Steiner's so-called "Education for Adolescents"

Among my pet peeves regarding the translation and publication of Rudolf Steiner’s educational work is this:

The book Education for Adolescents is misnamed and therefore overlooked by many Waldorf teachers who might benefit from studying it.

Through about the 1960s, the book was published with the uninformative but more accurate title, The Supplementary Course. It was called this because it supplemented the course that Steiner gave for the teachers at the first Waldorf School in late summer 1919 before the school opened its doors. After one year of success and failure, ups and downs, and observation of how the students and teachers were doing in real life, Steiner gave 8 lectures, literally a course for teachers meant to supplement the course he had given the year before.

Reading through, it’s clear, too that the first four of the eight lectures basically pertain to all teachers, not simply those who teach adolescents. And, later, when he addresses the teaching of adolescents—the Waldorf school was about to open its high school grades—it’s clear that he’s speaking to teachers of all grades (except early childhood, not because he didn’t want to, but because the first Waldorf school had no early childhood or kindergarten program at that point in its life).

It’s one thing for the book to be overlooked by those who might profitably read it.

It’s another when some do read it but ignore the discussion in it because “it's for high school students,” projecting an understanding of an erroneous title onto the contents.

Finally, it’s here, in lecture 3, that Steiner lays out, clearly and beautifully, the concept of a lesson carried over two days (not three; I am not aware of any source for a three day lesson), one that is not, in fact a “threefold” lesson in the conventional way these are conceived, but in a way that calls on the whole child to begin, that then carries into imagination and will, and that then returns to judgment and conceptualization on the following day.

But don’t take my word for it, read the darn thing yourself.