Art and Craft
From Handwork to Technology
A great emphasis in a Steiner school is placed on the experience of doing and making. The handwork of the primary school provides the basis for design and technology of the secondary school.
Handwork lessons are more than a means of promoting dexterity and skill. Handwork is a balancing element for intellectual activities, leading to a harmonious development of the student. Such work calls on the thinking, feeling and willing capacities of the student. What we make and how we go about making it engages our thinking capacity. How we break this task down into steps to achieve a completed and successful finished piece of work also engages our thinking capacity and develops and strengthens the will forces to complete a worthwhile task. The feeling and imagination is stimulated in the student by his/her own personal response to the task. The way in which the student selects and uses materials and coloured threads, for example, becomes the student's expression of his or her individuality.
Through rhythmically repeated movements and exercises, while working on tasks suited to the age of the children, the hands – expressing the middle realm of the human being – help to bring about both a strengthening of the will and of the capacity for logical thinking. The transition between these is the cultivation of the feeling life. Everyday language still uses physical expressions to describe mental operations, e.g. ‘to grasp something’, ‘to take up the thread’, ‘to get one's thoughts tangled up’.
In contrast to the intellect, intelligence is formed through 'activity', through movement and manual dexterity. Brain function is founded on body function. Working with our hands stimulates the development of our thinking – thinking is really internalised action. What is learned only in the mind may be quickly forgotten. What is learned with the body is there for always, as we know from riding a bike, for example.
Rudolf Steiner indicated that a sense for beauty and colour was a learned rather than an innate sense and can be nurtured in the young child. The creative and imaginative use of natural materials, wool, silk, wood, and pure clear coloured threads encourage the development of a love for beauty and quality. Care and respect for materials leads to moral and social responsibility. We foster gratitude for the gifts of the earth.
In handwork and crafts, the formative qualities of above/below, heavy/light, light/dark, inside/outside form the basis of the work for students of all ages. All the tasks are performed by both boys and girls. They are not done for their own sake but in order to develop the capacities of the students. They should always have a practical purpose and awaken a social awareness for the work of other people.
Although many of the crafts have their formal lessons, crafts are integrated throughout the curriculum. For example, the students encounter a material such as wool, in the Kindergarten, where they learn its tactile, scented qualities. They use it to make gnomes and stuffed cushions. In the Primary School, particularly in class 3 they learn about sheep farming. They may experiment with plant dyes later in Primary School and further in Chemistry in secondary school. In history and geography lessons in secondary school they learn the economic aspects of the wool industry.
Quite apart from the formal handwork curriculum, the students in the Primary School have many opportunities to work with their hands in many different lessons, using whatever materials are to hand, especially natural materials such as wood, plant fibre, leaves, bark, clay, water, material, paper and so on.
The benefit of a curriculum that encourages the acquisition of practical and artistic skills continues on into adulthood where as individuals we are able to draw upon our knowledge to enhance life skills and independence, and to make productive and satisfying use of recreational and leisure time.
Development of Skills and Values
Fine motor skills are developed early through activities such as weaving, knitting, threading needles, sewing, crochet and modelling in beeswax. Gross motor skills are involved in kneading in clay, felting, sawing and hammering. The students learn specific technical skills in using different materials and tools.
While the craft activities are determined by the teacher, the students are given as much leeway as possible to choose their own colours and materials and to develop their own design. The emphasis is always on practical, beautiful objects. Design should reflect the purpose of the craft object – where is the top of a bag? This should be visually reflected in its decoration and colour combinations to cue against lifting it up the wrong way and spilling the contents.
Organisational skill is also fostered: in ensuring they have the right materials, in working in an orderly fashion, in handling tools safely, and in cleaning up, and in persevering to the completion of the project.
An important element of the programme is an exploration of the aesthetic and the artistic and therefore at times units may include activities of purely artistic pursuits exploring aesthetics such as the making of art forms and design e.g. sculpturing in soapstone. Drawing, painting and in particular form-drawing might also be important when considering design possibilities.
An integrated curriculum of soft craft activities moves from sewing and knitting to the creation of hats, vests, slippers, dyeing, weaving and felting in upper primary. Natural materials of wool and silk are used. Children may make costumes for the plays in which they enact stories from the epochs studied. Class 8 use sewing machines to make simple garments. Woodwork develops from whittling and carving bows, arrows, boats and toys to carpentry in the high school. Basketweaving may also be introduced in class 8. Clay modelling develops into pottery. Painting and drawing begin to be taught as separate disciplines from class 7 onwards, eg. perspective drawing, black and white drawing as are print-making, photography and sculpture