Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Language Arts Curriculum 1–8
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speaking, we make a special point of not allowing any mistakes in
the use of the subjunctive, so that they assimilate a strong feeling for
this inner dimension of the language. A child is supposed to say, “I
am taking care that my little sister learn (subjunctive) how to walk,”
and not, “I am taking care that my little sister learns to walk.” [These
distinctions are not as readily detected in current English. In Steiner’s
example, the difference is between lerne and lernt; the first is perhaps
closest to the process of learning (not yet fact), the second to having
learned (fact). Trans.]
We now make the transition from personal letters to simple,
concrete business compositions dealing with things the children have
already learned about elsewhere. Even as early as the third grade we
can extend what we say about the meadows and woods and so on to
business relationships, so that later on the subject matter is already
available for composing simple business letters.
In the seventh grade, we will again have to continue with what we
did in the sixth grade, but now we also attempt to have the children
develop an appropriate and flexible grasp of how to express wishing,
astonishment, admiration, and so on in how they speak. We try to
teach the children to form sentences in accordance with the inner
configuration of these feelings. However, we do not need to mutilate
poems or anything else in order to demonstrate how someone
or other structured a sentence to express wishing. We approach it
directly by having the children themselves express wishes and shape
their sentences accordingly. We then have them express admiration
and form the sentences accordingly, or help them to construct the
sentences. To further educate their ability to see the inner flexibility of
language, we then compare their wishing sentences to their admiring
ones. What has been presented in science will already have enabled
the children to compose simple characterizations of the wolf, the lion,
or the bee, let’s say. At this stage, alongside such exercises, which are
directed more toward the universally human element in education,
we must especially foster the children’s ability to formulate practical
matters of business. The teacher must be concerned with finding out
about practical business matters and getting them into the student’s
heads in some sensible fashion.