Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

What are the Essentials in
English Main Lessons?
by
Betty Staley
First, I don’t think there are essentials that form a canon in literature
for Waldorf high school English classes. There are certain suggestions
that Rudolf Steiner made, and there are firmly held traditions. This colloquium
offers us an opportunity to examine the traditions and the assumptions.
I will share what I think are important books to teach and why. What
is most important is for us to know why we are teaching a particular book
or theme and how we can relate it to adolescent development.
Second, I don’t think we should consider only main lessons, but
look at the whole field of literature whether we are teaching main lessons or
ongoing track or subject lessons.
I was very moved years ago when I had the opportunity to attend
a talk by the author Elie Wiesel. He spoke about the process of writing,
characterizing each word hovering around his head, calling out plaintively,
“Use me. Use me.” As he made the decision not to use certain words, he
experienced this as a death of these word-beings. Later, when he was going
through the editing process and was eliminating more words, the pleas became
even more intense. Wiesel’s image challenges us to consider when we
are speaking about words that we may be dealing with something more
profound than what appears on the surface.
Last week I had the occasion to visit a Waldorf high school history
lesson on the Middle Ages. It became clear from the questions the
students asked that they had not studied the Old or New Testament and
had little idea of the content of Judaism or Christianity. They had not had
the opportunity to experience the beauty of the psalms or of the Sermon on
the Mount. They expressed negativity towards Christianity and a kind of
naïve approval of Islam which came out of comparing the horrific aspects
of historical Christianity with the beautiful words in the Koran. Had they
studied the essence of Christianity with the essence of Islam, they would
have been able to appreciate and evaluate both religions more effectively.
They may have arrived at the same conclusion of which they preferred, but
their experience would have been different.
I realized during that observation that I was feeling pain that
these students had not had those previous experiences in their literature
background before studying the Middle Ages. Aside from the fact that the
teacher kept getting pulled away from her focus on history to explain aspects
of the religions, the students were gaining simplistic statements in the
teacher’s attempt to answer the questions and try to regain her focus.
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