Not only today, when we see immense efforts being invested in the development of intelligence, is the education of the will a central topic. It was as important a hundred years ago when the first Waldorf School was founded, and when Rudolf Steiner gave fourteen lectures to prepare the future teachers for their task. The fourth of these lectures focuses exclusively on the will. Wolfgang-M. Auer, author, lecturer and long-time Waldorf teacher shows how education can support the will.

If we are to understand will concretely and unlock it for education, we must, as Steiner pointed out in that lecture, observe it in the context of the entire human organization. Will manifests differently in each of the altogether seven constituent parts of that organization, appearing at the level of the physical body as «instinct», in the life body as «drive» and in the sentient body as «desire». We do not need to go any further than that because here is where the problem starts.

Compared to animals, we humans have hardly any instincts left, but we certainly have drives and desires. But can it be the task of education to educate or even boost them? Rudolf Steiner’s listeners at the time may have understood what he had in mind; later teachers didn’t find this so easy, because they focused on Steiner’s explications on what animals and humans have in common rather than looking for what is different in humans. As a result of this, Lecture 4 has for decades been simply considered inaccessible. This is also apparent from the various publications about the First Teachers’ Course in the centennial year of 2019, when comments on Lecture 4 were basically restricted to statements such as that human beings also have an animal nature with instincts, drives and desires in which will is effective. That does not do justice to Rudolf Steiner’s lecture, however. An attempt shall be made here to find a different approach to his considerations.

At the level of the physical body, will is instinct. In the case of animals this means that for all typical behaviours and activities there is a «programme» determined by it. This is why animals don’t have much to learn because they know everything they need for their specialized existence. A newly born foal can immediately stand on its legs, walk, skip and soon follow the herd. Birds build nests instinctively and beavers lodges, but they can’t do anything else because their body structure, informed by instinct, is highly specialized.

Animals are predetermined and cannot choose to change their behaviour. It is the opposite with human beings. Apart from a few reflexes such as the sucking and the grasp reflex, which are only effective for a short period of time, we bring hardly anything with us that would determine or guide our behaviour. We have to learn everything, even faculties that are specific to our species such as walking upright and speaking.

When children learn to stand up and walk at the age of one and when they have really mastered walking a few years later, they can walk, run and jump in any situation: on soft or hard, even or uneven ground, uphill or downhill. Through their own activities, they have imprinted a ‘programme’ into their body that ensures that the activity of walking happens automatically in the right way in every situation, just as instinct ensures this in animals from the very beginning. The same applies to other activities such as speaking, writing, arithmetic, knitting, sawing, swimming, riding a bike, playing the piano or playing football. Once we have really learned to master a skill, it will stay available to us for the rest of our life – just like the instinctive behaviour of animals – and we will even be able to swim, ride a bike and play the piano when we haven’t done it for some time. But how does will develop in individual human beings?

Using a picture one can liken the human will to the course of a stream from the spring to the ocean. Whether the will reaches the valley (i.e. the world) or whether it seeps away near the source does not depend on the spring and how vibrant it is but on whether there are channels and outlets for the water to flow into the world. Whenever we learn a movement, activity, technique or a new language, a new channel is made or an existing one widened or deepened. Then the intentions, or will impulses, can stream through the body and our newly acquired skills can get out into the world and take effect there.

Will education therefore means preparing channels and conduits so that the will can get through the physical body into the world and be active there. The will itself (the spring), the most individual and intimate part of our being, must not be touched in Waldorf Education. It is off-limits. Education only aims at the human constituents (channels). At the level of the physical body this means all the movements, activities and skills we acquire with the body. Making this possible for children and young people through movement, handwork, craft activities, playing and much else means paving the way for their will to enter the world.

In the life body will manifests as drive. School is not about exercising innate drives such as the drive to eat, reproduce or take flight but about developing new cultural drives for action. Our habits are such cultivated drives. They are shorter or longer lasting actions, behaviours or methods that we have acquired through constant repetition and that are linked to specific situations. When such a situation occurs, the corresponding habit is set off automatically, ensuring that we, without having to decide, brush our teeth at night, practise our instrument in the afternoon, complete our tasks, tidy up our tools after work, hold the door open for others, but also that we apply the right steps when doing arithmetic or other things. Once something has become a habit it is easier for us to keep it up. Habits, too, prepare channels for the will; channels that motivate us to repeated activities and lasting behaviours and that often pave the way for more important acts. Both in kindergarten and school, habits are a crucial educational element for establishing discipline in connection with rituals in a non-violent way, making sure that methods and behaviours become second nature.

In the sentient body will appears as desire. While desires are often looked down on, they are a manifestation of will that we need to look at impartially here as appetites or, in a weaker form, as needs. Desires always aim at a perceived or imagined object or person, such as a lover, the chocolates on the table, a summer trip to Greece or a good report. In order to achieve the desired object much will power is often invested that was first awakened by desire. If we look more closely at everyday life, we will find that not only habits but desires, too, often prompt us to become active. Without desires, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and much would be left undone. It is the task of education to widen the horizon of existing desires. Children love sweeping the classroom because their teacher has shown them how to do it until their desire to do it themselves has grown strong enough. They like coming to school because they are curious to find out what happens next in a story or in written arithmetic. More is needed, however, to make the desire to play the cello last: good teaching, regular practice and the witnessing, again and again, of what older students or musicians can achieve on the instrument. Desire then turns into an interest in music and music-making that, with continuing regular stimulation, will last years.

Fostering and developing physical aptitude, habits, and desires and interests in education will result in a strong will and effective actions because enough channels will be available on all three levels for the will to get into the world.

Motives, which are assigned to the ‘I’, also belong to these three way-pavers of the will. Desires do not last long; they die as soon the desired object has been attained or forgotten. Motives, on the other hand, are not dependent on situations or objects. We choose and shape them ourselves. They relate to a long-term goal, often even a life goal, that cannot be achieved on a direct route. They lend the will power and perseverance to keep pursuing its goals in the face of resistance, setbacks and distractions. Motives can be inspired even in young children, but especially in adolescence, through folktales, role models, examples, biographies, philosophical conversations and by looking back on one’s own life.

With the help of motives, desires, drives and instincts, the will makes its way from the inner life out into the world. It depends on this way how intensely the will can connect with and become effective in the world. Strength or weakness of will are consequently not unalterable individual properties; they can change quickly and depend on the task at hand and above all on the channels available.

An example from pedagogical practice may illustrate this. A student always appears listless and uninterested in school, not engaging with anything, never getting anything done. No bookwork is ever finished, none ever handed in on time. Everyone thinks he is weak-willed, but they are wrong. When he is allowed to organize his 17^th birthday party, given certain conditions, another side becomes visible. He starts planning and preparing energetically, gets the right help with the music and makes sure during the party that everyone is having fun and sticks to the rules. Through this experience of success his interest in the lessons grows, as does his reliability. He was not weak-willed before the party, but he was lacking the right channels for desire and interest and the habits, which he later managed to develop in school, too. Equally, a part in a class 8 play or a class 11 art assignment that requires the study of a painter and the copying of one of his paintings, can help a young person’s will to break through. Discipline is established by introducing the forms and agreements of coexistence – in the moving classroom this could be the changing around of benches and cushions – and by practising them until they have become habits and skills. And when we practise how to study and write texts in class 7, we may hear parents say that desks at home are suddenly kept tidy.

When educating and forming the will, we therefore don’t focus on the will that has to change but on concrete aspects of the human organization that need strengthening or even developing first so that, through them, the will can become effective in the world.

Wolfgang-M. Auer

Translated from the German by Margot M. Saar

Dr. Wolfgang-M. Auer taught for 30 years at the Rudolf Steiner Schule in Bochum (DE) and was instrumental in developing the Moving Classroom model. He has written and edited a number of books on Waldorf Education and is lecturing widely in Germany and abroad.

This article was first published in the magazine «erziehungsKUNST» in September 2021. The magazine is published monthly by the Association of Waldorf Schools.