The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of HistoryPartridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Philosophy
The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of History
Partridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Education; History -- Philosophy; War
If preparation for defense is by no means exhausted by military
training, on the other hand not all military training is intended for
defense. Decision about the actual amount and kind of military
training, we say, may be left to the expert, but it is for the
psychologist and the educator to decide whether we need a mere minimum
of such training or a general military training for educational
purposes. After all, however, this is perhaps more a matter of taste
in educational practices than of learning. There is plenty of opinion
at least on both sides. Some maintain that military discipline is of
very great benefit to the man and to society. From the German point of
view it is the equivalent of hygiene for the individual. It is a
national regimen for physical and mental health. It is also the symbol
and the expression of social solidarity. Many believe that the
discipline of soldiering would be especially good for all American
boys. But there is no dearth of evidence on the other side--that
military training in so far as it is really conducted in the military
manner is brutalizing.
After all, we say this may be a matter of preference. Some like
military discipline in the schools and everywhere; some do not. The
present writer for one will confess that he does not. It is not the
danger of making a people warlike that one sees in it, so much as the
certainty of introducing into all the daily life a spirit that is
inconsistent with our stage of civilization and with the most
wholesome spirit of education. It savors of the unprogressive. It
means, in our opinion, the introduction into the school, in a far too
easy and simple way, and consequently at far too low a level,
something that ought to be put into education in a different manner.
The sense of solidarity and the idealism which the German has found in
his military discipline we must express in some other way. It is
especially the unproductiveness of military life, and the constant
suggestion of that which is archaic without either the practical
setting or the ornamental life to which such things belong, that are
especially to be charged against militarism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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