青禾Chill Talk by 青禾華德福

December 07, 2023 S2.EP18 一個關於人的教育：為什麼我們需要華德福教育？專訪Ben Cherry老師

當我們送孩子來到華德福學校時，我們是否曾經想過，這只是為了讓他有一個快樂的童年？亦或我們明白華德福教育的本質，是一個使人邁向健康自由，一個真正關於人的教育？

這麼大的提問，我們請到在華德福非常資深的Ben Cherry老師來為我們解答，在這場訪談中，與其說是對談，更像是Ben老師給我們的一場精彩的演講，從各個面向來談人、談教育，並讓我們更深刻的體會到靈性是什麼？真正會讓我們內在感到安定充滿力量的又是什麼？我們如何看待自己又如何看待他人，特別是那些和我們非常不同的人，我們是否能尊重彼此都是獨特的個體？而不要忘記孩子都是如此單純深愛著父母也渴望父母的愛，我們必須真實的去面對來到眼前的孩子，也面對自己內心世界最真實的觸動。

當我們真正懂得人，就會理解華德福教育是一個關於人的教育。

如果您對華德福教育有興趣，也歡迎您報名【青禾華德福113學年新生入學說明會】
報名連結：https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd5TwkB70F4a68D3NupT9rKCAWg3NnU-sKscdyrvS3IvUmjQg/viewform?fbclid=IwAR0Wi5TbuZxqSJ3FapCyasjIdybVSYEjarJ7D58LVav0wBrJbWxIRu59RfA

說明會資訊
一、日期：2024年1月14日（週日）
二、時間：上午10:00～12:00
三、地點：台北市樂群二路262號 (濱江國中內，請從樂群二路266巷側門進入校園)
四、對象：113學年度入學一年級孩童與家長(非當屆入學之家庭，可先報名，如有名額將另行通知)
五、報名截止日期：2023/12/25 或額滿為止

以下則是這場對談Ben老師的英文原文逐字稿，希望能帶給大家更多啟發和力量：

It is, of course, a very big question. And. there's a deeper question within that question and that question is what is Waldorf education? What is anthroposophy? What is the connection between anthroposophy and this education? But in all of these questions, there is the real question What is a human being?

We're living in a time now where this is, in my view, the most important question we have. You see, the way we think of ourselves directly influences how we behave, what we do. If we really believe. That we are animals and only animals. Well, how does one educate an animal? One trains an animal. One rewards and punishes an animal. Is that education? Is that a human way of working with other human beings?
Equally. If we are robots. How do we work with robots? We program them. We already pre reorganize. How the robot is going to behave in a particular situation? Is this a human way? Of working with human beings.

There's another question. What is a child? Is a child the same basically as an adult? It's just that the child is considered more stupid, perhaps, and ignorant, and we have to fill this head with as much information as we can and then they'll become an adult. Is that really what life is about? Because it's certainly not what my life is about.

And for me, it's fascinating that at the same time that we are losing childhood on this earth, it is really in danger. At the same time as we're losing childhood, we're also losing old age. Because old age is considered to be some kind of sickness. It's a terrible thing to become old. I would like to, really encourage you to look forward to becoming old. It's a wonderful time of life, and it's intimately connected with the time of life that we call being a child.

I'm sure many of you have experienced that there's a very particular relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. I haven't experienced great grandparents or great grandchildren, but it's enough for me to have the wonderful experience not only of having known one of my grandparents, the others I didn't know, but a very powerful lady, a very strong lady. The old kind of person who was really connected with reality, with practical things of life, and she. She was never ill. She was astonished that we children were ill so often and she couldn't understand it. The first time she became ill was at the age of 92. She got a cold. And shortly after that, she died. So for me, as a child, that relationship was incredibly important.

Likewise, being her grandfather, my 2 grandchildren are in Australia. They're now both in adolescence. But this extraordinarily wonderful experience of being with them but not having the responsibility that a father and a mother have, and so one can watch them much more one can be just that little bit more distant. And and value value their process of learning. Little children are so intelligent.

And this is known to modern science. It is known. It's it's simply a a fact of modern life. Children. Have an incredible intelligence and that this intelligence diminishes when they go to kindergarten. Shockingly diminishes. And when they go into the primary school, it it, it goes even further into into a kind of. I don't know it it it just Children now are are pushed to learn. They have to learn. It's no longer this love of learning.

And another just incredible connection between old age and little children. You see? Both stages, at both ends of life, we are closer to the spiritual world. This is something we're not encouraged to talk about at all today. Spirit. What is Spirit is just some kind of superstition, some kind of religion. It's not. It's something absolutely real and practical. Little children. Have this spiritual intelligence and when we become old. Our childhood comes closer to us again. It's quite remarkable the memories that come up.

So all of this is is to do with this question, this fundamental question What is a human being? And in today's world, we we have a very materialistic picture of what a human being is. The material part is very necessary. It's essential we live here on this material earth. We have to get to know this earth. But to confine our humanity, or indeed to confine the nature just to the physical, just to what is material. This, this, this is such a poverty bringing way of thinking. The richness of. What this world is? Is wiped out.

I can tell you something else. If I had been born into a family that spoke Chinese, I would be as fluent in your language as you are. There's nothing. In my genes or in your genes, that dictates that you will learn a certain language. So how is it? What is this intelligence that enables a child so quickly to pick up whatever the host language is? Even 2 languages? Even 3 languages with different people? And each language brings a different experience for the child, a different feeling, a different. A different world.

The same is true of standing. There are no genes that make the human being stand. Each child has to overcome gravity through his or her own power. This incredible power of will, this determination to do this and this is before they learn to speak, and it's before they learn to think.

If you look carefully. At the progress the little children that babies make, one could say one can actually see without seeing it, with the clarity that I can see through my eyes, but one can see through the way the child is. That something is coming down. Not only the child is lifting herself up. But something is coming down, first of all after three months. The child learns to lift the head. And. Really. The neck now has a power, A power to hold this head. Three months later. The child can sit up. The whole of the upper part of the body now is becoming organized by the child itself, by the spirit that is coming down. And then three months later. The child is learning to stand. It's come right down into the legs, right down into the feet.

And each time such joy. This incredible joy of achievement. Of the human will, overcoming the downward forces. We are upright beings, That's what we are. And if we really did descend from apes? Then the last achievement that we would have made would have been lifting the head. But in reality? That is the first achievement.
so now perhaps I could rephrase this, this central question that has been presented to me. Instead of saying why do we need Waldorf Education, what I'd like to say is what we do need is a really refreshingly clear picture of what a human being is. And that means that we need to be able to recognize the presence of spirit, that it becomes a reality in our lives. It doesn't mean I can see the spirit. I can't. I have physical eyes. But I can definitely be aware that I have in myself and so can everyone else. You can be aware that you have in yourselves a power of uprightness. And this uprightness is a core aspect of a really human education and I see Waldorf education as a human education.

So in Anthroposophy, which is not taught in the Waldorf School, but it gives the whole inner quality of this education, this science of the full human being. That's what Anthroposophy is. Wisdom of the human being, human wisdom. This is a three-fold picture of what we are. First of all, the spirit, which I've tried to characterize today. Secondly, we are beings of soul. And when we use the word soul, what we're referring to particularly is the middle part of the human being. As I'm speaking to you now, my hands are naturally moving in a certain way in connection with my own heart. The heart has been largely left out of education today. The heart is the center of the soul. In our soul, we have all kinds of different... We have a very, very rich soul life. We have all our fears and our hopes and our wonderful inner achievements and our happiness, our sadness, our pain, our joy.

And of course, we have our bodies. One of the really challenging realities of the modern world is that more and more people are being brought up to think we are bodies. That's what we are. And if you think of, for example, the metaverse and all of this incredible, dazzling modern technology, if you think of that, how does it work? How does it connect with the human being? And the answer to that is it connects with the physical results of what our soul and spirit are doing. So it picks up chemicals. It picks up biological processes. It picks up very, very subtle movements of the neurons. It picks up these inter-neuronal complexes where different neurons come together. It picks up all these symptoms of the physical body and increasingly denies the reality out of which these symptoms have occurred in the physical body.

We also live in a brain-infatuated society. The brain is considered to be the truly human organ. And the brain is the dictator of everything that happens in the body. That is the picture that I received when I studied biology a long time ago. And now it is more and more fleshed out by details from modern science.

I would say, not just for parents of little children and young children now, but I would say for the whole world. What is needed today is a renewed picture of what a human being is. And Waldorf education has arisen out of that picture. So in all this work that we do, as you've described, in all this work we do with the feelings of children and artistic work and all the social connections that we try to encourage with children and so forth. All of this is nourishing the soul.

But I started to talk about the brain. And I just must say that when I first read in the book Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner that the brain is the organ of the spirit, I just need to say my world changed. I thought that's the secret of the brain. The brain is indeed the most highly developed organ probably in creation. But to reduce it to becoming a kind of dictator that is telling everything what to do is way below that real possibility of the brain as an organ of the human spirit.

I fully understand your concern and I understand the concern of parents. I've also been through this as a parent. So your question, such an important question about the worry of the parents, I think it's I don't feel that I am here to solve all these problems. I can only give you thoughts which for me have life. And if you're willing to begin to think these thoughts, they will give you courage. They will open new doors into the way you see life.

You see we assume the role of education is to fit young people into the way the world is now.

When I was a young man, through certain experiences I had, I realized that I actually had to break my own education. I had a very high powered, very competitive, very traditional British education in boys boarding schools in England.

Then I got a master's degree from Cambridge University in England in law. So in a certain way, many doors could have opened for me.

But emotionally, I was a wreck.

In my relationship with women, it was not a balanced, it was not a healthy relationship.

I also recognized that in me there was an arrogance because of my education.

And it was all of this, all of these things that made me feel I have to leave England and I have to go out into the world and I have to find my own way.

And one good thing that Waldorf schools in my view also must learn, one good thing from my education, I mean one out of several good things, but one, the one I value highest is it did develop in me a strong will.

It's just that our traditional education has led my will towards competition.

Competition is part of life. Some competition is excellent, but when it becomes the be all and end all, the actual central avenue of going into adulthood, no, it's a mistake.

Yeah I can agree with what you said, but I also need to say we in Waldorf education also have to change ourselves because if Waldorf becomes a fixed way, if it becomes in this age, we do this. At that age, we do that. That's the end of the story. Then it dies. Education must come to life, and that means through individual human beings, working with individual human beings.

Perhaps I could ask parents can you remember why you send your child to a Waldorf school? At that time, right at the beginning.

What was it to gave you the courage or the audacity to do this?

What was you recognized in at least the ideas of possibility of this way working with children what was it ignited you.

To those ideals that you had then, do they still live in you?

Now you see, one of the key aspects of this education is. Children Change.

They go through huge changes in life and we as parents, we as grandparents, we as teachers. Need to recognize these changes that are taking place in the children.
So the way of teaching in class one should not be the way of teaching in grade 3.

And by the time a grade 5 and then 7 and 9 and so far, I mean these are different worlds.

But we as adults need to recognize that and it's very difficult.

But if I just go back for a moment to this picture I gave near the beginning about a child learning to stand.

And I highlighted this this is something that only that child can do. You can't do it for the child. It's an act of pure will.

And as a Waldorf teacher, one of the questions that I need to ask myself when I'm with children at different levels of being with children different ages. Am I still able to touch that will of the child or am I failing to do that?

And as well as the will, I've also spoken about feelings a little bit.

When a child is learning to speak, this second incredible victory that only that child can do, you cannot do it for the child. This learning to speak is really a world of of experiencing new feelings.

So one can ask, as the child grows and is no longer just learning to speak, but is further developing speech and hopefully learning some other foreign languages and learning many, many other things too. What's happening with the feelings?

As teachers, we must look at ourselves. As parents, we must look at ourselves. Am I recognizing who this child is becoming?

Or am I still treating the child in the way I treated the child two years ago?

And the third huge victory of the small child, usually in the third year of life. Is the victory of learning to think.

Again, there are no genes. To make you think, It is a purely human action. It is an action of the human spirit.

And look at little children who've learned already to speak to a certain extent. And now they're connecting the spetaking with a thought. Mama, Mama, Mama.
Can you see I've understood something?

The joy of connecting a thought with a sense perception.

But then as I say, two years later perhaps, or maybe even then, a child is sent off to school somewhere. Kindergarten and immediately. All of this is just buried. And they have to learn something else. Which seems to have nothing whatever to do with their lives so often.

And that intelligence drastically goes down.

So what I would say to you, dear parents, dear brave Waldorf parents and dear teachers in Waldorf schools too. Have the courage to see the children changing and do not treat them in the way that you used to treat them a year ago or even six months ago.

Because the quality, one of many qualities that makes us true human beings, is our capacity to learn.

And I speak to you now as an aging man. Yes. I still learn every single day.

But I'm sure. That if I had not broken the hardening part of the education that had been put on me, if I hadn't broken that, I would have stopped learning.

I might have learned a profession, of course, but not learning from life.

So you brought up a huge question, this question of of children with difficulties and I would like to make a prediction. As the years go by, there will be more and more.
Just like I predict there will be another pandemic, and there will be because we live in a mind set that is creating illness.

in denying the truly human human being. In other words, the being of spirit, soul as well as body in denying this. And in reducing us to just body, this is an illness.
And you know these words. Of course you know them. Of Kongzi. Yeah. If you want to change the world, you have to change yourself.

it's incredible that already 2500 Years ago, someone could say that you know the wisdom.

Everything depends on human beings changing themselves. I can't change you. I don't want to change you. It's enough work to change myself.

But my life becomes richer if I can get to know you or whoever it is. More and more people to get to know them and to see how different every human being is.
And similarly, in a school, every child is unique.

We have to work with them as a group, but never forgetting that the group consists of individuals.

And increasingly today, amongst those individuals, we have more and more young people, children, babies. And there will be more. Who are so unique that they have a problem that perhaps you haven't encountered before anywhere.

And of course this upsets us. It brings enormous pain to the people around, to the parents, to to the teachers, to it disrupts things. But the simple truth is that it's through these difficult situations that we can learn, if we're willing. To recognize and to dare to try this and then see does this work or try this and does this work.
And this is one of the reasons. It's one of many reasons why in the Waldorf school art, many different arts and many different practical skills are taught and taught further and developed hopefully year by year.

Not only is art working with the heart, the heart is very much involved with all artistic activity. Not only is art using the hands and particularly the crafts, but all arts use the hands and so forth, the movements of the body. But also. In every art we have to use our thinking. In a different way, you know, we have to free up our thinking to to look at things in a new way.

I can truly say that in my own life, before I met the work of Rudolph Steiner, which was on my roughly my 30th birthday. In a school for severely disadvantaged children, children who were really crippled. Where I worked as a gardener for two years. Before that. I had already had certain experiences. Which gave me the feeling. We shouldn't only look at the world in a cognitive way, in a thinking way. But the world is a work of art.

So when I was training to become a Waldorf teacher or learning to become a Waldorf teacher in different cultures, partly in. In England, partly in Africa, partly in Australia. This artistic work, I realized how, how in a certain way, how handicapped I was. Artistically. But I realized that my own health depended on this artistic work, and so I can see how. This helps the health of children.

Well, I think I don't need to go into details with that because I'm sure you can see the effect of computers and screens and things on little on children. But I'll just, I'll just share with you an example from my own life that my son for the 1st 12 years of his life had no contact with computers at all. This was before the time of cell phones. But when he became an adolescent. He made it very clear to both his mother and myself, I want to learn how a computer works. And he saved up money. He did a part time job. While he was still at school. Working in the computer shop. And he was able to save enough money. He bought himself his own computer, and he started teaching himself how to do this.

The man who owned the computer shop was so impressed by his progress that he actually gave him a job and he paid him for it to go to people's homes and sort out their computers.

So why? How could that happen? Because he was interested.

I could say he loved it.

And he could also learn to master it.

And I thank goodness that he had all this artistic work before that and continued in the high school also to have artistic work.

I think parents have more fear of, you know, will my child keep up with modern technology than the children do? The children have no problem with modern technology.

They learn very quickly.

But as I've tried to indicate, if the modern technology comes into their lives too early, there are consequences. And those consequences last for life.
Because young children are so sensitive, they take the world into themselves.

The whole question of the role of fathers in particular in the upbringing of children is really an important question.

And of course, in today's world, this difference between being a male or being a female is less clear than it used to be. And so many men actually have very feminine qualities, and many women have masculine qualities. So it's not black and white.

But speaking generally, one can say. The male body is a body that is harder than a female body.

And the female body is not only softer but also has an organ like the breasts that come in adolescents, but also the womb which is there through the whole of life. Which a boy and a man doesn't have, so that and this. This somehow brings more of an inner life there in the female.

But because there are differences, and we need to know this, there are differences between women and men. Life becomes much richer.
If I look back to my own experience as a boy, I mean my relationship with my father was very different from my relationship with my mother.
I told secrets to my mother that I didn't tell my father.

I was, in a certain way, certainly as an adolescent, more in competition with my father.

But he accepted this competition, for example playing tennis or something, and it was very important to each of us that we do our absolute best to beat the other one.
I was also very blessed that my mother was very gifted with her hands.

But of course these things they can, they can be in both genders. So if each parent recognizes their own strengths and their own weaknesses, and then is able to see how these can. That these two different people have been drawn together and you have a child together and obviously aspects of each of you is in that child through mainly through imitation.

And so on one level, one could say if a boy can experience his father doing some physical work, it's an impressive experience for the boy.

And likewise if a girl can experience how a woman relates to a baby that's brought into the home or whatever it is to a neighbor's baby and and just take that in and feel that that's also a very important experience.

But I don't want to fix any of these masculine qualities and feminine qualities because we live in a world where it's all mixing up.

But what I would say as the final thing is. Children long to love their parents.

And if they feel that they can't love their parents, it's a shocking realization.

If the relationship between the two parents has more harmony than disharmony. Then that love has an atmosphere in which to grow up.
We must live truthfully together,Not be afraid of being different from each other. But also recognizing what it is that has drawn us together.

And I would actually also say about the relationship between teachers and parents, that if that is working. If there really is a relationship, a human relationship there, the children will benefit from that and they will, they will rejoice. They'll be so happy.

But all healthy relationship depends on truth. Be true, be true.

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