Kingdom of Childhood Lecture 5 in Essays

“It is essential that you have some understanding of the real essence of every subject that you teach, so that you do not use things in your teaching that are remote from life itself. Everything that is intimately connected with life can be understood. I could even say that whatever one really understands has this intimate connection with life. This is not the case with abstractions.”
Concepts, abstractions, and universals are not unimportant; they are however impossible to realize unless one is grounded in first principles. Without first principles, the mind can imagine, dream, or fantasize as real anything at all without any restrictions imposed by reality, and the individual not rooted may even begin to believe them.

Pg 76 Quote; “You can find a remarkable analogy for this human head. If you have a care and are sitting comfortably inside it, you are doing nothing yourself; it is the chauffeur in front who has to exert himself. You sit inside and are driven through the world. So it is with the head; it does not toll and moil, it simply sits on the top of your body and lets itself be carried quietly through the world as a spectator. All that is done in spiritual life is done from the body. Mathematics is done by the body, thinking is also done by the body, and feeling too is done with the body.”
There are some things Steiner says which impact me as incredulous and mystical, and some things which after having first read it, I experience a reactive speculation based on prior assumptions. How can that be so? I find that I mull it over almost against my will; it permeates my thinking, and as some might say, is “stuck in my craw”. And then I understood.
The very experience of having something “stuck in my craw” is what Steiner is referring to as “thinking is done by the body”. Insofar as the human mind has evolved to abstract, to conceptualize and to universalize, the mind that is more powerful, that grasps truth before it can ever be made conscious, is the unconscious. The unconscious is something we share with animals, and is not part of the abstracting mind. There is no brain-body dichotomy. There is no feeling which only exists abstractly.
To ignore the body in thinking is a mistake that costs humanity dearly. A person who is not seated and most comfortable in their body might retreat to cognitive abstractions, but their thinking is poor quality, often untrustworthy, and exhausting.

Pg 79 Quote; “If you give a child a watch for instance, the child’s immediate desire is to pull it to pieces, to break up the whole into its parts, which is actually far more in accordance with human nature- to see how the whole arises out of its components.”
Steiner indicates a correct developmental approach to mathematics; to begin with a whole and discover what parts belong to it. Children may be allowed to stack bricks, but the concept that they are building is that everything is separate and comes together to make something- the definition of materialism or deconstructionism. These concepts in an abstract way are not harmful, but to a small child who is just discovering who they are in the world, it easily damages their sense of wholeness, security, and belonging.
A table is set with clean dishes, the meal is served, and then the family sits down to eat. These things cannot be separated and given to the child to puzzle out how they fit together, because each of them on their own has no meaning. If everything is given to the child as a whole and explored through the whole how the parts belong to and serve it, then the child can find meaning not only in the world, but in themselves as belonging to the world.

Pg84 Quote; “It would be good to accustom the children to count up to twenty with their fingers and toes, not on a bead-frame. If you teach them thus then you will see that through this childlike kind of “meditation” you are bringing life into the body; for when you count on your fingers and toes, and this is then a meditation, a healthy kind of meditating on one’s own body.”
It is possible- and evidence has shown us highly beneficial- for children to embody and experience counting in a sensorial way by counting with their fingers and toes. The body counts, and the mind is made aware of the counting through the use of this method. Through the body, abstract numbers are grounded in reality.
I recently heard the analogy that trying to teach a child to write by taking their hand and moving it over the page not only teaches the child nothing at all, but has the effect of making them passive and unwilling to learn at all. So, in education, one must accept that all education is purely self education. The parent/teacher is merely a guide to direct the experiences necessary for the child to learn; for the child to become aware of their own experiences.
In order for the education to have the best possible effect and outcome, the child must trust in and be secure in their own sensory and experiential feeling.