|
The Art of Child Study
It may be a truism to say that every teacher should make efforts to understand his pupils.
Our real understanding, after all, can be a sure foundation and support for children’s
whole development; and without this, our lessons will be a random undertaking that
connects with our pupils, at best, in a superficial way only. A skilled teacher seeks to
understand his pupils so that he can raise learning beyond mere compulsion or drill.
It was Rudolf Steiner’s ideal that the weekly pedagogical meetings in Waldorf schools
should support teachers’ continually developing insight into their pupils. He exhorted
them to ‘become psychologists’ but did not mean this in the commonly understood
sense. He demonstrated this ‘art of evolving insight’ in the faculty meetings in which
he participated on many occasions. One can say that it is an essential part of the quality
of our work as teachers for us to develop these skills of perception, reflection, and insight.
Christof Wiechert here picks up these suggestions of Steiner’s anew. He elaborates from
them the art of the child study as a key tool in nurturing pupils development and, at the
same time, teachers’ growing powers of insight. In short, the approach described here
can enliven the educational and social dimensions of a whole school community.
Book Review
The very essence of Waldorf education lives in the Child Study. Observing
the children is primary task of every Waldorf teacher. The entire curriculum
should be formed out of this child observation practice and new organs of
perception are developed from this practice. This is why Rudolf Steiner was
so insistent about administration being done by those who are with the
children every day, not by others who have nothing directly to do with
teaching the children. The real revolution lives in this open secret of Waldorf
education: that the observation of children is the heart of the curriculum…
Not the subjects listed nor the dictates of those outside a particular group
of children about what “every child should know.”
Christof Wiechert’s book, Solving the Riddle of the Child: the Art of the
Child Study addresses this truth, this open secret with elegance and
comprehensive clarity. Every Waldorf school faculty should take the book
up as a study at some point along their development together!
A child study is a technique unique to Waldorf schools that has the child
become the focus of observation on the part of the whole faculty. A faculty
meeting then devotes itself to lining up observations about the child’s
physical organization and appearance, the child’s behavior in class, and
with other children, and as a learner, and also how the child is in his or her
own world – likes and dislikes, social ease, imaginative abilities, willingness
to learn and to work. Then the faculty lives with the questions that the child
prompts out of these observations. If it is possible, some ideas of what can
be done to help and harmonize the child’s experience in school and in the
world come forward as a plan on the child’s behalf.
Rather than giving a formula for approaching a study of a child, Wiechert
describes three different phases of the study. He cautions against jumping
to conclusions too quickly, applying what we know about another child to
this new child, and avoiding the puzzle that every child presents. He instructs
that the discomfort that we feel with the mystery of each child is the very portal
through which we must walk as teachers to find the essence of each child and
to cultivate our own capacities of perception.
All the grace of Christof Wiechert’s many years of experience shine through
the pages of this book. He provides us with a challenge and a procedure to
use to meet that challenge. The challenge is in itself the very same as that of
Waldorf education. The call of Rudolf Steiner to formulate a new approach
to education lives in this work of child study. That the child instructs and that
teachers follow with ideas that are informed by life experience is the lodestar
of all that is new, all that constitutes a genuine revolution, in Waldorf education.
Wiechert’s masterful style of explaining his ideas and observation make this
an invaluable tool for any teacher, any faculty, any parent. In our times when
children are giving consistent signals that something is terribly wrong about
our way of reaching them – the mainstream barrage of information, technology,
stimuli, speed, etc. – the answers that live in the care given to a child in a
well-done collaboratively approached child study holds solutions that defy
the modern world. Wiechert defines through the procedures he explains the
very core of the slogan “Receive the Child in Reverence.” What could be
more reverent than to allow child to be displaying symptoms of his or her
discomfort, instead being annoying and “resisting” learning the way we
say it ought to be done?
The artistically organized book starts with the history of Steiner’s work in
the Waldorf school, developing the curriculum he was asked to develop by
the enlightened industrialist, Emil Molt. Molt understood after WWI that
something new needed to be done to make a future that supported human
beings instead of destroying them. Steiner was enthusiastic about the call.
Wiechert then describes the basis on which the child study is set and then
describes how it can be done, in three phases. He explains the points of
discomfort that inevitably come in a teacher’s even asking for help
through child study, “Because sending the child out of class is not a
permanent solution…” or “ because the teacher feels that she is not
addressing the child’s true problem…” or “the teacher is asking for
help in addressing the child’s headstrong will.” The very humility
required as a teacher to state help is needed and to ask colleagues
for support for a child, addresses the nature of collegial work as a new
idea in Waldorf education. To admit to feeling stuck with the riddle of
one child or another is to create new opportunities for the whole
teaching faculty to learn. Identifying the points of discomfort as necessary
in the process liberates us all from the usual social norms of “saving face”
through admitting what we do not know. Of course, every child remains
a riddle to all who care for the child. How to “read” the child’s
symptoms with love and attentive interest is the task!
At the end of the book the author gives a small but comprehensive
bouquet of examples of actual child studies and those that had instant
results and those that continue to shroud the child’s symptoms in
mystery. These examples are very helpful and clear.
Every teacher should read Christof Wiechert’s book: class teachers,
specialty teachers, therapeutic support teachers, tutors, coaches, and
parents too! It is refreshing to be reminded of the true nature of the
child, of education, of our teaching. Christof Wiechert’s book does
all these things expertly and with compassion. His artistic skill as
cultivator of a full concept, as a story teller, as a teacher, make this
a remarkably accessible and helpful training tool for any teacher to
better understand the task of child observation and child study.
The seminal nature of the child and the study of the child are
perfectly underscored in this masterful work.
|
