Proceedings Colloquium on World History - Waldorf Research Institute

A Conversation on the Teacher’s Role
Concerning Contemporary Issues
Contemporary events come up at the beginning of discussions, and I think it is very helpful for the
students to be aware of what is going on in the world. In terms of content I take for my 20 th century course
the background of the Nazis and the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler and then the Civil Rights movement. I
do it always with the following theme — what are you going to do when something like this meets you?
Will you recognize it and how are you going to act? I’m not interested in answering the question, I am
interested in putting the question really strongly.
How would you answer it for yourself? How do you know which event is the event you must face
or all hell is going to break loose? How do you know? You don’t know. That is the situation. Nobody can
tell you from the outside – you will only discover it on the inside – that is our age – there is no answer out
there that is true anymore. The answer is the one that you work HARD – it may be that you work hard for
one moment in your life.
I don’t tell the story of Owen Meany (A Prayer for Owen Meany) by John Irving, but I love it
because it depicts an artistic representation of an entire life preparing for one moment. Each of us can
probably relate a point at which we did step out and do something. Then there is always this situation that
when you get busy and you have mortgages to pay, it is a different situation to risk and make decisions to go
into protest or get yourself thrown in jail. This decision changes as you get more and more established.
That is a real question because you know there was one of the men in the White Rose, the German
resistance group against the Nazis in Munich He was a soldier in a medical battalion and he was sent to
Russia. What did it mean when he took his water can and walked across the train station to the group of
Jewish refugees, directly defying an order not to give aid, and he shared it with them. The officers could see
him doing it, all his comrades could see him doing it, and then he walked back. Nothing happened. Those
kinds of moments can be so key in the larger scheme.
There is a wonderful quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant Minister who died resisting the
Nazis. The one attributed to Bonhoeffer is “When the Nazis came and arrested all of the Jewish Rabbis we
said nothing. When they came to arrest all of the Roman Catholic priests, we said nothing. When they
came to arrest all of us { Protestant clergy}, there was no one left to say anything.” (Note: It is not completely
clear whether Bonhoeffer or Martin Niemoller said this. There are two similar quotes, sometimes
attributed to one or the other, both of whom were Protestant clergy active in the Resistance. Bonheoffer
was hanged, Niemoller survived the war and traveled to countries speaking the following words: “First,
they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the
trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak
for me.” )
You can have great discussions with students about these quotations. You can also look at it from
another perspective. What are you going to do when your children come to you and say “Why didn’t you
say something?” What will you do? Whatever issue it is that you feel strongly about, abortion or whatever,
what did you do? Your children may ask, “Did you think it was wrong?” “Yah I did. “ “ . . . but what did
you do?” How far will you go when you feel strongly about something? How much will you inconvenience
yourself? Would it be embarrassing to stand outside with a placard because people might recognize
you? What if it affects your job? What if it affects your relationship? What will people think about you
and where will you go with that?
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