The New Ideal in Education: An Address Given Before the League of the Empire on July 16th, 1916Velimirović, Nikolaj
Religion
The New Ideal in Education: An Address Given Before the League of the Empire on July 16th, 1916
Velimirović, Nikolaj
Education; World War, 1914-1918
_I:_ Certainly I do; but their work is too much overestimated. Not a
handful of economic writers, like Adam Smith and Marx, but the common
genius of generations and generations arranged the house, set the
furniture, created the cooking, constructed towns, invented plays and
enjoyments, customs, language, and so forth.
_He:_ You agree, I think, that Shaljapin and Caruso have wonderful
voices, don't you?
_I:_ Yes, I agree. But don't you agree that a choir of millions of human
voices would be something much more striking and wonderful than any solo
singer since the beginning of time?
_He:_ Don't you believe in the wisdom of wise men like Kant and Spencer?
_I:_ No, I don't. I think there is incomparably more healthy and more
applicable wisdom in the popular sayings, proverbs, parables, and tales
of the nations, cultivated and uncultivated, in Macedonia, Armenia,
Ceylon, New Zealand, Japan, &c., than in some dozen of the greatest
thinkers of Europe.
_He:_ Who is then in your opinion a great man?
_I:_ Only a good man is a great man to me, who is conscious that he is a
cell in the panhuman organism, or a brick in the building of human
history. Such a man is more a man of truth and of the future than any
conqueror, who thinks that a hundred millions of people and hundreds of
years have waited just for him and his guidance, his work, or his
wisdom.
That is what I would say to a pupil of individualism in education. And
at the end I would remind him of Christ and His call after the children,
and of the new ideal of education, of panhumanism which stands over
individualism, and of the collective work of people which stands over
every individual work and merit.
EDUCATION AS AN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIR.
It is quite surprising and humiliating that other things can be
discussed and settled as international affairs, before education. Yet
you have hundreds of things regulated by international laws, and among
these hundred things education is net yet reckoned. You have the
International Institution of the Red Cross, international laws on trade,
fishery, travel, copyright, political crimes, barbarities in war-time,
&c. But this war shows quite clearly that education--before anything
else--should be a matter of international consideration and regulation.
Behold, how illusory are all international restrictions when the
education of a nation is quite excluded from any control! When the
Nitzschean education of Germany teaches the German youth to despise all
neighbours, all nations and races as inferior ones, how could you expect
the Germans to respect the laws and regulations about Belgium, and
submarines--and Zeppelin-warfare, and use of the dum-dum bullets and of
poisonous gases?
If there is anything to be learned from this war it is doubtless this:
The education of youth in all the countries of the world must become an
international affair of the very first importance.
THE RUSSIAN TSAR, MR. CARNEGIE AND NOBEL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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