Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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and bring their free thinking to it. But we as teachers need to train their
thinking by making them work at it, by thinking about thinking.
We can find plenty of examples to chew on. Edith Hamilton, for
one, in her descriptions of ancient Greece and Rome reveals herself as a
Darwinist. Her introductions can be looked at in a 10 th grade mythology
block: “when man climbed out of the slime . . .” she writes. Or, “ When
ancient people hear a bush moving, they make up a story to explain it.”
When students begin to become aware of this bias, they are astounded
by the assumption that a writer like Hamilton makes without even being
seemingly aware that she has assumptions. In encountering statements like
these, we can challenge students to think about thinking. If Hamilton has
this assumption, what is her relation to mythology?
When students actually read the primary sources, the original myths,
they become more acutely aware of how assumptions shape interpretation,
so that a writer can now say “Ancient myths are just stories”, or “the Delphic
oracles spoke in “meaningless jabber.”
When they become aware of the evolution of consciousness, they
become alert to the inaccuracy in thinking that ancient peoples were “dumb”
when they developed myths to explain natural events.
In a mythology block, the teacher can talk freely about many ideas.
We are not a religious school, nor do we teach the modern religion of materialism.
Materialism is of no use to us because it is only a step along a continuing
path of movement. We do not want our students to be stuck at any
point in an evolving consciousness.
Much of my English curriculum is about the evolution of human
interaction with nature, about the relationship between obedient husbandry
and exploiter. The legend of the Garden of Eden took humans from Paradise
to living by the sweat of the brow. The myths of Zarathrustra, Eleusis,
and Prometheus show the development of a relationship with the earth.
Here, again, students can understand how assumption colors interpretation.
In the myth of Zarathustra and the king and the grain of wheat,
for example, they can see that agriculture did not arise from experimentation,
as is generally taught; it came from a teacher. Tenth graders all notice
that in myths teachers go away to and come back from somewhere. The
priests did not need to teach awe of the gods; people were already living in
that. Priests taught how to live practically in the physical world. So priests
were like engineers and scientists.
Mythology is full of possibilities for questioning. What about
Humbaba in Gilgamesh? Why did he have to die? What is the connection
between consciousness and death? What does it mean when Prometheus
steals fire from Olympus? Fire meant freedom, but it also signals the fall of
participation, because fire frees you from unity with nature. Fire brings the
light into night. Many myths point to change as losing something as we gain
something. We no longer participate in darkness; we sit around the fire, and
we tell stories. The outer something has transformed into an inner something
in relation to nature. In the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, and the