Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Writing
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derstands the physical body through pure observation and intellect,
the etheric body through shaping activity, the astral body through
the concept of music, and the I-being through insight into the true
nature of speech, what practical application does this have?
Certainly, if we must describe education and instruction as a
whole—as we have for Waldorf methods in these lectures— then we
would have to say that the most important aspect of a teacher’s perspective
on life and the world is not what we generally understand as
a “worldview”—that would be completely theoretical. Instead, it is an
aspect that, as a soul force, can enter the whole activity of the human
being. Any teacher who tries to acquire the principles of education
from today’s recognized knowledge of the human being would have
to look elsewhere for the necessary inspiration. Hence the continual
references to educational ideals that, however convincing they appear,
always remain ineffective, because they are rooted in abstractions.
Nevertheless, true insight that penetrates the nature of the world
and the human being will, by its very nature, kindle inspiration in
the human heart. While practicing their profession, teachers can
always draw inspiration from the feeling of their relationship to the
world and to their own being—like artists, whose work seems to live
in their very marrow. The artist doesn’t need to go anywhere else for
inspiration—it comes from the thing itself. Similarly, the inspiration
found by teachers in their world-view, experienced internally
and constantly renewed, is carried into the soul constitution of the
children entrusted to them. Such inspiration lives in everything the
teacher does at school.
Those who have insight into the human being have the ability to
perceive that a musical element flows into harmony with the formative
processes in the inner being of the child during the elementary
years, between the change of teeth and puberty. Such a person will
never be likely to stray from the right way of teaching, writing, and
reading to children. They have a living understanding that writing—
particularly as described here—mobilizes the whole being; it uses the
arms and hands and permeates them with spirit that exercises the
whole person. These are the very aspects of the human being that
will be perceived in a living way if we begin with a view of the world