Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

ealms and falls ever more deeply into his or her body. As each school year
goes by, we teachers can observe how the child is conditioned more and
more by the heaviness of the skeleton. The center point of the red spiral can
be thought of as representing the age of 14 when the young person is at the
point of greatest density, happily and eagerly immersed in matter, in the
contemporary world, in the here and now. We can think of this as the 8 th
grader, and see in this inmost resting place of the red spiral, the culmination
of the first eight years of school life.
The stories told in the early grades connect the child to eternal
truths that exist outside us and lead him/her gradually into the world of
causality. In the early grades these include the fairy tales in 1 st grade, legends
and fables in 2 nd grade, and Old Testament stories in 3 rd grade. With
the Norse myths in 4 th grade come pictures of deceit and disappointment;
these include the death of Baldur, the most perfect of the Norse gods, through
Loki’s treachery. This is a change in consciousness from the secure world of
right and wrong that the child has known through the curriculum up to
this point. And the change matches changes in the child’s own psyche and
soul. Baldur is killed by Loki because Loki is a character who wishes to
assert his own authority, his own individuality. As we are reminded so
vividly in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, we humans often act in
our own worst self-interest, precisely because we strive to establish our freedom
and independence. The 9 year-old is experiencing this need as well as
a new consciousness of life’s sadnesses and disappointments. The story of
Baldur is a confirmation of what the child already knows unconsciously in
his inner life.
The 5 th grade curriculum is still located in the mythical world, but
real time does come into the experience of the year with the advent of
Greek history. In the 6 th grade, the true beginning of cause and effect thinking
is clearly evident in the Roman world, in the images of human initiative
and will that we find in the stories of the heroes and leaders of the Roman
Empire. With the 7 th grade focus on the Renaissance there is again a birth
of a new consciousness. The previous importance of medieval forms, as
represented in the triptych of the monastery, castle, and town, gives way to
the rise of the middle class in which individuals emerge who are no longer
content to be defined by forms of feudalism. In 8 th grade, the students
study the age of exploration and experience the discoveries and colonizations
as their own direct desire to know the world. The teacher must be
sensitive to the exploitation and suffering that accompanied such historical
activity and convey it in appropriate ways as a parable for modern times. In
studying world geography, the Industrial Revolution, North American history,
8 th graders are brought directly to the contemporary world; they are at
the center of the spiral, living deeply into their emerging adult bodies, living
fully in the matter of the modern world, the age of technology. Is it any
wonder that they are most intrigued and captivated by the computer at this
age? Now, the 8 th grader is ready to leave the class teacher and eager to begin
a new adventure in the next four years of high school.
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