Nga Ānga Ohia
Impulses- Child Development
Class 1
During the first seven years of life the child becomes familiar with their physical body. They learn to orientate themselves in space and develop the build the foundations for the capacities of uprightness, speech and thought.
Around the age of seven the forces that up to now were active in building the physical body and supporting growth now become available for the development of independent, representational, pictorial thinking. The second dentition signals the completion of the forming processes of the first seven years.
While in the Kindergarten learning was experienced practically, and the child’s environment was the learning context and content, in Class 1 formal learning can be introduced, in literacy, numeracy and other subjects. Through images – physical and mental – the child develops a feeling relationship to the concepts taught in Class 1; the pictorial imagination is complemented by movement, musical and artistic experiences.
“The etheric body will unfold its forces if a well-ordered imagination is allowed to take guidance from the inner meaning it discovers for itself in pictures and allegories…It is not abstract concepts that work in the right way on the growing etheric body, but rather what is seen and perceived – indeed, not with the external senses, but with the mind’s eye.”
(Steiner, The Education of the Child in Light of Anthroposophy, 1965)
The Class 1 child is still in a dreamy state, as one with the world. Not yet fully aware of themselves as separate individualities, or that others are separate and unique individuals, the child relates to the world as it affects them. Their immediate response will come from their own sense of comfort or discomfort - ease or unease. The seven-year-old wishes to know that the word is beautiful, that the adults know what is right and good and will look after their needs. Children of this age can love easily and will wish to please those they love. Children and teacher relate through loving authority, and good examples are essential.
“What children see directly in their educators with inner perception must, for them, become authority – not authority compelled by force, but authority that they accept naturally without question. Through this they will build up their conscience, habits and inclinations.”
(Steiner, The Education of the Child in Light of Anthroposophy, 1965)
The Task
Having crossed the threshold from Kindergarten to Class 1, the children are led into formal learning. The teacher must work to build the foundations of a class ethic that is conducive to learning. Good work and social habits which are formed in Class 1 stay with the children throughout their time together at school and, indeed, beyond.
The children are learning to become social, to 'do' with others, to experience themselves as part of a group, to take turns and to respect others’ needs and abilities. Helping Class 1 to form a socially cohesive group who care for each other is one of the most important tasks of the teacher in this year.
The whole-class aspect nurtures the Class 1 children who experience themselves as one with the world. Speaking of verses and rhymes, moving and singing is not yet individualised; neither are children grouped by ability in any learning context.
The Class 1 child is led to look into their immediate environment and, through imaginative pictures, to continue to develop reverence for, and understanding of, the world of nature.
Through pictorial imagination and physical experiences, they are led to make a feeling connection with the more abstract concepts that accompany our daily lives – beginning with writing, early reading skills and number recognition and computation.
The incarnating child is nourished by the archetypal pictures found in fairy tales and carefully chosen nature stories. Fairy tales in particular are pre-earth history, human psychology, human development and a bridge between heaven and earth. All lessons are contextualised with these stories and the children are encouraged to live and learn imaginatively.
Class 2
Through their ninth year the children still experience themselves as at one with the world and filter external experiences and impressions through this view. The world as it affects them is still the basis of the children’s primary social response. Gradually, though, their development is moving towards self-identity and encompasses a growing awareness of others as different identities with their own needs and abilities.
Along with this unfolding sense of differentiation of self and the other comes a contrast between deepening feeling for religious elements and mischievousness in the exploration of social relationships and boundaries.
The children are now in the final stages of imitation; they will still be influenced by others’ actions and adults must continue to be worthy role models and to set the standards for all social interactions.
The will is still predominant and the healthy eight year old will wish to act out all experiences. The children wish to please those they love and to know the world as a good and beautiful place and they implicitly trust that adults know what is right and good for them.
The Task
Teachers will support the children to develop to a more conscious awareness of their own needs and abilities, and those of others, by continuing to build a strong class bond and ethos which allows the children to move within clear and simple physical, social and moral boundaries.
Carefully chosen movement, artistic experiences and lesson content will enable the children to integrate their movement between heaven and earth, allow them opportunities to heighten their understanding of themselves and others and inspire them to look towards, and experience a feeling for, their higher purpose. We must also continue to encourage the children's sense for the beauty of the world, and their reverence for all life.
The children continue to live in the pictorial realm and develop their understanding of concepts through forming individualized thought-pictures, and the teachers acknowledge this by facilitating learning through pictures and meaningful sensory experiences.
Class 3
The children will turn nine in this year, and the developmental stage known as the 'nine-year-old crisis' occurs around this time. The children find they are now 'on the earth', there is a perception of individuality and 'aloneness’, and they no longer experience themselves as one with the world. This is also described as “Crossing of the Rubicon” experience.
The children will question those things that previously went unquestioned: “Who are you to tell me?”, “What is my real name?”, “Am I adopted?” They will push boundaries, venture forth fearlessly when you wish they wouldn't and shrivel up fearfully where once they were confident.
With the ninth year there comes an important stage in the development of the growing child, and this should be carefully watched and considered in teaching and education. It is the age when the child first really feels separate from their surroundings, which formerly were taken so much for granted.
Self-consciousness becomes noticeably stronger and the soul life more inward and independent. All the child's powers of consciousness stir to life, and a wish to learn to know both teacher and world from a new angle.
The nine year old wants to revere consciously what was formerly loved in a childlike way but needs to feel that reverence is justified. This age makes great claims on the wisdom and tact of the teacher. The children need to be protected from a feeling of disappointment with themselves or the world, which they can so easily fall into at this age, especially in the presence of world weary or cynical adults.
The Task
The curriculum in Class 3 supports the children by creating in them a sense of confidence: change is happening, it’s frightening at times, but they can learn to take hold of the world around them – things will be alright. The adults around them must reassure the children that they know what is right and good, and can and will show them the way.
As the children now experience their bodies as 'the house of my soul', supporting lessons in the curriculum include 'House Building' which investigates the history and technology of house building and especially the different people, tasks and crafts involved in providing a home.
'Farming and Gardening' teaches the wonder and history of growing food and caring for the soil and the body. Finally, in 'People at Work' the children experience the many different ways in which we all support each other with our particular contribution to society.
Class 4
The children turning ten experience a veiling of the connection with the spiritual world; they stand truly on the earth and are learning to walk in its ways.
Experiencing themselves as separate from their surroundings, self-consciousness becomes stronger and the soul life becomes more inward.
There grows a soul wish to know and love the world consciously, yet this will be tested: is it justified that I revere this occurrence; that person; this phenomenon?
The children must be protected from becoming disappointed, or cynical about the world, as now the faint beginnings of consequential behaviour stir to consciousness: “If I do this, then that might happen.”
The Task
To lead the children to discover themselves in time and place, turangawaewae and whakapapa, and to an appreciation of the wonder of their world and how they arrived in it; to allow them an experience of consequences through story and to strengthen their social awareness.
The Norse Myths are full of wonderful personalities and stories that children of this age can relate to. Of paramount importance is the figure of Loki, who grows from naive mischief-maker to bearer of conscious ill-will and who eventually brings about the battle of Ragnarok, which marks the final departure of the Gods from the immediate sphere of humankind.
The Māori myths about Maui-Tikitiki-a-Taranga are, similarly, full of adventures describing actions and the consequences of these actions.
Other lessons which support this year’s soul-wish to orientate themselves in time and place include “Local History and Geography” and the “Tenses” grammar Main Lesson.
The “Fractions” Main Lesson accompanies the children’s increasingly conscious experience of being a part of various communities which have the quality of “one” and also consist of a number of equal parts.
Class 5
Children turning eleven years old can feel more at ease within themselves. The heart and lung ratio of 4:1 is attained, leading to a deeper, calmer breathing rhythm. This is matched by a relatively harmonious, balanced emotional-affective state. It can be said that around this age the point of balance, the 'crown of childhood' is achieved.
The Task
To help the children attain the balance of body and soul that can come at this time as they stand strongly within themselves.
To encourage movement that demands strong form and rhythm, allows the children to experience full control over their bodies and allows individuals to experience a sense of control and balance inwardly. In searching for this sense of balance, the children can experience that the world has many facets, many points where the microcosm and macrocosm meet. Without labouring the point, they will be led again and again to the experience of causality where the soul may experience an awakening to its role in the social life.
Having explored their immediate environment, and local history through an understanding of place, the children grasp the abstract concept of linear time; they begin to look outward both in space and time. Always beginning from the children’s own interest and experience, we introduce them first to the mythologies and sacred texts of ancient cultures and civilizations; the year usually concludes with stories of events and figures from classical antiquity.
The children journey from myth and legend to recorded history. Ancient India is studied through the Ramayana or BhagavadGita; the life of Buddha may also be studied at this time; the stories of Gilgamesh and Eabani and Zarathustra may be told in brief before moving on through Ancient Egypt to Greece. The philosophers, poets and orators are met (even though this can also wait until the beginning of Class 6), and often the story of Odysseus is told. The Greek epoch marks a time in the world's development when humankind lived in balance between materialism and spirituality; the motto inscribed on the temple of Delphi, 'As Within, so Without’ reflects the ideal state of being for the Class 5 child.
The teacher is encouraged to research the characteristics of the ancient civilisations in their relevance to the Class 5 task, and may choose to study corresponding civilisations from Polynesia, Asia or Meso-America.
Class 6
The children turning twelve have arrived at the age of 'cause and effect'. For the first time we can usefully reason with them: “If you do this, then that will happen.” They now have a growing need not just to understand the cause, but to be the cause. They search for a new standpoint and are often hyper-critical towards adults. At the same time they can experience the world with heightened sensitivity and emotion, can feel lonely and vulnerable.
The children’s bodies are changing and, as these changes occur, they must work, albeit unconsciously, with them. They must learn how to live in their bodies in a new way. The movements of these twelve-yearolds begin to lose the natural rhythm and grace of the younger child; the point of balance, attained over the preceding year, appears to be lost. They become 'unskilled'; their growing bodies seem to be no longer in their control and can become awkward and clumsy. Just as they must learn to move in a new way, adjusting to the body's new relationship to gravity, so the soul must also adjust to its changing abode.
The Task
It is at this stage, when the soul connects itself more closely with the mechanism of the bony system, that we introduce the children to new scientific subjects.
In the Physics Main Lesson, through observation and experiment, the children will investigate some of the laws that govern life and in the Geology Main Lesson, they will investigate the 'bones’ of the earth.
The history and geography lessons create a similar sense of structure for the orientation in time and space. Timelines, maps and graphic representations of relationships, for example, meet the children’s burgeoning intellectuality and provide a counterpoint to their charged emotional responses. Studying the laws of Ancient Rome and their central position in the self-image of that society can be a counterpoint to the hyper-critical as a picture of a society where the good of the state was held above all else.
The exploration of causality is given content, for example, with the study of the institution of the Roman Senate and its role in the making of laws, and how our own systems of money, government and justice have their roots in this ancient time.
Geometry and art engage the unfolding rational-causal capacity in a similar manner. Precise geometric constructions and black and white charcoal drawings demand of the children to observe with care and explore the respective laws that govern relationships and dynamics. They experience that a judgement based on emotion has little effect here but rather, that they are able to create beautiful work when they take hold of and accept the structural / dynamic laws.
Class 7
With the onset of puberty, the children’s relationship to the world is transformed.
They begin to sense their individuality in its future expression and search for the expansion of their individual relationship (and responsibility) with the world and the earth. In this phase of intense soul experiences the questioning, searching gaze is direct toward the inorganic, physical world.
The children search for laws that exist independent of humans and for connections between phenomena.
At this time the children often feel that their growing individuality clashes with the rules, values and conditions of their environment. They no longer experience themselves as children and – again - challenge the adults’ authority: “Who are you to tell me this?”
They may wish to experience a new and larger world and express this in requests to explore the night life of the city, to frequent those places where their contemporaries 'hang out'. They often demand to change schools at this time, expressing a wish to escape the safety of the known world and to step into something that is 'bigger and better.'
The Task
Learning experiences that help the children to deepen their understanding of time organisation and their own part in this will support them as they grapple with questions and a sense of change or departure.
They will begin to understand that it’s the human who shapes history and is shaped by it.
The shaping aspect in particular is an important element at this time. Being intensely pre-occupied with their inner life, the children must be supported to access their own will - determination – and creative ability. They can in this way develop a sense for their own power or agency.
Tasks that are physically and/or socially challenging will support this development and show them that the world will need them to do what is necessary. First, though, they must gather the skills and knowledge that will equip them to do so, as did everyone else before them who put their mind to take on great challenges.