PARTHENOGENESIS? AN A-MUSING IDEA Calliope is the Muse of Eloquence, Muse of the Word. This ninth of the Nine muses seems to resonate a similar quality to the first verse of the St. John Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh.”. In the Nine Muse’s traditional role of charming a baby […]
PEDAGOGY: Child Development
Grammatike-Grammatikos: The 33rd Tooth in 5th Grade
The last story in my reading book, The Magic Mangrove Seed, is the Old Knight; a modern-day tale using latter-day images. It tells of the mineralization of Man, concentrated as this is in the skeleton. It is a story of imprisonment, and last-minute reprieve – a story of mankind’s Fall and Resurrection. The descent, or […]
Logios: Spirit of the Word: Seven Aspects of Thought
SMART PILLS!…HEART PILLS? Seven Aspects of Thought So the white coats are busy trying to develop a ‘smart pill’ (or gene manipulation) to increase human intelligence. Some would say that we’re already too smart for our own – or the world’s – good. The nominally ‘dumb’ animals certainly haven’t threatened to de-rail the timeless genius […]
Genii of Language: Truth Watcher
In the Class 1 Writing in Nature main lesson, I mentioned the power of anthropomorphism in the education of 7-year-olds – as strongly recommended by Rudolf Steiner. On one occasion this took the form of four special Tree Watchers. (These popular story characters also appeared in the Class 1 Local Geography main lesson, see my […]
Genii of Language: The Genii of Language
“When we are dealing with growing children, we are brought into contact with beings who attain to spirit self; beings who are further on in evolution than man. If we set out to develop our education and really mean our work to have life, then we must appeal not only to the human beings who […]
Genii of Language: The Mystery of the Double in Childhood
When I was a child I was deeply troubled by a story I read called The Bad Seed. This was about a sweet-faced little girl who was intrinsically evil. Among her more ghastly crimes was to push her crippled grandfather down the stairs! Perhaps my soul turbulence was caused by the fact that I instinctively […]