Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Writing
97
of eurythmy, and getting them to experience the form from out of
their own bodily movements. Then what the child runs is retained
as the form of the letter. And it is possible to do it in yet a third and
a fourth manner. You will find the same subject taught in the most
varied ways in the different parallel classes. Why? Well, because it
is not a matter of indifference whether the teacher who has to take
a lesson has one temperament or another. The lesson can only be
harmonious when there is the right contact between the teacher and
the whole class. Hence every teacher must give his lesson in his own
way. And just as life appears in manifold variety so can a teaching
founded in life take the most varied forms.
Usually, when pedagogic principles are laid down it is expected
that they shall be carried out. They are written down in a book. The
good teacher is he who carries them out punctiliously, 1, 2, 3, etc.
Now I am convinced that if a dozen men, or even fewer, sit down
together they can produce the most wonderful program for what
should take place in education; firstly, secondly, thirdly, etc. People
are so wonderfully intelligent nowadays; I am not being sarcastic,
I really mean it, one can think out the most splendid things in the
abstract. But whether it is possible to put into practice what one has
thought out is quite another matter. That is a concern of life. And
when we have to deal with life, I ask you now, life is in all of you,
natural life, you are all human beings, yet you all look different.
No one man’s hair is like another’s. Life displays its variety in the
manifold varieties of form. Each man has a different face. If you lay
down abstract principles, you expect to find the same thing done
in every classroom. If your principles are taken from life, you know
that life is various, and that the same thing can be done in the most
varied ways. … When the art of education is held as a living art, all
pedantry and also every kind of formalism must be avoided. And
education will be true when it is really made into an art, and when
the teacher is made into an artist. It is thus possible for us in the
Waldorf School to teach writing by means of art. Then reading can
be learned afterwards almost as a matter of course, without effort. It
comes rather later than is customary, but it comes almost of itself.
[ Spiritual Ground of Education, pp. 61-65.]