art

Educating is a form of art

Going the way from education as a science to education as a form of art is what we intend to do in the different training programmes at Rudolf Steiner Institute. This idea is based on a broad understanding of art. The artist Johannes Stüttgen wonderfully characterizes art like this:

"In every human being there is a second person who is hardly ever perceived because he/she is invisible to the eye. This second human person normally remains small, tiny, because he/she doesn't get enough to eat. The Bible says: "Man does not live on bread alone." That is not a pious phrase, but a scientifically accurate though hidden reference to the second person. This raises the question: "What does he/she live on?" The answer: This second person lives on art.

He/She is supposed to live on art? Yes. If you are completely quiet, you can hear the second person screaming inside of you because he/she is in great distress. He/She lacks everything: food for thought and spiritual space to breathe. And I'm giving you the method to provide him/her with this space and food. Art! Sure enough, by art I mean something else than is usually understood. If you want to get the idea, you have to force open the hard shell of how ideas and notions are usually understood.

The art I'm talking about (which the second person needs in order to grow), is just as invisible to most people as the second person itself. But it is there, in each one of us, as a skill. Not only in a few chosen ones! I'm talking about the energy of freedom. This is an idea, which had to develop in secret until it became strong enough to be able to confront the outside world. The situation that mankind created for themselves in the past decades now necessitates that this idea be represented in public ever more clearly. One aspect of this is a free educational system which manages itself, but also direct democracy has to be put into practice. Those who want to know more will ask more questions.

Is this about the future? Yes, it is the music of the "human being to come". The realisation of a free form of the social organism in all areas depends on our carefulness and perseverance. This too has something to do with art;, art understood not as a special field of interest, but as an all-encompassing method in the course of action regarding the reorganization of social life. A human principle which replaces impulse of freedom for compulsion, love and warmth for dogmatism and fanatism. Art is what provides us with energy on the inside, which we need to shape our circumstances into a work of art: The Social Sculpture.

So is the world going to be a piece of art or is it going to rot? That is what this is about."