Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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ever something begins to permeate them which Rudolf Steiner called an
“undertone.” It goes straight to the heart and creates a new level of interaction.
The relationship to speech changes completely when puberty starts.
The young person sorts the conceptual structures and the laws of logic out
of the language and starts to juggle with them like a virtuoso. He leaves the
spoken language behind him completely and rises up to the sphere of pure
thinking where mathematicians of all languages and nations reach the same
incontestable results. But this is another subject that will not be dealt with
here.
In the Beginning is the Word
Our contemplation has shown us the significance of the creative
power of “the Word”, with ramifications for the entire life of a person growing
up. “The Word” sculpts the organs of the small child, it gives life and form
to the soul-life, and it releases the spirit of the adolescent. Without “the
Word” a person would not become a human being; no growth, no development
would be possible. “In the beginning was the word.” The profound
truth of this biblical quote takes on a new meaning in the face of the current
speech catastrophe. In German the words “Wort” (English: “word”)
and “werden” (English: “to become”) have nearly the same linguistic root.
And in the creative word there is always the potential for something to
come into being, in the sense of a “turning over” as described above. That
which lives in the speaker in the form of thoughts and feelings is “turned
over” by speech to become outwardly audible sounds passing through the
air to the listener. Then in the listener the acoustic sound phenomena “turn
over” again to become the inner perception of concepts and emotions. The
word changes the supersensory into the sensory and the sensory into the
supersensory. This principal of speech does not however work through machines.
It needs the human being as medium of the word. Only then can
speech be instrumental in leading the “I” of the child down from the supersensory
world to the sensory world; only then can speech release from the
sensory world the super-sensory forces which the child needs to unite soul
and spirit with the physical body.
The adult has the chance to place herself in the service of the creative
phenomenon of speech and she must constantly remind herself: although
it is I who speaks, and without me the words would have no effect,
still the power of the word does not come from me. Speech has made me
human and I pass it on to the child who wants to become human.