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On Research Into Resilience

7/8/2022

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by Christof Wiechert 

​Disturbing reports are circulating around the world, always in the murky twilight of so-called “facts”.  According to the rumours, or indeed facts, that we are dealing with, a disproportionate number of war  veterans commit suicide on their return to the USA from their tour in Iraq. After the Vietnam War, accounts  came in from various sides of how soldiers were only able to cope again with everyday civilian life with  great effort. People in Europe are also worried about the NATO soldiers’ ability to deal with trauma when they have been in peace-keeping missions abroad. 

The question is, how does an individual cope with traumatic or otherwise shattering events in his or her  life. This question is just as valid for children as for adults.  

The research that deals with this is research into resilience – research into the overcoming, the processing  of, “insurmountable” experiences, research into the soul’s (mental) power of resistance (resilire = to spring  back, to rebound). 

This research came about after the Second World War when people were faced with the fact that there  were those who inwardly overcame their experiences of war or prison and were able to resume a “normal” life once their soul wounds were healed. However, at the same time, they realised that there were those  who never really overcame these experiences and kept suffering from the trauma affecting them. 

The question arose on what this ability to inwardly overcome experiences depends. What makes one child  strong in taking life’s knocks, what makes another child react so much more sensitively? From regions  where people have been hit by great natural disasters, we hear relatively little of the problems that they  have in inwardly coming to terms with them.  

Research into resilience has arrived at several conclusions that have considerable significance for educators  in particular. The first issue was to follow up the question whether the soul’s power of resistance may be  explained by heredity. If the parents have inner strength, is it passed on to their offspring? After  numerous studies the conclusion was reached that this is not the case. Resilience is not inherited. 

However, resilience is definitely connected with the experiences of the early years of childhood. One  researcher thinks it is a matter of the first four or five years while another thinks the whole time of  childhood is significant, that is till the tenth year. Leaving aside the different viewpoints, there is  agreement that the soul’s power of resistance, or resilience, is nurtured and developed, if children have  had the following five experiences. 

1. A reliable, stable relationship with one person. This person does not necessarily need to be the mother,  but it is necessary for it to be a single person in the beginning. Later on, this person may be joined by  others. Neurologists also point out that at the start of life there must be only one person to relate to.  Later on, there may be a second, followed by a third or fourth person, who is added to the circle of people  the child relates to, but just not in the beginning.  

2. The growing child needs the experience of an authoritative upbringing. This means that the child needs  the fundamental experience that others (involved in its upbringing) decide for it, and that it is completely  relieved of the necessity of making decisions. It is simply from the experience that others make the right  decisions that the child gains a sense of security in life, in other words, trust. This experience cannot be  estimated too highly. In the first place, others decide what is good or bad for me, what is right and wrong,  healthy, and unhealthy. A deep feeling of security comes about: I can leave it up to the world to take over,  I can rely upon my surroundings in all circumstances.

​3. Children need the experience of learning through example. This has to do with two qualities. Firstly, a  moral quality that makes a deep impression: what the child experiences through the example of the  behaviour of those around it should be completely compatible with what is demanded of it. If the child is  forbidden to watch television and the people it relates to watch unlimited amounts of television, the child’s  understanding of its surroundings as a totality crack open. You can add many other examples.  

There is something else at stake too. When the Canadian psychologist, Albert Bandura, discovered the  mirror neurones and their activity in human beings, the interesting question arose as to whether, in  general, the child learns with its intellect or from imitation, from “doing it like this too”. Bandura argues  vehemently that the young child learns from imitating, not through cognition, something he documents  impressively through the process of learning to speak.  

To date, in the practice of teaching, this most significant idea, the idea that children learn in a more  carefree way through imitation than laboriously drumming things into their heads, is scarcely to be found.  In this case we are talking about children up to the age of ten. Through the process of a child learning, for  example, to do arithmetic by developing habits rather than through the intellect, it develops self confidence as it learns “externally”; it feels affirmed through the sure habit. The research described here  does not derive from an anthroposophical-anthropological milieu, but from conventional research. It is,  therefore, legitimate to emphasise that, according to Rudolf Steiner, from around the twelfth year the start  of cognitive learning takes on more and more significance. Only with Steiner is this whole complex called  “becoming capable of forming judgements”. In other words, the learning process is guided and determined  by the child’s own power of judgement, no longer by habit. 

4. Children need a qualitative experience of time. What is the difference between the morning and the  evening for our feeling about life? What is the difference between autumn and spring, summer and winter  for our feeling about life? Within a Christian context, how does the Easter festival differ from Christmas?  Or within an Islamic context, how, for example, does the Sugar festival differ from the beginning of  Ramadan? How does the child experience the ordering of time, how do we help it to experience the  ordering of time? Here is one quite simple example: when I was still quite young, people in Holland  celebrated the Queen’s birthday at the end of spring. This was the season when we used to visit the annual  fair and to celebrate the day we would be given candyfloss on a wooden stick. In our minds as children this  candyfloss developed into the quintessence of the celebration of the Queen’s birthday. Lots of biographies  describe rituals that are linked to the seasons. There is also the simple fact of going to bed. Is it a random activity because we are tired, or is there a small ritual belonging to this moment when we take our leave of  the day that is entirely different from waking up in the morning? ​
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We can see from the way in which this fact is reflected in Waldorf kindergartens and schools that these  festivals are not celebrated for the sake of it, but rather out of some insight. Whoever wants to give shape  to his or her life, whoever refuses to be “lived” has to shape time. 

5. The child needs a definite surplus of positive school experiences. The fifth condition from research into  resilience scarcely requires an explanation. Nonetheless, it ought to be pointed out that for long periods of  time (times which are not yet over) the question whether pupils are left with more positive than negative  experiences from learning, from going to school, is considered incidental. 

This needs to be seen properly. Many school traumas will accompany the individual for his or her whole  life, wounds of which the school (or the teachers) are often not aware. If they were aware of them, the  schools would set things up differently. In other words, whatever basis is laid down for the mood of soul at  school plays a key role in the memory of individuals for their lives; this is an important reason for schools  and teachers to ask themselves how the pupils are faring. This is by no means to deny that school is a place  where pupils can go through a crisis. This will also need to happen. What is at stake is the overcoming of  difficulties and whether pupils feel sufficiently accepted by the teachers. 

We will have no difficulty, after reading the above account, in establishing the basic requirements of the art  of education. That is to say, the art of education is based on resilience. We are dealing with one aspect of  resilience. Another aspect is concerned with the so-called education for dealing with emergencies. How do  we help children who have survived natural disasters or war disasters?  

Nowadays, we know that what enables children to work through trauma more than anything else is art or  artistic activity. This fact has been documented in lots of places and it confirms the healing power that can  come from art. Art needs to become a normal part of every form of education. 

References/Literature: 
- Rutter, M. Resilience Reconsidered, Handbook of Early Child Intervention, Cambridge University Press,  2000.
- On research into resilience, C. Wiechert (IASWECE Newsletter 07.2022)
-Steiner, R. Pedagogical Praxis from the Viewpoint of a Spiritual-Scientific Knowledge of the Human Being.  The Education of the Child and Younger Human Beings (GA 306), 5th Lecture, Dornach, 19th April 1923.  
-Werner, E. Protective Factors and Individual Resilience, Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention,  Cambridge University Press, 2000.  

This article appeared in Taruna Mid-winter Newsletter (New Zealand) in 2009. 

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Christof Wiechert, born in 1945, has been a Waldorf pupil and later a teacher at the Waldorf School in The  Hague for 30 years. Between 2001 and 2010 he has been the leader of the Pedagogical Section of the School  of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum. He still devotes himself to pedagogical and anthroposophical  themes and is active lecturing at home and abroad.
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