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The Child as a Sense Organ: An Anthroposophic Understanding of Imitation Processes by Peter Selg
skahn's review
3.0
Whether or not your agree with Rudolf Steiner's theory of education, Peter Selg's little book is a very good introduction to the basic idea that underlies the entire approach to Waldorf education. In a single sentence, it could be stated as: until a child starts to get its adult teeth, it is a creature of almost pure imitation.
The child, from birth to (approximately) age 7, is dominated by the sensory nervous system (thus "Child as Sense Organ") and through imitation the child learns. As later "religious" experience focuses on wanting to become some higher spiritual power, the child is this automatically in a somatic way. It reminds me of Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of the Christ, the sustained efforts of monks visualizing the passion of the Christ so vividly that some would have spontaneous physical symptoms, or the "union with God" sought in various branches of mysticism and under many names. The child has an automatic devotion to its environment and that somatic-religious attitude permeates the first seven years of consciousness and lays the groundwork for "true" religious experience later in life. A child not given much to imitate will lack, in the Waldorf view, the natural foundation for full development later. It is important to point out that the "true" religious experience that Steiner refers to is in no way related to doctrine, creeds, or sectarian theologizing.
Implications to this are that reading, writing, and abstract logic are deliberately delayed in the Waldorf approach in order to focus instead on the foundational level development of the body through movement.
The child, from birth to (approximately) age 7, is dominated by the sensory nervous system (thus "Child as Sense Organ") and through imitation the child learns. As later "religious" experience focuses on wanting to become some higher spiritual power, the child is this automatically in a somatic way. It reminds me of Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of the Christ, the sustained efforts of monks visualizing the passion of the Christ so vividly that some would have spontaneous physical symptoms, or the "union with God" sought in various branches of mysticism and under many names. The child has an automatic devotion to its environment and that somatic-religious attitude permeates the first seven years of consciousness and lays the groundwork for "true" religious experience later in life. A child not given much to imitate will lack, in the Waldorf view, the natural foundation for full development later. It is important to point out that the "true" religious experience that Steiner refers to is in no way related to doctrine, creeds, or sectarian theologizing.
Implications to this are that reading, writing, and abstract logic are deliberately delayed in the Waldorf approach in order to focus instead on the foundational level development of the body through movement.
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