Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Writing
113
the child’s whole being. Then you can move on to teaching reading;
and what was developed out of the child’s whole being through
drawing can be understood by the head. This method of teaching
writing and reading will naturally take longer, but it will have a far
healthier effect on the whole earthly life from birth to death. These
things can be done when the practical work of the school flows out
of a real spiritual knowledge of the human being. Such knowledge
can, through its own inner force, become the teaching method in
our schools. The desires of those who earnestly seek a new art of
education live in this; but its essence can be truly found only when
we are unafraid to look for a full knowledge of the human being in
body, soul, and spirit. [Roots of Education, pp. 50-54.]
10. From Human Values in Education
When we are quite clear about this we shall, out of the whole nexus
of our studies, come to see how we can find the right approach to
an instruction which is truly educational, an education which really
instructs. Let us take an example. How must the child learn to read
and write? There is actually a great deal more misery connected with
this than one usually imagines, though human intellectualism is far
too crude to perceive it. One recognizes that learning to read and write
is a necessity, so it follows that the child must at all costs be drilled
into learning reading and writing. But just consider what this means
for a child! When they are grown-up, people have no inclination to
put themselves in the child’s place, to imagine what he undergoes
when he learns to read and write. In our civilization today we have
letters, a, b, c and so on; they are there before us in certain definite
forms. Now the: child has the sound a (ah, as in father). When does
he use it? This sound is for him the expression of an inner soul experience.
He uses this sound when he is faced with something which
calls up in him a feeling of wonder, of astonishment. This sound he
understands. It is bound up with human nature. Or he has the sound
e (eh, as in they). When does he use this? He uses it when he wants
to show he has the feeling: “Something has come up against me; I
have experienced something which encroaches on my own nature.” If
somebody gives, me a blow, I say e (eh). [In English we tend to prefix