FHE, sixth time round

Steiner geek

Finally beginning to understand the FHE a wee bit. The book is divided into three parts: Well, ok four. The first part is short - why and how we ended up on planet Earth. Yep. short part. Life before death, life after death and bits in between. What we bring with us and what we will take with us. Like most creation mythology, i can take or leave it. It's interesting and does no harm. What is important is the HERE and NOW.
Then it is roughly divided up into how we work in our soul, spirit and physical body and how Thinking, Feeling and Willing operate in all three arenas. How as human beings we perceive things and act. How we can then best reach the children in this context.

In many ways Steiner says - look, there is no need to know anything else if you understand this. If you understand all of this then you are sorrted - everything else is technique. I think that understanding this text is important if we are to be relevant in the 21st century as teachers, especially Waldorf teachers.

I am sooo glad i decided to do this as my thesis.

So this evening i read Lectures 5 and 6. I never really understood either of them until now. In lecture 6 especially Steiner talks about the way our I consciousness operates in our Thinking, Feeling and Willing forces. How we are awake in our spirit in Thinking, dreaming in our Feeling life and asleep in our Willing life and how these interact. When we are especially blessed we can have Intuitions which then break through into our awakened life. But usually Inspiration is the best we can hope for.

What does this have to do with how we educate the children? Well, most education currently only operates with the awakened thinking forces and this basically taps into a tiny bit of our selves as humans. Also some children are more Willing children, so they appear to be 'stupid' or 'slow'. this is not the case Steiner says. We need to reach these children through the Will. All education is about moving children from Feeling Will to Thinking Cognition. However this has to be done not within a moral vacuum, but warmed through with feeling.It is fascinating and has massive implications on what i am doing in the classroom.

In any case, if you only worked with the head forces, you'd end up with highly lopsided individuals. I think that this approach probably has massive implciations in special needs education as well. It would be absolutely fascinating to see its implications carried out there.

But it is actually getting very exciting now!!! Did i ever think i'd see the day i would say that about the Study of Man??