Parent–Teacher Conferences as Reverse Ritual

by Torin Finser

Chapter 23 of "A Second Classroom: Parent-Teacher Relationships in a Waldorf School", SteinerBooks 2014

In cultures around the world people celebrate in the form of rituals, from tribal customs in Africa, to Native American ceremonies in what is now the United States. These rituals were used to draw a community together in shared practices, and remind the participants of their connection to their common spiritual traditions. Churches, synagogues, and mosques around the world also rely heavily on ritual. One could say that many of these rites and rituals serve as an invocation, inviting the descent of spirit into matter. They call down to Earth spiritual content that serves to energize and unite a community.

Rudolf Steiner describes the above as one way to build community, one that has deep historical roots. He then also describes another route, something he names as a reverse ritual, in which human beings become so active with one another that spiritual content is generated and sent in the reverse direction, from the earth to the heavens. How can this happen?

In lectures on community building given in February 1923, Steiner describes three stages of consciousness: dreams, which occur without much personal direction, waking consciousness that arises as we interact with nature and daily life, and then a third level which is particularly interesting:

We begin to develop the first understanding of the spiritual world when we awake to the spirit and soul of the other person.

- "Awakening to Community", lecture of 2/27/1923

When we work spiritually together, with reverence and dedication to the common idealism, we do not have a ritual descending so to speak into our midst but a community spirit that ascends.

The individual persons awake to one another, and they awake to each other in a changed condition each time that they gather together, as each of them in the meantime has gone through a different experience and advanced somewhat further.

- (Ibid.)

If one works time and again together to create spiritual substance, and one awakens again and again to the others, one finds the spirit at work on the Earth and enacts a reversed ritual. One could say an offering of human striving results in an entirely new substance woven from human working out of anthroposophy. When a teacher in a Waldorf school meets in conference with the same parents again and again, sometimes three times a year over eight years, a substance is created that might be called a reversed ritual. A tapestry of connected conversations, dedicated to the best interests of the child in question, is gradually woven over time. Especially if the participants are spiritually active, it is possible to feel a change in the atmosphere of the conference over time. One does not have to begin at the beginning each time, but there is a continuity that supports and strengthens the work. One cannot say much more about this phenomenon, for it is ever so delicate. But I encourage those who participate in these conversations over time to observe what happens, and at least entertain the possibility that something is being offered up that is greater than the words spoken in any given conference.

Behold, I make everything new.

Torin Finser is Chair of the Education Department, Antioch University New England, and is General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America. He lectures widely and has written nine books on education, leadership, and community.