Our Rightful Place as Educators

52 Weeks of Steiner – Week 11  (This is part of a weekly serial started on Michaelmas 2023. To see the other entries, please see the post linked HERE and scroll down to the bottom for individual links)

Our rightful place as educators is to be removers of hindrances.“

Rudolf Steiner
Spiritual Ground of Education, Lecture Four
August 19 1922

Short and sweet. Obviously there is more to the quote, and this whole lecture as a whole is a beautifully eye opening experience to anyone working with children. The lecture was titled Body Viewed from the Spirit, and this opening paragraph sums up the question that, as teachers, we should be carrying.

It might perhaps appear as if the art of education described in these lectures would lead away from practical life into some remote, purely spiritual region: as though this art of education laid too much stress on the purely spiritual domain. From what I have said so far in describing the spiritual foundation of the education, this might appear to be the case. But this is only in appearance. For in reality the art of education which arises from this philosophy has the most practical objects in view. Thus it should be realised that the main object of speaking of spiritual facts here is to answer the educational question: how can we best develop the physical organism in childhood and youth?”

How can we best develop the physical organism in childhood and youth?

Firstly, by understanding the phases, not just of childhood development, but human development as a whole. In the greater picture of human development the first 21 years are a focus on building the body (the next 21 are on building soul and the last 21 and beyond are on building spirit). So while we focus on willing in the first seven, feeling in the second seven and thinking in the last seven years of childhood, it is all with the aim of building up the physical body so that as adults, our children will be able to focus on soul and spirit and will not need to continue to work on completing the development of the body. 

There has been much modern research on how children need to build their physical bodies to be successful in later years. It just took mainstream science a while to catch up to Steiner’s “innovation”.

So, if our rightful place as educators is to remove hinderances, how is that accomplished?

In a Waldorf school, who the teachers are is far more important than any technical ability they may have acquired intellectually. It is important that teachers not only love the children, but also love the whole procedure they use. It is not enough for teachers to love the children; they must also love teaching, and love it with objectivity. This constitutes the spiritual foundation of spiritual, moral, and physical education. If we can acquire this love for teaching, we will be able to develop children up to the age of puberty so that, when that time arrives, we will be able to hand them over to the freedom and the use of their own intelligence.”

As home educators, I think we are primed for loving our children, ha. So, check that off the list.

Do we love teaching too? Do we love the whole procedure of teaching?

Do we love teaching with an eye of objectivity?

I see many of us, myself included, sometimes get teaching muddled with our own preconceived notions and judgements and we become stressed and full of self doubt and doubt about the curriculum and methods used. We teach not from a place of clarity in what is needed, but from a place filled with emotion and bias. Often it starts because we see something in our child that stirs up emotion within us, and we start to enter into this astral storm of worry and fear, which often leads to searching for fixes and answers. It can make teaching stressful, joyless and mechanical. It can take the love from teaching, and cloud our objectivity. 

That is not to say that when we see something that needs attention we just continue on in our merry way and hope it will all work out. That is also not teaching from a place of love and objectivity. 

This philosophy of education must be viewed as a big picture and not as the parts that lead to the completion. This is where loving the whole procedure comes in. It is hard to not get caught up in the details, but we must step back and look at the bigger picture to fully understand the moment where we stand. We must be able to meet needs through all circumstance and not lose sight of the big picture.

So what’s a homeschool parent to do? How do we balance removing hinderances, a love of teaching, and an objective eye when we are SO closely connected to the children we are teaching?

If you were walking in the woods and came to a HUGE rock wedged between two tress that blocked your path, leaving no room on either side to pass, what would you do? Would you sit down in despair, throw your hands up and say the entire forest is ill equipped to meet your walking needs? Would you feel that you were ill equipped to ever choose a hiking path again? Would you plan on never coming on this trail ever again because it just doesn’t work? Probably not. (I mean, depending on your temperament, you might, HA). 

Most likely, you would spend some time to look at it from all angles and see if you could move the rock out of the way. If that didn’t work, maybe you’d try walking back a bit to see if there was an alternate path that would work around this section. It might be longer, or it might prove to be shorter, who knows. If there is no path and you can’t move it on your own, you would find someone to help move the rock. Eventually, through your own will or the meeting of minds, that rock will not be an issue any more and you can continue on the path.

Do you see where I’m going here?

When we find a hinderance, the first thing you do is you look at what you know. Look at the phases of childhood. If the overarching development of childhood is physical, we can ask the question what physical hinderance could this be stemming from? A good place to start is understanding the twelve senses, another place to look is retained reflexes and body dominance. The more we know, the better we are able to address questions and meet needs.

Once we have some preliminary information, then we can make a decision. Do we go back and re-address a need that was missed? Do we find a new way of teaching the same concept? Or do we seek out someone who can help you build a plan to address needs. That might still mean going back to choose a different path, but with the companionship of support by your side.

What ever way we choose to meet the hinderance, we can choose for the journey to be one of expansion, of solving a riddle, as opposed to one driven by fear and our own self doubt. Through all of this, we can hold the child with the same love and see the child through the same eyes as we did before we saw the hinderance. Children feel when our spirit and soul has shifted to a place of concern and it will be reflected in their behaviour.

Solving the riddle is part of the procedure of teaching. While we would all like our experiences to be full of sunshine and roses, it is not realistic to think there will be no riddles to solve. And so we meet them with the same love and energy that we meet those days that roll through our lives so beautifully and calmly. It is our job as educators to remove hinderances, and that means it is our job to love that part of the teaching process as well.

I’m going to close this post with this quote. A lovely reminder from Steiner:

We must make sure we do not try to turn out children who are copies of ourselves, and that we do not forcibly and tyrannically impose ourselves on those who will naturally develop beyond us. Each child in every age brings something new into the world from divine regions, and it is our task as educators to remove the bodily and soul obstacles, so that the child’s spirit may enter with full freedom into life.”