Proceedings Colloquium on World History - Waldorf Research Institute

Introduction to Teaching History in a
Waldorf High School
Stewart Easton, formerly a teacher of college history and the author
of several history texts, wrote the foreword to Werner Glas’ pamphlet, The
Waldorf School Approach to History (Highland Hall Books, 1963).
“The grade school pupil is regarded, not as a receptacle for information
but as a young human being who can be awakened by history taught
through mythology and biography, which work upon his imagination. Only
in high school is the appeal made to his growing intellect, his understanding.
Thus when he has passed through all the grades he has acquired far
more than knowledge, pumped into him by a teacher and regurgitated at
regular intervals by means of examinations. . . . by means of the Main Lesson
technique they have saturated themselves for a brief period in the historical
epoch or civilization they have been studying, learning even the geography
of the country and how the people actually spent their lives. . . .
The facts and ideas, given in high school by a specialist teacher, superimposed
upon a residue from earlier days which might by then consist mainly
of a kind of imaginative feeling for the epoch or civilization, could not fail
to stimulate to thinking.” P. V.
From The Educational Tasks and Content of the Waldorf Steiner Curriculum:
“In Classes 5-8, history lessons have depicted the process of humanity
from a mythical, pre-historical cultural stage up to the development of a
material civilization and its religious, social, political and ecological consequences.
This has brought the pupils more and more practically into the
present time. This progress is now repeated and deepened at a new level, in
keeping with the developing capacities of the young people. The transition
in consciousness from Class 8 to Class 9 with respect to history has been
likened to the transition from the Middle Ages to Modern times. The analogy
is not to be taken literally but does characterize the shift in perspective,”
p. 159.
“The content and method of the lessons take account of the pupil’s
growing capacity to understand ideals as the moving forces in history and
their developing capacity to take in overall insights. Rather than giving them
finished images, it is now more a matter of appealing to their own capacities
to form judgments. The teacher becomes the helper in bringing to birth
knowledge that arises out of the young people’s own forces of personality.
History lessons should help them tread the path from passing judgments to
forming judgments, which is the equivalent of building up a new relationship
between their own individuality and the world,” (p. 159).
Historical Symptomatology as an approach to the teaching of history
was described by Rudolf Steiner as a way of gaining knowledge of phenomena.
A symptomatological approach to natural science was exemplified
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