Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Grammar and Spelling
301
then, affects the students. The instruction in grammar is shocking,
literally. It is purely superficial, so that it is one of the worst things
done at school. All the stuff in the grammar books should actually
be destroyed in a big bonfire. Life needs to come into it. Then, the
problem is that the students do not get a feeling for what the present
or past tense is when they really should have a lively feeling for
them. The genius of language must live in the teacher. That is also
true for teaching German. You torture the children with so much
terminology. Do not be angry with me, but it is really so. If you used
mathematical terminology the same way you do grammatical terminology,
you would soon see how horrible it is. All your horrible habits
do not allow you to see how terrible the grammar classes are. This is
caused by the culture that has used language to mistreat Europe for
such a terribly long time, it has used a language that was not livingly
integrated, namely, Latin. That is why we have such a superficial
connection to language. That is how things are. The little amount
of spirit that comes into grammar comes through Grimm, and that
is certainly something we need to admire. Nevertheless, it is only a
little spirit. As it is taught today, grammar is the most spiritless thing
there is, and that gives a certain color to teaching. I must say there
is much more to it than what we do. It is just horrible. We cannot
always have everything perfect, which is why I do not always want
to criticize and complain. You need a much better inner relationship
to language, and then your teaching of language will become better.
It is not always the children’s fault when they do not pay attention
in the language classes. Why should they be interested in what
an adverb is? That is just a barbaric word. Things only become better
when you continually bring in relationships, when you repeatedly
come back to the connections between words. If you simply make a
child memorize and yourself have no interest in what you had them
memorize, the children will no longer learn anything by heart. They
will do that only if you return to the subject again in a different connection
so that they see there is some sense in learning.
[Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner II, pp. 547-550.]