The Sixth Grade Crisis, Puberty and Adolescent Crisis, Twelve Year Olds, At-Risk Children, Waldorf approach to Adolescence

As was mentioned in the introduction I've worked in many Waldorf Schools as a consultant - about 75 over the past decade and about 50 of them in the last four years. Wherever I go, with 2 or 3 exceptions, one factor is always consistent, which is that 6th grade classes are in a stage of difficulty.
Seventh grades are considerably smaller than the fifth grades of that same class. Sometimes by a half; sometimes they are one third the size that the fifth grade was. In one case it was one fifth its size as it had been at the end of fifth grade. So there is a very high attrition rate in Waldorf schools throughout the country. Like I said, there are exceptions and we are a stone¹s throw away from one of those exceptions, which is Green Meadow.
So Green Meadow is an exception to the rule and those of you who are parents there will probably never experience the 6th grade crisis to its depths. Nonetheless, it¹s probably good for you to hear about it because you¹ll experience it to some degree or other.
Part of any crisis that a child goes through in life is a necessary prerequisite for the next step forward in growth. Part of a crisis that a school goes through serves a similar function for the school. When it happens to a whole school movement then you realize a kind of awakening is being called for.
As Waldorf Schools approach now being 90 years old, worldwide, certainly they are in danger of growing old and stale. They are in need of renewal like anything else that age, in need of a kind of revivification, a kind of resurrection. Whether the school is very young or very old, they all share in that. That¹s also an aspect of the 6th grade crisis.
I want to talk about it tonight from three different vantage points.
First of all, from the side of the child. What is the child going through in 6th grade?
Secondly, from the side of the parent. What are parents going through in 6th grade? Are they changing as well? Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that our children do such a great deed for us - they allow us to live childhood all over again. On a very different level, but nonetheless we go through it again, maybe to do it right, the second time around, or the third, or the fourth, depending on the number of children.
And then lastly, I want to look at it from the perspective of the teacher and the Waldorf School Movement. What can be done so that the 6th grade crisis turns not only into the challenge that we see but also the opportunity that lives there very strongly?
[wiring comments]
Tonight is the second night of Hanukkah and I want to thank those of you who¹ve come with commitment to light your Hanukkah candles and have been kind enough to come anyway. It¹s a busy time of year.
I want to draw on the board a kind of diagramatized schematic Menorah - not the Hanukkah Menorah with its nine candles, but the conventional seven branched Menorah which has a middle candle. [Draws, presumably]
Let¹s say this candle can represent for us the individuality of the child or the human being in general. What is unique about the child, what is unpredictable, which we can call the child¹s ³I², the name the child alone can call herself, or the ego of the child. Now this ³I², this ego, is in a ceaseless state of development. It never is, it¹s always becoming. It¹s never fully realized, it¹s always in potential. We certainly know this as adults as well. It¹s what makes education possible for a human being, at any time in life. We can always learn something new, especially about ourselves.
This ego flashes up in a certain way and at a certain time in a child¹s life and this affects everything about the child - the way the child learns, behaves, the way the child unfolds at that moment.
So at birth, we can say that as with the shamus of the Menorah, this candle is taken and lights up the first of these lower candles and this we speak of as the physical body of the child. And this is the child¹s most active, most important, most sacred factor in the child¹s life for the first 6 or 7 years of life. This is what Waldorf kindergarten teachers take such solicitous care with. They¹re really trying to make sure that the child is able to develop as a healthy, active, physically unfolding being.
Then at age 7, or around about the change of teeth, the ego ignites the second candle and this we speak of as the etheric body. This is the body of life forces, of formative forces. It is a body that¹s worked quietly and invisibly for the first 7 years of life, just allowing that child to grow, just allowing the organs to find their rightful place, their rightful size, in correct relationship to one another in the first 7 years.
Now it¹s freed up from this activity and the child can begin to go to school proper, to receive an education which is didactic and consciously directed rather than imitative which is what occurred in the first 7 years. This is the time of memory growth when the kids get especially strong.
Then around age 14 a third candle is lit and that¹s the one that concerns us tonight. As we can see it is spatially closer to the ³I². We¹re now starting to approach something of the child¹s individuality. We are now going to speak to her as a body, to a functional aspect of the child, which is close enough to the child¹s ³I², the child¹s self and individuality, that a can do a very good job of imitating this ³I² quality, that we can mistake it for the individuality of the child, when in reality it isn¹t that at all. It¹s something that the ³I² is living in, but it¹s by no means the same. And this is what we Waldorf educators call the astral body.
So these three candles are lit. There are others to be lit in later phases of life. But that would take us beyond the 6th grade crisis to the mid-life crisis, perhaps. I don¹t want to go that far tonight. This is enough to handle in one evening.
Now I give age 14 here, but how old is a 6th grader? We¹re talking about a 12 year old, but because of the power of this particular candle, and because of the strength it radiates its light and especially its heat, in every sense of the word - it¹s activity makes itself known earlier than age 14. It flashes up a certain way in 3rd grade, quite powerfully, for awhile. That¹s what we call the 9 year old change, another important transition point, another crisis very often in the child¹s life.