Subject: nurturing and cultivating imagination and the arts in WE
Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2001 05:12:30 -0800
From: Sune Nordwall <Sune.Nordwall@home.se>

[someone] wrote:

"Sune in the context of my experience, "imagination" in Waldorf does refer to the stage of knowledge of the supersensible world. If it referred to the normal broad sense of the word wouldn't there be evidence from the children and in their lesson books that they were allowed to use their imagination and not be forced to copy every drawing or lesson from what the teacher does on the black board."

One aspect of encouraging imagination in waldorf schools of course has to do with giving the children the opportunity to express themselves in the making of pictures in different forms.

You mention:

"I have kids in 5th grade, and I have yet to see -anything- in their class work where they were encouraged to use their imagination or to express themselves.  Further, my kids are board with the lack of self expressive projects.  My 3rd grader has even said he would rather draw at home where he can do whatever he wants.  I have a great picture of a man made from red hot peppers on my refrigerator and a picture of Santa Claus and his rain deer being blown out of the sky by a SCUD missile. My all time favorite was a picture of a dragon falling through the night sky to earth.  His scales were made with hard *black lines.*  What a blessing."

But it's one ones kids who made them!

But encouraging 'imagination' in children in the broad sense does not only mean encouraging the making of pictures. It also entails nurturing the imagination in a broad artistic sense in terms of nurturing their imagination with the tales and stories that constitute the treasures of human cultural evolution, with music and songs and giving them a sense of the richness of life in nature developing through the rhythms of the year.

Personally, I find the performing and participation in the making by 3rd graders of the Advent spiral that Debra described in full in a posting to be one such rich inspirational nourishment. What experience does it give the 10 year olds? And how will they think about it later in school and in life?

I think, when they study astronomy later in the upper grades they will have a much richer experience of the nature of galaxies, the greatest observable structures in the universe, where they will recognize what they experienced as the Advent spiral as 3rd graders. 

They will have a feeling how there is an at least potential centre in all galaxies, at least belonging to the spiral type and how there is a relation between what can be found as suns/suns as centres of solar systems and the centre of the spiral galaxies because they have themselves made the spiral and experienced that there is an inner relation between the centre of the (spiral) galaxies and the suns as at least partly centres of solar systems. 

They will not only look somewhat distractedly at beautiful pictures of galaxies in later years, learning their names or astronomical codes, but also relate to them out of their own childhood experience in the 3rd grade.

In the lower grades they will (probably) also learn and experience basic qualities of mathematics and the relation between different numbers and forms by participating in making and experiencing them themselves, as simple walking of forms in the class room, concrete mathematics done and experienced with their feet walking forms. 

They will do it experiencing the musical-rhythmical aspect of mathematics, also letting them understand more concretely how the planets move at different paces around the sun in our solar system. They learn in a simple, way in the lower grades to understand some of the basic relations between numbers, forms, astronomical relations and musical rhythms, that in one form comes to expression in the "Multiplication table" in mathematics and "Table of the chemical elements" in chemistry, depicting the common musical element in both mathematics and chemistry.

'imagination' (not 'Imagination' in the 'technical' anthroposophical sense, related to a purely inner activity and primarily the 'seeing' experience) is nourished in WE in training to experience in an artistic way the relation between different contexts in terms of music, numbers, astronomy, light/darkness/colours, forms, symmetries, poetical expressions, words and sounds as the basic components of language.

They give the basic nourishment for the soul mainly during the first 7 years in school being an experiental basis out of which the concepts and more theoretical analysis' then are developed in the upper grades, not only learned as something purely abstract that someone has come up with, and that they will learn for the tests and then forget, but as something they can understand because they during the first seven years in school through their own experience have a relation to.

In the lecture I saw in passing and mentioned in an earlier posting ('The nature of anthroposophy' - and how it can and has inspired different activities, held in Elberfeld 24 Jan 1922), Steiner points to the essence of this way of relating art to nature and culture, as he viewed it:

"What did Goethe say, when he wished once to express his ideal of art in the most intimate way? He said 'Art is a manifestation of the secret laws of nature, which without it would never be revealed'. And he also said significantly, 'The man in whom nature begins to reveal her most intimate mysteries, feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpretess, Art'."

I think this maybe points to the way art and imagination is nurtured and cultivated in WE; art, the arts are used, nurtured and cultivated primarily as a means of approaching nature and human culture; of relating to and being the primarily basis, especially in the lower grades (1-7), for understanding nature and human culture (over the last almost 10 000 years), not primarily as a means of self-expression.

That may be viewed as a weakness from a perspective of viewing imagination and the arts primarily as a tool for self-expression. Maybe that difference and conflict is most pointed in American cultural contexts, where the expression of ones own personality is one of the central issues.

To come back to what I wanted to write in the beginning:

I think one needs to see how 'imagination' (not 'Imagination') is cultivated in WE:

1. It is cultivated not primarily as the formation of inner pictures (as in 'Imagination') or making of external pictures (as a means of self expression), but in relation to all the arts in their basic components and expressions.

2. It is cultivated not only or primarily related to the 'sight' experience (as in 'Imagination') but as stepwise training of the tools of the arts (even if maybe oil on canvas, or advanced printing techniques not are included in the lower grades, different printing techniques come later in the upper grades) in relation to the basic components of the visual and 'oral' arts; slowly stepwise in different forms building a basic understanding of their components; light, colours, forms, rhythms, harmonies and 'melody' an developing the handicrafts through the grades.

3. It is not cultivated primarily as a tool of self-expression, but as a tool of understanding nature and the cultures of man and humanity and in the description and depicting of the patterns, regularities and qualities of natural phenomena and expressions of human culture, coming to expression in among other ways the 'Main Lesson Books'.

Sorry if the above may seem 'teacherish'. It's a primary instinct that made me consider teaching as a profession in youth and difficult to get rid of ... :-()

Maybe Robert or others can complement, nuance or dispute and argue it.

... [someone:]
"Thanks for the anthro definition of imagination at least I have a reference point with which to understand the type of education my kids are getting."

Regards,
and Happy New Millennium!

Sune Nordwall
Stockholm, Sweden

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