On the Future of our Educational InstitutionsNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
On the Future of our Educational Institutions
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Education -- Philosophy; Educational change -- Germany; Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 -- Views on education
"It is precisely in journalism that the two tendencies combine and
become one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join
hands. The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he
who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education, must
avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which cements
the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all
sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as news paper is, as a
rule. In the newspaper the peculiar educational aims of the present
culminate, just as the journalist, the servant of the moment, has
stepped into the place of the genius, of the leader for all time, of
the deliverer from the tyranny of the moment. Now, tell me,
distinguished master, what hopes could I still have in a struggle
against the general topsy-turvification of all genuine aims for
education; with what courage can I, a single teacher, step forward,
when I know that the moment any seeds of real culture are sown, they
will be mercilessly crushed by the roller of this pseudo-culture?
Imagine how useless the most energetic work on the part of the
individual teacher must be, who would fain lead a pupil back into the
distant and evasive Hellenic world and to the real home of culture,
when in less than an hour, that same pupil will have recourse to a
newspaper, the latest novel, or one of those learned books, the very
style of which already bears the revolting impress of modern barbaric
culture----"
"Now, silence a minute!" interjected the philosopher in a strong and
sympathetic voice. "I understand you now, and ought never to have
spoken so crossly to you. You are altogether right, save in your
despair. I shall now proceed to say a few words of consolation."
SECOND LECTURE.
(_Delivered on the 6th of February 1872._)
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--Those among you whom I now have the pleasure of
addressing for the first time and whose only knowledge of my first
lecture has been derived from reports will, I hope, not mind being
introduced here into the middle of a dialogue which I had begun to
recount on the last occasion, and the last points of which I must now
recall. The philosopher's young companion was just pleading openly and
confidentially with his distinguished tutor, and apologising for
having so far renounced his calling as a teacher in order to spend his
days in comfortless solitude. No suspicion of superciliousness or
arrogance had induced him to form this resolve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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