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The Sixth Grade Crisis, page 3

But the astral body  is only beginning its inward migration into the inwardness of the human being, so it¹s not fully incorporated.  That takes another 7 years to happen., which means that the young person experiences the astral body as a kind of breathing experience.  This is a very critical aspect of it.  Some of the day, some part of the child¹s week, the child breathes the astral body in and becomes inward, noncommunicative, somewhat moody.  Then it could be part of another part of the day, another part of the week, or month, the rhythms are often difficult to predict, the astral body is breathed out.  The child lives with a great deal of sensitivity in all of those around her.  We could say that children between the ages of 12  and 15 experience a low grade of clairvoyance.  By low grade, I mean that it¹s not in their control, it happens to them and it often can be very disturbing.  But I also mean it¹s low grade, because they are only able to clairvoyantly experience the lower aspects of everybody else¹s astral body and with this they become very critical.  Suddenly those teachers, those parents, those individuals around them who seemed to be radiating golden light at all times, who seem to be perfect, now their feet of clay are revealed.  Now their habits can be accurately imitated and all their foibles, the absent mindedness can be clinically laid out and dissected by the 6th graders with remarkable accuracy.  This is very important.  Please don¹t forget this - you are dealing with a clairvoyant individual when we¹re speaking about a 6th grader, a 7th grader, an 8th grader.
And this comes with a tremendous delicacy.  Things will come towards the 6th grader and he or she has no control and they will react as best they can, often in an emotional, very often, in an inappropriate way.  But much more is going on there than meets our eye although they are able to see it quite clearly.
Now lets look at this from another point of view, so we can see how parents can be pulled in this 6th graders crisis.  Here¹s another aspect of growth and life.  We¹re born and then we go forward into our life and it seems that time always moves from the past to the unforeseen future but one thing that Rudolf Steiner gave quite a revelation to Waldorf teachers is actually time doesn¹t move in only one direction.  It moves in two directions.  Just as much as there¹s a stream from birth to the future, there is a stream from the future, that is our death, moving backwards towards our birth.  The individual who is truly a prophet is one who awakens to this stream.  To awaken to this stream  you have to have a kind of friction occurring.  When these two streams rub together, then this stream can awaken and actually 12 year olds, 13 year olds can be very prescient about their futures.  They can have a sense of what they¹ll be like in later years, of what challenges will face them, of what might approach coming from the future.  This is something that we may tend to dampen down, but you may all remember back at this age, that sometime in the junior high years, sometime between 6th and 8th grade, that you had a feeling of excitement that something was coming towards you, that you had some great task to do in life, some mission to accomplish.  Then we tend to look back on that from the vantage point of the adult intellect, which is very dull, compared to the bright intellect that is arriving at this time, saying oh that was an illusion.  What happened to that, where did that go?   Actually, it is reality that the child is experiencing it.  If I could use a different term for these, we could say  this stream , which is very much connected with all that came with us into birth, with heredity especially, this stream gets weaker and weaker as we grow older.  This stream, which has to do with our individuality, grows stronger and stronger.  But these two streams are always working together, often battling, often in conflict.  
Another way of putting it is, this has to do with the child¹s relationship to her mother; this stream has to do with relationship to the father.  There is a point where they come together.  This grows weaker and this grows stronger.
Before I go into this in greater detail, this scenario may be inaccurate in your case.  Many parents have told me it was pretty accurate.  I mentioned earlier that parents grow along with their children.  Generally , unless the teacher is really screwing up, the parents¹ attitudes towards the teacher are very much a reflection of their children¹s attitudes, so the first grade teacher is very often an individual who is reverenced, who is revered by parents.  They may even always call him Mr. or Mrs. It will take time for parents to call him or her by first name because the individual is at such a lofty height in the child¹s estimation.  The child comes home at night and says, ³Mrs. Jones told us a story today and it was the story of Rapunzel.  And first Mrs. Jones stood up from her chair and then she went like this and then she said, Today we¹re going to hear about a girl whose mother longed for her so much and then she walked over here.²  And you will hear every detail.  It may take hours to hear what went on in main lesson and it¹s all seen through the lens of god-like or goddess-like being who is the class teacher.  And to see the child¹s reverence and awe and respect for an adult awakened like that is often a wonderful experience for adults.  Now around about 3rd or 4th grade, the child instead of assuming that the teacher knows everything, and has always known everything that she¹s teaching, will start to ask the teacher, ³When did you learn this?²  Or, ³Did you have a teacher who taught this to you?²  The child begins to wonder something about the individual who is behind this figure.  
There was a girl in my 3rd grade class who said this to me, ³Mr. Schwartz did, this is a funny question, but.  Did King Solomon ever go to the bathroom?²  
³Yes.  Of course, he did.²
³Why didn¹t you ever tell us that in the story?²
³Well you know, everybody does that.  Because we all do, we never really have to talk about that.  I want to share with you what was unusual about people.  Things that Solomon did that no one else ever did.²
Okay.  She went back and almost sat down in her chair, turned around and said,
³Mr. Schwartz.  Do you ever go to the bathroom?²
So there¹s this wonderful feeling that the child has and it¹s so unusual in our time, which debunks everything, tears down everything, in which a figure like Cruella Deville of 101 Dalmatians is the representative of the adult world for children today.  It¹s a wonderful thing.  
Around about the middle years, as this astral candle is lit, as this stream from the future begins to approach, the child starts to ask questions of the teacher and about the teacher to the teacher.  And certainly by 6th grade, 7th grade at the latest, the child will come home reporting that the teacher is no longer as nice as she used to be, there must be something going on in her personal life, now that the child is aware that the teacher does go home, something that she is unhappy about, because she is just, she is hollering at everybody, and she¹s giving so much homework, she¹s really unfair.  If it¹s a girl, it¹s because the teacher favors the boys, the boys get away with everything.  If it¹s a boy, the girls get away with everything.  
Now, how do parents react at this time?  And here yet again, you may not experience this yet.  All along, because parents are human beings, in first grade, second grade, and third grade, when they heard that teacher being praised to the heights, though they appreciated it and were grateful for it, nonetheless, being human, they could not help but feel a certain degree of jealousy for this third family member, this third parent figure who seemed to have it over them.  If it¹s a woman teacher then it¹s the mother who feels a lot of the jealousy; if it¹s a male teacher then it¹s the father.  It¹s part of being human and it¹s fine.

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