Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Language
47
an authority speaks. A conformity to the authority’s musical element
is, whether we want to believe that it is right or wrong, simply there
because of the nature of the child. If you have a talent for observing
such things, you will quickly notice how the musical element of the
child’s language conforms to that of the person educating the child.
A one-sided development of the musical element in language
destroys language’s sculptural element. When people only follow the
musical element, they are forced more and more to make language an
inner experience, to follow their feelings in a certain way by recreating
the tone, the intonation, and particularly the nuances of the vowels
to conform to those of the people whom they perceive as authorities.
This is most certainly true when a child enters elementary school.
It is less true for a child in that age between birth and elementary
school, when he or she first learns language. During that time, the
child is an imitator and develops language out of the entirety of human
nature and with a continuous adjustment of the remainder of
the human organism to the environment. At that point much enters
into speaking which guides language into a more sculptural form.
However, because human beings are imitators and imitate right into
the innermost activities of their nature, the sculptural element also
forms during this time in an inner way. Here we can see one major
difference in language development. From birth until the change of
teeth, children develop their language sculpturally. If a child has the
good fortune to be able to adjust to a dialect during that period of
life, one that is more inwardly connected to the human being than
standard language, then the child is, in regard to willing and authority
aspects of language development, more intimately connected to
language than it is with standard language.
Upon entering elementary school, the musical element then
replaces the sculptural element, as I mentioned before, and the inner
feelings have an effect. However, since the musical element as such
counteracts the sculptural element, it is necessary for us to appropriately
use in teaching elementary school what the children bring
with them, what they have developed in language through their own
forces until the age of six or seven.