The Development of the Child
In the twentieth century, the course of child development was a hotly debated and scientifically fruitful topic. Alongside Steiner’s detailed descriptions of child development, which have not explicitly penetrated into the mainstream, other prominent theorists include Maria Montessori, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and in a sense also Burrhus Skinner.
Generally speaking, the advent and dominance of time-intensive empirical psychological and neurobiological research has taken the focus away from individual theorists to an accumulated body of systematic observations and experiments. Indeed, the literature is now so specific to individual aspects of child development that few researchers any longer think about or publish broader theories. Even one specific aspect of child development, say memory or language development, constitutes a broad field with multiple sub-disciplines and specialities such that it is nearly impossible for one researcher to have a deep overview of memory research alone. This is understandable, and even necessary, but brings with it the danger that we believe that specific details supplant the need for broader theories; in reality, both are required. For this reason, we first present an overview of the study of child development before turning to Steiner’s ideas on the subject.
5.1 Quantitative and qualitative views of child development
For true education recognizes the whole human being to be educated. The debate and debacle of ‘theories of education, learning, thinking, information processing, and systems of information retrieval’ are relevant to computer programing [sic], not the education of human beings. What we need to realize is that the human being and mechanically derived systems meant to describe the human being are not even remotely the same thing.
(Sardello and Sanders, 1999, pp. 244–245)
Again weaving its way through this book is the observation that the human being can be considered from a qualitative and a quantitative point of view. Qualitative views see childhood as being fundamentally different to adulthood, typified in the saying ‘Children are not mini-adults’. Freud believed that children developed in stages, so-called psychosexual phases, each having its own unique character and accompanying needs. Montessori and Piaget also viewed childhood as passing through a series of qualitatively distinct phases, although Montessori was perhaps a bit more individualistic with regard to how children passed through these phases (Edwards, 2007). Piaget thought that children began life in a sensorimotor phase of development, passing through several phases into a stage where abstract thought was possible, at around puberty (Berk, 2004). In short, qualitative models see a series of unique, distinct and sequential phases of child development.
In contrast, quantitative views see children as being fundamentally similar to adults, with development occurring due to an increase in ‘more of the same’. As the desire to measure change has intensified across the last decades, so too has the prevalence of quantitative views of development. Given that ‘measurable’ is a synonym for ‘quantitative’, it is not surprising that the mainstream view has become increasingly quantitative. However, a second reason for the dominance of quantitative views is a reaction against the speculative introspection present in the psychology discipline’s early days.
B.F. Skinner, one of the fathers of behaviourism, believed that all knowledge and skill was conveyed through reinforcement and punishment of behaviour. Reinforcement and punishment are not referred to in the usual sense of the words, but rather indicate any environmental response that either increases or decreases the likelihood of a behaviour – a smile can be a reward, a frown a punishment. Skinner was fundamentally sceptical about anything to do with feelings or thoughts; for him these could not be measured so they should not be studied. He pushed them into a black box, and set about studying the effect of stimuli on behaviour.
Some time after Skinner’s and the behaviourists’ core work, the so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ occurred. This was based on the development of the computer, which came to be seen as a metaphor for human thinking. Furthermore, the cognitive revolution led to the acceptance of phenomena such as thoughts, although these were seen as programmed scripts that were accumulated across the life-time. Because the programs that supposedly underlay our thinking and experience simply became more sophisticated across development, such conceptions are also seen as quantitative – that is, children are not qualitatively different from adults.
A more recent wave of development arises from the neuropsychological revolution. The invention of increasingly advanced techniques for investigating brain processes (i.e. electroencephalography, transcranial magnetic stimulation, radiography, functional magnetic resonance imaging) allows a greater detail in understanding how neurophysiology and anatomy relate to psychological processes. Because the growth of the brain can be mapped from childhood to adulthood, a series of gradual changes can be observed, giving neuropsychological research a distinctly quantitative flavour.
Finally, at a societal level approaches are mixed as to how development is understood. On the one hand, laws prevent child labour, protect children from child abuse, premature sexual encounters, smoking, some forms of exploitation, and alcohol. Curricula to some extent reflect children’s different needs: there is usually more art in the early years of school, and less studying for exams. On the other hand, children are often treated precisely as if they were mini-adults (House, 2000, 2006). Education is full of content that is too cognitively taxing or one-sided, puts young children under pressure to learn or experience the world in a one-sided way, or they are exposed to constant educational assessment (ibid.). The media consumption of children is often not concordant with their sensorimotor and physiological needs (see sections 5.3 and 8.5). The nutrition that many children receive is also inappropriate (section 6.6). Education and societal understanding of child development is still very ‘quantitative’, we maintain, but with the odd tribute paid to treating children as something other than mini-adults.
We largely find previous models of child development to be inadequate, paving the way for societal confusion and educational reforms that often place children’s needs second. Essentially, a phenomenological-empirical and integrative view of child development has not made its way into mainstream thought in a sufficient way. Steiner’s conception of child development is precisely this – a view that is both spiritual and physiological, phenomenological and experimental. Hence we outline Steiner’s formulation next.
5.2 The anthroposophical view of human development across the lifespan
[O]ur basic concept or vision of the nervous system – as a sort of machine or computer – is radically inadequate, and needs to be supplemented by concepts more dynamic, more alive.
(Sacks, 2015, p. 91)
Steiner’s view of child development was, as previously mentioned, both phenomenological and physiological, both quantitative and qualitative. He endeavoured to see how certain qualities or phases manifested both in terms of children’s psychological-intellectual10 as well as physiological-anatomical development. Steiner’s approach was unique in that he applied careful methods of research in relation to the qualitative, physically invisible aspects, and hence his conception takes on a complexity and profundity that to many people initially seems overwhelming.
Again, Steiner’s threefold view of the human being is paramount in understanding his view of child development. This threefold view (see section 3.3) emphasizes that three dimensions or spheres are responsible for human experience, namely the physical-bodily, the soul-psychological and the intellectual-spiritual. These three aspects of the human being tend to dominate at different points of human development, giving rise to the qualitative and quantitative differences that have been so keenly debated in the past, as mentioned at the beginning of this section. Next in this chapter, we outline the importance that Steiner placed on autonomy in human development (freehood), which serves as the guiding principle for an education in accordance with an understanding of development itself. For this reason, we then describe this development, from infancy to adulthood.
For excessive freedom is nothing more than excessive slavery.
(Plato)
One unique feature of Steiner’s ideas on child development and education is the immense importance he attaches to freedom. Technically, the meaning of the word freedom as intended by Steiner, and by the German language in which he spoke of it, is freehood, which is closer to the German Freiheit.11 Freedom tends to refer to being free from external constraints to be able to do what one wishes. In contrast, the word ‘freehood’ refers more to learning to develop the capacity to act freely.12 From a philosophical point of view, one is only free in doing what one wishes if that which one wishes is not subjected to external compulsion. For example, if I want to drink alcohol because I want to fit in with others, or because the thought of a drink dominates my spare moments, then I am not free, but subservient to social compulsion, on the one hand, and my psychophysiology on the other.
The distinction between freedom and freehood may at first sound trivial, but it is actually very important in education as it leads us to consider whether allowing children to have whatever they wish is helpful or hindering their development of freehood. Indeed, giving children what they wish may be considered freedom; however, if doing so leads to long-term character weakness, then their freehood is compromised by freedom. Accordingly, considering what freehood is and how it comes into being constitute a crucial riddle for child development.
Children who are simply images of their parents, unfreely following in their footsteps, may not be free in the true sense, nor are those who oppose everything their environment offers them likely to be free, but instead enslaved by contrariness or oppositionality. From a neuropsychological point of view, freehood is dependent on the ability to inhibit desires and weigh up choices. The term for this used in modern neuropsychology is ‘executive functioning’, which is associated with the part of the brain that is very small in animals, but large in comparison to human beings, and continues developing into the third decade of life (Fuster, 2002). From an anthroposophical point of view, one would call the executive functions ‘I’ functions, and Steiner also argued that the human ‘I’ does not really incorporate itself properly into the human organism until from around the third decade of life.
In the next section, we detail how, according to Steiner, this incorporation of the human ‘I’ occurs. One way of viewing development is by dividing it, among other possibilities, into phases lasting for approximately seven years, which is the division we adopt in this chapter. Given that the first seven years are most relevant for early childhood education, we focus mostly on these.
5.2.2 Early childhood (birth to dentition)
Children are born with a rich tapestry of experience gathered in utero and, according to Steiner, who believed in life before conception, they bring latent talents and abilities with them, which they seek to realise in their individual life’s motif. In the mother’s womb, children likely receive sensory input from the senses of touch, life, balance, movement, warmth, hearing and probably also speech (Bradley and Mistretta, 1975). At birth, babies have shown body awareness and perception (Filippetti et al., 2013).
Research has also analysed the limb movements of foetuses at 14, 18 and 22 weeks. Such analyses provide insight into sensory development because purposeful limb movements depend on the senses of movement and touch. At 14 weeks, foetuses could move limbs but were not yet able to direct these to targets in a coordinated manner (Zoia et al., 2007). However, clear evidence of purposeful motor control at age 22 weeks has been found, and to some extent even at 18 weeks. Finally, coupled with findings that new-born infants prefer the sound of their own mothers’ and fathers’ voices – and even the music accompanying television programmes frequently viewed by the mother during pregnancy – this suggests that speech perception also begins developing prenatally (Ruben, 1997). Undoubtedly, future work will uncover more aspects of development pre-birth.
We return now to the idea that, at birth, the qualitative (i.e. the soul-spiritual) is only a small way on in its journey to unite itself with the quantitative (i.e. physical) body of the child. From a phenomenological point of view, the newborn physical child has been formed predominantely out of the forces of the mother. If a child is to become an individuality as opposed to a mere copy of its parents and environment, it has to expend a good deal of time and effort teaching, forming and reshaping its body.
According to Steiner, the first and crucially important phase of child development runs from birth to the first dentition (i.e. the change of teeth). According to Steiner, development usually proceeds in approximately seven-year rhythms because the more permanent substances in the human body physically renew themselves approximately every seven years (Wade, 2005). To understand the significance of this, it is important to again reflect on the constant tangle of the qualitative and quantitative in Steiner’s philosophy. A physical renewal enables a new quality to emerge, in the same way that when a tree changes leaves, a new quality (i.e. season) emerges. The hard bony substance formed early in this seven-year phase of development, that is the baby teeth, is replaced around the seventh year of life, thus indicating the transition to a new phase of development (Lievegoed, 2005). However, it is important not to fixate too strongly on the dentition, for this is only one of many physiological-anatomical indicators of this change in development (e.g. head to torso ratio, facial development).
Given the phenomenal changes occurring in the first seven years of human life, it is no surprise that in this first phase, Steiner afforded an important role to children’s growth and physical development. This strong focus on the development of the body indicates that the will of the child is in particular developing in this phase of life, because this has an affinity to the limbs and metabolic system.
The will has several unique properties outlined earlier that have particular significance for education (see Chapter 6). First, the will is unconscious, and accordingly educational methods at this stage should also be less conscious (e.g. via imitation – see 6.1). Secondly, children’s wills are malleable to environmental influences, which gives them an extraordinary capacity to imitate and absorb that to which they are exposed in their environment. Thirdly, the will forms the foundational capacity that will later allow the ‘I’ to carry out its unique impulses in life. If children are to develop freehood, then it is important that their wills are sown with qualities that later bear fruit.
This capacity to imitate, the necessity of grasping hold of the body, shaping it, and the amount of learning that occurs through experience mean that, according to Steiner, good educational methods in this first phase capitalize on: (a) learning by imitation and doing; (b) utilizing good role models in the environment; and (c) avoiding explanations that place too strong a demand on the intellect. For example, sitting down and reasoning with a four- or five year-old as to why he or she needs to tidy up, no matter how great the exhortation, is usually counter-productive (without some kind of explicit incentive – but which then brings other problems). It is far more effective to announce the tidying-up activity through some kind of routine, and for an adult to lead by example.
Additionally, Steiner also argued that the forces of growth are the same forces that later lay the foundation for thinking. For this reason, too much strain on the forces of thinking in this first phase can interfere with growth, and weaken the constitution. This idea may seem initially difficult to grasp for the modern mind that tends to see the brain as responsible for thinking, and its development dependent on stimulation and entirely separate from organ growth. Phenomenologically, however, one can observe the link between forces of growth and repair and thinking by observing how difficult it is to think when, for example, suffering from influenza. Anatomically, much brain growth in the first seven years is dependent on both environmental stimulation and innate growth. Thus, there is a role for both ensuring adequate stimulation and not interfering with the establishment of key neurological milestones (Perry, 2002); and as we later argue, this best takes the form of gentle sensory and language experiences largely through self-initiated play (see section 5.3 and Chapter 6).
Each seven-year phase can be divided approximately into a phase in which body, soul and spiritual development is particularly observable. From birth until around age of 2⅓ years, the physical development of the child is most marked. After birth the child is exposed to a raft of new sense impressions (visual, taste, warmth) that also vary in intensity in comparison to the sheltered life in the womb. Sounds are much louder, weight is felt as heavier without the support of the amniotic fluid, the world is colder; and because the source of nutrition changes from the umbilical cord to the oral digestive tract, hunger begins to be felt. To a newborn child, the world must present as a confusing, overwhelming and invasive phenomenon (see section 5.3). To draw an analogy, adults find the first day of work in a new job taxing because of the many new tasks, impressions and people: imagine how this must be for a child going from the womb into the world!
Throughout this first sub-phase of life, limb movements become more coordinated, birth reflexes die out (McPhillips and Sheehy, 2004), senses become more integrated, and the child begins to locomote. High points are crawling and then walking, the latter usually occurring around the first year of life. Steiner attached great importance to the upright orientation of the human gait, seeing this as an expression of ‘I’ development (see section 4.2.4). Indeed, research has found that children’s attainment of walking relates to their later thinking (Murray et al., 2006), which, as stated earlier, represents ‘I’ functions from an anthroposophical viewpoint. Standing and walking places the human being, phenomenologically speaking, under the equal influence of the forces of Earth and the Heavens – thus symbolizing freehood (see section 4.2.4).
Once motor development has reached a certain maturity, the body can become an especially good tool for the soul. Around the third year of life, the child begins to feel more deeply that it is not simply an extension of the mother or the environment, but that he or she is an active agent. Children begin to say ‘I’ to themselves and to others. Will-battles and temper tantrums become more common. Language development accelerates, from about 50 words at 18 months to 10,000 by age 6 (Diesendruck, 2009).
Around the sixth year of life, another subtle change begins to occur in that children seem able to reflect more on their surroundings, and they are able to inhibit their behaviour and articulate their needs. A kindergarten teacher interviewed in Drummond and Jenkinson (n.d.) describes it thus:
They’re more conscious somehow, their awareness is beginning to extend outwards, there’s a kind of richness in what they are able to achieve, where their skills are, where their interests are … it is almost like the Renaissance part of the kindergarten.… The middle part of the kindergarten is that very beautiful time when there is this huge blossoming in their interests, in their skills, in their capabilities, what they can do, what they want to show that they can do … they can now take ideas and really run with them and create something quite amazing. (p. 41)
Nightmares may increase, and anxieties about losing a parent (e.g. through death, divorce or natural disaster) can be particularly unsettling. This broader perspective bears the character of the spirit making itself particularly present. Once the ‘I’ or spirit begins to manifest itself more strongly and feels itself as an individual, then it can begin to sense its separation and fallibility, which can lead to little crises and angsts.
5.2.3 Into middle childhood and adulthood
As previously discussed, the first phase of childhood is dominated by the development of the body, and the second phase is too, albeit with some important differences. Clearly, important growth marks the transition to puberty in comparison to the rest of the body. Baby fat is lost, bodies become longer and thinner and the head less over-sized (Lievegoed, 2005). Faces lose some of the universal baby look and come to more closely resemble the child as he or she will look in adulthood. Sensory processes and motor development are still immature (see section 5.3).
In this phase of life, just as imitation is the key to education in the first seven years, according to Steiner the relationship to the educator is crucial.13 Because the child is becoming more and more conscious of both the outside world and inner changes, a stable, authentic and reliable relationship to educators and parents is important. Expressed from a different point of view, whereas imitation and education through the will were important in the first phase of development, in this second phase children can be educated through the feeling. Stories filled with morally inspiring characters as well as stable personal relationships can be used to instil freehood in children. Given this focus on the development of emotion (and the inevitable associated emotionality of this phase of development), as well as the still appreciable growth that is occurring, for Steiner it is still too early to really tax children intellectually. Instead, providing children with aesthetically and rhythmically appealing content is an effective educational means (e.g. learning rhymes, hearing stories, singing, music, drawing, physical movement and so on).
Just as the child approaching the third year of life typically undergoes a phase of strongly feeling itself as an individuality, a similar experience occurs one third of the way into this second phase. The child inwardly crosses ‘the Rubicon’14 from which there is no going back…. This can be experienced as a mini-adolescence, with children realising that they are individuals, that their parents have flaws and that they have to go out into the world. Often parents report that their child has simply become unreasonable, like an adolescent. However, this is an important step in developing self-awareness, and should not be discouraged or admonished, but instead ideally met with understanding and humour.
Puberty is the external sign for another change, most notable for the emergence of a strong and often initially chaotic soul life. Children struggle to grasp hold of this swarm of feelings and increased self-awareness, resulting in the often-tumultuous adolescent years. However, again Steiner is consistent with Jean Piaget in seeing that the intellect undergoes a new birth, and can begin to develop more strongly. Across the life-span, the first 21 years are primarily concerned with the body, the next 21 years with the soul, and from age 42 onwards more strongly with ‘I’ or spiritual development. However, within each of these phases, further finer gradations can be observed (Lievegoed, 1985).
Steiner once remarked that the human being at birth is almost entirely sense organ (Grunelius, 1950/1991). Before turning to see how this manifests physically, it is interesting to consider the role of the senses in child development. As outlined earlier in Chapter 4, the human being has numerous senses that provide direct links between the environment and the child’s experience. In other words, the senses are the mediators between the outer world and the child’s inner world. To say that children are nearly ‘entirely sense organ’ at birth is another way of saying that they have not yet developed independent inner worlds of ideas, memories and experiences, such that they live more strongly in the numerous sense impressions approaching them from the outside world. In other words, the child is at one with the world, for better or worse, and needs to draw itself back from the world to develop individuality. The development of the senses allows the child to do this, to perceive the world, instead of directly living with the world.
Viewed physically, the head of the new born is large, and the limbs and torso small in comparison (Lievegoed, 2005). Besides a few primitive survival reflexes that usually die out some time after birth (Berk, 2004), the human new born is entirely unable to fend for itself. Also, in comparison to animals, the human brain is comparatively underdeveloped at birth, experiencing much postnatal development (Perry, 2002). Interestingly, this comparatively immature development at birth allows for greater human freedom because less development is determined by biology than is possible in other mammals and animals.
In this chapter we outline the development of the senses in the child, with a focus on features and principles affecting them. Crucially, we as adults have forgotten what an incredible and taxing struggle it was to learn to perceive and thrive in the world of the senses. This forgetting leads to many educational errors in early childhood that likely impede children in their development. We now outline eight such principles.
5.3.1 The world outside forms the sense organ inside
We tend to think that our sense organs are ‘just there’, that their development is innate and self-evident. Nothing could be further from the truth. As previously mentioned in this book, Steiner was heavily influenced by Goethe and his phenomenological understanding of the senses. In contrast to more simplistic conceptions around at the time, Goethe believed that the eye was formed by light. In other words, using a given sense stimulates the development of that organ. We now know, from rather cruel experiments on animals and in the case of child neglect, that depriving children of sensory experiences during the early formative years can permanently damage or prevent senses from developing (Perry, 2002; Steiner, 1999). Hence the first principle of sensory development – that sensory qualities and experience shape and school the senses. It also follows that a rich, varied sensory environment should help a child’s sensory organs develop optimally (see section 6.4).
Sense organs require time to develop, to calibrate to the surroundings, to integrate with other senses, so as to become subtle organs of perception. Physically, sensory development entails development of organs and receptors, the formation of neural synapses and their connection to the receptors and finally, via sensory stimulation, the brain itself undergoes changes (Neuffer, 2008). In fact, this process happens remarkably early in life, by around the second month of pregnancy (Schepers and Ringkamp, 2009). The hearing and vestibular organs begin forming very early in foetal development (at least by the time the foetus is 3mm in length), and have reached the development that they have at birth by about five months pre-partum. Taste buds have been identified on the foetal tongue at around 8–9 weeks (Fulkerson, 2014). Similarly, touch receptors begin their development early, and by about seven weeks gestation, the foetus shows reflexive response to stimulation (Neuffer, 2008). The visual organs begin developing early and undergo their major developmental milestones between the second and fifth months, before continuing development after birth (ibid.).
Anatomical development is only one aspect. A second is trying to understand when we begin to experience impressions from the senses. Hearing responses have been established from around 19 weeks of pregnancy (Vriens et al., 2014). Tactile memory for objects has been established in 28-week-old preterm babies (Steiner, 1925/1997).
In short, there is mounting evidence that the foetus develops its sensory organs in the subtle pre-birth environment. Despite the womb being largely sealed off from light and sound, foetuses show response to sound and light. There are also in utero variations in warmth, movement, body orientation and salinity of amniotic fluid which, combined, provide a subtle but rich pre-birth environment. After birth, whole new intensities and ranges of sensory experience are possible. Coming to grips with this all requires good time.
5.3.3 Everything at its right time
For the development of sensory organs, timing is key. By timing, we mean that there are certain periods – or ‘windows’ – in development in which children need to develop certain sensory abilities, or it will be too difficult later, or possibly too late altogether (Perry, 2002). In these periods, the central nervous system appears particularly plastic, meaning that the brain is malleable to sensory influences from the outside (Trachtenberg, 2015). Such sensitive periods have been found for the auditory, visual and sensorimotor systems in humans and animals (Berardi et al., 2000). In terms of Steiner’s speech sense, there also seems to be a similar window for healthy development. Children who have hearing difficulties early in life and only later have these corrected suffer lasting speech perception difficulties (Polka et al., 2009; Ruben, 1997). Children need appropriate sensory experiences, from pre-birth onwards, and ideally without phases of deprivation.
5.3.4 Too much can be too little
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.
(William James)
A common idea in early childhood education is that children need stimulation for their development. This desire to stimulate, capture and maintain attention results in ever-more brazen marketing techniques, and in the world of children a new breed of toys – toys that flash bright lights, blurt out various supposedly ‘educational’ noises and programmes that ‘educate’ children. Moreover, modern society seems to be both fast-paced and specialized, creating a compulsion to seek out experiences that round out the sometimes one-sided experience that goes hand in hand with this specialization. Perhaps the ghost that whispers in parents’ and teachers’ ears, calling for ever-more stimulation, in part comes from studies showing how healthy development is simply not possible without social interaction and input (Perry, 2002).
However, sensory overstimulation, or one-sided stimulation in the form of, for example, lights and sound, but neglecting the social senses, is misguided for two reasons. First, in sensory development there is a principle called ‘the concept of limitations’ (Lewkowicz, 2000). This states that if one sense is not being strongly stimulated, then another can develop without competition. In other words, a child has less opportunity to focus on developing touch and movement senses if obtrusive visual and auditory input is constantly present, as happens during fast-paced electronic media. Secondly, the role of subtlety is important. More and more stimulation could be expected to develop perception of loud and intense noises, whereas subtle exposure could be reasonably expected to lead to the development of fine sensory differentiation. Because the pre-birth environment provides subtle sensory stimulation, perhaps post-birth stimulation – at least initially – should also be gentle and subtle in order to provide continuity and transition into middle childhood (Neuffer, 2008).
[W]e see things in the following way: in presenting an arrangement of colours to us, they show also the boundaries of these colours – lines and forms. But we do not usually attend to the way we actually perceive. If a man perceives a coloured circle he simply says: I see the colour, I see also the curve of the circle, the form of the circle. But there we have two completely different things looked upon as one. What you immediately perceive through the real activity of the eye, apart from the other senses, is only the colour. You see the form of the circle by making use of the sense of movement in your subconsciousness…
(Steiner, 1919/1993, p. 148)
As the above quotation makes clear, Steiner thought that the act of seeing a circle, for example, required the working together of the vision and movement senses. This process of two senses working together is called ‘sensory integration’. In real-world environments, it is rare that only one sense at a time is stimulated; usually, several are stimulated at once. When hearing a loud thump, for example, we may also feel a vibration (sense of movement) and the floor shaking (sense of balance, sense of movement). Despite this multisensory stimulation, we experience phenomena as unified entities.15 Exactly how we do this is unknown! At any rate, the ability to transfer and integrate information from one sense to another, and more than one sense at a time, develops early in life; it has even been observed in new-born infants (Slater et al., 1997).
Generally, sensory integration refers to the senses working together to provide a better percept16 than one sense alone can provide (Brandwein et al., 2011). Crucially for early years education, the ability to integrate information across senses requires much time to develop, not reaching adult levels until at least puberty (Ernst, 2008; Gori et al., 2008; Rentschler, 2004). This suggests that early education needs to provide children with rich and authentic sensory stimulation across multiple senses.
5.3.6 Perceiving is more than sensing
Because sensory development is automatic in adults, we tend to overlook what an impressive achievement something as simple as recognizing a table in a room is! Recent research suggests that acquiring knowledge through the senses is an intricate interplay between thinking processes and sensory input (Trachtenberg, 2015). Interestingly, in his seminal work The Philosophy of Freedom, this is precisely what Steiner proposed; an ‘I’ directing conceptual activity unites with bottom-up sensory stimulation to result in the act of knowing (Steiner, 1918/1986). To make this process comprehensible and show just what is required for a child to master something as simple as ‘seeing’ a table, consider the steps involved:
1. Children need to first develop the organs of vision, touch, movement and balance. Balance helps children recognize the orientation of the table, movement its depth, touch the difference between texture and distance (e.g. is an object darker because it is rougher, or because it’s further away?).
2. They need to have used these senses and to have physically explored objects in the past so that they can make sense of visual cues (such as depth, perspective, that overlayed objects are in front).
3. Children have to be able to move to the object to carry out the investigations necessary for 1 and 2. For this they need motor skills.
4. They also need to have a concept for ‘table’. Likely, a child will have to have experienced many different tables to be able to realise that a table is generally a flat surface, supported by a legged structure, about the height of a human lap – either adult or child size – when a person is sitting on a chair or stool. Before this can be realised, a child has to understand surface, legs, human adult, human child, sitting, stool, chair etc. So they may need many other concepts first before they can recognize the concept of a table itself.
5. Finally, a child needs to view the scene and recognize the table, after having gone through steps 1 through 4 many times with other tables. How quickly and easily a child will recognize the object in the room as a table will depend on the richness of perceptual experience and thinking.
In short, seeing and recognizing requires a rich tapestry of past experience that requires time and cultivation to develop.
5.3.7 The shift from seeing qualities to seeing ideas becomes habit
Generally speaking, we move from seeing qualities to seeing ideas. As adults, we look at the world, and seldom stop to admire the qualities in the world. Our perceptual system is constantly perceiving, identifying and judging as we hurry through the world. Children, on the other hand, seem to delight more in the qualities, stopping to investigate and gather new impressions, sometimes asking ‘What is that?’. Many artists try to recapture this primeval aesthetic state, this naivety, to see the world through children’s eyes. How is it that we lose this unbiased unison with the world?
From an anthroposophical point of view, the recognition of novel objects requires joining perceptual with conceptual activity (section 5.3.6). Much of what we believe that we perceive is actually idea. Thus, there are no straight lines, objects or the like that exist purely perceptually to the senses. For the sense of sight, all there is are gradations of colour; and for the sense of sound, gradations of tone. What we perceive in the environment in the form of lines and objects is the idea or phenomenon of the object revealing itself to us through the senses and through concepts (see section 4.4.3). To the senses, there is no reason to consider a picture on the wall as being separate from the wall itself. The picture is a phenomenon created by the artist and recognized by us as a piece of artwork because we have learned to perceive the idea of art presented in that form. Thus, for children the surrounding world is more of a riddle to them, which enables them to interact with it and delight in it in ways that we often can no longer do.
5.3.8 Disturbed senses, disturbed development
As previously outlined, the journey to becoming a fully perceiving adult is a long and even perilous journey. It is interesting that there are a number of developmental disorders where disturbed sensory development, and in particular sensory integration, is a hallmark feature. For instance, children with autism spectrum disorder (Goulardins et al., 2013; Sanz-Cervera et al., 2017) often show sensory delay and even a hypersensitivity to some forms of experience, such as human touch or preferring strong earthy smells. Some children with a condition known as developmental coordination disorder (Michel et al., 2011) have trouble mastering their bodies and developing coordinated movement. Still others with learning disabilities often show sensory anomalies (Pieters et al., 2012; Westendorp et al., 2011).
Moreover, children have at birth around 70 birth reflexes, which are automated movements in response to stimuli (e.g. grasping, swimming, turning head). Normally, these reflexes become inhibited – that is, they fade away because they are no longer needed for survival. However, research has discovered that when these reflexes persist, behavioural and learning problems can result (Konicarova and Bob, 2012; McPhillips and Sheehy, 2004; see also Goddard Blythe, 2011, 2018).
The question of why senses relate to learning and developmental delays is unclear. However, by considering exactly what sensory development involves, we may come a step closer to understanding. As previously mentioned, perceiving, recognizing and knowing are complex human achievements that require the whole body, functioning senses, and the coming together of the human spirit with its soul and body. The existence of disorders relating to both sensory and learning problems serves as a warning to educators to take the senses seriously in the early years, and beyond.
• Views of child development are numerous, giving rise to a diverse range of theories, from psychodynamic, behavioural, neuropsychological, to cognitive views.
• Steiner viewed child development from a unique and comprehensive perspective, emanating from his phenomenological research.
• Educating children to freehood is a key goal – freehood entailing the capacity to act in accordance with one’s true self, being less governed by feeling or bodily constraints.
• Children’s development from pre-birth to the first change of teeth and beyond follows both quantitative and qualitative phases, each helping the child to unfold into an adult capable of freehood.
• Children’s senses also develop across childhood, in particular from pre-natal to middle childhood.
• Principles of sensory development govern what educational experiences are harmful and helpful for the developing child.