Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

20
Benchmarks: Transition from Middle School
to High School
by
Carol Bärtges
Too often when we high school teachers think about the middle
school, we start with the wrong question. We focus on all that we perceive
has not been done, because we may think that students have not been wellprepared:
some students can’t spell, they can’t make head or tail of Moby
Dick, they can’t write clear essays. We may perceive an insufficient level of
ability in reading, writing, speaking. And so, we high school teachers often
ask impatiently, “What have they been doing in the middle grades?”
But if we start like that, with that tone of voice, we are doomed to
failure, for the real question is, “What have they been doing in the middle
school?” Same question, but notice what happens when one asks this question
with interest, not censure. What is the curriculum that we inherit
through the students who stand before us? Our disposition must be one of
curiosity and reverence, for the curriculum of the lower grades is a golden
seed, planted with care and thought, given all the right conditions for germination.
If we think of the three areas of the school as being governed by
the forces of the Holy Trinity, a metaphor familiar to many of us in Waldorf
circles, we remember that the lower grades are led by the image of God the
Father, the divine authority. The middle grades work with the image of
Christ as a being of compassion and love. But in high school, the reigning
principle of authority is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The inspiration
that a high school teacher can instill acts as an agent of divine warmth that
brings those golden seeds of the middle school years to light.
Too often in the high school we think that the job of educating the
feeling life is over. As academics, we can become over-eager to rush to concept.
Of course, we do arrive at concept and judgment in the high school,
but this is the result of a transition that is elegantly embodied in the high
school curriculum of grades 9 to 12. Teachers in the high school must continue
to work with the feeling life that has been developed in the lower
grades so that it is not lost, for it is the foundation of concept building in
the upper grades. Rudolf Steiner reminds us of this when he says: “The
whole of the processes which eventually lead to memory take place in the
same region of the soul in which the life of feeling is present. The life of
feeling with its joys and pains, its pleasures and discomforts, its tensions
and relaxations, is the bearer of what is permanent in the conceptual life.”
We can imagine the curriculum throughout all twelve years as a
spiral of red and blue moving side by side. The red is the path from kindergarten
to the 8th grade, from the cosmos to the world of matter. This form
reminds us how aware we must remain that the child begins in spiritual