Table Of ContentPRACTICAL ADVICE TO TEACHERS
[II]
FOUNDATIONS OF WALDORF EDUCATION
R U D O L F S T E I N E R
Practical Advice
to Teachers
Anthroposophic Press
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the inspiration
and support of Connie and Robert Dulaney
❖ ❖ ❖
These lectures, from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer, are translated
by Johanna Collis from the German Erziehungskunst. Methodisch-Didaktisches
(vol. no. 294 in the Bibliographical Survey) published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag,
Dornach, Switzerland. The lectures have been edited by Anthroposophic Press
for this edition.
Copyright © 2000 Anthroposophic Press
Introduction Copyright © 2000 Astrid Schmitt-Stegmann
Published by Anthroposophic Press
PO Box 799, Great Barrington, MA 01230
www.anthropress.org
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Steiner, Rudolf, 1861–1925.
[Erziehungskunst. English]
Practical advice to teachers / Rudolf Steiner; [translated by Johanna Collis].
p. cm.— (Foundations of Waldorf education ; 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88010-467-8 (paper)
1. Teaching. 2. Waldorf method of education. 3. Educational psychology.
I. Series.
LB1025.3 .S735 2000
00-020597
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
Foreword by Astrid Schmitt-Stegmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii
Lecture 1. August 21, 1919
introduction; artistic activity, arithmetic, reading
and writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Lecture 2. August 22, 1919
sympathy and antipathy expressed by speech;
the oneness of humankind with the cosmos;
nuances of spoken sounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Lecture 3. August 23, 1919
sculptural and pictorial arts, music, and poetry;
teaching what children do not yet understand;
nature study in and out of the classroom . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Lecture 4. August 25, 1919
the first lesson; manual skill, drawing and painting;
distinguishing beauty; beginning to teach language;
ancient power of speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Lecture 5. August 26, 1919
writing and reading; consonants and vowels; spelling . . .62
Lecture 6. August 27, 1919
experimental psychology and reading; life’s rhythms
and rhythmic repetition in teaching; the teacher’s
position outside ordinary life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
Lecture 7. August 28, 1919
the ninth-year teacher; natural history, cuttlefish,
mouse, people and their arms and hands; Schiller’s
Aesthetic Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Lecture 8. August 29, 1919
education after twelfth-year—history and physics;
teachers must cultivate wonder in themselves . . . . . . . . 106
Lecture 9. August 30, 1919
the economy of teaching; language lessons . . . . . . . . . 118
Lecture 10. September 1, 1919
arranging lessons until the fourteenth year; introducing
history and geography; foreign languages continued:
observing life; geometry and object lessons . . . . . . . . . 130
Lecture 11. September 2, 1919
teaching geography as the basis for all subjects. . . . . . . 143
Lecture 12. September 3, 1919
how to relate education to everyday life;
religious sentimentality does not lead to idealism;
relating one subject to another. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Lecture 13. September 4, 1919
the curriculum; the consequence of too much
intellectuality; general sequence of the curriculum;
making the best of external regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Lecture 14. September 5, 1919
practicing moral principles in education;
using the child’s healthy instincts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Foreword
Before the opening of the first Waldorf school, Rudolf
Steiner met with the group of teachers who were preparing
themselves for their new task. For fourteen days, from August
20 to September 5, 1919, he gave these teachers a foundation
for an understanding of the growing human being in body,
soul, and spirit. This understanding made it possible for the
teachers to call forth the true artists in themselves, enabling
them to create their lessons out of imaginative and inspired
thought pictures.
Rudolf Steiner began the day with the lectures that are col-
lected in The Foundations of Human Experience (previously
titled The Study of Man); then he followed these with the prac-
tical advice contained in the lectures of this book. The sessions
which are known under the title Discussions with Teachers fol-
lowed in the afternoons. Together these three books constitute
the solid foundation upon which every Waldorf teacher can
build, for, as we hear at the beginning of the first lecture of this
book, Waldorf teaching methods will have to differ from other
methods. They will draw on the teacher’s spiritual-scientific
understanding of the child and of the time in which they live.
In Practical Advice to Teachers, he spoke to the teachers in
the following way: “Concern yourselves with whatever has
genuine significance for the child’s development (lecture 4,
p.55). Then he proceeded to give invaluable insights into the
methodology that no Waldorf teacher can be without. These
lectures not only provide insight into how certain subject mat-
ter works in the growing child and how it correlates with his or
viii PRACTICAL ADVICE TO TEACHERS
her developmental stages, but also how teachers in their method
of working can “bring the Soul-Spirit into harmony with the
Life-Body,” (The Foundations of Human Experience, lecture 1)
and how they can handle the subjects “for the purpose of devel-
oping human capacities” (Practical Advice, lecture 1).
This book contains so many gems and profound insights
into how to address the needs of the growing human being in a
healthy way that it is positively astonishing. For that reason
these lectures can be an inspiration to parents, home schoolers,
and all others who are interested in human development and
education.
The harmonizing of the growing human being is an urgent
need in our time, now that the technological revolution has
propelled humanity into an information age that brings with it
a hectic pace of life accompanied by stress and an over-empha-
sis on intellectual pursuits. Artistic expression as well as other
aspects of education that nourish the soul and spirit are
neglected and ignored. Our children and teenagers are strug-
gling to find meaningful experiences where they feel met as
human beings searching for answers to their earthly existence.
The excitement and constant flow of entertainment that the
technological innovations supply hold many captive. However,
entertainment does not address the need for inner fulfillment
that the human individual seeks in order to find his or her
place and purpose in this present incarnation.
In Practical Advice for Teachers, Rudolf Steiner focuses on
just that: giving much practical advice and insight into meth-
odology. He gives a clear picture that the curriculum does not
include art for art’s sake. Instead, every subject is to be taught
artistically so as to engage the whole child and draw forth the
students’ own creative essential being as well as their interest in
the world. We recognize the mission of the arts rightly if, in
addition to the above, we see them also as strengthening the
Foreword ix
motivational will forces and harmonizing the child’s whole
being—thinking, feeling, and willing. Rudolf Steiner gives a
wealth of indications in these lectures that cover all subjects of
the curriculum, showing how to teach the individual subjects
artistically, imaginatively, and in such a way that they
strengthen the inner being, the true Self of the child. Rudolf
Steiner’s concern is that growing children be brought into a
healthy relationship with themselves and with the world
around them. The teacher’s presentation must therefore
breathe between self and world, thus giving the solid moral
foundation upon which the children can build their lives.
He gives expression to this task in The Foundations of Human
Experience and again in the first lecture of this volume, namely,
the harmonization of the child’s essential individuality (spirit-
soul) with his or her living, hereditary, physical body (life-
body). In the third lecture he addresses this harmonization by
way of the two streams in the arts: the sculptural-pictorial on
the one hand and the musical-poetic on the other. Rudolf
Steiner also developed the art of eurythmy as a higher synthesis
of the two, and spoke of it as “visible music and visible speech.”
In a masterful way, Rudolf Steiner opens new vistas for the
teacher, shedding light on these two poles for the enhancement
of the work with the children. He suggests that if it were possi-
ble to live solely in our mental images, in conceptual activity, we
would live in a realm that consists only of reflected images of
the objects of the visible, physical world. This is the world we
analyze, dissect, name, and isolate. It manifests in us as the
sphere of the past. Therefore, when we work to develop the chil-
dren’s mental, conceptual side, we must enliven what is dying
into the fixed and static condition of our conceptual thought
life by quickening it with the help of the pictorial, sculptural
element, through drawing, modeling or painting. Crafts and
woodwork, which are part of the Waldorf curriculum, also
Description:How do Waldorf teachers put their educational ideals into practice in the classroom? How does a teacher connect geography and art and language in a way that enlivens the souls of children? What does a child's respect for the teacher mean for later life? These are only a few practical aspects of this
