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object:1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher.
author class:Rudolf Steiner
book class:The Essentials of Education
subject class:Education
class:chapter

Lecture Two
STUTTGART, APRIL 9, 1924
Yesterday I spoke of the teachers encounter with the children. Today I will try to describe the child as a growing being, and the childs experience of encountering the teacher. A more exact observation of the forces active in human development shows that at the beginning of a childs earthly life we need to distinguish three distinct stages of life. Only after our applied knowledge of human nature yields insight into the characteristic qualities of each of these three stages can we begin to educate in a way that is more appropriateor rather, an education that is more humane.

The Nature of Proof in Spiritual Matters
The first stage of life ends with the change of teeth. Now I know that theres a certain amount of awareness these days concerning the changes that occur in the body and soul of children at this stage of life. Nevertheless, its not sufficient to bring to light all that happens within the human constitution at this tender age; we must come to understand this in order to become educators. The appearance of teethnot the inherited, baby teethis merely the most obvious sign of a complete transformation of the whole human being. Much more is happening within the organism, though not as perceptible outwardly; its most radical expression is the appearance of the second teeth.

If we consider this we can see that contemporary physiology and psychology simply cannot penetrate the human being with any real depth, since their particular methods (excellent though they may be) were developed to observe only outer physical nature and the soul as it manifests in the body. As I said yesterday, the task of anthroposophical spiritual science is to penetrate in every way the whole human development of body, soul, and spirit.

First, however, we have to eliminate a certain prejudice. This preconception is inevitably a stumbling block to anyone who approaches the Waldorf education movement without a basic study of anthroposophy. I dont mean for a moment that we simply ignore objections to this kind of education. On the contrary, those who have a spiritual foundation such as anthroposophy cannot be the least bit fanatical; they will always fully consider any objections to their viewpoints. Consequently, they fully understand the frequent objection to pedagogical ideas founded upon anthroposophy: you need to prove thats true.

Now, people have a lot to say about proofs with no clear idea of what that means. I cant present a detailed lecture on the methods of proof in the various spheres of life and knowledge; but Id like to clarify the matter by way of the following analogy.

What do people mean when they say that something requires proof ? The whole trend of human evolution since the fourteenth century has been to validate judgments through visual observation, that is to say, through sense perception. It was a very different matter before the current era, or before the fourteenth century. But we fail to realize today that our ancestors had a very different view of the world. In a certain sense we are arrogant when we consider the development that has occurred in recent centuries. We look condescendingly at what people did during the Middle Ages, for example, considering them childish and primitive. But its an age about which we really know nothing and call the Dark Ages. Try to imagine how our successors will speak of usif theyre as arrogant in their thinking as we are! If they turn out to be as conceited, well seem just as childish to them as medieval people appear to us.

During the ages before the fourteenth century, humans perceived the world of the senses, and also comprehended with the intellect. The intelligence of the medieval monastic schools is too often underestimated. The inner intelligence and conceptual faculty was much more highly developed than the modern and chaotic conceptual faculty, which is really driven by, and limited to, natural phenomena; anyone whos objective and impartial can observe this. In those days, anything that the intellect and senses perceived in the universe required validation from the divine, spiritual realm. The fact that sense revelation had to be sanctioned by divine revelation wasnt merely an abstract principle; it was a common, very human feeling and observation. A manifestation in the world of the senses could be considered valid only when knowledge of it could be proven and demonstrated in terms of the divine, spiritual world.

This situation changed, gradually at first, one mode of knowledge replacing the other. Today, however, it has come to the point where we acknowledge the validity of somethingeven in the spiritual worldonly when it can be proven through the senses. Something is validated when statements about spiritual life can be confirmed by experiment and observation. What is it that someones looking for when they ask for a demonstration of matters that are really related to spirit? People ask you to make an experiment or sense observation that provides proof. Why do they ask for this?

This is what people want because they have lost faith in the reality of our inner activity as human beings; theyve lost faith in the possibility that intuitions can emerge from human beings themselves when looking at ordinary life, at sensory appearances and the intellect. Humanity has really weakened inwardly, and its no longer conscious of the firm foundation of an inner, creative life. The things I just described have had a deep influence on all areas of practical life, and most of all on education.

Proofs, such as external sensory appearances, through observa- tion and experiment, might be compared to a man who notices that an unsupported object falls, and that its attracted by the Earths gravity and therefore must be supported until it rests on solid ground. And then this man says, Go ahead, tell me that the Earth and the other heavenly bodies hover freely in space, but I cant understand it. Everything has to be supported or it will fall. Nevertheless, the Earth, Sun, and other heavenly bodies dont fall. We need to change our way of thinking completely when we move from earthly conditions into the cosmos. In cosmic space, heavenly bodies support one another; the laws of Earth dont ap- ply there.

This is also true of spiritual facts. When we speak of the material nature of plants, animals, minerals, or the human physical body, we need to prove our statements through experiment and sense observation. This kind of proof, like the example mentioned, suggests that an object must be supported. In the free realm of the spirit, however, truths support one another. The only validation required is their mutual support. Thus, in representing spiritual reality, every idea needs to be placed clearly within the whole, just as Earth or any other heavenly body moves freely in cosmic space. Truths must support one another. Anyone who tries to understand the spiritual realm must first examine truths coming from other directions, and how they support the one truth through the free activity of their gravitational force of proof, as it were. In this way, that single truth is kept free in the cosmos, just as a heavenly body is supported freely in the cosmos by the countering forces of gravity. We need to develop the capacity to think the spiritual as a fundamental, inner disposition; otherwise, though we may be able to understand and educate the human soul, well remain unable to grasp, cultivate, and educate the spirit that also lives and moves within us as human beings.


The Individuals Entry into the World
When human beings enter the physical world of sensation, their physical body is provided by the parents and ancestors. The scientific20 community has achieved a certain understanding of thisalthough such discoveries will become complete only in the remote future. Spiritual science teaches that this is only one aspect of our human nature; the other part unites with what arises from the father and mother; it descends as a being of spirit and soul from the realm of spirit and soul.

Between the previous earthly life and the present one, this being passed through a long period of existence from the previous death to rebirth; it had experiences in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, just as on Earth, between birth and death, we have bodily experiences communicated through the senses, intellect, feelings, and will. Together with its experiences in the spiritual world, this entity descends, unites at first only loosely with the physical body during the embryonic period, and hovers around the person, lightly and externally like an aura, during the first period of childhood between birth and the change of teeth. This being of spirit and soul who comes down from the spiritual worlda being just as real as the one who comes from the body of the motheris more loosely connected with the physical body than it is later in human life. This is the why the child lives much more outside the body than an adult does.

This is only another way of expressing what I said in yester- days lecture, namely, that during the first period of life the child is in the highest degree and by its whole nature a being of sense. The child is like a sense organ. The surrounding impressions ripple, echo and sound through the whole organism because the child isnt so inwardly bound up with the body as is the case in later life, but lives in the environment with its freer spiritual and soul nature. Hence the child is receptive to all the impressions coming from the environment.

Now, whats the relation between the human constitution as a whole and what we receive from the father and mother strictly through heredity? If we study human development with vision that truly creates ideas instead of mere proofs as describeda vision that looks at the spiritual and the evolutionary aspects of human naturewe find that everything in the organism depends on hereditary forces in exactly the same way as the first, so-called baby teeth do. We only need to perceive, with real acuity, the dif- ference in the ways the second teeth and the first are formed. In this way, we have a tangible expression of the processes occurring in human development between birth and the change of teeth.

During this stage the forces of heredity hold sway in the physi- cal body, and the whole human constitution becomes a kind of model with which the spirit and soul element work, imitating the surrounding impressions. If we place ourselves in the soul of a child relative to the environment and realize how every spiritual impulse is absorbed into the whole beinghow with every move- ment of the hand, every expression, every look into anothers eyes, the child senses the spirit inherent in the adult and allows it to flow in then well also perceive how, during the first seven years, another being is building itself on the foundation of the model provided by heredity. As human beings, the earthly world actually gives us, through hereditary forces, a model on which to build our second self, that is actually born with the change of teeth. The first teeth in the body are eliminated by what wants to replace them; this new element, which belongs to our human individu- ality, advances and casts off heredity. This is true of the whole human organism. During the first seven years of life, the organ- ism was a product of earthly forces and a kind of model. As such its cast off, just as we get rid of the bodys outgrowths by cutting our nails, hair, and so on. Were molded anew with the change of teeth, just as these outgrowths are continuously eliminated. In this case, however, the first being, or product of physical heredity, is completely replaced by a second, who develops under the influ- ence of the forces that we bring from pre-earthly life. Thus, dur- ing the period between birth and the change of teeth, the human22 hereditary forces related to the physical evolutionary stream fight against the forces of a pre-earthly existence, which accompany the individuality of each human being from the previous earthly life.


The Religious Nature of Childhood
Its essential not to understand these things merely theoretically, which is the habitual way of thinking today. This is the kind of fact that we need to understand from the perspective of the child by bringing all of our resources to bear, and only then from the standpoint of the educator. If we understand whats happening from the perspective of a child, we find that the soul-being of the childwith everything brought from pre-earthly life, from the realm of soul and spiritis entirely devoted to the physical activities of those who are in the immediate environment. This relationship can be described only as a religious one. Its a religious relationship that descends into the sphere of nature and moves into the outer world. Its important, however, to understand whats meant by such term.

Ordinarily, one speaks of religious relationships today in the sense of a consciously developed adult religion. Relevant to this is the fact that, in religious life, the spirit and soul elements of the adult rise into the spiritual element in the universe and surrender to it. The religious relationship is a self-surrendering to the uni- verse, a prayer for divine grace in the surrender of the self. In the adult, its completely immersed in a spiritual element. The soul and spirit are yielded to the surroundings.

To speak of the childs body being absorbed by the environ- ment in terms of a religious experience thus seems like we are turning things around the wrong way. Nevertheless, its a truly religious experiencetransposed into the realm of nature. The child surrenders to the environment and lives in the external world in reverent, prayerful devotion, just as the eye detaches itself from the rest of the organism and surrenders to the environment. Its a religious relationship transferred to the natural realm.

If we want a picture, or symbol, of the spirit and soul processes in the adults religious experience, we should form a real idea in our souls of the childs body up to the change of teeth. The life of the child is religious, but religious in a way that refers to the things of nature. Its not the soul of the child that is surrendered to the environment, but the circulation of the blood, breathing activities, and the nutritional process through the food taken in. All of these things are surrendered to the environment the cir- culation of the blood, breathing, and digestive processes pray to the environment.

The Priestly Nature of Teaching
These expressions may seem contradictory, but their very contradic- tion represents the truth. We have to observe such things with our whole being, and not just theoretically. If we observe the struggle unfolding in the child before uswithin this fundamental, natural religious elementif we observe the struggle between the heredi- tary forces and what the individuals forces develop as the second self through the power brought from pre-earthly life, then, as teach- ers, we also develop a religious mood. But, whereas the child with a physical body develops the religious mood of the believer, the teacher, in gazing at the wonders that occur between birth and the change of teeth, develops a priestly religious attitude. The posi- tion of teacher becomes a kind of priestly office, a ritual performed at the altar of universal human lifenot with a sacrificial victim to be led to death, but with the offering of human nature itself, to be awakened to life. Our task is to ferry into earthly life the aspect of the child that came from the divine spiritual world. Together with the childs own forces, this fashions a second organism out of the being that came to us from the divine spiritual life.24

Pondering such things awakens something in us like a priestly attitude in education. Until this priestly feeling for the first years of childhood has become a part of education as a whole, educa- tion wont find the conditions that bring it to life. If we merely try to understand the requirements of education intellectually, or try rationally to design a method of education based on external observations of a childs nature, at best we accomplish a quarter education. A complete educational method cant be formulated by the intellect alone; rather, it has to flow from the whole of human naturenot merely from the part that observes externally in a rational way, but the whole that deeply and inwardly experi- ences the secrets of the universe.

Few things have a more wonderful effect on the human heart than seeing inner spirit and soul elements released day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, during the first period of childhood. We see how, beginning with chaotic limb movements, the glance filled with rapture by outer experiences, the play of expressions that dont yet seem to belong to the child, something develops and impresses itself on the surface of the human form that arises from the center of the human constitution, where the divine spiritual being is unfolding in its descent from pre-earthly life. If we can make this divine office of education a concern of the heart, we understand these things in such a way that we say: Here the Godhead Who has guided a human being until birth is revealed again in the impression of the human organism; the living Godhead is there to see; God is gazing into us. This will lead, out of the teachers own individuality, not to something learned by rote, but to a living method of education and instruction, a method that springs from our souls and spirits.

This must be our attitude toward the developing child; its essential to any educational method. Without this fundamental attitude, without this priestly element in the teacher (and I mean this, of course, in a cosmic sense), education cant progress. Therefore, any attempt to reform the methods of education requires a return from the intellectual element, which has become dominant since the fourteenth century, to the domain of soul and feelings, to what springs forth from human nature as a whole, and not just from the head. If we look at children without preconceptions, the childs own nature will teach us to read these things.


The Effects of a Teachers Inner Development on the Child
Now, what has been the real course of civilization since the four- teenth or fifteenth century? As a result of the great transition, or cultural revolution, that has occurred since then, we can only perceive what has thrust itself forth, as it were, from inwardness to externality. Grasping at externals has become a matter of course for us moderns to the degree that were no longer aware of any other possibility. Weve arrived at a condition in historical evolu- tion thats considered right in an absolute sensenot merely a condition that suits our time.

People no longer could feel or perceive in a way that was possible before the fourteenth or fifteenth century. In those days, people viewed matters of the spirit in an imbalanced way, just as people now have a one-sided view of nature. But the human race had to pass through a stage in which it could add the observation of purely natural elements to an earlier human devotion to the world of spirit and soul that excluded nature. This materializing process, this change in course, was necessary; but we have to realize that, in order that civilized humanity not be turned into a wastel and in our time, there has to be a new turn, a turning toward spirit and soul. The awareness of this fact is the essence of all endeavors such as that of Waldorf education, which is rooted in what a deeper observation of human evolution reveals as necessary for our time. We need to find our way back to the spirit and soul; in order for that to happen, we need to understand how we became divorced26 from spirit and soul in the first place. There are many today who have no such understanding and, therefore, view anything that attempts to lead us back to the spirit as, well, not very clever, shall we say.

We can find remarkable illustrations of this attitude. Id like to mention one, but only parenthetically. Theres a chapter (incidentally, a very interesting chapter in some ways) in Mau- rice Maeterlincks new book The Great Riddle. 4 Its subject is the anthroposophical method of viewing the world. He discusses anthroposophy, and he also discusses me (if youll forgive a per- sonal reference). He has read many of my books and makes a very interesting comment. He says that, at the beginning of my books, I seem to have a levelheaded, logical, and shrewd mind. In the later chapters, however, it seems as if I had lost my mind. It may very well appear this way to Maeterlinck; subjectively he has every right to his opinion. Why shouldnt I seem levelheaded, logical and scientific to him in the first chapters, and insane in later ones?

Of course, Maeterlinck has a right to think this way, and nobody wants to dispute that. The question is, however, whether such an attitude isnt really absurd. Indeed, it does become absurd when you consider this: I have, unfortunately, written a great many books in my life (as you can see from the unusual appearance of the book table here). No sooner have I finished writing one, than I begin another. When Maurice Maeterlinck reads the new book, hell discover once again that in the first chapters I am shrewd, levelheaded and scientific, and then I lose my mind later on. Then I begin to write a third book; the first chapters again are reasonable and so forth. Consequently, if nothing else, I seem to have mastered the art of becoming at will a completely reasonable human being in the early part of a book andequally by choicea lunatic later, only to return to reason when I write the next book. In this way, I take turns being reasonable and a lunatic. Naturally, Maeterlinck has every right to find this; but he misses the absurdity of such an idea. A modern man of his importance thus falls into absurdities; but this, as I say, is only a little parenthetical remark.
4 . Maurice Maeterlinck (18621949), Belgian poet, dramatist, and essayist. In Paris he gained a reputation through Symbolist verse and became a leading Symbolist playwright. He was awarded a Nobel prize for literature in 1911.

Many people are completely unaware that their judgments dont spring from the primal source of human nature but from elements implanted in our outer culture since the fourteenth cen- tury as a result of the materialistic paradigm. The duty of teach- ers, of educatorsreally the duty of all human beings that have anything to do with childrenis to look more deeply into what it means to be human. In other words, we need to become more aware of how anything acting as a stimulus in the environment continues to resonate within the child. We have to be very clear that, in this sense, were dealing with imponderables.

Children are aware, whenever we do something in their environment, of the thoughts behind a hand-gesture or facial expression. Children intuit them: they dont, obviously, interpret facial features, since what operates instead is a much more powerful inner connection between the child and adult than will exist later between adults. Consequently, we must never allow ourselves to feel or think anything around children that shouldnt be allowed to reverberate within the child. The rule of thumb for all relationships in early education has to be this: Whether in perception, feeling, or thought, whatever we do around children needs to be done in such a way that it can be allowed to continue resonate within their souls.

The psychologist, the observer of souls, the person of broad practical experience, and the doctor thus all become a unity, inso- far as the child is concerned. This is important, since anything28 that makes an impression on the child, anything that causes the souls response, continues in the circulation of the blood and in digestion, becoming a part of the foundation of health in later years. Due to the imitative nature of the child, whenever we edu- cate childrens spirit and soul, we also educate their body and their physical constitution. This is the wonderful metamorphosis that whatever approaches children, touching their spirit and soul, becomes their physical, organic organization and their predisposi- tion to health or illness in later life.

Consequently, we can say that if Waldorf schools educate out of spirit and soul, its not because we choose to work in an unbal- anced way with only the soul and spirit. Its because we know that this is how we physically educate the inner being in the highest sense of the word: the physical being exists within the envelope of the skin. Perhaps you recall yesterdays examples. Beginning with the model supplied by the human forces of heredity, the developing child builds a second human self, experienced in the second phase of life between the change of teeth and puberty. During the initial phase of life, we struggle to fashion a second, uninherited self out of whats present within our individuality as a result of experiences in earlier earthly lives during a purely spiritual existence between death and rebirth. During the second stage of life, between the change of teeth and puberty, the influences of the outer world likewise struggle against what our individuality wants to incorpo- rate into itself. During this second stage, external influences grow more pow- erful. The childs inner nature is streng thened, however, since at this point it no longer allows every influence in the environment to continue vibrating within the bodily organization as though it were mainly a sense organ. Sensory perception begins to be more concentrated at the surface, or periphery, of the childs constitu- tion. The senses now become more individual and autonomous, and for the first time there appears within us a way of relating to the world that isnt intellectual but rather is comparable only to an artistic view of life.


The Teacher as Artist
Our initial approach to life had a religious quality in that we related to nature as naturally religious beings, surrendered to the world. In this second stage, however, were no longer obligated merely to accept passively everything coming from our environ- ment, allowing it to vibrate in us physically; rather, we transform it creatively into images. Between the change of teeth and puberty, children are artists, though in a childish way, just as in the first phase of life, children were homo religiosus naturally religious human beings.

Now that the child demands everything in a creative, artistic way, the teachers and educators who encounter the child must pres- ent everything from the perspective of an artist. Our contemporary culture demands this of teachers, and this is what needs to flow into the art of education; at this point, interactions between the developing children and educators need to take an artistic form. In this respect, we face great obstacles as teachers. Our civilization and the culture all around us have reached the point where theyre geared only to the intellect, not to our artistic sensibilities.

Lets consider the most wonderful natural processes the description of embryonic life, for example, as portrayed in mod- ern textbooks, or as taught in schools. Im not criticizing them, merely describing them; I know very well that they had to become the way they are and were necessary at a certain point in evo- lution. If we accept what they offer from the perspective of the spiritual force ready to reawaken today, something happens in our life of feeling that we find impossible to acknowledge, because it seems to be a sin against the maturity attained by humanity in the30 course of cosmic evolution. Difficult as it may be, it would be a good thing if people acknowledged this.

When we read modern books on embryology, botany, or zool- ogy, we feel a sense of despair in finding ourselves immediately forced to plunge into a cold intellectuality. Although the life and the development of nature are not essentially intellectual, we have to deliberately and consciously set aside every artistic ele- ment. Once weve read a book on botany written according to strict scientific rules, our first task as teachers is to rid ourselves of everything we found there. Obviously, we have to assimilate the information about botanical processes, and the sacrifice of learn- ing from such books is necessary; but in order to educate children between the change of teeth and puberty, we have to eliminate what we found there, transforming everything into artistic, imagi- nal forms through our own artistic activity and sensibility. What- ever lives in our thoughts about nature has to fly on the wings of artistic inspiration and be transformed into images that then come before the soul of the child.

Artistically shaping our instruction for children between the change of teeth and puberty is all that we should be concerned with in the metamorphosis of education for our time and the near future. If the first period of childhood requires a priestly element in education, the second requires an artistic element. What are we really doing when we educate a person in the second stage of life? The individuality journeying from an earlier earthly life and from the spiritual world is trying gradually to develop and permeate a second self. Our job is to assist in this process; we incorporate what we do with the child as teachers into the forces that inter- wove with spirit and soul to shape the second self with a unique and individual character. Again, the consciousness of this cosmic context needs to act as an enlivening impulse, running through our teaching methods and the everyday conditions of education. We cant contrive what needs to be done; we can only allow it to happen through the influence of the children themselves on their teachers.

Two extremes must be avoided. One is a result of intellectual- izing tendencies, where we approach children in an academic way, expecting them to assimilate sharply outlined ideas and defini- tions. It is, after all, very comfortable to instruct and teach by definitions. And the more gifted children learn to parrot them, allowing the teacher to be certain that they retain what theyve been taught in the previous lesson, whereas those who dont learn can be left behind.

Such methods are very convenient. But its like a cobbler who thinks that the shoes he made for a three-year-old should still fit the ten-year-old; the shoes are well formed, but they no longer fit the child. And thats how it is with the teaching that the child is meant to assimilate. What the child takes in during the seventh or eighth year is no longer suited to the soul of the twelve-year-old; its as useless as shoes that have become too small. We just dont realize it when the problem unfolds within the soul. The teacher who demands of her students at age twelve the same definitions that were used earlier is like the cobbler who tries to put a three- year-olds shoes onto the feet of a ten-year-old: she might fit her toes into the shoes, but not her heels. Much of a childs spiritual and psychic nature doesnt fit into the education we give children. Whats needed is that, through the medium of flexible and artistic forms, we give children perceptions, ideas, and feelings in picto- rial form that can metamorphose and grow with the soul, because the soul itself is growing. But before this can happen, there has to be a living relationship between child and teacher, not the dead relationship that arises from lifeless educational concepts. Thus, all instruction given to children between approximately seven and fifteen needs to be permeated with pictures.

In many ways, this runs counter to the ordinary tendencies of modern culture, and of course we belong to this modern culture. We read books that impart meaningful content through little squiggles we call a, b, c, and so on. We fail to realize that weve been damaged by being forced to learn these symbols, since they have absolutely no relationship to our inner life. Why should a or b look the way they do today? Theres no inner necessity, no experience that justifies writing an h after an a to express a feeling of astonishment or wonder.

This was not always the situation, however. People first made images in pictographic writing to describe external processes, and when they looked at the sheet or a board on which something had been written, they received an echo of that outer object or pro- cess. In other words, we should spare the child of six or seven from learning to write as its done today. What we need instead is to bring the child something that can actually arise from the childs own being, from the activities of his or her arms and fingers. The child sees a shining, radiant object and receives an impression; then we fix it with a drawing that represents the impression of radiance, which a child can understand.

If a child strokes a stick from top to bottom and then makes a stroke on the paper from top to bottom, the meaning is obvious. I show a fish to a child, who then follows the general direction of the form, followed by the front and back fins that cross in the opposite direction. I draw the general form of the fish, and this line across it, and say to the child, Here, on the paper, you have something like a fish. Then I go into the childs inner experi- ence of the fish. It contains an f, and so I draw a line crossed by another line, and thus, out of the childs feeling experience, I have a picture that corresponds to the sound that begins the word fish. All writing can be developed in this waynot a mere copying of the abstract now in use, but a perception of the things themselves as they arise from a childs drawing and painting. When I derive writing from the drawing and painting, Im working with the liv- ing forces of an image.

It would be enough to present the beginning of this artistic approach; we can feel how it calls on the childs whole being, not just an intellectual understanding, which is overtaxed to a cer- tain extent. If we abandon the intellectual element for imagery at this age, the intellect usually withdraws into the background. If, on the other hand, we overemphasize the intellect and are unable to move into a mode of imagery, the childs breathing process is delicately and subtly disrupted. The child can become congested, as it were, with weakened exhalation. You should think of this as very subtle, not necessarily obvious. If educa- tion is too intellectual between the ages of seven and fourteen, exhalation becomes congested, and the child is subjected to a kind of subconscious nightmare. A kind of intimate nightmare arises, which becomes chronic in the organism and leads in later life to asthmas and other diseases connected with swelling in the breathing system.

Another extreme occurs when the teacher enters the school like a little Caesar, with the self-image of a mighty Caesar, of course. In this situation, the child is always at the mercy of a teachers impulsiveness. Whereas extreme intellectualism leads to congested exhalation, the metabolic forces are thinned by overly domineering and exaggerated assertiveness in the teacher. A childs digestive organs are gradually weakened, which again may have chronic effects in later life. Both of these excesses needs to be eliminated from educationtoo much intellectualizing and extreme obstinateness.

We can hold a balance between the two by what happens in the soul when we allow the will to pass gently into the childs own activity and by toning down the intellect so that feelings are cultivated in a way that doesnt suppress the breathing, but culti- vates feelings that turn toward imagery and express the buoyant capacity I described. When this is done, the childs development is supported between the change of teeth and puberty.34

Thus, from week to week, month to month, year to year, a true knowledge of human nature will help us read the develop- ing child like a book that tells us what needs to be done in our teaching. The curriculum needs to reproduce what we read in the evolutionary process of the human being. Specific ways that we can do this will be addressed in coming lectures.





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