Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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108 authority, and thus to form those sentences that we present to the children in the most artistic way. We need to artistically form the sentences so that we draw from the child a feeling for their artistic form. That is something we can do when we make the children aware of the difference between an assertion or a question, or perhaps a statement of feeling, and have the child speak it in such a way that a statement with feeling is spoken with the intonation of an assertion. We can then make the children aware of how an assertion is spoken in a neutral, objective way; whereas a statement of feeling is spoken with certain nuances of feeling. We can work with this artistic element of language, then out of that element develop grammar and syntax. If we use dialect in order to develop the natural human instinct for language while using standard language in order to awaken an inner feeling for style, we can achieve what is necessary in teaching language. The Renewal of Education (158–160) Bringing Language to Life Today hardly anyone is interested in trying to bring life into language. I have tried to do that in my books in homeopathic doses. In order to make certain things understandable, I have used in my books a concept that has the same relationship to force as water flowing in a stream does to the ice on top of the stream. I used the word kraften (to work actively, forcefully). Usually we only have the word Kraft, meaning “power” or “force.” We do not speak of kraften. We can also use similar words. If we are to bring life into language, then we also need a syntax that is alive, not dead. Today people correct you immediately if you put the subject somewhere in the sentence other than where people are accustomed to having it. Such things are still just possible in German, and you still have a certain amount of freedom. In the Western European languages—well, that is just terrible, everything is wrong there. You hear all the time that you can’t say that, that is not English, or that is not French. But, to say “that is not German” is not possible. In German you can put the subject anywhere in the sentence. You can also give an inner life to the sentence in some way. I do not want to speak in popular terms, but I do want to emphasize the process of dying in the language. A language begins to die when you are always hearing that you cannot say something in one way or another, that you are speaking incorrectly. It may not seem as strange but it is just the same as if a hundred people were to go to a door and I were to look at them and decide purely according to my own views who was a good person and who was a bad person. Life does not allow us to stereotype things. When we do that, it appears grotesque. Life requires that everything remain in movement. For that reason, syntax and grammar must arise out of the life of feeling, not out of dead reasoning. That perspective will enable us to continue with a living development of language. The Renewal of Education (180-181) Working with the Unconscious Element in Language If you understand the spirit of what I have just presented, you will recognize how everywhere there has been an attempt to work with this unconscious element. I have done that first by showing how the artistic element is necessary right from the very beginning of elementary school. I have insisted that we should use the dialect that the children speak to reveal the content of grammar, that is, we should take the children’s language as such and accept it as something complete and then use it as the basis for presenting grammar. Think for a moment about what you do in such a case. In what period of life is speech actually formed? Attempt to think back as far as you can in the course of your life, and you will see that you can remember nothing from the period in which you could not speak. Human beings learn language in a period when they are still sleeping through life. If you then compare the dreamy world of the child’s soul with dreams and with how melodies are interwoven in music, you will see that they are similar. Like dreaming, learning to speak occurs through the unconscious, and is something like an awakening at dawn. Melodies simply exist and we do not know where they come from. In reality, they arise out of this sleep
element of the human being. We experience a sculpting with time from the time we fall asleep until we awaken. At their present stage of development human beings are not capable of experiencing this sculpting with time. You can read about how we experience that in my book How to Know Higher Worlds. That is something that does not belong to education as such. From that description, you will see how necessary it is to take into account that unconscious element which has its effect during the time the child sleeps. It is certainly taken into account in our teaching of music, particularly in teaching musical themes, so that we must attempt to exactly analyze the musical element to the extent that it is present in children in just the same way as we analyze language as presented in sentences. In other words, we attempt to guide children at an early age to recognize themes in music, to actually feel the melodic element like a sentence. Here it begins and here it stops; here there is a connection and here begins something new. In this regard, we can have a wonderful effect upon the child’s development by bringing an understanding of the not-yet-real content of music. In this way, the child is guided back to something that exists in human nature but is almost never seen. Nearly everyone knows what a melody is and what a sentence is. But a sentence that consists of a subject, a predicate, and an object and which is in reality unconsciously a melody is something that only a few people know. Just as we experience the rising and subsiding of feelings as a rhythm in sleeping, which we then become conscious of and surround with a picture, we also, in the depths of our nature, experience a sentence as music. By conforming to the outer world, we surround what we perceive as music with something that is a picture. The child writes the essay—subject, predicate, object. A triplet is felt at the deepest core of the human being. That triplet is used through projecting the first tone in a certain way upon the child, the second upon writing, and the third upon the essay. Just as these three are felt and then surrounded with pictures (which, however, correspond to reality and are not felt as they are in dreams), the sentence lives in our higher consciousness; whereas in our deepest unconsciousness, something musical, a melody, lives. When we are aware that, at the moment we move from the sense-perceptible to the supersensible, we must rid ourselves of the sense-perceptible content, and in its place experience what eludes us in music—the theme whose real form we can experience in sleep—only then can we consider the human being as a whole. Only then do we become genuinely aware of what it means to teach language to children in such a living way that the child perceives a trace of melody in a sentence. This means we do not simply speak in a dry way, but instead in a way that gives the full tone, that presents the inner melody and subsides through the rhythmic element. Around 1850 European people lost that deeper feeling for rhythm. Before that, there was still a certain relationship to what I just described. If you look at some treatises that appeared around that time about music or about the musical themes from Beethoven and others, then you will see how at about that time those who were referred to as authorities in music often cut up and destroyed in the most unimaginable ways what lived in music. You will see how that period represents the low point of experiencing rhythm. As educators, we need to be aware of that, because we need to guide sentences themselves back to rhythm in the school. If we keep that in mind, over a longer period of time we will begin to recognize the artistic element of teaching. We would not allow the artistic element to disappear so quickly if we were required to bring it more into the content. The Renewal of Education (189–192) Grammar as a Synthesis of the Drawing and Musical Elements As I mentioned yesterday, we should also take such things into account when teaching music. We must not allow artificial methods to enter into the school where, for instance, the consciousness is mistreated by such means as artificial breathing. The children should learn to breathe through grasping the melody. The children should learn to follow the melody through hearing and then adjust themselves to it. 109
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Research Project #9 Colloqu
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4 Title: Proceedings of the <strong
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6 Additional Articles: Recommended
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8 WHSRP Mission Statement Formed in
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10 MONDAY 13 OCTOBER 8:00 A.M. - -
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12 From the Left: Patricia Ryan and
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14 We left feeling that we had much
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16 Secondly, it discloses the world
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18 Student Response: In our lives t
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20 Benchmarks: Transition from Midd
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22 Thus the center of the red spira
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24 attention to the composition of
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26 “What have they been doing in
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28 more accurate than our senses, t
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30 and bring their free thinking to
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32 POETRY EXERCISE Mary uses this f
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34 novels Shane, The Adventures of
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36 Poetry is the path because it pr
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38 In the10 th grade, we begin to m
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40 Why do we teach literature? Some
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42 We always have to work with the
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44 The analytical process becomes a
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46 Keeping The Curriculum Timely by
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48 Steiner on the High School Liter
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50 Dr. Steiner: … it would depend
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52 Historically, Wolfram is an inte
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54 plane, need to strew pictures an
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56 of German literary history in re
Page 58 and 59: 58 Children’s Receptivity to the
Page 60 and 61: 60 however clumsy the children’s
Page 62 and 63: 62 Discussion: Teaching Reading Our
Page 64 and 65: 64 specifics from the text in discu
Page 66 and 67: 66 Steiner On Reading The Effects o
Page 68 and 69: 68 the school subjects demanded by
Page 70 and 71: 70 Consequently, we will have to re
Page 72 and 73: 72 emerge only later on. In this wa
Page 74 and 75: 74 stand its truth and beauty, to b
Page 76 and 77: 76 The writing experience begins wi
Page 78 and 79: 78 Now the students individually ha
Page 80 and 81: 80 paper is an abstract concept. Th
Page 82 and 83: 82 I Am I am: yet what I am none ca
Page 84 and 85: 84 I-Search Projects The purpose of
Page 86 and 87: 86 Annotated Bibliography Breindel,
Page 88 and 89: 88 Steiner on Writing and Spelling
Page 90 and 91: 90 Understanding Spelling Difficult
Page 92 and 93: 92 Is there a Phenomenological Appr
Page 94 and 95: 94 7. careless: the first “as”
Page 96 and 97: 96 in this Colloquium</stro
Page 98 and 99: 98 It names the parts and modes and
Page 100 and 101: 100 of your lesson; at times it can
Page 102 and 103: 102 the students’ perception of a
Page 104 and 105: 104 Through eurythmy people can lea
Page 106 and 107: 106 Introduction to Grammar Grammar
Page 110 and 111: 110 That should be an unconscious p
Page 112 and 113: 112 you do not let them do what is
Page 114 and 115: 114 period. If you have caused them
Page 116 and 117: 116 “substantiating” verbs. In
Page 118 and 119: 118 Grammar in the Ninth Grade In G
Page 120 and 121: 120 quy and a sonnet, and to recite
Page 122 and 123: 122 Enlivening English Teaching thr
Page 124 and 125: 124 Recommended Books For Waldorf E
Page 126 and 127: 126 Also Recommended: Bly, Robert.
Page 128 and 129: 128 reward for the first person to
Page 130 and 131: 130 1) Tenth graders may wish to re
Page 132 and 133: 132 Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the L
Page 134 and 135: 134 How in the act of writing itsel
Page 136 and 137: 136 The Wholeness Of Imagination by
Page 138 and 139: 138 Coleridge was an exact thinker
Page 140 and 141: 140 ception of the universe into wh
Page 142 and 143: 142 The theories must indeed come.
Page 144 and 145: 144 Disturbances in Speech Developm
Page 146 and 147: 146 ment then the development of th
Page 148 and 149: 148 which the forms are continually
Page 150 and 151: 150 Acquisition of Speech and the D
Page 152 and 153: 152 on the musical and rhythmic qua
Page 154 and 155: 154 ever something begins to permea
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