On Practicality

52 Weeks of Steiner – Week 13  (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)

We must take care in education not to drag everything learned by the children into sentimentality, especially in their thirteeth through fifteenth years, but rather lead what we teach them more toward the workings of practical life. No child ought to reach fifteen without having been guided in arithmetic lessons to an understanding of the rules of at least the simplest forms of bookkeeping. Similarly, the principles of grammar should lead not so much to the kind of essay depicting the human being’s inner life as though bathed in a soup of sentimentality but rather to business compositions, business letters. The former kind of essay, a glorified version of the spirit that reigns when people gather over their wine in the eveing or at coffee parties, is the kind of essay usually expected of thirteen to sixteen year olds. No child should pass beyond the age of fifteen without having gone through the stage of writing specimens of practical business letters. Do not say that the children can learn to do so later. Yes, by overcoming dreadful obstacles they can learn it later, but only if they can overcome these obstacles It is of great benefit to the children if you teach them to let their knowledge of grammar and language flow into business letters. There should be nobody today who has not at one time learned to write a decent business letter. IF you satiate the children mainly with sentimental idealism between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, they will later develop an aversion to idealism and become materialistic people. If you lead them during these years into the practical concerns of life, they will retain a healthy relationship to the idealistic needs of the soul, since these can be wiped out only if they are senselessly indulged during early youth.”

Rudolf Steiner
Practical Advice to Teachers, Lecture 12

I’m still working my way through Practical Advice to Teachers and I’m taking my readings and questions about the upcoming year through the holy nights this year. It has been pretty enlightening to see what is coming through the night, reflecting on the year gone by and setting intentions for the year ahead. It has created a spark of excitement within me that I’m not ashamed to admit has been dulled these last few years.

The main questions I ask while planning are always

• How will they use this in the future?
• How does this support their development?
• How will this expand their view of the world?

During the highschool years, children start off questioning their previous trust in goodness, beauty and truth in the world. They are awakening to the powers of their own thoughts and judgments and they see a big discrepancy between what is said and what is actually done. They have incredibly high ideals and often struggle with what they perceive as their own inadequacy. As the years travel on, they settle and begin to see all the shades of grey between their initial black and white view of the world and when adequately stimulated in their education are able to see both the idealism and practical.

As I plan, I always look at the practicality of what they are learning and how it will serve them in adulthood. This service might be for body, soul, mind or spirit, but it must have a purpose for their specific path. I see the goal of education is to help them through these years being able to imagine an ideal world, full of goodness, beauty and truth, while still being able to be practical about human nature while at the same time be able to perform practical functions of being an adult.

When I look over guidelines for the upper grades in Steiner’s lectures, I find much practical application and preparation for adulthood. When I look at the guidelines for the upper grades in books geared towards waldorf class teachers, I don’t see the same dedication to preparation. I see much of the arts and soul work, even much to build the capacity of free thinking, but not much in the way of practical tasks like the bookkeeping and business writing Steiner discusses in this lecture. In two very popular books for Waldorf teachers, neither is even mentioned as part of the curriculum through all of highschool.

This entire lecture reminds me how much education has changed from Steiner’s original indication, and even his subsequent indications as the school grew and changed. And it reminded me that when I lead with my intuition, under the framework of my knowledge of human development and the unfolding childhood years, I am always lead in the right direction. 

Ways I’m bringing practicality to lessons for my 9th and 11th graders?

• Learning how to write business letters and emails
• Construction and carpentry math
• Bookkeeping and budgeting lessons
• Media and advertising studies

There is much to be said about going to back to the source. His words are indications, not indoctrination. The real inspiration for all our choices must be the children in front of us in light of the unfolding human. The children are the only curriculum we need.

Until next time,
Marina