Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

22
Thus the center of the red spiral represents both the curriculum
which begins in the world of no time and ends in present day, as well as the
incarnating forces of the child which bring him to greatest contact with the
density of his own body at the age of 14.
The high school experience can be represented by the blue spiral,
which takes off from the red and now moves outward from the center. The
direction of the high school student is back out into the world, not back to
the outer spaces of the cosmos from whence the child is born, but out into
the world of men. The blue spiral shows how closely related is the 9 th grade
curriculum to the 8 th grade in content, and how much 9 th grade seems to
mirror the 8 th grade year. This is intentional, but 9 th grade work cannot be a
mere review or we will have students who grow disenchanted and resentful.
Thus, in 9 th grade, modern history is taught again, as it was in 8 th ,
but it will now have greater consciousness of cause and effect – a bird’s eye
view of historical events rather than the elementary school close up of, say,
the soldier’s life or the president’s biography. Physiology is taught again in
both 9 th and 10 th grades, but now the topic delves even more specifically
into the formation, not just the structure of the bones. A survey of the
invisible begins with the study of internal organs. Students have a second
year of black and white drawing, but now with more attention to theme
and point of view. We return to ancient history in the 10 th grade but with a
sense of how the various cultures of the ancient world compare and contrast,
with a sense of how they influenced one another. As in 7 th grade,
medieval and Renaissance history is taught in 11 th grade with a new emphasis
on the birth of individuality. The 12 th grade year returns to contemporary
ideas and modern history and seems to once again reflect on aspects of
the 8 th grade curriculum. Having reached the middle of the red spiral at age
14, students in the high school conclude their journey by having spiralled
back out into the world, now armed with insight and judgment gleaned
from their own struggles and experience.
The consciousness of what was brought in the middle school, and
how the curriculum was brought in all its appeal to the feeling and imaginative
life of the students should never be far from the minds of high school
teachers. Our training of the intellect in the high school years must continue
to be artistic as well as intellectual if we are to enable the young person
to rise out of physicality and find the necessary capacities for judgment
with which to meet and evaluate the greater world. As mentioned before,
Steiner tells us that judgment is not connected with the head but rather
with the middle organism, particularly the arms and hands. Judgment has a
direct relationship to feeling. It is, as Steiner says, “borne out of the powers
of the imagination.” Therefore, the high school teacher must always strive
to present living images and ideas that allow for growth. Only through
imagination are we allowed to grasp the invisible laws that connect and
govern unlike things. Imagination allows the students to see that the macrocosm
is infinitely repeated in the microcosm of their own individual experience.