The Education of Children from the Standpoint of Theosophy

by Rudolf Steiner

As the muscles of the hand grow strong and powerful when they do work suitable for them, so the brain and the other organs of the physical human body will be directed towards the right path, if they receive the right impressions from their environment. An example will best illustrate the point in question. A doll can be made out of an old piece of cloth, by making two corners serve for arms, two for legs and a knot for the head, with the eyes, nose and mouth painted in ink—or a so-called “beautiful” doll can be bought with real hair and painted cheeks, and given to the child. The latter, it is hardly necessary to say, is really horrible, and is calculated to ruin the child’s sound aesthetic taste for life. Here the question of education is quite a different one. If the child has the rag-doll to look at, it has to complete out of its own imagination the impression of a human being which the doll is intended to convey. This work of the imagination helps to build up the forms of the brain, so that it opens up as the muscles of the hand expand by doing their natural work. When the child possesses the so-called “beautiful doll,” there is nothing further for the brain to do. It becomes, as it were, stunted and dried up, instead of expanding itself. If people could look into the brain after the manner of the occultist and see it building itself up into forms, they would certainly only give their children that kind of plaything which is really able to stimulate the creative powers of the brain. All toys that are only composed of dead mathematical forms have a desolating and deadening effect on the child’s formative powers, whilst on the other hand everything that stimulates the perception of something living tends to influence in the right direction. Our materialistic age produces but few good toys—such for instance as that in which two movable pieces of wood are made to represent two smiths facing one another and hammering at some object. Such things may still be bought in the country. Very good also are those picture books in which the figures are made to be pulled by strings, thus enabling the child to transform the dead picture into a representation of action. All this produces an inner activity of the organs, and out of this activity the right form of the organs builds itself up.

Of course these things can only just be indicated here, but in the future occult science will be called upon to point out that which in each particular case is necessary, and this it is able to do. For it is not an empty abstraction, but a body of vital facts quite able to furnish the guiding-lines for practical matters.

One or two further examples will serve as illustrations. According to occult science a so-called nervous excitable child should be treated differently from a lethargic and inactive one, with regard to its surroundings. Everything must be taken into consideration, from the color of the room and the various objects by which the child is generally surrounded, to the color of the clothes in which it is dressed. One may often do the wrong thing, unless willing to be guided by occult science, for a materialistic tendency will in many cases hit on just the opposite of what is right. An excitable child should be clothed and surrounded with red or reddish-yellow colors, whilst for the opposite type of child, blue or bluish-green should be selected. For, in accordance with the color used outwardly is the complementary color produced inwardly. Thus, for instance, green is produced by red; orange-yellow by blue, and of this one may easily be convinced by looking for a time on a spot of a particular color and then quickly directing the eyes to a white surface. This complementary color is produced by the physical organs of the child, and in turn reacts upon the corresponding organic structures necessary to the child. Red in the environment of an excitable child produces inwardly the green complementary picture. The activity thus produced by the sensation of green has a calming effect and the organs take upon themselves the tendency to composure.

One rule must invariably be taken into consideration at this period of life—that the physical body has to create for itself the standard of what is suitable to it. It does this through the corresponding development of desire. Generally speaking it may be said that the healthy physical body desires only what is good for it. And as long as it is a question only of the physical body of the growing child, one ought to notice carefully what it is that is sought by the healthy desires, cravings and pleasures. Joy and pleasure are the powers which draw out the physical forms of the organs, in the best way.

A very great error may be committed in this direction by not placing the child in the suitable physical conditions with regard to its environment. This can especially be the case with regard to the instinct of nourishment. The child can be overfed with things that make him completely lose healthy instincts of nourishment, whilst through correct feeding they can be preserved for him so fully, that he will ask (even to a glass of water) for that which under given circumstances is good for him, and will refuse anything that may be harmful. When occult science is called upon to construct a system of education, it will be able to specify, even to the particular articles of nourishment and table luxuries, all that has here to be considered. For it is a practical teaching, applicable to life, and no mere colorless theory—as indeed one might suppose, from the mistakes of many Theosophists of today.

Among the forces therefore which affect the physical organs by moulding them, must be included an element of joy with and amid the surroundings. Let the guardian be cheerful of countenance, and above all things let there be true and not artificial love—a love that flowing warmly through the physical environment, as it were, incubates, in the true sense of the word, the forms of the physical organs.

When within such an atmosphere of love, the imitation of healthy models is possible, the child is in his right element. Special attention should therefore be given that nothing may happen in the child’s environment that he should not imitate. Nothing should be done that would necessitate saying to the child “You must not do that.” Of the way in which the child tries to imitate, one may be convinced by observing how it can copy written letters long before it can understand them. It is indeed an advisable thing for the child to copy the written characters first, and then later to learn their meaning. For imitation belongs to the developing stage of the physical body, whilst the mind responds to the etheric body, and this latter ought only to be influenced after the time of the second teeth, when its outer etheric covering is gone. Especially should the learning of speech by means of imitation take place in these years. For by hearing the child best learns to speak. All rules and artificial teaching can do no good at all.

In the early years of childhood it is especially important that such means of education as, for instance, songs for children should make as beautiful a rhythmic impression on the senses as possible. The importance lies in the beautiful sound rather than in the sense. The more invigorating the effect which anything can have upon the eye and ear, the better it is. The power of building up the organs which lies in dancing movements when put to a musical rhythm, for example, must not be under-estimated.

With the change of teeth the etheric body throws off its outer covering, and then the time begins in which the training of the etheric body may be carried on from without. One must be clear as to what it is that can influence the etheric body in this way. The transformation and growth of the etheric body signify, respectively, the transformation and development of the affections, the habits, conscience, character, memory and temperament. One is able to influence the etheric body by pictures, by example, by regulated guidance of the imagination. Just as the child, until it has reached the age of seven, ought to be given a physical model which it can imitate, so too, in the environment of the developing child, between the period of the second teeth and that of puberty, everything should be brought into play that possesses an inner sense and value upon which the child may direct his attention. All that conduces to thought, all that works through image and parable, has now its rightful place.

The etheric body develops its power when a well regulated imagination is directed upon that which it can unravel or extract for its guidance from living images and parables, or from such as are addressed to the spirit. It is concrete and not abstract ideas that can rightly influence the growing body—ideas that are spiritually rather than materially concrete. A spiritual standpoint is the right means of education during these years. It is therefore of paramount importance that the youth at this period has around him in his guardians themselves personalities through whose points of view the desirable intellectual and moral powers may be awakened in him.