The Waldorf Main Lesson Book’s blank pages naturally raise the question: Why should children write without guidelines? What is the point of this challenge that is, at first sight, such a hindrance?
As usual in Waldorf Education, there are several aspects to consider and understand.
Otherwise, this too becomes a bullet point on the list of Waldorf do’s and don’ts that has a whiff of dogma about it.
Early Memories
This article must begin with a personal experience that is engraved on my memory:
The time is the late Sixties. The setting is a village school in Austria. It is the first Maths lesson in Class 1.
We are given a workbook with the customary grid of squares and are told to take our lead pencil and decorate its first page with a border.
The teacher demonstrates on her squared blackboard how to draw the border along the margin. We follow her example as best we can.
Progress is slow. Then the first homework: Complete this page, and two more like it, by tomorrow.
At home, Mother points out that my enthusiastic freehand approach is not what is required here.
I have drawn the teacher’s row of neat crosses as two zigzag lines that blithely ignore the grid’s framework.
To my free-spirited young mind, these gridlines do not matter. I do not see them. They might as well not be there.
The wobbly outcome is recreated in the top section of the image below:
Learning to Conform
Mother makes me see the little squares. She shows how to link their corners with short, separate pencil strokes; and then watches with dismay as I border three pages with rows of increasingly identical crosses.
In the space of an afternoon, my hand and mind learn to conform to a system. Eager to do the right thing, I am proud and pleased.
Mother is not.
I overhear my parents discuss this homework later. No doubt it is one of the irritations that pile up during my first school year and make them switch to Waldorf Education, as described in The Story.
A Free Approach
At the Swiss Waldorf School I attend from Class 2, we learn to work on unlined pages.
Our enthusiastic and free-spirited approach is valued as essential, and its wobbly outcomes are regarded as age-appropriate.
Numbers, letters, symbols and signs, placed without guidelines, make us find our way in the undivided space. The blank page trains a perception of beauty in balance and proportion.
This takes time, and time we have plenty.
We develop our sense of space, and of spacing, without hurry. We learn to draw writing paths with block crayons. These first golden lanes then become bands of colour and may shrink to bars that underscore the writing.
This process is illustrated here with examples from my own class:
The results look lively. Like their creators, they have been given room to breathe.
The children’s youthful spirit is not constrained in any way. And neither is their eagerness misused.
Based on this unforgettable experience, I maintain that all aspects of working on a blank page involve the soul-spirit, the young child’s imagination and its free development.
That such development comes with a range of challenges can be no reason to declare bookwork on blank pages redundant.
Some people see the tradition of writing on unlined pages as one of the Sacred Nothings. Their argument: “This was not done at the first Waldorf School, and it is not mentioned by Steiner.”
Guess what: Unlined books were not available at the time. Neither were beeswax crayons and modelling wax. These, the Nature Table and the Morning Circle were introduced and developed by later educators.
It does not follow that such meaningful Waldorf essentials are to be rejected.
“Is this based on true insight?” must be the question Rudolf Steiner would have wanted us to put to everything we do in the classroom, traditions and innovations alike.
Note: The argument that “this was not done at the first Waldorf School” or “not in Rudolf Steiner’s time” ignores the fact that practically everything he spoke and wrote is about development.
He called it Entwickelung, adding an extra ‘e’ as if to further emphasise the point. It was his expectation that insightful teachers would continue to develop Waldorf Education through daily study of the children in their care.
“This was not done in the time of …” (insert any name) is the toxic tenet of fundamentalism.
Borders or No Borders?
At my Swiss Waldorf school, pages were usually created without decorative border of any kind. In Britain, by contrast, I got to know bordered pages as an established part of Main Lesson bookwork.
Indeed, the Waldorf Way of doing things differs from country to country, albeit in minor aspects. Traditions that develop locally are spread by relocating teachers across a nation.
Of course this process is now hastened and globalised by social media.
At the start of my years as a teacher in England, I thought the drawing of borders a waste of time. Then I saw the love and care most children poured into their creations, and the appealing results changed my mind.
Anyhow, bookwork borders are a topic for another day.
The Waldorf Main Lesson Book is reminiscent of the artful (full of art) volumes produced in the monastic tradition, because it is about creating beauty. Our quiet bookwork time has overtones of the scriptorium.
Its results aim to be similarly imaginative, meaningful and appealing, and equally worthy of preservation.
Alongside this artistic bookwork on blank pages, literacy and numeracy skills are practised in exercise books. These have lined or squared pages, for here the focus is on practical outcomes.
The popular opinion that Waldorf schools don’t use lined paper is an incorrect view of the facts.
Doing it Right
Rudolf Steiner emphasised the importance of teaching children to do things the right way, meaning: the way of competent adults.
From the start, sewing was to be learnt with a thimble, and painting with a cloth held ready in the free hand.
Everything was to be done as in the professional world of grown-ups.
Such an approach naturally makes learning new skills harder. Nevertheless, it is a valuable lesson in itself, because overcoming difficulties is an important part of the learning process.
From this we can deduce that Steiner would have frowned on the increasingly popular method of making the pupils draw lines on their Main Lesson Book’s blank pages. Or to have an adult draw lines for them.
This trend is objectionable for several reasons:
- DIY guide lines are usually unequally spaced and not parallel.
- Their drawing takes and wastes time.
- The unsightly pencil lines undermine the key goal of creating beauty.
- And, crucially, it is not done in the professional adult world.
If you want children to write on lines, why give them blank pages?
And if you want to train their sense of space, proportion and beauty, why hinder or prevent it with ugly pencil lines?
I consider the do-it-yourself lining of pages as misguided as the freehand drawing of geographical maps.
The Neat Guide Sheet
When adults still wrote letters by hand, they could employ a ruled guide sheet to achieve a pleasing page. This, then, is what our pupils should learn to use.
In the recent past, pads of writing paper often included such a neat guide sheet.
As a Class 4 pupil, I delighted in the joyful ease it brought to filling a blank page with straight lines of writing. And when the guide sheet was whisked away at the end, no trace of a line marred the page. Just like magic!
As a teacher, this recollection made me create ruled guide sheets for my class. Our loose-leaf Main Lesson Books were of identical size, but the corresponding guide sheet’s layout changed with the years.
Note: Most adults are unable to write a long text with straight and evenly spaced lines on a blank page. It is therefore unreasonable to expect children to do so. Once the early phase of spatial orientation has been worked through, it is time to adopt the professional-adult-world approach.
And never mind that handwriting has gone out of fashion. Studies show that it is still the best way of learning.
Guide Sheet Examples
Our guide sheet in Class 4 was still widely spaced. The children practised staying on the lines that shimmered through the paper.
It wasn’t easy at first, but wonderfully focusing:
Later that year, the fountain pen was introduced. It made the children’s cursive hand shrink, so it was time to adjust the guide sheet accordingly:
In Class 5, the amount of written work increased. And though our Maths exercise books always had gridlines, the Main Lesson Book on Arithmetic did not:
In certain topic blocks, page borders were not used. In some blocks they were simple, in others elaborate. Each pupil decided how much time and effort they wanted to expend on this embellishment.
Towards the end of the next year, I designed a new guide sheet that suited the layout skills of Class 6. Its two columns also accommodated more text:
This more mature guide sheet continued to be used throughout Class 7:
The individual free-spirited creative approach continued undiminished, but now its outcomes were no longer wobbly.
Having mastered the use of the blank page, these young teenagers were able to enjoy their skill. And naturally also the appreciative comments of parents, peers and teachers.
Guide Sheet Particulars
Whatever your guide sheet’s design, four things are important:
- every guide sheet is personalised with name or initials
- each guide sheet is laminated and therefore durable
- an identical guide sheet is kept at home for homework
- several spares are stored in the teacher’s cupboard
For the class teacher, choosing Main Lesson Book formats and producing matching class sets of neat guide sheets can be a pleasant part of preparing for the coming school year.
How to Make Your Own
- Take a format of the same size as the Main Lesson Book.
- Work out your margins, the title box and the line spacing.
- Draw faint and accurate pencil lines first.
- Then go over them with a thick black marker.
- Photocopy two class sets plus a few spares.
- Personalise each guide sheet with name or initials.
- Laminate them all.
Of course this takes time, but it really pays off for the children.
Mounting Putty
When doing bookwork on loose sheets of drawing paper, as recommended in my previous article, the children need to fix their paper to the laminated guide sheet. A tiny bit of good-quality mounting putty at each corner will do the trick.
Mounting putty is also perfect for wall displays, because the best brands can be removed without trace. It doubles as a soft eraser, fixes transparencies to window panes, holds tiny things in place on the Nature Table and can do much else besides.
Just as well to procure generous amounts at the start of the school year!
This has been really helpful for me and now I am going to make a guide sheet for my upcoming fourth grade homeschooler! Brilliant information and so insightful. I really appreciate this article!
Thank you, Vanessa! It is so nice to hear that my work is helping others.
Some excellent points here!. Especially the early part of your argument is compelling and contemporary. I would suggest from experience and in principle that, if the empty page approach is followed for three years, most children won’t require a guide sheet. They have developed an embodied understanding of and aptitude for straight writing, and should continue to develop that “from the inside out”. Guide sheets should be available as an option, but not expected, I think.
Thank you for contributing your thoughts, Sven. In theory I agree with what you say about continuing to develop the ability to write without a guide sheet. In practice I found that this puts considerable strain on those who don’t find writing easy. It has always been my aim to level the field, so that not only the most capable segment of the group could achieve a pleasing and well-spaced page.