Pedagogical law

A fundamental pedagogical law was described by Rudolf Steiner in his "Curative Education Course". It is significant not only for curative education but for education as a whole and consists in the fact that the educator acts with his next higher member of man on the lower member of the child. Thus, for example, the etheric body of the educator affects the physical body of the child, the astral body affects the etheric body, and so on.

„Here we encounter a pedagogical law which appears in all pedagogy. It is as follows. Any one member of the being of man is influenced by the next higher member. Only through this does it effectively come to development. For the development of the physical body, a living thing in the etheric body can be effective. For the development of an etheric body, only what is living in an astral body can be effective. For the development of an astral body, only what is living in an I can be effective. And only what is living in a spirit-self can be effective on an I. I could go on even further beyond the spirit-self, but there we would already enter into the teaching of the esoteric.

What does that mean? If you become aware that in a child the etheric body is in some way atrophied, you must form your own astral body in such a way that it can have a corrective effect on the child's etheric body. With reference to the educational scheme it can be written here:

Child:	physical body	Educator:	etheric body
	etheric body		astral body
	astral body		I
	I		spirit self

The educator's own etheric body must be able to work on the child's physical body - and this must happen through his seminary training. The astral body must be able to influence the etheric body of the child. The educator's own I must be able to have an effect on the child's astral body. And now you will even be inwardly frightened, for here stands the spirit-self of the educator, which you will believe is not developed. This must have an effect on the child's I. But the law is like that. And I will show you to what extent, not only in the ideal educator, but often in the very worst educator, the spiritual self of the educator, which is not even conscious to him, has an effect on the child's I. The educator is, in fact, in the ideal, but often in the very worst educator, the spiritual self of the educator, which is not conscious to him. Education is indeed wrapped in many mysteries.” (Lit.:GA 317, p. 33f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Heilpädagogischer Kurs, GA 317 (1995), ISBN 3-7274-3171-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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