Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Reading
173
one or another student has to leave the Waldorf school for another
school during this time because of circumstance, one is usually told
that such students are behind in reading and writing. They may
be considered far ahead in artistic subjects, such as in drawing or
eurythmy, but these, so we are told, are not generally considered to
be very important.
[The Child’s Changing Consciousness and Waldorf Education, pp. 76, 148.]
7. 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 the
school subjects demanded by life and by the state than we do to the
developing human being. Common, everyday things, such as reading
and writing, lack the inner basis of, say, geometry and arithmetic.
The fact that we have the language we have is not fundamentally
connected with anything external or generic. The existence of written
letters doesn’t have much to do with relationships in the world,
whereas the existence of a triangle is based on the fact of its three sides,
and that the sum of its angles is 180 degrees. All conventions, such as
reading and writing, are primarily useful for developing the intellect
and, in particular, reasoning. For now, it would be too much to fully
explain that statement in a way acceptable to a genuine psychologist,
but those who consider life fully will certainly see the truth of that
statement. By comparison, everything that corresponds to general
relationships in the world or appeals to human memory—such as
history or geography—is more connected, oddly enough, with the
feeling forces. It forms feeling. Everything we teach young children
about art forms the will. We should teach individual subjects with
an eye on the developing human being and always remember that
we form thinking with one thing, feeling with another, and willing
with yet another thing. The important thing is the developing human
being, not any particular collection of knowledge.
When we use these principles, children learn something seldom
learned these days. They learn many things today, such as geography,
arithmetic, drawing, and so on, but I don’t want to speak about them.