Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

Working Hygienically with Reading
When we receive a child into our school, we are expected to teach and train the youngster. We
introduce all kinds of activities, such as writing, reading, and arithmetic, but really we are assaulting the
child’s nature. Suppose that we are to give reading lessons. If taught in the traditional way, they are certainly
one-sided, for we make no appeal to the child’s whole being. Essentially, we are actually cultivating a
malformation, even a predisposition toward illness. And, when teaching writing, we are cultivating a tendency
toward illness in another direction. In teaching young children, we are making assaults on them all of
the time, even if this is not always evident because the illness lies hidden and dormant. Nevertheless, we
have to make continual attacks upon the children. At our stage of civilization there is no other way. But we
must find ways and means of making amends for those continual assaults on our children’s health. We must
be clear that arithmetic represents a malformation, writing a second malformation, and reading a third
malformation, not to speak of history or geography! There is no end to it and it leads us into a real quandary.
To balance out those malformations, we must constantly provide what will make good the damage;
we must harmonize what has been disturbed in the child. It is most important to be aware of the fact that,
on one hand, we must teach children various subjects but that, on the other, we must ensure that, when we
do so, we are not hurting them. The right method in education therefore asks: How do I heal the child from
the attacks which I continually inflict? Awareness of this must be present in every right form of education.
How often have I emphasized that anthroposophical spiritual science addresses itself to the whole
human being! In anthroposophy, the whole human being enters into a relationship to what a specific
branch of spiritual science can contribute. If teachers are introduced to both healthy and sick development
of children in a living way, if they can harmonize those two aspects of child development, then their own
feeling life will at once be motivated. They will face each individual child with his or her specific gifts as a
whole human being. Even if teachers teach writing in an artistic way, they can still be guiding their children
in a one-sided way that comes very close to malformation. But, at the same time, they also stand there as
whole human beings, who have a rapport with their children’s whole beings and, in this capacity, as whole
human beings, they themselves can be the counter-force to such one-sidedness.
If, as a teacher who has a living relationship with everything that has to do with the human being,
I must lead the child in a one-sided way when I teach reading or writing, then I must go about it in such a
way that, precisely through leading the child into one-sidedness, I at the same time bring about an inner
harmonization of the child’s being. The teacher who always has to work toward the wholeness of all things
must stand there as a whole person, whatever subject is taught. There are two things that must always be
present in education. On one hand, the goal of each particular subject and, on the other, the 1,001 imponderables
which work intimately between one human being and another. If teachers are steeped in knowledge
of the human being and the world—and if their knowledge begins to live in them when they face their
children—we have a situation similar to that of the plant. As the entire formative force shoots into a single
organ in a plant, only to withdraw again in the right way and shoot into another organ, so the teacher holds
this totality, this unifying force, in his or her own being, while guiding the child from stage to stage.
Spiritual science can stimulate this way of guiding the child, for spiritual science is related to all branches of
outer, natural science in the same way as the soul is related to the human body. And, as, according to the old
saying, a healthy soul is to be found in a healthy body, so, too, in and through a healthy science of nature
there should be found a healthy science of the spirit, a healthy anthroposophy. “Knowledge of Health and
Illness” in Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy I ( 76-77, 86-87)
Reading as a Means of Developing the Intellect
We should always remember that, during that period of the child’s life, we should always consider
the child’s developing soul forces. During this time, we make many mistakes by giving more attention to
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