But present-day woman is not adapted to motherhood; she will only be
fitted for it when she has trained herself for motherhood and man is
trained for fatherhood. Then man and woman can begin together to bring
up the new generation out of which some day society will be formed. In
it, the completed man--the Superman--will be bathed in that sunshine
whose distant rays but colour the horizon of to-day.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION
Goethe showed long ago in his _Werther_ a clear understanding of the
significance of individualistic and psychological training, an
appreciation which will mark the century of the child. In this work he
shows how the future power of will lies hidden in the characteristics of
the child, and how along with every fault of the child an uncorrupted
germ capable of producing good is enclosed. "Always," he says, "I repeat
the golden words of the teacher of mankind, 'if ye do not become as one
of these,' and now, good friend, those who are our equals, whom we
should look upon as our models, we treat as subjects; they should have
no will of their own; do we have none? Where is our prerogative? Does it
consist in the fact that we are older and more experienced? Good God of
Heaven! Thou seest old and young children, nothing else. And in whom
Thou hast more joy, Thy Son announced ages ago. But people believe in
Him and do not hear Him--that, too, is an old trouble, and they model
their children after themselves." The same criticism might be applied to
our present educators, who constantly have on their tongues such words
as evolution, individuality, and natural tendencies, but do not heed the
new commandments in which they say they believe. They continue to
educate as if they believed still in the natural depravity of man, in
original sin, which may be bridled, tamed, suppressed, but not changed.
The new belief is really equivalent to Goethe's thoughts given above,
_i.e._, that almost every fault is but a hard shell enclosing the germ
of virtue. Even men of modern times still follow in education the old
rule of medicine, that evil must be driven out by evil, instead of the
new method, the system of allowing nature quietly and slowly to help
itself, taking care only that the surrounding conditions help the work
of nature. This is education.
Neither harsh nor tender parents suspect the truth expressed by Carlyle
when he said that the marks of a noble and original temperament are
wild, strong emotions, that must be controlled by a discipline as hard
as steel. People either strive to root out passions altogether, or they
abstain from teaching the child to get them under control.
To suppress the real personality of the child, and to supplant it with
another personality continues to be a pedagogical crime common to those
who announce loudly that education should only develop the real
individual nature of the child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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