Dr. Steiner: Some people can be old members even though they have been in the Society only three days.

1. See Rudolf Steiner, Pastoral Medicine; and Vorträge und Kurse über christlichreligiöses Wirken, V: Apokalypse und Priesterwirken (Lectures and course on Christian religious activity, 5: The Apocalypse and the activity of priests, untranslated, GA 346).

2. This did not take place.

Wednesday, September 3, 1924, 7:00 –9:00 p.m.

Dr. Steiner: Unfortunately, I am here for only a short time, but I want to discuss some important things with you. I must be in Dornach tomorrow for certain to take care of some things concerning the construction of the Goetheanum.

A teacher asks about visitors.

Dr. Steiner: You can admit student teachers. But you must treat each case individually. You should limit the visits to a specific time and number of visitors. You should have no more than three visitors in a class, but perhaps you should not separate them. It is important to realize that each such visit is a disturbance. You should never have more than three visitors in a class. The people from the Ostheimer school should wait for a better time, perhaps the beginning of the month.

A teacher: Does each teacher have the right to allow someone he or she believes proper to visit the class, or is it only you that can decide that?

Dr. Steiner: In principle, it should be the latter. In principle, the teachers have complete freedom in how they teach, but not in things connected with the administration of the school. Therefore, you cannot allow just anyone to visit. I do not think the teachers

should decide that. Even in cases where a teacher discusses it with the administrative committee, you should also call me in Dornach.

A teacher: Can we demonstrate some gymnastics at a monthly festival?

Dr. Steiner: It would be very nice to have gymnastics then.

Wednesday, September 3, 1924

A teacher presents a report about the desire of a mother to have her son placed in a parallel class.

Dr. Steiner: We need to tell her that in general we cannot do that, that we do it only when there are truly important reasons.

A teacher: Some parents in Nuremberg have requested that pedagogical courses be held there. They wish to form a school.365

Dr. Steiner: Of course we will need to give the lectures. I think they have everything there except the money, but that is true of nearly everything.

A teacher: We should give some public pedagogical lectures in Munich.

Dr. Steiner: What is the current situation in Munich? Are they unable to turn to some association to do the organizing? Then there would be no problem. They should work with a pedagogical association. It would be detrimental if another problem arose there.

A teacher: A church newsletter made an incorrect comment about the Youth Service.

Dr. Steiner: You should correct it, but it will not hurt us. We could just as well ignore it. I would simply send an official correction.

A teacher: Who should take over the art class for the ninth grade? Dr.

Steiner: Mr. Uehli could do that.

365 . The school was actually established September, 1946.

A teacher asks about the outline of twelfth grade history, particularly about India and Egypt.366

Dr. Steiner: The Indian etheric body is appropriate for a human being, but not for a civilization. Of course, I am thinking only of the original Indian, and not the people of later India. In the original Indians, human beings lived strongly in a separation of the physical and etheric bodies. The result was that they could very clearly perceive the structure of their own physical body and everything that lived in the physical body. Because their etheric body was particularly well-developed, the physical body was open to their understanding.

Their comprehension was based upon an observation of the physical body through the etheric body.

When you consider this you can see that the original Indians perceived the secrets of the world reflected in the human physical body and, thus, recognized how wonderful the human physical body is. They realized that the entire human physical body is a reflection of memory—a wonderful memory—of the entire macrocosm. That was the basis of their whole life and worldview.

For example, they had no connection between the two halves of their life. Consequently, they experienced a complete break in the middle of life. Remember that you can look to the physical body only until the beginning or middle of your thirties. After that, the decline of the physical body becomes so strong that it no longer gives you anything. After they became older, the ancient Indians more or less wholly forgot what they had experienced before the age of thirty.

They had something like a register, of course not so primitive as people think, where they could inquire about who they were earlier, because after a certain point in their life, they no longer knew who they were. Individuals could officially determine who they were. It could happen that two friends, one thirty-two years old and the other twenty-eight, might find from one day to the next that the thirty-366 . See Rudolf Steiner’s lectures of March 1, 5, and 13, 1924 The Birth of Christianity, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1951, GA 353 and his lecture on July 12, 1924, in The Evolution of the Earth and Man, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1987, GA 354.

two-year-old no longer recognized the other. It was more likely, however, that the younger friend would recognize the older, but the older friend would not realize the situation, having first to learn about it.

Wednesday, September 3, 1924

Thus, people were born twice, and the later expression “twice born”

is based on the concrete earlier experience of actually being born twice.

The Egyptian astral body was well developed and could, under certain circumstances, observe the etheric body well. Egyptians could see the astral areas of the etheric body particularly well, that is, the Sun, Moon, and stars. That is expressed in the Book of the Dead, in the clear view of life following death. The Persians belong in the same group as the Chaldeans.

A teacher: Should the eurythmy teachers go to the drama course in Dornach?367

Dr. Steiner: I do not know why a eurythmy teacher should attend the course on speech formation. The course is really for comedians and actors, and we will present it that way. The only reason for attending is if you have a talent for drama. The teachers would have to have a reason connected with the school. We are holding the course for speech on the stage, and the second part is connected with directing, set design, and the relationships of the stage to the public and of the theater to critics. The purpose of the course is to help form a traveling group of actors, similar to the traveling troupe. Haaß-

Berkow, Gümbel-Seiling, Kugelmann, and other actors and actresses will be there. They have sent word they will attend.4 Miss Lämmert,

367 . See Rudolf Steiner, Speech and Drama, Anthroposophic Press, 1986, GA 282. 4.

Maximilian Gümbel-Seiling, 1879–1964, an actor in Munich. He played Dr. Strader in the Mystery Dramas and also spoke behind the scenes as the spirit voices. Georg Kugelmann, 1892–1959, an actor who led a wandering troupe beginning in 1922.

Schwebsch, Kolisko, Schubert, and Rutz should attend this course in September.

A teacher asks about the final examinations.

Dr. Steiner: This year we do not expect anyone to take the final examinations, so we will finish the Waldorf School pedagogy.

Next year, we will attempt to prepare the students ourselves. You heard the discussion today.368 It is clear from that how much these young people depend on the Waldorf School. The current twelfth grade seems to have no desire to take the examination this year. We will also create a very strenuous year of cramming. The children, however, really love their teachers and their school. We will not call it the thirteenth grade, but a preparatory class for the final examination.

I want to give some lectures later in September or early October about the moral aspects of education and teaching.369

368 . The second meeting with the present twelfth grade students had been that morning.

369 . Those lectures did not occur. Rudolf Steiner’s final lecture was delivered on Michaelmas, September 28, 1924, after which he was confined to bed until his death on March 30, 1925.

Bibliography

Books by Rudolf Steiner:

Agriculture: Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, BioDynamic Farming and Gardening Association, Kimberton, PA, 1993.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts: Anthroposophy as a Path of Knowledge and The Michael Mystery, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1985.

Anthroposophy (A Fragment), Catherine Creeger & Detlef Hardorp, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996.

Anthroposophy in Everyday Life, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995

(contains “The Four Temperaments”).

The Apocalypse of St. John, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1985.

Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, Rudolf Steiner Press, London,

1996.

Aspects of Human Evolution, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1987.

The Boundaries of Natural Science, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY,

1983.

The Calendar of the Soul, William & Liselotte Mann, trans., Hawthorn Press, Stroud, UK, 1990.

The Calendar of the Soul, Ruth & Hans Pusch, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1988.

Christianity as Mystical Fact, Andrew Welburn, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1986.

Colour, Rudolf Steiner Press, Sussex, 1992.

Curative Education, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1981.

Curative Eurythmy, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1983.

The East in the Light of the West & “Children of Lucifer,” a Drama by Edouard Schuré, Spiritual Science Library, Blauvelt, NY, 1986.

Economics: The World as One Economy, New Economy Publications, Bristol,

1993.

Education As an Art (with other authors, Paul Allen, ed.), Steinerbooks, Blauvelt, NY, 1988.

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1997.

Extending Practical Medicine: Fundamental Principles Based on the Science of the Spirit (Dr. Ita Wegman, co-author), Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1996 (previous trans., Fundamentals of Therapy).

Eurythmy as Visible Music, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, n.d.

Eurythmy as Visible Speech, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1984.

The Evolution of the Earth and Man and the Influence of the Stars, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1987.

The Foundation Stone / The Life, Nature, and Cultivation of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1996 (previously published as separate volumes).

The Fruits of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1986.

Health and Illness: Lectures to the Workmen, 2 vols. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1983.

How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, Christopher Bamford, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1994.

Human and Cosmic Thought, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1991.

The Human Being in Body, Soul, and Spirit, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1989.

The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1983.

An Introduction to Eurythmy, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1984.

Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom, Michael Lipson, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY,1995.

Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, 8 vols., Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1974–1997.

Light: First Scientific Lecture-Course (Light-Course), Steiner Schools Fellowship Publications, East Sussex, 1987.

Man and the World of Stars: The Spiritual Communion of Mankind, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1963.

Occult Science, An Outline, George & Mary Adams, trans., Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1989.

An Outline of Esoteric Science, Catherine Creeger, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1997.

An Outline of Occult Science; Henry Monges, trans., Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1972.

Pastoral Medicine, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1987.

The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Philosophy of Freedom, Rita Stebbing, trans., Rudolf Steiner Press, Bristol, 1988.

Polarities in the Evolution of Mankind: West and East, Materialism and Mysticism, Knowledge and Belief, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1987.

The Portal of Initiation: A Rosicrucian Mystery Drama / Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (by Johann W. von Goethe), Spiritual Science Library, Blauvelt, NY, 1981.

Prayers for Parents and Children, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1995.

The Principle of Spiritual Economy in Connection with Questions of Reincarnation, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1986.

Psychoanalysis & Spiritual Psychology, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY,

1990.

Reincarnation and Karma: Two Fundamental Truths of Human Existence, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1992.

Rudolf Steiner: An Autobiography, Steinerbooks, Blauvelt, NY. 1977.

The Social Future, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1972.

Social Issues: Meditative Thinking and the Threefold Social Order, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1991.

Speech and Drama, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1959.

The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1992.

Spiritual Science and Medicine, Steinerbooks, Blauvelt, NY, 1989.

Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1994.

Theosophy of the Rosicrucian, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1981.

Therapeutic Insights: Earthly and Cosmic Laws, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1984.

Toward Imagination: Culture and the Individual, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1990.

Truth-Wrought-Words: with Other Verses and Prose Passages, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1979.

The Twelve Moods, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1984.

The Universal Human: The Evolution of Individuality, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1990.

Universe, Earth and Man, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1987.

Verses and Meditations, Rudolf Steiner Press, Bristol, 1993.

Warmth Course, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1988.

Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983.

The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit, Rudolf Steiner Research Foundation,1990.

The Younger Generation, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1984.

Other Authors:

Anschütz, Marieke, Children and Their Temperaments, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1995.

Barnes, Christy MacKaye, ed., For the Love of Literature: A Celebration of Language and Imagination, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996.

Barnes, Henry, A Life for the Spirit: Rudolf Steiner in the Crosscurrents of Our Time, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1997.

Britz-Crecelius, Heidi, Children at Play: Using Waldorf Principles to Foster Childhood Development, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 1996.

Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, Freedeeds Library, Blauvelt, NY, 1972.

Carnie, Fiona; Martin Large; Mary Tasker, eds., Freeing Education: Steps towards Real Choice and Diversity in Schools, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, UK, 1996.

Childs, Gilbert, Education and Beyond: Steiner and the Problems of Modern Society, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1996.

—— Steiner Education in Theory and Practice, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1991.

—— Understand Your Temperament! A Guide to the Four Temperaments, Sophia Books, London, 1995.

Childs, Gilbert & Sylvia Childs, Your Reincarnating Child, Sophia Books, London, 1995.

Edmunds, Francis, Renewing Education: Selected Writings on Steiner Education, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, UK, 1992.

—— Rudolf Steiner Education: The Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1992.

Fenner, Pamela Johnson and Karen L. Rivers, Waldorf Student Reading List, 3rd ed., Michaelmas Press, Amesbury, Mass, 1995.

Finser, Torin, School as a Journey: The Eight-Year Odyssey of a Waldorf Teacher and His Class, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1994.

Gabert, Erich, Educating the Adolescent: Discipline or Freedom, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1988.

Gardner, John, Education in Search of the Spirit: Essays on American Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996.

—— Youth Longs to Know: Explorations of the Spirit in Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1997.

Gatto, John Taylor, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, New Society, Philadelphia, 1992.

Heydebrand, Caroline von, Childhood: A Study of the Growing Child, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995.

Jaffke, Freya, Work and Play in Early Childhood, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996.

Kirchner-Bockholt, Margarete, M.D., Fundamental Principles of Curative Eurythmy, Temple Lodge, London, 1992.

Large, Martin, Who’s Bringing Them up? How to Break the T.V. Habit!

Hawthorn Press, Stroud, UK, 1990.

Logan, Arnold, ed., A Garden of Songs for Singing and Piping at Home and School, Windrose Publishing and Educational Services, Chatham, NY, 1996.

McDermott, Robert A., ed., The Essential Steiner: Basic Writings of Rudolf Steiner, Harper Collins, New York, 1984.

Maher, Stanford & Ralph Shepherd, eds., Standing on the Brink—An Education for the 21st Century: Essays on Waldorf Education, Novalis Press, Cape Town, 1995.

Pusch, Ruth, ed., Waldorf Schools Volume I: Kindergarten and Early Grades, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1993.

—— Waldorf Schools Volume II: Upper Grades and High School, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1993.

Richards, M. C., Opening Our Moral Eye: Essays, Talks, & Poems Embracing Creativity & Community, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996.

Spock, Marjorie, Teaching as a Lively Art, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1985.

Wachsmuth, Guenther, The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner: From the Turn of the Century to His Death, Spiritual Science Library, Blauvelt, NY,

1989.

Wilkinson, Roy, The Spiritual Basis of Steiner Education: The Waldorf School Approach, Sophia Books, London, 1996.

T H E F O U N D AT I O N S

O F W A L D O R F E D U C AT I O N

THE FIRST FREE WALDORF SCHOOL opened its doors in Stuttgart, Germany, in September, 1919, under the auspices of Emil Molt, the Director of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company and a student of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science and particularly of Steiner’s call for social renewal.

It was only the previous year—amid the social chaos following the end of World War I—that Emil Molt, responding to Steiner’s prognosis that truly human change would not be possible unless a sufficient number of people received an education that developed the whole human being, decided to create a school for his workers’ children. Conversations with the minister of education and with Rudolf Steiner, in early 1919, then led rapidly to the forming of the first school.

Since that time, more than six hundred schools have opened around the globe—from Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Great Britain, Norway, Finland, and Sweden to Russia, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Israel, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Japan, and others—making the Waldorf school movement the largest independent school movement in the world. The United States, Canada, and Mexico alone now have more than 120 schools.

Although each Waldorf school is independent, and although there is a healthy oral tradition going back to the first Waldorf teachers and to Steiner himself, as well as a growing body of secondary literature, the true foundations of the Waldorf method and spirit remain the many lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave on the subject. For five years (1919–24), Rudolf Steiner, while simultaneously working on many other fronts, tirelessly dedicated himself to the dissemination of the idea of Waldorf education.

He gave manifold lectures to teachers, parents, the general public, and even the children themselves. New schools were founded. The movement grew.

While many of Steiner’s foundational lectures have been translated and published in the past, some have never appeared in English, and many have been virtually unobtainable for years. To remedy this situation and to establish a coherent basis for Waldorf education, Anthroposophic

Press has decided to publish the complete series of Steiner lectures and writings on education in a uniform series. This series will thus constitute an authoritative foundation for work in educational renewal, for Waldorf teachers, parents, and educators generally.

R U D O L F S T E I N E R ’ S L E C T U R E S

( A N D W R I T I N G S ) O N E D U C A T I O N

I.

Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik. Pädagogischer Grundkurs, 14 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1919 (GA 293). Previously Study of Man. The Foundations of Human Experience (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

II.

Erziehungskunst Methodische-Didaktisches, 14 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1919

(GA 294). Practical Advice to Teachers (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988).

III.

Erziehungskunst, 15 Discussions, Stuttgart, 1919 (GA 295).

Discussions with Teachers (Anthroposophic Press, 1997).

IV.

Die Erziehungsfrage als soziale Frage, 6 Lectures, Dornach, 1919 (GA 296). Education as a Force for Social Change (previously Education as a Social Problem) (Anthroposophic Press, 1997).

V.

Die Waldorf Schule und ihr Geist, 6 Lectures, Stuttgart and Basel, 1919

(GA 297). The Spirit of the Waldorf School (Anthroposophic Press, 1995).

VI.

Rudolf Steiner in der Waldorfschule, Vorträge und Ansprachen, Stuttgart, 1919–1924 (GA 298). Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Lectures and Conversations (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

VII. Geisteswissenschaftliche Sprachbetrachtungen, 6 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1919

(GA 299). The Genius of Language (Anthroposophic Press, 1995).

VIII. Konferenzen mit den Lehren der Freien Waldorfschule 1919–1924, 3

Volumes (GA 300a–c). Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner, 2

Volumes (Anthroposophic Press, 1998).

IX.

Die Erneuerung der Pädagogisch-didaktischen Kunst durch Geisteswissenschaft, 14 Lectures, Basel, 1920 (GA 301). The Renewal of Education (Kolisko Archive Publications for Steiner Schools Fellowship Publications, Michael Hall, Forest Row, East Sussex, UK, 1981).

X.

Menschenerkenntnis und Unterrichtsgestaltung, 8 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1921

(GA 302). Previously The Supplementary Course—Upper School and Waldorf Education for Adolescence. Education for Adolescents (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

XI.

Erziehung und Unterricht aus Menschenerkenntnis, 9 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1920, 1922, 1923 (GA 302a). The first four lectures available as Balance in Teaching (Mercury Press, 1982); last three lectures as Deeper Insights into Education (Anthroposophic Press, 1988).

XII. Die Gesunder Entwicklung des Menschenwesens, 16 Lectures, Dornach, 1921–22 (GA 303). Soul Economy and Waldorf Education (Anthroposophic Press, 1986).

XIII. Erziehungs-und Unterrichtsmethoden auf Anthroposophischer Grundlage, 9

Public Lectures, various cities, 1921–22 (GA 304). Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 1 (Anthroposophic Press, 1995).

XIV. Anthroposophische Menschenkunde und Pädagogik, 9 Public Lectures, various cities, 1923–24 (GA 304a). Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 2 (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

XV. Die geistig-seelischen Grundkräfte der Erziehungskunst, 12 Lectures, 1

Special Lecture, Oxford 1922 (GA 305). The Spiritual Ground of Education (Garber Publications, 1989).

XVI. Die pädagogisch Praxis vom Gesichtspunkte geisteswissenschaftlicher Menschenerkenntnis, 8 Lectures, Dornach, 1923 (GA 306). The Child’s Changing Consciousness As the Basis of Pedagogical Practice (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

XVII. Gegenwärtiges Geistesleben und Erziehung, 4 Lectures, Ilkeley, 1923 (GA 307). A Modern Art of Education (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981) and Education and Modern Spiritual Life (Garber Publications, 1989).

XVIII. Die Methodik des Lehrens und die Lebensbedingungen des Erziehens, 5

Lectures, Stuttgart, 1924 (GA 308). The Essentials of Education (Anthroposophic Press, 1997).

XIX. Anthroposophische Pädagogik und ihre Voraussetzungen, 5 Lectures, Bern, 1924 (GA 309). The Roots of Education (Anthroposophic Press, 1997).

XX. Der pädagogische Wert der Menschenerkenntnis und der Kulturwert derPädagogik, 10 Public Lectures, Arnheim, 1924 (GA 310). Human Values in Education (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1971).

XXI. Die Kunst des Erziehens aus dem Erfassen der Menschenwesenheit, 7 Lectures, Torquay, 1924 (GA 311). The Kingdom of Childhood (Anthroposophic Press, 1995).

XXII. Geisteswissenschaftliche

Impulse

zur

Entwicklung

der

Physik.

Ersternaturwissenschaftliche Kurs: Licht, Farbe, Ton—Masse, Elektrizität, Magnetismus, 10 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1919–20 (GA 320). The Light Course (Steiner Schools Fellowship,1977).

XXIII. Geisteswissenschaftliche

Impulse

zur

Entwicklung

der

Physik.

Zweiternaturwissenschaftliche Kurs: die Wärme auf der Grenze positiver und negativer Materialität, 14 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1920 (GA 321). The Warmth Course (Mercury Press, 1988).

XXIV. Das Verhältnis der verschiedenen naturwissenschaftlichen Gebiete zurAstronomie. Dritter naturwissenschaftliche Kurs: Himmelskunde in Beziehung zum Menschen und zur Menschenkunde, 18 Lectures, Stuttgart, 1921 (GA 323). Available in typescript only as “The Relation of the Diverse Branches of Natural Science to Astronomy.”

XXV. The Education of the Child and Early Lectures on Education (A collection) (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

XXVI. Miscellaneous.

Inde

x

A

444–45, 555, 559, 587, 588,

abstract thinking, mathematical,

610

179

Anthroposophical Society, 23,

administration. See school

85, 497, 544, 588, 590, 591,

administration

684, 697, 698, 700–702,

aesthetics, 270–71, 286, 357,

706, 707, 710 “old” vs.

358, 468 aesthetics

“independent,” 587 self—

class, 743–44 Aesthetics

destructiveness in, 583

(Hegel), 739 afterschool

anthroposophical youth

care, 56 aging process,

move—

726–27 Akasha Chronicle,

ment, 610

24 ambition of students,

Anthroposophie, 647

58 angels, 46 animal

Anthroposophy, 23, 106, 119,

geography, 661 animals. See

270, 321, 380, 381, 444,

also ethnology; nature

495, 587, 591, 700, 727

stages of life and, 683

opposition to, 184–85, 319,

anthropology, 181, 270

374, 380, 396, 497

anthroposophic children,

overcoming weakness through,

number of, 168

631

anthroposophic plays, 190

religion and, 45–46 teaching

anthroposophical institutions,

of, 403 Anthroposophy, 525

698

apathy in students, 208, 209

anthroposophical instruction.

Apocrypha, 615–16

See also religious instruction,

archangels, 46 archeology, 26–

independent

27. See also his—

religious, 41, 42, 655

tory, natural

anthroposophical lectures,

architecture, 740 arithmetic.

students at, 582–83

See mathematics art, 343, 475.

anthroposophical movement,

See also drawing;

305–6, 325, 380–82, 416,

painting

light and dark in, 487 art

gymnastics Bolshevism, 699,

class, 298–99, 411, 438,

700 bookbinding, 93–94, 342

670, 739, 743–44 art

books. See literature; textbooks

instruction, 357, 358 artistic

botany, 616, 658, 678, 719. See

crafts, 201–2, 234, 270–

also plants Brehm, 49

73, 299–300, 310–11. See

brooding, hidden by superficial-

also specific crafts

ity, 542 Bücher, Karl,

artistic subjects, 71 artwork,

107 bureaucracy, 522, 528

501–3 asthma, treatment of,

bureaucratic thinking, 523

249 astral body, 53

business relationships, 278

Egyptian, 790 excessive

directing of, 536 astrology,

C

362, 617, 659, 661

calcium, 564–67 calculus,

temperament and, 91

604, 744–45 Catholic

astronomy, 30–32, 52–53, 180,

children, 367–68

370

Catholic church, 306

spiral movements of plants

Catholic mass, children

and, 34–35

attending, 368

atomism, 358–59 attendance,

Catholicism, 699, 758, 759. See

compulsory, 474 authority, 293

also Christianity; Pope

students’ feeling of, 14 of

character, 681 chemistry,

teachers, 14–15, 408–9, 494

268–69, 358–60,

608, 609, 657, 747–49

B

cosmic rhythm and, 748 child

Baravalle, Hermann von, 288–

care. See afterschool

89 behavior problems, 106,

care

720– 23. See also expulsion;

choir, 16, 233, 272 chorus,

specific behavior problems

126, 209, 233, 254

Bible instruction, 47–48, 275,

Christian community, 711,

276, 312–13, 365, 757–58

770–73

biographies, 492 biology. See

Christianity, 749. See also

zoology body, physical, 53,

Catholicism evolution of,

115 body movement. See

47 Christology, 44, 47

eurythmy;

cigarettes. See smoking

clairvoyance, 54 class

scheduling, 1–4, 405, 462

D

classroom management,

dance. See eurythmy day care.

importance of maintaining

See afterschool care deaf

teacher-student contact, 20–

students, 682–83 death, 119

21

teaching about, 42 decorations

classrooms, 88–89. See also

in classroom, 503 delinquent

school buildings

students, 106, 383. See also

ratio of boys to girls, 89

behavior problems; expulsion;

seating in, 740 cold,

kleptomania; theft

common

destiny, 44–46, 50 “Die Drei,”

remedies for, 593 college,

317 diet, 86–87, 457–58, 500,

147 color, 200, 289, 298, 310,

533– 36, 543, 562–67. See also

411

health, holistic;

development of sense of, 201–

vegetarianism

2 Coming Day, The, 214–16

disciplinary problems. See

communism. See Bolshevism

behavior problems

concentration difficulties, 543

discipline, 22, 354, 396–97, 455,

Constitutions, cross-cultural

546–47. See also expulsion;

study of, 22

homework; interrogation of

continuation school, 623–24

students

continuing education schools,

lack of, 238 punishment,

94 cooking, 579–80

22–23 physical, 22, 323,

Copernicus, Nicolaus, 35–36,

547 strict, 237 teacher—

41

student contact vs.

crafts, 183, 361. See also artistic external, 20–21

crafts

disease. See illness

criticism, given as joke, 58

divine, the, 46 doctors.

curriculum, 193, 259–61, 277,

See physicians drafting,

307, 352–54, 600–601.

272 drama, 757, 769,

See also specific subjects final 790 drawing, 200, 715

examinations and, 688–

freehand, 656

89

dumbness. See mute

modification for individual

students

students, 203, 255, 291

E

ear, 469–70 Earth. See

department, 155 eurythmy

also astronomy inner

exercise, 442, 456–

organization, 178 study

57, 606, 759 eurythmy

of, 28–33 as a whole,

figures, 681 eurythmy room,

266 economics, 23, 24

82, 513 eurythmy shoes, 202

edelweiss, 606 egotism,

examinations, 549 anxiety

119

about, 549, 582 eighth grade

Einstein, Albert. See relativity

competency, 332 final, 344,

Elementary School Law, 525,

450–51, 527–28,

526

598, 605, 613, 688–89, 708,

emotionally disturbed students,

712, 713, 724–25, 735–36,

380

791

enunciation, 718–19. See also

exercise. See eurythmy;

speech

gymnastics

esoteric studies and practices,

experience, inner, 202

305–6, 732 essay writing,

expulsion, 388–90, 392, 394–

340 eternity, 119 etheric

96, 399, 407, 445–46

body, 53 lefthandedness

eyesight. See vision

and, 635 etheric forms, 658,

660 etheric substance, in

F

primitive times, 50–51

failing, 97, 317–18. See also

ethnology, 26–27. See also zool—

students, holding back a

ogy

grade

etiquette, 476–77 eurythmists,

fairy tales, 95–96, 100, 194,

254–55 eurythmy, 15–17, 57,

220, 231–32, 341 fate.

58, 61, 65, 67, 72, 92, 100,

See destiny

102,

Faust (Goethe), 336, 339, 481

108, 125–27, 131, 211, 220,

feedback. See criticism; student

243, 361, 425, 465, 489,

reports

570–73, 599–600 curative,

feeling, things that can be

233, 251, 442, 456–

learned only through, 45

57, 625, 632 orthopedic,

final exams. See examinations,

427–28 sex differences and,

final

575 tone, 197, 301, 763

flirtation between students,

voice, 762 eurythmy

294

foreign language instruction, 3–

separating boys and girls, 94,

5, 15, 21, 58, 64, 67, 74, 79,

629

123–25, 157, 291, 297, 371,

geodesy, 752 geography,

421–22, 424, 434, 449–50,

245–46, 266 animal, 661

463, 552, 555, 625, 753–56,

geology, 24–25, 50, 177–78,

767. See also German class;

266, 657–58. See also Earth

German language

geometry, 184, 193, 200, 228–

French as mandatory, 552,

29, 267, 287–88, 332, 358, 569,

554, 556 grammar, 764

628, 745–47, 759. See also

Greek and Latin, 320, 334,

mathematics

365, 370, 403–4, 421–25,

drawing and, 229 German

450–53, 620

class, 187–90

reading literature in, 273–74

German language, 74–75, 176

use of dialog, 362 writing in,

as language of deception, 556

15 foreign languages, 283

German spirit vs. German

literary history of, 196

empire, 530

forms, 200 France,

gifted students, 12 Goethe,

Waldorf schools in,

336–38, 341, 481–84,

117

601, 670, 689 grading. See

Free School of Spiritual

student evaluation;

Science,

student reports

698, 699, 701, 703–6, 708,

graduation reports, 334

709

grammar, 81–82, 176, 315,

French diplomacy, 556

365, 468, 548–50, 640,

French language and culture,

645–49, 754–56, 764

556–59, 767

foreign language, 371

attitude the soul in, 553

Latin, 507 illness and,

Fröbel, Friedrich, 114

540

G

Greek language, interest in,

Galileo, 33 games, 571, 579

450–51

gardening, 65, 632–33, 678,

gymnastics, 2, 92, 126–28, 313,

719

425, 462–63, 489–91, 570–

gender

77, 626, 630

ratio of boys to girls in

purpose, 491 sex

classroom, 89

differences and, 575

H

humor, 20, 58, 262, 364, 539,

handicapped students, 324–25

631, 632, 755, 768–69

handwork, 201, 325, 364, 425,

as soul’s exhaling, 364

429

hygiene, 539–40. See also

handwriting styles, vertical vs.

health, holistic

slanting, 438–39

hyperactivity. See restlessness

health, 260, 310, 457–58. See

hypnosis, 377–78

also diet

holistic, 532–43, 564–65,

I

667–68

I-being, 649 idealism vs.

temperament and, 542

materialism, 114 illness. See also

hearing problems, 11 Hegel,

health symptoms of, 537–38

Georg W. F., 739 history, 21,

temperament and, 542

50–51, 59, 63, 66,

imagination, synthetic and

177, 227–28, 266, 357,

constructive, 535–36

603–4, 670–71 inner

incarnations, 18, 45, 694, 722

workings, 738–39

independent work of students,

knowledge of, 6 literary,

349

365, 600, 601, 644–

Independent Youth Group,

45, 741–43 method of

308

presenting, 480 natural, 21,

individuality of students,

25–26, 49–50,

tending to, 247

177–78, 360, 439, 747

inspection, school, 314, 317

history textbooks, 627

intellect, 652–54

holidays, 56, 70, 183, 373, 374,

intellectual weakness,

615

227

homework

intellectualism, 504, 505

presented as voluntary, 62

interrogation of students, 396–

punishment for not doing, 58

98

humanistic examination, 450,

Italian language, 559

451

J

humanities, 59, 406. See also

Jesus Christ, 48, 253, 276

specific subjects

Jungens, 332

humanities examination,

451

K

karma, 45, 625 teaching

286–87, 311–12, 336–41,

about, 18 in Waldorf

353, 440, 476–77, 481–87,

schools, 45 kindergarten,

492–93, 550–51, 559–61,

240, 344 kleptomania, 69,

601–2, 605, 614–15, 661,

341, 783 kraft, 557

691–92. See also fairy tales;

history, literary

L

ancient Greek, 337, 340

language instruction, 3–5, 64,

Lorentz’s experiments, 33–

125, 413, 420, 432–33,

34 lyric, 766–68

439–40, 447–48, 462, 548,

764. See also foreign

M

language

instruction;

malnutrition, 564–66

poetics

manners, 476

recitation in, 182 seating of

marching, 579

children, 740 dividing

materialism, 114–17

students into groups,

vs. idealism, 114 mathematics,

448–49, 451, 452 stages

81, 178–79, 266–

of, 468–69 language teachers,

68, 285–87, 335, 420, 439,

344 Laocoön, bodies of the,

469, 569, 597, 604, 669–70,

184 lazy students, 207–8 lead,

744–46, 751. See also

534 learning difficulties, 11–12.

geometry

See

mathematics teachers, 436

also intellectual weakness;

measures, material vs. abstract

remedial classes

intellectual, 536

learning goals, 369

melancholy, 53 memory,

lefthandedness, 100, 345–46,

strengthening, 69 metabolism,

634–35

748. See also diet;

breaking tendency toward,

health

634

metaphors, 766 misbehavior.

lethargic students, 207, 243 life,

See delinquent stu—

teaching idea of, 42

dents mood

life before and after death

swings, 625

teaching about, 184 light and

moods, artificially

dark, 487 listening, 172, 173

created, 219

literature, 239, 273–74, 284,

Moon. See

astrology;

Nietzsche, F., 530, 691

astronomy moral

Noll, Ludwig, 11

attitudes and

notebooks, 628, 663

development,

nutrition. See diet; health,

632, 722

holistic

etheric body and, 784 mother—

child relationship

O

astral and etheric bodies and,

optics, 736–38

722

spiritual life and, 737

motifs, 200 motivation.

See lethargic students

P

Movement for Religious

painting, 200–201, 298, 331,

Renewal, 499

351, 487, 618, 715–16 as

Movement for Threefolding,

creating from the soul, 716

525–26

paintings, 206, 501–3 in

music, 15–16, 125, 126, 181,

music rooms, 513–14 parent

202, 206, 354, 424, 551. See

conferences, 54

also eurythmy

parents, teachers’ working with,

connection to acoustics, 219–

13

20

Parzival, 476–77, 481–83, 486,

instrumental, 271 music

495, 551, 645 past lives, 46

rooms, decorations in,

Paul, Jean, 264 philosophers,

513–14

470 philosophy, 36, 288, 470,

musical instrument playing, 92,

623 modern, 36–37 physical

182,

345–46

body, 53, 115. See also

mute students, 682

eurythmy; gymnastics

mythology, 600

physical education. See

eurythmy; gymnastics

N

physical examinations, 11

Napoleon choleric

physicians, school, 11 physics,

temperament, 91 etheric

21, 28–29, 32–34, 66,

body, 91 nature painting

179–80, 268, 288, 334, 353,

the moods of, 618

358, 608. See also astronomy

teaching about, 43 negative

as bridge between music and

thoughts, 580

acoustics, 220 physics

curriculum, 736–38 physics

R

instruction, 4 experiments,

race, 559

195

reading. See also literature

pictures, state of the soul and,

humor in, 755 reading aloud to

501–2

children, 62 reading lessons, 62

pictures in classroom,

recesses, 9 reform. See school

decorative, 500–503

reform reincarnation, 45. See

plants, 34–35, 658. See also

also incar—

botany

nations

play, 579 poetics, 765–69

teaching about, 18

poetry, 67, 69, 151, 264–65,

relativity, 33–34, 751

351, 353, 355, 361, 363. See also

relativity theory, arose out of

Goethe; lyric Pope, the, 306

unreal thinking, 33

praise, 58 pranksters, 106. See

religion(s), 41. See also

also behav—

Catholicism; Christianity

ior problems; delinquent

opposition to preexistence in,

students

119

prayer, 19–20, 38–40

the twelve, 483 religious

preschool, 95 progress

instruction, 16, 19, 43,

reports, 408. See also

49, 84–86, 212, 276, 335,

student reports

343, 365, 367, 370, 414,

pronunciation. See also

426–27, 430, 431, 462, 615,

enunciation

717, 749. See also Bible

of consonants, 80–81

instruction; prayer

temperament and, 80–81

books for, 7–8 independent,

Protestantism, 46 Psalms,

4, 6, 17–18, 60,

275, 276 psychosis, 68

64, 83–86, 157, 184, 197,

puberty, 331, 348

252, 275, 354, 426, 584

punctuation, 629, 645, 647–

teacher-student relationship in,

48

465–66

punishment, 69. See also

method of presentation in, 480

discipline

stages of, 43–44 religious

teachers, authority of,

Q

494

questions, asking, 494

religious worldviews, 45–46

school organization, 348

Rembrandt, 487, 503 remedial

school reform, 668, 697, 725

classes, 97–98, 123,

school time, amount of, 405

249, 252, 291, 301, 365,

Schopenhauer’s philosophy,

369, 762 report cards. See

anthroposophy and, 36 Schuré,

student reports restlessness,

Edouard, 559–60 science

209–10 Rhineland, 529–30

curriculum, 352, 354.

rhythm, 90–91, 285, 579, 748.

See also specific sciences

See also eurythmy; Work and

sculpture, 487 self, higher

Rhythm

overcoming idiosyncrasies

in music, 680 rhythmic

through, 632

system, 532–33, 538– 39

selflessness, 119 sex. See

gender sexuality. See flirtation

S

between students

salt, 533–34 Schiller, 337–41,

Shakespeare, 195–96, 336–39,

468–69, 551,

362, 768–69 shop class,

601

150, 152, 153, 182,

school administration, 507–8,

198–99, 270, 299 shyness,

543–44. See also teaching

208 singing, 16, 126, 181, 229–

faculty; Waldorf School

30, 424, 579. See also choir;

Association; Waldorf—

chorus; voice instruction

Astoria Company

group soul and, 209 solo,

committees, 514, 515–24

233 singing class, 233

agenda, 515 school buildings,

smoking, 296 social forms,

129–34, 218 financing, 218.

632 social science

See also Waldorf School

instruction, 23.

Association

See also specific social sciences school finances, 6–7, 163–65,

social understanding,

170, 218, 612. See also school

instruction in, 68, 84

administration; Waldorf

Socratic method, 195, 437,

School Association;

469, 507, 782 soul(s)

WaldorfAstoria Company

cannot be ruined, 610

School of Spiritual Science. See

inbreeding of, 375

Free School of Spiritual

state of the, 501–2

Science

teaching about, 41–42

things spiritually

stories. See fairy tales; literature difficult for the, 58

student absences, 9, 369

Soviet Union. See

unexcused, 65

Bolshevism spanking.

student associations, 379

See under discipline

student evaluation, guidelines

speech, 176. See also

for, 12–13. See also student

enuncia—

reports

tion; voice instruction

student participation, 253

figures of, 766 proper,

student promotion, 252 student

helps heal common cold,

report meetings, 120 student

593

reports (evaluations), 60, 96–98,

speaking in chorus vs. individ—

408, 622–23. See also graduation

ual speech, 123–24

reports; progress reports

spelling, 409–10 spirit

midyear, 97 from religion

knowledge about, 42–43

teachers, 96 writing of, 731–

perspective of, 114 in

32 yearly, 78, 213, 760–61

teaching, 443–44 spiritsoul,

students. See also specific topics 115 spiritual and intellectual

holding back a grade, 10–14,

development, 778–79

369

spiritual science. See also Free

individual meetings with, 126

School of Spiritual Science

putting ahead a grade, 13

popularization of, 54–55

responsibility for their work,

spiritual virgins, need for, 590

335–36

spiritual world, 119 spirituality,

style, development of sense of,

114–15, 318 sports, 571, 578,

201–2 sugar,

579. See also

535 summer camp,

gymnastics

728

stealing. See theft Steiner,

Sun, 39. See also astronomy

Marie, 559, 583, 598

superficiality, brooding hidden

stenography, 300, 426, 475–76,

by, 542

758

surveying, 272

Stockmeyer, 5

suspension, 396

Stolze-Schrey method, 476

T

tardiness, 109–10, 732

spiritual responsibility, 55

of teachers, 110 teachers.

teaching methods, 506. See also

See also teaching

Socratic method

faculty

technology class, 740

attentiveness to students, 11

technology instruction, 361

authority, 14–15, 408–9

temperament, 53, 80, 90–91,

important qualities of, 118

345–46, 533, 687

intentional maligning of, 393–

assessment of, 72 choleric,

94

90 phlegmatic, 80–81

jealousy about, 88 need to

pronunciation of consonants

be anthroposophists,

and, 80–81 Ten

118

Commandments, 48

punctuality vs. tardiness, 110,

tests. See examinations

354

textbooks, 284, 569, 614, 627

religious, 354 salaries, 134

theft, 68–69, 291, 292, 762.

selection and hiring of, 149,

See also kleptomania

155, 594, 771 special

teacher response to, 68–69

language, 344 subject, 94, 436

Theosophy (Steiner), 45, 54 time

subject expertise of, 23, 436

spirit, 47 tones, 201–2 toxins,

working from

dietary, 534 trades class, 207.

anthroposophical spirit, 119

See also voca—

teacher-student relationship,

tional instruction

349, 785 teaching general

tree forms, 52 trinity

principles and guidelines, 67,

(Christian), 48 tuberculosis, 633

293

tuition costs. See school

need to bring life into, 539,

finances tutoring, 10–11

541

training and preparation for,

U

504–5

Union for Threefolding, 217–

teaching faculty, 173, 507–9

19

friendly interaction among,

545

V

lack of contact with older

vegetarianism, 500, 562–63

students, 397

vinegar, 542–43 vision, 11.

See also optics vocational

instruction, 150. See also

Z

trades class; specific skills and

zoology, 49–50, 360, 616, 659–

subjects

60, 662. See also ethnology

vocational schools, 241

voice instruction, 462

W

Waldorf children, number of,

168

Waldorf School Association,

137, 139–44, 157, 164, 165,

168, 169, 525, 529 Waldorf

schools, 45, 101–2

brochure with pictures of,

684

WaldorfAstoria Company, 139,

141–44, 161, 165–68

weaving, 361 will, 46, 574–75

Work and Rhythm (Bücher), 107

working class students, 224–25

World School Association, 137,

138, 145, 157, 159, 187,

190, 191 Swiss members,

138 worldviews, religious,

45–46 writing, 75, 99. See also

grammar; stenography

business, 278–79 essay, 81–

82 with left hand, 100

physical dexterity and, 99–100

writing difficulties, 221, 683

writing style, 646–49

Y Youth Festival,

84