News 43: 27 October

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10.  The Transformation of Mistakes

By Erich Gabert,

(Teacher in the original Waldorf School under Rudolf Steiner)

To the extent to which we are really successful in calling on the deeper forces of the child, the individual spiritual being to help us in our considerations and efforts, to the same extent we shall again and again become more and more conscious that we could never try to use any sort of punishment or any moral education except to give a little assistance from outside to the individuality itself in its efforts to evolve.  Nobody can beat goodness into a child or educate it "into" him in any other way.  Compul­sion and fear can indeed to a certain extent hinder bad deeds, but they can never ever kindle active-creative love for the good.  For this, in the words of Goethe "loving the command one has set oneself" can only arise out of man's own inner being, and differently in the case of each one, and fresh and new each time, because it comes from the creative sphere of individual freedom.

Few thoughts and experiences can bring such strength and enthusiasm to the efforts of moral education as these, namely that one is permitted, as educator, to become ally and assistant to that part in the child's soul which, out of a spiritual connexion with the divine powers of good, has taken up the fight against the powers of darkness and evil.  For the practical consequence of this is that it is certainly necessary to make a thorough study and obser­vation of the many forms that evil can taken, when it appears and works in the souls of children, that it is however, a thousand times more important and worthwhile to detect the growth of good forces in even the most tender beginnings and to cherish and further them with joy.

Whoever approaches the child in this way with a look of loving enquiry and the joy of making fresh discoveries, in his case moral education can really lose more and more the sour musty smell of morality that makes one afraid, that gloomy and oppressive quality that must appear without fail when it is the child's mistakes and misdeeds that are looked at in the first place.  They are not at all of the greatest importance.  The positive forces and deeds are much more essential because they flow out of the real being of the child.  These must be drawn out, surrounded by warmth and cared for.  It is not a matter of "breaking the will", of "subduing them to the yoke" and all the other wicked expressions, but of calling forth joyfulness, of bringing about the inner certitude that when the human being makes an effort he is helped by the guiding forces of the spirit.  Blame makes one reluctant, sullen and unproductive, and it leads to feelings of inferiority and thereby to ambition and the urge for recognition.  Joyful appreciation lets one know that one also has some good in one, that one is not godfor­saken.  It gives inner security and — though it seems paradoxical, it simply is true and is proved so time and again — it gives genuine, humble modesty.  Hebbel once said nobody can stay down forever.  Only he who can raise himself up is capable of also bending down.  There were times when it was strictly tabooed to praise children, because it was supposed to make them vain.  The opposite is true.  Praise and appreciation do not make children vain and ambitious, but they do arouse active forces.  For whoever can be active feels his limitations and becomes modest.

Such a positive attitude to the being of the child, that knows quite well that evil, "sin", is certainly at work in the child, but also knows that at the same time, and this is much more important — the divine powers of Grace work in him too, such positivity will grant the child the confidence that it needs.  It is an especially happy experience in the life of a teacher when old scholars come to him after many years and say: "In those days, when everything was so difficult and confusing for me, you had confidence in me.  That helped me!"

With this confidence in the good forces that will sooner or later work their way through the ability to wait in patience is intimately connected.  For it can often take a very long time.  But just as one cannot, as a child might do, pull at the new shoots to make the peas grow faster, one must also allow the inner struggles to take their time.  If the teacher can remain firm in his confidence, then a lot of the words and deeds that one e.g.  often experiences from the 'teenagers, expressions that are in themselves irritating and ugly, and that perhaps touch the teacher in a sensitive spot too, become then very insignificant.  He will allot them the answers that appear to him to be necessary, objectively, but he will be able to view them as unavoidable side-issues of a development that is in itself success­ful.  He will also leave a lot quite unnoticed, so as not to disturb the important thing, the hidden inner process of maturing.  The wisdom of the parable mentioned earlier, of the weeds among the seeds, applies here too.

Truly, it is not at all a question of the single deeds or misdeeds.  They are, after all, only symptoms for what stands behind in the way of inner talents, qualities and directions of character.  It is a matter of focus­ing one's attention on these and dealing with them.  Of course, not in the sense that one keeps bad tendencies suppressed through fear of punish­ment.  Then, although nothing happens, the bad tendencies will, of course, only be bottled up and intensified.  In truth it will only get worse and worse.  On the contrary, the educator will, at times, actually be glad when bad tendencies that have been noticeable to him, burst out properly one day, and, through doing so, become accessible to visual consciousness and therefore also to educational treatment and improvement.

Of course, it is even better if one can find ways and means of not letting them come out at all in the first place, but of previously intercept­ing them pedagogically in the right way.  But how is that possible, without suppressing them?

What are bad tendencies and deeds then, altogether, at bottom? Here we come for the second time upon the question of the actual being of evil that occupied us in the first part of this book, too.  It was stated there that bad qualities do not at all in themselves and under all circum­stances have to be bad.  But it depends largely on how and where they occur, whether one has to regard them as bad.  Just like a chemist, in jest, coins the expression "Dirt is only 'Matter in the wrong place'," one can say, in deepest seriousness, that wickedness is good in itself, only it occurs in a connection that is not suitable to it, also, as it were, "in the wrong place", and because of this, and only because of this, it works to hinder and to destroy.  When it is "put in its place" it can very well change from bad to good, just as in the hand of a doctor poison can become a healing remedy.

In education, this applies in quite a special way, for observation shows that tendencies that begin to appear thoroughly unpleasant show themselves suddenly to be good and useful if, under the right influence, they are guided into the appropriate sphere.

Think of temperaments of a one-sided nature.  The melancholic child is in danger of being interested only in itself, to founder in its anxieties and to withdraw egoistically from the world.  If one succeeds, however, in draw­ing his attention and sympathy to the sorrow of others, one sees that just the melancholic can share other people's troubles better than anyone else can, no one else can help so tenderly, or give such heartfelt comfort.  — Or remember how a choleric temperament can often lead just as well to brutal self-assertion, without any consideration, as to the staking of ones all for the right and the protection of others; to a man of criminal violence or a real hero.

Certainly, it is not the education alone that determines which direction is taken, but its influence is very great indeed.  Rudolf Steiner once gave examples that are very surprising at first, but which have thoroughly proved themselves in practice.  It concerns cases of children who, during the first 7 years of their lives, have taken in influences that have possibly met with tendencies that they have brought with them and then have brought forth bad qualities in the child.  And the question arises whether as educator one has the possibility here of intervening in a favourable way.  The quotation is taken from a lecture that was given by Rudolf Steiner in the conference of "Pedagogy and Art" in Stuttgart on 26th March 1923 and entitled "Pedagogy and Morals".  He said:

"Let us assume that in the earlier years of his life '(in the first 7 years) a child has developed himself in such a way within his surroundings that a certain predisposition exists in him not to direct the forces of his whole organism so much towards the outside but to concentrate them within.  That can happen especially in the event of the child having seen a lot of ill-humoured, even cowardly deeds in his environment.  If the child has seen much in the way of retreating from life, if it has felt much in the way of boredom and dissatisfaction with life and disappointment with the environment, then the child has within it something which, I would say, signifies a perpetually restrained turning pale.

If, as educator, one cannot be aware of such things, then the result will of course be that the child will receive to an ever-greater degree the effect of all the despondency, apathy, cowardice and doubt that has poured into him from his environment, and in a certain way the child will become similar.

But if one looks deeper into such things, one will find that which has gained a footing in the child during the first 7year period as a definite direction of character can be used now to orientate him in quite a different way.  One can direct what would otherwise be timidity, despondency, shyness and a fighting shy of life so that this same force develops as discretion, as the capacity for judgement, and a good time to do this would be in the course of the middle school years when one happens to be in the process of telling the children about such instances in which just these qualities of discretion and judgment — of course in a feeling way suitable to the age — can be developed.

Or let us assume a child has seen much in his environment that is uncongenial and that has repelled him.  He comes to school with this in a certain way as part of his whole characterological disposition right down into his physical organisation.  If one were to leave such a trait of character unnoticed, then it will develop further in the sense of that which the child has taken in from his environment.  If one knows out of a genuine knowledge of man how to direct a character of this kind in a suitable way, then this trait of character in particular can be guided to lead to the purest, most chaste modesty, to the noblest feeling of a certain restraint in the child.

That is a tremendously important activity that arises out of a psychology that is genuinely familiar with inner processes, inner processes that are however practical, and one can enter into this activity of psychology when, as educator, one has the child in front of one, and with one’s attention lovingly devoted to the revelations of the child's nature, one grasps sensitivity those various directions of char­acter, will and soul, and works with that which has perhaps arisen out of something bad and developed into a certain direction of human forces, and in working with them, guides them into right channels.

For one can say for sure, that at least in most cases, there is nothing in the moral predestination of a child that is so bad that it cannot during this period of life, be turned to good, if as educator one has the necessary understanding and energy.

If one knows, once and for all, that e.g.  a certain quality, if directed badly, leads the human being to become a hot-tempered person in life, if directed well can make out of him a person who takes hold of life and life's tasks boldly and unhesitatingly, if one knows such things out of a psychology that is familiar with inner processes and is at the same time practical and leads into action, then for the first time the question arises: how should the moral education of the child be guided just in these middle-school years?"

(The lecture continues on the possibilities of moral education between 7 — 14 as has been mentioned, in part, above).

Thus, the wonderful task awaits the teacher of changing bad into good, of not suppressing it, but of bringing it into its right place where it can work constructively.  Now and then one sees the most marvellous miracles, like that of a wild boy being given the duty of protecting a delicate and timid child on the way to school; or of a rather dreamy and slow child being given the maintenance of animals, which entails dependable regularity and care.  It is often touching to see how happy the children become when their being which they cannot simply change, and under the negative aspects of which they have so often had to suffer, can suddenly develop into something positive, when they are accepted in their being and their forces recognised.  That is a strongly effective spur to use all their forces for good.

When the teacher tries to work in this way, he will actually make a surprising discovery in himself.  He will find that he gradually begins to see the bad behaviour, habits and misdeeds of the children in quite a different light.  Whereas before he was just simply annoyed, now something will be mingled with the annoyance to an increasing extent, something which, as a student of medicine one knows as a burning interest for the illness, how­ever revolting it nevertheless is.  If a very strong boy has been brutal perhaps to the point of cruelty, one will now notice in oneself, besides the disgust at the cruelty, something like a kind of admiration for the immense strength that is there; only here it has got onto the wrong rails.  Something like res­pect for the error of the children, if they are forceful and full of character, will become more and more noticeable, and one will joyfully take up the possibly very troublesome job of helping these forces to transform them­selves in the right way.

For that which runs in the wrong direction can be put right.  But that, which does not run at all, which is half-hearted, flat, blurred, offers no opportunity for help.  That will mostly remain as it is, too, mediocre and boring.

Therefore in the long run it is a dreary job to educate so-called "good" children.  They do nothing silly but also nothing clever; they do everything that you tell them to do, but never any more, and certainly nothing out of their own initiative as they lack the smallest spark of originality.  They are average, and will later on become good tax-payers.

That which is to be transformed, has first of ail to be something itself.  Strength grows however from resistance, and force of character grows in coming to terms with one’s own mistakes and overcoming them.

Therefore, a wild group of children is often far more heart-warming than a well-behaved one.  The work with it is rewarding, here are forces to preserve, intensify and help to transform.  Inner forces of resistance against evil can be drawn out and guided.  Rewarding pedagogical work can be done.