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RE: Welcome – Striving after truth
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baandje
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Jul 15, 2005 19:15 PDT
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PK wrote: “And so there is a conflict, perhaps, between their
responsibility as a teacher, which I think Steiner was trying to
identify in the first quote ‘He (the teacher) must never compromise with
untruth’…”
*
I honestly can’t remember if I posted this on Waldorf-Questions the
other day. I was working on a response to your original topic, which was
longer and went into greater detail. Perhaps you could repost it?
Anyway, I had written:
That’s not the way I interpret that or necessarily experienced things. A
couple of sentences later in that same paragraph, you’ve quoted Steiner
as saying: “Our teaching will only bear the stamp of truth if we are
intently striving after truth in ourselves.” So the conflict as Steiner
identifies it has to do with truth versus untruth in one’s inner life.
The ‘teacher’ aspect is secondary at that point, as I see it.
For the most part, I believe Steiner was sincerely exploring meaningful
questions pertaining to human morality. I know most Steiner-Waldorf
people believe that. And they believe that, as Steiner students and
anthroposophists, they’re continuing those very same spiritual
explorations.
My experience though has been that many and even the majority of
anthroposophical teachers simply have not reached the level of inner
moral development Steiner was speaking of; have not evolved the capacity
to deal with many of the issues that arise, in an honest and truthful
manner. What I’ve seen is that teachers very often deal with issues in
the contrived and, to put it bluntly, dishonest manner we discussed in
another post: making this or that decision based on what’s supposedly
‘spiritually best’ for the situation.
The idea that teachers somehow know what’s spiritually best, is a smoke
screen that’s thrown up to hide the fact the individuals involved have
not developed the strength of character to see these issues through in
an open, inclusive and communal manner. And the paradox here is that
teachers who act and work this way, believe they’re following Steiner’s
indications with regards to never compromising with untruth. Yet it’s
exactly this sort of dishonesty of soul that Steiner was in fact warning
of.
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