How do you expect students to be receptive?- Steiner pt 2

You think just because it’s 09:30 students should be ready to learn?

In this blog post, I have taken extracts from Steiner’s Stages of Initiation and looked at the first stage, preparation.

Just to keep in mind, Steiner is telling us here how we can access the spiritual world, and you can interpret this in a few ways. The first is that there is no greater form of education than learning to access the spiritual world. The second is that it gives us a different way of looking at how education can be approached. Thirdly, it provides the underpinning of the Waldorf method of education.

With all the challenges our society is facing, do you think there is a new way to educate our children?

Preparation

How can a learner be receptive? What does the learner need? Do you presume that just because it is 9:15 in the morning, a child is ready to learn?

Learning how to be receptive

“Preparation consists in a strict and definite cultivation of the life of thought and feeling, through which the psycho-spiritual body becomes equipped with higher senses.”

Steiner here is suggesting that in order to be receptive, you need to learn how to do it and be it. How many times do we presume the student is ready, just because it is the first lesson of the day? He is also referring to a higher level of senses, just like when you enter a room of people arguing and they all go silent; there is tension in the air. This level of sensory perception is something that can be cultivated.

The initial stimulus

“Attention is given to events that, on the one hand, life that is budding, growing and flourishing, and on the other hand, all phenomena connected with fading, decaying and withering.”

“...[the events] naturally evoke in him feelings and thoughts.”

“...he must banish everything else from his soul and entirely surrender himself, for a short time, to this one impression.”

When an event (or impression) happens, the student will have feelings and thoughts around it, e.g., watching a sunrise. For a short moment, they must place all consciousness on the view. Steiner goes further to say in this section that before just moving on to the next thing (impression), they must be still and feel how this makes them feel: “he must allow this feeling to reverberate quietly within himself, while keeping inwardly quite still.”

Your soul telling you something

“First look at the things as keenly and as intently as you possibly can; then only let the feeling which expands to life and the thought which arises in the soul, take possession of you.”

Wow, just wow! I think this sentence speaks for itself. How do we teach this? Learning how to look at something in awe and then taking a moment to feel how this feels. Currently, our mainstream education system dictates what to look at.

Should facts stay in the mind?

“A new world is opened to the student if he systematically and deliberately surrenders himself to such feelings…..Growth and decay are no longer facts which make indefinite impressions on him, but rather they form themselves into spiritual lines and figures.”

As I read this section, I am reflecting on how we teach facts in science, keeping things at the cognitive level. Imagine if we held onto a fact and felt what it means inside us, forming a connection with our soul.

Giving the intellectual answer too quickly

“Students must never lose himself in speculations on the meaning of one thing or another. He should look out onto the world with keen, healthy senses and a quickened power of observation and then give himself up to the feeling that arises within him.”

“He should try not to make out, through intellectual speculation, the meaning of things, but rather allow the things to disclose themselves.”

I feel that this is quite the opposite of how we teach our students today. We are quick to tell students the intellectual answer, rather than pondering over the feelings the event has evoked in them. I would also assume that these are the first steps in learning how to listen to yourself.

How you talk to yourself

“The realisation that feelings and thoughts are just as veritable realities as are the tables and chairs of the physical world.”

“Thoughts and feelings react upon each other just as physical objects do.”

“A student may not believe that a wrong thought in his mind may have as devastating an effect upon other thoughts that spread life in the thought world as the effect…”

“He will never allow himself to perform a physically visible action which he considers to be wrong, though he will not shrink from harbouring wrong thoughts that appear harmless to the rest of the world.”

I understand this as: your thoughts and feelings are just as real as the chair you are sitting on, and just because nobody else can see your thoughts or feelings doesn’t mean they aren’t real. From this, Steiner is also saying that your thoughts and feelings play a significant role in how you see and talk to yourself. People don’t realise that just because the outside world can’t see the thought or feeling inside you, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Further on in the paragraph, he goes on to say that there can be no progress unless we are mindful of how we speak to ourselves.

Listening to others

“...while speaking, he is silent. If someone expresses an opinion, assent or dissent will stir in the inner self of the listener.”

“Many people feel themselves impelled to express their assent or dissent. In the student all such assent or dissent must be silenced.”

“When he practises listening without criticism, he learns to blend himself with the being of another and become identified with it. Then he hears through the words into the soul of the other.”

We are taught to think critically, and I believe this is good. However, Steiner is suggesting here to consider where the criticism comes from. Rather than responding with your immediate reaction or an intellectual response, try to listen to the soul of the other person.

Summary

How do we prepare our learners to learn and be receptive to learning?

According to Steiner, this is a skill that needs to be cultivated. We cannot presume that a learner can learn just because they are standing in front of us.

Steiner starts by making the learner aware of the thoughts and feelings of an event, and to not move too quickly on to the next event. Really look with intent at this new thing. Do not try to come up with an answer too quickly. Sit still with this new idea or thing. Understand where any positive or negative thoughts come from, and silence them. Listen to others, but listen to their soul speaking.

This is how you learn to be receptive to learning.

Final thoughts

How much time do we give our students to learn to be receptive? In the current mainstream education system, there is no time, perhaps with the exception of the Early Years.

I still feel this deep sense of change. We cannot keep measuring education by the results of a test. What this alternative looks like, I still don’t know. But, as I read through this book, I feel more aligned with these ideas than with those I have experienced in mainstream schools.

How do you feel about what Steiner suggests here and where does it fit in with your idea of education?

References:

Knowedge of the Higher World and Its Attainment