by Claus Peter Rðh
Originally published in Rundbrief, Journal of the Pedagogical Section, Goetheanum, Easter 2013, #47
Download the article: Entering Deeply into Foreign Language and Understanding it From Within
When foreign language lessons were introduced in the first Waldorf School in 1919, Rudolf Steiner set new and revolutionary standards, such as introducing two foreign languages from Class 1. If we look back at these standards now, 93 years later, at a time when effectiveness and ever faster cognitive information processes prevail, we realize that Rudolf Steiner's comments are as innovative and topical as ever:
In these lectures I have mentioned that a certain genius lives in language. The genius of language is ... ingenious. We can learn much from the way language fits together and carries its spirit.1
There is untold wisdom in these words ... Alt human characteristics are expressed in the way various cultures form their words. ...If you understand language in this inward way, then you will see how the organization works.2
The postulation “to allow the living power of language to play into the child soul’’3 in the lesson so that pupils can experience the language in their feeling first, runs like a thread through Steiner’s instructions on language teaching:
“This is of special importance also with regard to the element of speech. Languages are the outcome of a direct human response to inner experiences. If one is able to immerse oneself in the quality of spoken sounds, one can still bear in them the important part which such inner responses have played in the formation of certain words. But in our abstract life, when the logical content of language plays the leading part, this perception of the artistic element almost has been lost. True, there is an inherent logic in language, but this represents only its skeleton, something which is dead. There is much else besides logic in language. Its breath and pulse can be felt only by those who have been touched b)’ the creative genius of language itself. ”4
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