In the series of Anthroposophical musings:
We don’t need no education
There is a theory - within Anthroposophical pediatrics - that there is great freedom in imitation. To the Montessori mind (especially my mother’s) it sounds impossible! She shudders at the thought of being like and doing like anybody else. It might make her feel like the headless chicken which the others (read: my father) make her out to be. I can relate (read for others: all men).
↓ Ruth Elsässer - Mai - Blütenbäume
But I’ve done my homework since, remaining very independent as instructed by my good mother.
The three fundaments to an Anthroposophic education reads as follows:
- Proper imitation develops freedom;
- Authority develops the right’s life;
- Brotherliness, love, develops the economic life.
This ties into the Threefold Social Life as described by Rudolf Steiner (not quite the Trias Politica, since his ideology pertains more to the individual responsibility and development of consciousness and less to governance.) Anthroposophy is stooled on all things triune. (Or four-fold. Or on the seven metals/planets. Or the 12 fixed constellations of our zodiac.)
→ Jomo
We don't need no thought control
Did I just list Authority! as an ingredient in education? No wonder that’s the last bit of my mother's heel we see slipping out of this topic room.
I don’t know if the word “right’s life” was precisely chosen very carefully by Olive Wicher (from whom I’ve taken the wording for this specific list) but it’s a complicated term, I find, and we might like to substitute it for “a sense of justice” or at least “right judgement” as a mature, innately moral quality of thinking. Furthermore, isn’t it all starting to sound a little Big Brotherly rigidly organised now? Well, that’s the ongoing problem with reading into Steiner instead of reading the living imagery behind his words.
I have tried to come at what Anthroposophy says by way of taking Steiner's(specifically Steiner’s) thoughts and philosophically holding them up to their internal logic as reflective of observable pheonmena. As a creative thinker myself, or a flopped artist, I found it easy enough to give his life view the benefit of the doubt as a clearly imagined projection of his innermost knowing (clairvoyancy). The rest boils down to the painstaking study of learning a new (esoteric) language. (Look up what the word esoteric officially means if you keep on getting a bad taste in your mouth with this much abused term.)
←Marjan van Zeyl; "Behold the plant within the seed"
After all, the clue to Steiner is said to be that he merely tapped into what IS (spiritual reality behind all material manifestation) and then sought words for what he saw. Of course, he was also a man-on-a-mission to improve the world, but hey, who are we Steemians to hold that against him. Added to the difficulties of his outmoded language (which wasn’t even his native tongue) is the very fact that we have translated it many times, ever copying and losing something of the orginal in that manner; on top of which, we now are eager to make his material ready-to-go comprehensible.
As such we are running the risk of adding his thought-legacy to the world of manuals for dummies and the mechanical infrastructure of good-living.
→ Elsa Beskow
Education needs something more if we are not to dumb ourselves down into living machines.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Allowing children to imitate (and NOT automatically, dryly, pointlessly copy - as the Autistic child, sadly only can - but nowadays we are autiforming most of our kids….) means to stimulate their ether-body‡ , which is a life-force network that is NOT neural. Hence the strong stipulation that there be no cerebreal knowledge-based learning before the age of 7 (although book-learning is forever discouraged where it leads to rote learning rather than internalised reproduction).
← Gabriela de carvalho - Frau Holle
This call to imitate further requires the leading adults, the guides and guardians, mentors and carers to raise the bar of their own behaviours and attitudes. The example set must be worthy of imitation!
Technically, spiritually scientifically, this imitation is performed by the Will force (as opposed to Feeling and Thinking); which is that force that courses through the Metabolic-Limb-system, quite unconsciously for the main part. Ah the peace in that! The subconscious as the puppeteer. The trust and relaxation to be found in that!
Willing exactly may be perceived as darkness, if we consider Thinking to be light. Feeling (developed in the astral-body with a well-aligned 12-fold sensory system in charge) would be the nuances, the tones, the colour-play inbetween. While willing is the predominant force in the infant who is always wanting things, it is the most sophisticated force at our disposition once we are mature: when (or if) it gets channelled by the heart and mind into purposeful directions it makes us truly human co-creators of this Universe. We then are able to say: Let there be… whatever it is that needs to be; and it WILL be so. (Thy Will in Heaven be done on Earth by us.)
Teachers leave them kids alone
It is critical that the child plays in the fields of colour: this is the chest-or middle-man realm of the adult world, best supported by nature, who is a natural weaver of the ether (plant) and astral (animal) world. May we deplore the removal of the young child (under seven, but really even under 14) from the family hub, with its homely scale and familiar individual attention; unless there be a better suited community for them (in some cases for the severely mentally disabled or psychiatrically disordered). Think of the Camphill Communities and the work of the pure Steinerian Karl König, with nonetheless a very independent mind (and often critiqued therefore). I need only point to the the chilly discipline of the traditional boardingschool which too often literally snaps something in the tender soul.
I have yet to meet a less than pretty dysfunctional man or snobbishly dissatisfied woman with a "proper", traditional boarding school education. But then again, I don't get out much. (Besides the modern, progressive but warm and slow-cooking family can also be hard to find.)
← 5th grade botany
This heart-circulation field is all about warmth, pulse, rhythm, with its rest and regularity; its repetitions giving healthy and reliable routines, punctuated by seasonal festivities. These (in Western Anthroposophy, Christian feastdays) function as a trellis for the etheric unfoldment.
This development of the time-body benefits from observing the annual cycle which goes hand in hand with nature tables in the classroom (thankfully found in many but often small and exclusive schools). The "religious" moulding found in a Waldorf school is deceptive (curiously, generally underplayed OR overplayed varying per country) for it is meant to serve merely as a tool for the expansion of individual consciousness and community building; it means to serve as a seedbed for an evolution out of churchy-spirituality, but at the same time to remind us to elevate ourselves out of nature, by observing the Christ Consciousness. This Christ is also the Lord of the Elements (and Lord of Karma) while still closely tied to the narrative of Jesus (of which there are two, if you ask Steiner, as can be read in the Bible). Could we achieve the same evolution with Krishna or Mohammed as our main story-line? † This is meant to be an intriguing question and not a provocative one, and definitely not the incitment to a debate on dogmas.
Many Waldorf schools incorporate world religions, which is nice as seen from a socio-cultural perspective; esoteric-philosophically, however, it either gets super complicated at that point, or annoyingly wishy-washy and let’s all hold hands and love the world; i.e. no longer mindful of what might make a different type of education, a truely "new vision" with a spiritual schooling for its source of inspiration.
Religion tends to be very much of the material world. Steiner’s Christology prooves to be not so much. Designing a general school-system that really works on a soulful-spiritual level without caustic power struggles (egoism!) proves very, very challenging at the present moment. Results are not all positive so far.
Returning to nature then: may we realise that this is NOT where man really belongs. We are eternally grateful to Nature for her collaboration in our Becoming Human Project, but we are nitwits (or cowards) to believe the right aim is to become integral with her. Even Rousseau only admired the good savage from behind his writing desk without returning to a caveman life himself. Our destiny is one of art and culture and global brotherhood and the right for every single living thing to be as perfectly inclined as their own nature and spirit so define.
To thoroughly appreciate this Potential we need children who have a new sense of responsibility and a new zest for an independence that strives for balanced communities. May we find a way to educate these sweet-peas, to unleash their inner knowing how to wind their tendrils around the lattice of love. Onwards and upwards towards the flowering body.
→Fiorenza de Angelis, Lo Zodiaco
Further Reading:
Dedicated to Teaching the Whole Child – Head, Heart, and Hands
Notes:
‡ I skip over the precise descriptions of the anthroposophical terminology here, or we won’t be getting anywhere today; but I am not insensitive to the lacuna in understanding this will give. I hope to limit the confusion by stressing points that may survive without the details fully underpinned in this specific writing.
† That’s what I am researching. There is not much I can say here about my findings, although one would have liked to think that if anywhere Steemit would be the place. I realised long ago, that they are not so easy to convey in a world where our minds are actually becoming progressively more sclerotic while our attention spans have lost their tension. Our speech is vapid and our concepts serve as anchors in crowded harbours not safe from tsunamis, anyway.
So, I have chosen to blinker myself to intellectual critique where it remains superficial and simply stick to Steiner to the point that I will seem like a dogged Anthroposophist blindly accepting a convention designed by just another simple soul. Where I correct this image it is not to keep my own options open, but to help you start opening yours.
It is why I feel compelled to stress I am not a member of the Society and would never become one, since I am considered an unwelcome maverick in their circles and have fought many fierce battles with they who call themselves Anthroposophists - and make me roll over the floor laughing. If anything, to be wayward if nothing else, I remain a Steinerian first and foremost, althought the future belongs to every new anthroposophically inclined (i.e. wisely humane and vibrantly, selflessly, community-conscious, creative) individual.