And this happens only when the educator knows clearly what he will
adhere to as essential in the development of the child, and when
according to that he establishes his commands and prohibitions, which
must be few in number but as immutable as the laws of nature, and if
violated must bring upon the child, not artificial punishment, but the
inevitable results of the act itself. So can man by fixed practice form
the child of nature into a man of culture, who out of consideration for
himself and for others curbs his tendencies which are inimical to
society, without, however, suppressing his personality. For outside the
field of immutable laws, children ought not to be constrained or coerced
against their nature and their disposition, against their healthy egoism
and against their especial tastes.
Now many mothers by their own effacement of self develop an unjustified
egoism of the child, but desire in other respects a self-control, a
circumspection, a moderation and discretion such as a whole life has not
ordinarily been able to inculcate in the mother herself. Out of this
soft clay, which is material for an individuality, parents, servants and
teachers mold a society being, sometimes a social being, but never a
human being.
This modeling is called education. And a part of the earliest education
must, as I have just shown, truly consist in that of molding. But after
the first years of life the aim of education should be to prevent all
molding and on the contrary to assure the freedom or development of the
single force which, considered in the light of the whole, makes it
significant for mankind that new generations succeed those which have
disappeared--the force of a new personality.
Every child is a new world, a world into which not even the tenderest
love can wholly penetrate. However openly the clear eyes meet ours,
however confidingly the soft hand is laid in ours, this tender being
will perhaps one day deplore the suffering of his childhood, because we
treated him according to the assumption that children are replicas, not
originals; not new, wonderful personalities. It is true the child in
certain measure is a repetition of the child nature of all times, but at
the same time, and this in a far higher degree, an absolutely new
synthesis of soul qualities, with new possibilities for sorrow and joy,
strength and weakness.
This new being will, upon his own responsibility, at his own risk, live
this terrifyingly earnest life. What creative force, new inceptions, he
will be able to bring to it; what elasticity he will possess under the
blows of destiny, what power to give and to receive happiness--all
depends, outside of nature itself, in essential degree upon the
educator's method of treating this individual child nature.
Goethe long ago lamented that education aspired to make Philistines out
of personalities. And this is now much worse since education has become
pedagogical, without at the same time becoming psychological.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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