Tell To Teach
There has been research regarding the relationship between language and body movement. From this we know that "…all speech acts are accompanied both in speaker and listener by spontaneous, scarcely perceptible body movements which are entirely unconscious and follow characteristic patterns.”3
Babies go through specific phases in the acquisition of language, the first being a short “babble-phase”, where all possible combinations of phonemes are experimented with; the next one is the “silent phase”, where the baby just seems to keep quiet and may be intensely focused on listening. Steiner’s observation of the child indicates that the child’s speech organs are activated by the important process of listening.
Language cannot be reduced to tones or sounds, but it is a completely different, more full and comprehensive sensory experience. The sense of language, in Steiner’s description of the twelve senses, is part of the higher senses, and is closely related to the lower sense of movement. It is recognized that the “organ” for the sense of language is the voluntary musculature of the body, as stated by Georg von Arnim, a pupil of Karl König.4
Steiner only made aphoristic comments about this. He did not point this organ out directly, but rather described it as “the system facilitating bodily movement, the human potential for movement.”
This takes us to the fact that we not only communicate through sounds, but also through gestures, which are as important to communication as words themselves. Examples of this are when we ask a child to be quiet by putting our index finger on our lips, or motion them to come by waving our hand. In any case, a movement comes to a pause for a short moment, and it is then that our sense of speech is activated. According to Steiner, this is the process that happens with all language perception.
This whole idea brings a question in Steiner schools about the correct use of body movement and rest in language lessons. This speaks to me again about rhythm, about a breathing in and out through movement. Johannes Kiersch mentions in his book:
“A sort of “active relaxedness” in musculature and posture is the best way of fostering the inner mobility that listening requires…. Take a thorough look at the interplay of movement and rest in language teaching… It is in the transition from “easy movement” to “relaxed alertness” that the most fruitful moment for the shaping of a successful language lesson may well lie.”5
This speaks of an interweaving of receptivity and activity on the part of the student and the teacher, and is in opposition to the classical methods of passive learning through drilling and repetition of grammar rules and the conceptual aspect of language.
Memory and language learning
The human brain is not comparable to a computer, which needs only the input of data for their later retrieval. Steiner pointed out that memory is not simply the retrieval of stored data and impressions, but a renewed act of sense perception. Remembering is directly connected to the etheric body, which encompasses, as we said before, the forces of life, growth, and shaping. These are the forces at work during the first period of life, when the child is intensely focused on its physical body development. Their task is to help the body grow and to shape the inner organs as well. Around the seventh year of life, once the first stage is accomplished, part of these very forces are liberated and used for
4 Kiersch, page 43
5 Kiersch, page 45
memory and learning. This is the right time to begin with academic work, and the right time for exerting memory.
“Memory must draw its strength from the realms of feeling and will, not from mere intellectual exercises and the like.”6
In Waldorf education, we do not expect students to keep everything they have learned in their heads and retrieve it at will at any point, but rather, we make sure that remembering alternates with forgetting in a healthy rhythm. Steiner made clear this connection by suggesting “to keep a proper pulse-beat in the classroom between mere listening and individual work.”7
Memory is ignited by feeling. There needs to be joy, mystery, uncertainty, the unexpected and the expected, humor and sadness, stress and relaxation, tension and relief. “There are no better memory aids than such feelings.”8 Steiner also brings a concept of paramount importance:
“By bringing everything in the world into relationship with man you place it in the realm of feeling. And that is so important.”9
In the Ilkley course of 1923 Steiner summarizes the application of the principles of memory to teaching in three sentences:
Concepts burden the memory
The concrete and artistic develop the memory
Exertions of will fortify the memory.10
Thus we have seen that during the second 7-year period, memory is especially linked to feelings (“into relationship with man”) and images (“the concrete and artistic”), not yet to intellectual work. And one of the very best ways to impress our memory is through the use of movement and gestures (“exertions of will”).
Once we have linked a word or concept with a characteristic gesture or movement, we will recall one when we do the other.
There is another aspect to this discussion about memory: as much as memory is not necessarily a matter of pure intellectual effort, whenever we apply our ego, our genuine interest, into something, it seems to stay in our memory much better. Whenever we are bored, we don’t even see the obvious because our mind wanders and our ego is not present. Our attention, our interest, will strongly impress our memory.
6 Rudolf Steiner, The Foundations of Human Experience, p. 136
7 Rudolf Steiner, High School Education (formerly: The Supplementary Course)
8 Rudolf Steiner, Education for Adolescents, Lecture 1 and 3
9 ibid
10 Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972
In this way, we are applying the three soul capacities to the learning of language:
• Thinking - by engaging our ego with interest
• Feeling - engaging our feeling life with emotions and with rhythmical, artistic experiences
• Willing - by engaging our body through movement and gesture
INTEREST STRENGTHENS MEMORY.- Rudolf Steiner