Essay No. 3
Old and New Fashioned Notions about Education
by the late
Professor Friedrich Paulsen
Late Professor of Philosophy at Berlin University.
(Reprinted by kind permission of the Editor of The Educational Review, New York.)
IF we attempt to characterise present-day education and educational ideas, we cannot escape the conviction that a tendency toward weakness and effeminacy is its chief trait. This is true not only of educational practice, but in a higher degree even of educational theory. At all educational gatherings, plans are submitted as to how force and compulsion might be eliminated from the training of youth. Interest and pleasure are to be made the sole motive forces and the mainspring of work. The idea of duty is no longer to play an important part in the education of the future. The "philosophy of joy and happiness " is in vogue, and has captured both the home and the school. Wherever teachers assemble the question of how to make this or that branch of study easy and pleasurable for the child is earnestly considered, and from the green table of government
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offices comes the word : Joy must be brought back to the schoolroom.
Everywhere there is a desire to relax requirements. In the home we find lenity and indulgence to be the rule. But it is lenity or forbearance with faults euphoniously styled peculiarities which must be excused and overlooked, lest the child's individuality and personality might be arrested in their development and its characteristics be lost. Under the pressure of public opinion the school is inclined to lower its aims, to reduce and to lighten its work. Still, at the end of the course, the pupil is supposed to have mastered the curriculum, but it must have been done without effort on his part. It is the business of the instructor to instil into the pupil, but without his having been made conscious of it, all that he is to know. Without too many recitation hours, without home-work, without examinations, he is expected, at the end of his school career, to be in possession of all desirable knowledge, of all necessary arts. The method of instruction is to be so improved that the subject matter will "stick " of its own accord. If this is not the case, the fault lies with the teacher, for, of course, the pupil cannot be held responsible for failure when his teaching has not been intelligent and scientific !
One is almost tempted to envy the children of to-day, and to regret that our own youth did not fall in the "century of the child," in which the
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children are always right and parent and teachers always wrong. How different was it when we were young When we attempted to set our own will against that of our parents we were told that stubbornness would not do, and that obstinacy had to be broken. When we neglected to do our work in school, our failure was not laid up against teacher or course of study and its unreasonable demands, but rather to our lack of diligence, application, and will power; and when we had to take the consequences of our deficiencies, there was no one to console us, no one to sympathise with us in our undeserved suffering. Had we presumed to pose as martyrs and bearers of the cross, we should have been mocked and laughed at by the whole world.
And yet how queer and paradoxical are the effects of the modern system upon the minds and souls of our children ! The boy of to-day, though the product of a milder, more affectionate, and conciliatory education, feels unhappy, oppressed, misunderstood, and maltreated, while the sterner treatment was accepted by us in a spirit of calmness—nay, even of jollity and good humour. We never felt that we deserved pity, while the youth of to-day, though flattered on all sides and made the recipient of compassion and sympathy in his grief and suffering, is dissatisfied with the world at large. Sentimental sympathy makes sad, a truth than which there is none more certain. A child which has long since ceased weep-
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ing over little injuries will, if coddled and petted by an over-anxious and over-sympathetic aunt, again open up the flood-gates of tears, while if handled by a resolute mother, who asks no questions and makes no fuss, but turns its attention to something new, it will soon have forgotten the whole matter. My counsel, therefore, is to return to the "educatio strenua," the sterner and severer training of former days, and to dismiss, once for all, "the theorists of over-work and coddling." Three great imperatives stand out as the guide-posts to all true education. They are :
Learn to obey !
Learn to apply yourself !
Learn to repress and to overcome desires !
1. Learn to obey! By obedience I do not mean a merely outward submission to outward force and authority, but the voluntary subordination of one's own will under the will of a better and higher intelligence. He who has not learned to do this in childhood will have great difficulty in learning it in later life; he will rarely get beyond the deplorable and unhappy state that vacillates between outward submission and uproarious rebellion. No greater wrong can be done to childhood than the one caused by our desire to spare it the necessity of obeying. Whoever conceives the duty of the educator to consist in giving in to all desires of the child, in gratifying all its wishes, makes himself guilty of the gravest sin toward his child. He denies it what, in view of its future mission, it cannot afford to lose,
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namely, the exercise in voluntarily subordinating its own will under necessity, be it a natural or a social one.
I hope I shall not be misunderstood. I do not recommend harshness, moodiness, and arbitrariness. These are as subversive of proper training as blind tenderness and affection ; they also make free obedience in the pupil impossible. Only that wise firmness whose roots lie in our love for the child and in our concern for its future, will produce the kind of authority that in time is sure to be followed and rewarded by willing obedience.
2. Learn to apply yourself ! It is true, sensuous nature does not love continued, long-sustained, and fixed effort, but it does love casual and quickly-changing activity. Yet all that we call higher civilisation and culture, not only the civilisation of the outer world, but also the culture of our own selves, depends upon our ability to bend and direct our mental and bodily powers, free from momentary influences and inclinations, towards a definite and fixed goal. And if it is the aim of education to prepare the coming generations for the solution of the problems of life, surely the training of the will, or the persistent and intensive exercise of all powers toward reaching a certain end, belongs to its very highest tasks. The road leading to this is exercise, or "training," as it is called in English, the physical, moral, and intellectual training. In these words lies all there is in educational activity. Training means
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the straining of one's powers, at times, even to the point of exhaustion. The watchwords of true education, of the "educatio strenua," are therefore not lenience, relaxation, and sympathy, but encouragement to effort and to untiring energy and exertion.
I again hope not to be misunderstood. There is a measure in all things. The boy cannot be expected to do a man's work. I know full well that in former times, for instance, when Minister Altenstein considered eleven hours of home-work as not excessive for boys of the middle and higher forms, the reasonable limit was overstepped. Such demands were repeatedly condemned by me, and the complaints against these requirements were justifiable. But I wish that for the next thirty years the word "overburdening " were not uttered again, at least not within the hearing of our pupils. Discussions on "overburdening," as well as on "heredity "—I mean heredity of all defects and shortcomings of body and soul, these unnerving and emasculating catchwords —ought for some time to be banished from all pedagogic meetings. They might be replaced by talks on the "possibilities of the human will," or by discussions on themes like "We can, if we will ! " The pupil's pride ought to be appealed to by telling him, "I hope you will not permit it to be said that you are not equal to the task ; a good boy never fails when honour is at stake." In physical training we have made progress within the last few decades;
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let us see to it that we do not retrograde in moral and intellectual training. If this should ever come we should have to change the old maxim so as to read : "Qui proficit in physicis et deficit in moribus, plus deficit quam proficit."
These words need especially to be addressed to our physicians whose interest in school hygienics I otherwise so greatly welcome. They must be reminded of the fact that bodily training is not the sum total of education, and that hygiene must make its compromises with the rest of life's necessary aims. I fully agree with A. Moll, who, in his book on "Medical Ethics," says : "Physicians cannot urgently enough be reminded that the real aim of the school, viz. the pedagogic aim, may be seriously hampered by too severe hygienic demands." "It goes without saying "—I no longer quote his exact words—"that romping about in the open air for six hours would be healthier for the child than sitting in a schoolroom, but to put this admission into the form of a demand would, of course, make all school instruction impossible. But the most serious mistake, according to his opinion, is to speak in the presence of children of over-work and over-taxation, for that gives the child the best excuse for laziness and for making the school unbearable and detestable to him.
3. Learn to repress and overcome desires! Self-denial is the last and highest stage of wisdom ; thus preached the sages of all times down to Kant and
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Goethe. Desires are like the jars of the Danaides that never could be filled. The more we yield to our sensuous impulses and appetites the stronger and more exacting they become; and what is worse, they are accompanied, pari passu, by a steadily increasing feeling of discontent. It is the part of wisdom,
therefore, to check our desires and cravings in time, and that time is the period of pliable youth, when habits may still be formed and firmly implanted. But how may we govern and regulate these desires ? Not by weakly yielding to every whim and prompting, by indulging in luxury and immoderateness, which only multiply and increase the whimsical and excessive demands for pleasure, but by a simple, frugal, and orderly gratification of our natural needs and wants. Education may choose either one of these roads, the road of discipline or the road of sense emancipation, the former leading to the control of the mind and spirit, the latter ending in man's submission to the impulses of enjoyment, and, in the last analysis, in his complete surrender to his animal nature, to utter weakness.
Does our present-day education deserve praise in this direction ? I fear not. Comparing it with that of our own youth we find it shows, with all classes of people, marks of undue tenderness and effeminate indulgence. But how, you will ask, could it be; otherwise ? How could we deny our children the pleasures and enjoyments we so eagerly seek for
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ourselves ? The enormously increased demands for pleasure in our metropolitan life have taken hold, in equal manner, of the classes and of the masses. Imperceptibly our children are drawn into this life. Instead of enjoying themselves by taking part in the open-air games that, for centuries, have been the delight of our country children, the city boys and girls are found at children's balls and in theatres, at expositions and watering-places, in music-halls and other public places of amusement. To these diversions will undoubtedly soon be added the joys and excitements of popular assemblies. How different is the modern practice of giving presents. Formerly it was only at Christmas that gifts were made and received ; in our time hardly a day passes without offering such a chance, or even the necessity of doing it. Every feast day, every home-coming, every visit brings to our little ones gifts which are more or less costly and extravagant. And yet, in spite of being over-sated, their hunger grows; though gorged with toys, books, and pictures, they suffer from loneliness and isolation.
I ask once more not to be misunderstood. I do not begrudge the child. I do not begrudge it its modest share in the larger wealth and affluence of the present day, for even if we would we could not entirely exclude it from them. But it remains an eternal truth that modest simplicity is the greatest blessing for our children. Simplicity alone will keep them healthy, active, and happy. Immoderateness
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and luxury lessen their powers, they weaken especially their inventiveness and independence. They annihilate all capacity for real enjoyment, and at last produce that state of vague and morbid avidity which for ever looks for change and novelty. It is in this mental state that disgust with life and pessimism find their nourishment. If we wish, therefore, to see our children grow up healthy and happy we must restrict them; we must develop in them a desire for self-activity, and teach them to take pride in volun tarily renouncing pleasure and enjoyments, even such as are permissible.
A stern education will in due time also be surely rewarded by gratitude. The sons of a healthier time soon forget the stripes of their boyhood, and later on they will even thank their parents for their chastisements.
In order to join end and beginning of my remarks let me add one more point. The education which thus rests upon the three imperatives is also the best method by which most securely can be developed in the young man that strength of will which alone can furnish the safeguard against the impulses aroused in the time of puberty and threatening the over throw of his moral self. An absolute safety from the dangers which this last and most tyrannical of all of Nature's impulses brings to his life does not exist. But what education can do toward tiding our children safely over this most perilous of all crises in life
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is, in addition to our training them to modesty and chastity and our cautioning them against infection, in reality nothing else but an endeavour on their part to accustom themselves, by free and voluntary obedience, by serious and self-directing activity, and by repressing their sensuous desires under a rational will, to self-control and mastery. I do not wish to reject altogether the so-called "enlightenment about sex-life " which is nowadays so urgently demanded and which is looked upon as the only remedy, but all power of resistance in this direction must come from serious efforts in will-training. Otherwise the instruction counts for naught. It is not ignorance, but effeminacy, idleness, and dissolute desires upon which the demons of licentiousness live and thrive.
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