Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

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Language Arts Compendium
we must rid ourselves of the sense-perceptible content, and in its
place experience what eludes us in music—the theme whose real
form we can experience in sleep—only then can we consider the
human being as a whole. Only then do we become genuinely aware
of what it means to teach language to children in such a living way
that the child perceives a trace of melody in a sentence. This means
we do not simply speak in a dry way, but instead in a way that gives
the full tone, that presents the inner melody and subsides through
the rhythmic element.
Around 1850 European people lost that deeper feeling for
rhythm. Before that, there was still a certain relationship to what
I just described. If you look at some treatises that appeared around
that time about music or about the musical themes from Beethoven
and others, then you will see how at about that time those who were
referred to as authorities in music often cut up and destroyed in the
most unimaginable ways what lived in music. You will see how that
period represents the low point of experiencing rhythm.
As educators, we need to be aware of that, because we need to
guide sentences themselves back to rhythm in the school. If we keep
that in mind, over a longer period of time we will begin to recognize
the artistic element of teaching. We would not allow the artistic element
to disappear so quickly if we were required to bring it more
into the content.
[The Renewal of Education, pp. 189–192.]
8. Grammar as a Synthesis of the Drawing and Musical Elements
As I mentioned yesterday, we should also take such things into account
when teaching music. We must not allow artificial methods to
enter into the school where, for instance, the consciousness is mistreated
by such means as artificial breathing. The children should learn
to breathe through grasping the melody. The children should learn
to follow the melody through hearing and then adjust themselves to
it. That should be an unconscious process. It must occur as a matter
of course. As I mentioned, we should have the music teachers hold
off on such things until the children are older, when they will be less
influenced by them. Children should be taught about the melodic