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The teaching of foreign languages plays an essential part in the
Waldorf curriculum. Rudolf Steiner ideally intended children
to be exposed to two contrasting foreign languages, three times
a week, from the first through the twelfth grade. Language is
one of the most important means of communication between human
beings. It is also the gateway to understanding a particular
folk that has its own genius, its own individuality, its own
musicality , and expresses itself in countless manifestations
of everyday life.
The learning of a foreign language greatly depends on imitative
musical abilities.
Experience shows that through the learning of a foreign language,
we become more subtly aware of our mother tongue. We rediscover
its own particular capacities of expression in speech, in prose,
and poetry .The children not only learn to speak correctly, but
also with due respect to the beauty and musicality of the language.
From the first to the third grade, nothing is written and it should
be stressed that all work is done totally. The children are introduced
to the seasons, day and night, the kingdoms of nature, rock, plant,
animal, the parts of the body, telling time, and common daily activities.
These are often mimed and acted.
In the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, the children can begin
to write down poems, stories, and dialogues acquired in the repertoire
of the first three grades. It is essentially the task of the middle
years to learn to read the foreign language, to be able to do simple
dictations, and to write answers to questions that have first been
dealt with orally in a living way.
In the seventh and eighth grades, much of what has been practiced
by way of poetry, songs, and pronunciation exercises will be continued,
but now, in addition, the printed book will be introduced. l
Through eurythmy the children learn to listen carefully and to
express, through appropriate movement, what they hear.
Music is a vital part of the child's rhythmic-feeling-soul development.
In the lower grades each child learns to play a simple instrument,
either a wind instrument such as a recorder, or a stringed instrument
such as a small lyre. Beginning in the fourth grade, the child
becomes part of the class orchestra.
Between the seventh year and puberty, the child is really a musical
instrument. As Rudolf Steiner said:
"
Our nerves are really a kind of lyre, a musical instrument that
resounds up to the head. After the change of teeth and before puberty,
the soul really begins to play on the single nerve fibers with
the in-breathed air like a violin bow on the strings. You will
foster this if you give the child plenty of singing.
“You must have the feeling that the child is a musical instrument
while he or she is singing; you must stand before your class to
whom you are teaching singing or music with the clear feeling:
every child is a musical instrument and inwardly feels a kind of
well-being in the sound. For, you see, the sound is brought about
by the particular way the air is circulated. That is inner music.
“In his or her first seven years, the child learns everything
by imitation, but now the child should sing out of the joy he experiences
in building up melodies and rhythms. There really should be present
in the child a feeling of well-being at the inward flow of sounds.
Imagine what would happen if a violin could feel what was going
on within it. If it could feel how each string vibrates with the
next one it would have the most blissful experiences, providing
of course the music was good. So you must let the child have those
little feelings of ecstasy so that you really call forth a feeling
for music in his whole organism and you, yourself must find joy
in it.” 2
Eurythmy is called visible speech and visible music. That which
one would normally hear, in the art of eurythmy, one sees in
the movements of the eurythmist. Both language and music are
human, and find the expression of their qualities within the
human.
In music, such elements as the beat, rhythm, and pitch find each
their own different movement. If one just reflects upon the difference
between a slow waltz and a lively march, each brings about a different
experience and thus a qualitatively different movement.
We will work with music which enhances these different qualities,
such as that
which will make us walk slowly and heavily like a great bear, quickly
like a little mouse, upright and noble like kings and queens.
Musical elements find their expression in human speech also. We
will explore, through poems and stories, the qualities of the vowels
and consonants, rhythm, and meter. Through eurythmy the children
learn to listen carefully and to express, through appropriate movement,
what they hear.
Throughout the years in a Waldorf school, eurythmy is balanced
by more physical movement education which engages the child's movement
and play in age-appropriate activities and emphasis. The character
of the games in the first school years is very much determined
by imagination; later by the free mobility of the limbs. Practically,
this is done through circle games and simple gymnastics based on
imaginative pictures for the youngest children. The joy and beauty
around the children is felt inwardly as a sense of vitality and
of growing strength. Gradually, games and activities of more skill
and dimension are introduced by the movement teacher in scheduled
games lessons and on the playground.
From the fifth grade on, the children's movement education becomes
more formalized as two periods per week are devoted to developmentally
appropriate activities and games. The goal of physical education
in the upper grades is to help the children toward mastery of the
movements of the body in the surrounding space through cooperative
play, gymnastics, folk dances and classical sports such as javelin,
discus, running and archery.
Highlights of the movement education curriculum are the regional
tournaments for the four upper grades with classes from other Waldorf
schools: the fifth grade Olympiad based on the ancient Greek pentathlon;
the sixth grade Circus; the seventh grade Explorers Tournament;
and the eighth grade Northern California Waldorf Track Meet.
The human hand is unique. Freed from the weight of the earth, it
is capable of implementing deeds, of being trained to do the most
intricate and amazing things. It possesses both strength and gentleness.
It has a highly developed sense of touch, of warmth, and of movement
and in some ways, it can see and speak and give and take.
Rhythmic repetition such as knitting and crocheting strengthen
the etheric forces in a child. There are subtle intellectual and
moral benefits from the proper training of the hands. " A
task worth doing is worth doing well." Flexible, agile fingers
in childhood lead to mobile, creative thinking in adult life and
lead to an enhancement of the faculty of judgment. Hand-eye coordination
is essential for balance and harmony.
Care and respect for materials leads to moral and social responsibility.
Nothing is wasted and children must be helped to respect and be
grateful for the gifts of earth, plants, and animals. It also leads
to an appreciation for the work of others. In our disposable culture,
there is much unnecessary waste and this needs to be changed.
Everything made should be both useful and beautiful (toys are
very useful), and done with the greatest degree of perfection to
which each child is capable. Mistakes should be corrected and everything
done neatly. Projects should be done entirely by the students,
with guidance from the teacher. Children love to make things and
should be given every opportunity to do so, both at school and
at home.
Quality and utility are conscientiously brought to bear in the
handwork classes.
Special attention starts before the children enter the classroom-clean
hands, quietude, and order-that naturally translates into our work.
Conscious attention is also given to the age of the child. For
instance, introducing knitting by means of stories and wonder and
ending with a song, and on the attention to details and even appropriate
fashion in the creation of socks and clothing in the upper grades.
All projects are utilitarian as well as therapeutic, and of course,
tied to the curriculum. Knitting is looked at as a continuous line
of thought, a pre-reading skill, as well as a manual task resulting
in confidence in something the child has accomplished, and so on.
Even the clean-up should help to teach quiet and organization.
Children who learn while they are young to make practical
things by hand in an artistic way, and for the benefit
of others as well as for themselves, will not
be strangers to life or to other people when they are older.
They
will be able
to form their lives and their relationships in
a social and artistic way, so that their lives
are thereby enriched. Out of their ranks can come technicians
and artists who will know how to solve the problems
and tasks set us.
-Rudolf
Steiner 3
Beginning in the fifth grade, the children take woodwork classes.
They begin by
Making simple and practical objects and movable wooden toys and
continue through the upper grades to develop a respect and mastery
of the woodshop tools while at the same time developing fantasy,
endurance, and skillfulness of hand in more difficult work. The
teacher attempts to awaken a feeling for the combination of usefulness
and beauty in the making of objects.
If your timing is just right you can move from classroom to classroom
in the morning at the Waldorf School and hear poetry in every
one. The kindergarten children are gathering for their circle
of nursery rhymes and seasonal verses. The rhymes and verses
bring them into an active world of archetypal professions and
gestures. The language is a medium for movement and the children
live and grow in it learning it through imitation, the mode of
the youngest children.
In all classes the children learn poems of nature that help them
understand even the subtle seasonal changes that mark San Francisco's
yearly rhythms. The first grade is moving like the wind with Christina
Rosetti; the second may be creeping like Carl Sandburg's fog. Later,
William Blake introduces spring and Robert Louis Stevenson helps
them understand the change in daylight hours. In many classes,
the children share teacher-written verses, composed as birthday
gifts and reverently memorized and repeated in front of the class
once a week.
Poetry is learned along with every new block of study: farming
in the third grade
I Will Go With My Father A-Ploughing; animal study in the fourth
-The Tyger; ancient history in the fifth -The Destruction of
Sennacherib; Roman Empire in sixth -Horatius at the Bridge; The
romantics in seventh as puberty leads the students into a new
relationship to their own emotions; from Shakespeare to 20th-century
Americans in eighth as they study revolutions through history
.
The classes learn choral speaking with the same seriousness they
give to their music, and teachers conduct their classes as they
would an orchestra. At every monthly assembly, some classes offer
glimpses into their work with poetry. Reciting poetry by heart
is a holistic endeavor, involving clear thinking in the image-language
of the poem, heartfelt love of the sounds and rhythms, and physical
perfection in articulation and projection.
It is not long after the first joyful recitations that the children
begin to try their own hands at composition. Many address their
first efforts to their teachers, and present them as gifts. Whole
classes enjoy discovering the essence of an animal, for instance,
and distilling it into a poetic image. Or writing odes to the Greek
gods and goddesses to be presented at the annual Olympic Games.
Many classes practice poetry writing in daily journals before the
creative writing block in seventh grade during which everyone begins
to explore the self-expression possible through poetry.
Eighth graders, awakening to their thinking capacities, are in
a uniquely open and receptive position for the appreciation and
creation of poetry .Taking advantage of a weekly opportunity, my
own class and I formed a "writers workshop" where we
read from acknowledged masters and focused on their themes or techniques,
their forms or particular use of language. Then we responded with
our own poems, sometimes struggling to express our meaning, sometimes
surprising ourselves with the ease of the flow of words. Usually,
we were able to read some to each other during the same lesson.
Then we would have them typed and duplicated, so that we could
hear and comment on all the day's work during the following lesson.
The year's work culminated in a 61-page booklet illustrated by
the students and sold to raise funds for a farming project in Kenya,
sponsored through IDEX.
Anyone who has language has the possibility of poetry. And poetry
can then open up all sorts of possibilities for understanding and
being in the world. It can re-awaken us to the delight in nature
we had as very small children; it can lead us on the endless and
awesome path inward to our deepest feelings. It can bring the joy
forever of a well crafted “thing of beauty;” it can
catch us up with a new image, an I-never-thought-of-that freshness.
It can put us in touch with our history or culture, our humanity,
as interpreted by the word-artists whose visions add to our own,
expanding limits. And it starts with the morning verses, with the
simple, true images of the kindergarten, the love for language
that hearing it lovingly spoken engenders, and the learning by
heart of beautifully written poems.
- A Creative Approach to Foreign Languages for Waldorf Teachers,
Rene Querido
- Rudolf Steiner's Curriculum for Waldorf Schools: A Collection
of Quotations for the Benefit
of the Different Waldorf Schools, compiled by K. Stockmeyer
- Handwork: Indications by Rudolf Steiner
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