Chapter II: The Form of Education

§ 23. The general form of Education is determined by the nature of the mind, that it really is nothing but what it makes itself to be. The mind is (1) immediate (or potential), but (2) it must estrange itself from itself as it were, so that it may place itself over against itself as a special object of attention; (3) this estrangement is finally removed through a further acquaintance with the object--it feels itself at home in that on which it looks, and returns again enriched to the form of immediateness. That which at first appeared to be another than itself is now seen to be itself. Education cannot create; it can only help to develop to reality the previously existent possibility; it can only help to bring forth to light the hidden life.

§ 24. All culture, whatever may be its special purport, must pass through these two stages--of estrangement, and its removal. Culture must hold fast to the distinction between the subject and the object considered immediately, though it has again to absorb this distinction into itself, in order that the union of the two may be more complete and lasting. The subject recognizes then all the more certainly that what at first appeared to it as a foreign existence, belongs to it as its own property, and that it holds it as its own all the more by means of culture.

--Plato, as is known, calls the feeling with which knowledge must begin, wonder; but this can serve as a beginning only, for wonder itself can only express the tension between the subject and the object at their first encounter--a tension which would be impossible if they were not in themselves identical. Children have a longing for the far-off, the strange, and the wonderful, as if they hoped to find in these an explanation of themselves. They want the object to be a genuine object. That to which they are accustomed, which they see around them every day, seems to have no longer any objective energy for them; but an alarm of fire, banditti life, wild animals, gray old ruins, the robin's songs, and far-off happy islands, &c.--everything high-colored and dazzling--leads them irresistibly on. The necessity of the mind's making itself foreign to itself is that which makes children prefer to hear of the adventurous journeys of Sinbad than news of their own city or the history of their nation, and in youth this same necessity manifests itself in their desire of travelling.--

§ 25. This activity of the mind in allowing itself to be absorbed, and consciously so, in an object with the purpose of making it his own, or of producing it, is _Work_. But when the mind gives itself up to its objects as chance may present them or through arbitrariness, careless as to whether they have any result, such activity is _Play_. Work is laid out for the pupil by his teacher by authority, but in his play he is left to himself.

§ 26. Thus work and play must be sharply distinguished from each other. If one has not respect for work as an important and substantial activity, he not only spoils play for his pupil, for this loses all its charm when deprived of the antithesis of an earnest, set task, but he undermines his respect for real existence. On the other hand, if he does not give him space, time, and opportunity, for play, he prevents the peculiarities of his pupil from developing freely through the exercise of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the pupil back refreshed to his work, since in play he forgets himself in his own way, while in work he is required to forget himself in a manner prescribed for him by another.

--Play is of great importance in helping one to discover the true individualities of children, because in play they may betray thoughtlessly their inclinations. This antithesis of work and play runs through the entire life. Children anticipate in their play the earnest work of after life; thus the little girl plays with her doll, and the boy pretends he is a soldier and in battle.--

§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor play as if it were work. In general, the arts, the sciences, and productions, stand in this relation to each other: the accumulation of stores of knowledge is the recreation of the mind which is engaged in independent creation, and the practice of arts fills the same office to those whose work is to collect knowledge.

§ 28. Education seeks to transform every particular condition so that it shall no longer seem strange to the mind or in anywise foreign to its own nature. This identity of consciousness, and the special character of anything done or endured by it, we call Habit [habitual conduct or behavior]. It conditions formally all progress; for that which is not yet become habit, but which we perform with design and an exercise of our will, is not yet a part of ourselves.

§ 29. As to Habit, we have to say next that it is at first indifferent as to what it relates. But that which is to be considered as indifferent or neutral cannot be defined in the abstract, but only in the concrete, because anything that is indifferent as to whether it shall act on these particular men, or in this special situation, is capable of another or even of the opposite meaning for another man or men for the same men or in other circumstances. Here, then, appeal must be made to the individual conscience in order to be able from the depths of individuality to separate what we can permit to ourselves from that which we must deny ourselves. The aim of Education must be to arouse in the pupil this spiritual and ethical sensitiveness which does not recognize anything as _merely_ indifferent, but rather knows how to seize in everything, even in the seemingly small, its universal human significance. But in relation to the highest problems he must learn that what concerns his own immediate personality is entirely indifferent.

§ 30. Habit lays aside its indifference to an external action through reflection on the advantage or disadvantage of the same. Whatever tends as a harmonious means to the realization of an end is advantageous, but that is disadvantageous which, by contradicting its idea, hinders or destroys it. Advantage and disadvantage being then only _relative_ terms, a habit which is advantageous for one man in one case may be disadvantageous for another man, or even for the same man, under different circumstances. Education must, therefore, accustom the youth to judge as to the expediency or inexpediency of any action in its relation to the essential vocation of his life, so that he shall avoid that which does not promote its success.

§ 31. But the _absolute_ distinction of habit is the moral distinction between the good and the bad. For from this standpoint alone can we finally decide what is allowable and what is forbidden, what is advantageous and what is disadvantageous.

§ 32. As relates to form, habit may be either passive or active. The passive is that which teaches us to bear the vicissitudes of nature as well as of history with such composure that we shall hold our ground against them, being always equal to ourselves, and that we shall not allow our power of acting to be paralyzed through any mutations of fortune. Passive habit is not to be confounded with obtuseness in receiving impressions, a blank abstraction from the affair in hand which at bottom is found to be nothing more than a selfishness which desires to be left undisturbed: it is simply composure of mind in view of changes over which we have no control. While we vividly experience joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure--inwoven as these are with the change of seasons, of the weather, &c.--with the alternation of life and death, of happiness and misery, we ought nevertheless to harden ourselves against them so that at the same time in our consciousness of the supreme worth of the mind we shall build up the inaccessible stronghold of Freedom in ourselves.--Active habit [or behavior] is found realized in a wide range of activity which appears in manifold forms, such as skill, dexterity, readiness of information, &c. It is a steeling of the internal for action upon the external, as the Passive is a steeling of the internal against the influences of the external.

[Sidenote: _Formation of Habits._]

§ 33. Habit is the general form which instruction takes. For since it reduces a condition or an activity within ourselves to an instinctive use and wont, it is necessary for any thorough instruction. But as, according to its content, it may be either proper or improper, advantageous or disadvantageous, good or bad, and according to its form may be the assimilation of the external by the internal, or the impress of the internal upon the external, Education must procure for the pupil the power of being able to free himself from one habit and to adopt another. Through his freedom he must be able not only to renounce any habit formed, but to form a new one; and he must so govern his system of habits that it shall exhibit a constant progress of development into greater freedom. We must discipline ourselves, as a means toward the ever-changing realization of the Good in us, constantly to form and to break habits.

--We must characterize those habits as bad which relate only to our convenience or our enjoyment. They are often not blamable in themselves, but there lies in them a hidden danger that they may allure us into luxury or effeminacy. But it is a false and mechanical way of looking at the affair if we suppose that a habit which has been formed by a certain number of repetitions can be broken by an equal number of denials. We can never renounce a habit utterly except through a clearness of judgment which decides it to be undesirable, and through firmness of will.--

§ 34. Education comprehends also the reciprocal action of the opposites, authority and obedience, rationality and individuality, work and play, habit and spontaneity. If we imagine that these can be reconciled by rules, it will be in vain that we try to restrain the youth in these relations. But a failure in education in this particular is very possible through the freedom of the pupil, through special circumstances, or through the errors of the educator himself. And for this very reason any theory of Education must take into account in the beginning this negative possibility. It must consider beforehand the dangers which threaten the pupil in all possible ways even before they surround him, and fortify him against them. Intentionally to expose him to temptation in order to prove his strength, is devilish; and, on the other hand, to guard him against the chance of dangerous temptation, to wrap him in cotton (as the proverb says), is womanish, ridiculous, fruitless, and much more dangerous; for temptation comes not alone from without, but quite as often from within, and secret inclination seeks and creates for itself the opportunity for its gratification, often perhaps an unnatural one. The truly preventive activity consists not in an abstract seclusion from the world, all of whose elements are innate in each individual, but in the activity of knowledge and discipline, modified according to age and culture.

[Sidenote: _Protection against Temptation._]

--If one endeavors to deprive the youth of all free and individual intercourse with the world, one only falls into a continual watching of him, and the consciousness that he is watched destroys in him all elasticity of spirit, all confidence, all originality. The police shadow of control obscures all independence and systematically accustoms him to dependence. As the tragi-comic story of Peter Schlemihl shows, one cannot lose his own shadow without falling into the saddest fatalities; but the shadow of a constant companion, as in the pedagogical system of the Jesuits, undermines all naturalness. And if one endeavors too strictly to guard against that which is evil and forbidden, the intelligence of the pupils reacts in deceit against such efforts, till the educators are amazed that such crimes as come often to light can have arisen under such careful control.--

§ 35. If there should appear in the youth any decided moral deformity which is opposed to the ideal of his education, the instructor must at once make inquiry as to the history of its origin, because the negative and the positive are very closely connected in his being, so that what appears to be negligence, rudeness, immorality, foolishness, or oddity, may arise from some real needs of the youth which in their development have only taken a wrong direction.

§ 36. If it should appear on such examination that the negative action was only a product of wilful ignorance, of caprice, or of arbitrariness on the part of the youth, then this calls for a simple prohibition on the part of the educator, no reason being assigned. His authority must be sufficient to the pupil without any reason. Only when this has happened more than once, and the youth is old enough to understand, should the prohibition, together with the reason therefor, be given.

--This should, however, be brief; the explanation must retain its disciplinary character, and must not become extended into a doctrinal essay, for in such a case the youth easily forgets that it was his own misbehavior which was the occasion of the explanation. The statement of the reason must be honest, and it must present to the youth the point most easy for him to seize. False reasons are morally blamable in themselves, and they tend only to confuse. It is a great mistake to unfold to the youth the broadening consequences which his act may bring. These uncertain possibilities seem to him too powerless to affect him particularly. The severe lecture wearies him, especially if it be stereotyped, as is apt to be the case with fault-finding and talkative instructors. But more unfortunate is it if the painting of the gloomy background to which the consequences of the wrong-doing of the youth may lead, should fill his feelings and imagination prematurely with gloomy fancies, because then the representation has led him one step toward a state of wretchedness which in the future man may become fearful depression and degradation.--

[Sidenote: _Reproof and Punishment._]

§ 37. If the censure is accompanied with a threat of punishment, then we have the same kind of reproof which in daily life we call "scolding;" but if reproof is given, the pupil must be made to feel that it is in earnest.

§ 38. Only when all other efforts have failed, is punishment, which is the real negation of the error, the transgression, or the vice, justifiable. Punishment inflicts intentionally pain on the pupil, and its object is, by means of this sensation, to bring him to reason, a result which neither our simple prohibition, our explanation, nor our threat of punishment, has been able to reach. But the punishment, as such, must not refer to the subjective totality of the youth, or his disposition in general, but only to the act which, as result, is a manifestation of the disposition. It acts mediately on the disposition, but leaves the inner being untouched directly; and this is not only demanded by justice, but on account of the sophistry that is inherent in human nature, which desires to assign to a deed many motives, it is even necessary.

[Sidenote: _Correction_ VERSUS _Satisfaction of Justice._]

§ 39. Punishment as an educational means is nevertheless essentially corrective, since, by leading the youth to a proper estimation of his fault and a positive change in his behavior, it seeks to improve him. At the same time it stands as a sad indication of the insufficiency of the means previously used. On no account should the youth be frightened from the commission of a misdemeanor, or from the repetition of his negative deed through fear of punishment--a system which leads always to terrorism: but, although it may have this effect, it should, before all things, impress upon him the recognition of the fact that the negative is not allowed to act as it will without limitation, but rather that the Good and the True have the absolute power in the world, and that they are never without the means of overcoming anything that contradicts them.

--In the statute-laws, punishment has the opposite office. It must first of all satisfy justice, and only after this is done can it attempt to improve the guilty. If a government should proceed on the same basis as the educator it would mistake its task, because it has to deal with adults, whom it elevates to the honorable position of responsibility for their own acts. The state must not go back to the psychological ethical genesis of a negative deed. It must assign to a secondary rank of importance the biographical moment which contains the deed in process and the circumstances of a mitigating character, and it must consider first of all the deed in itself. It is quite otherwise with the educator; for he deals with human beings who are relatively undeveloped, and who are only growing toward responsibility. So long as they are still under the care of a teacher, the responsibility of their deed belongs in part to him. If we confound the standpoint in which punishment is administered in the state with that in education, we work much evil.--

§ 40. Punishment as a negation of a negation, considered as an educational means, cannot be determined _à priori_, but must always be modified by the peculiarities of the individual offender and by the peculiar circumstances. Its administration calls for the exercise of the ingenuity and tact of the educator.

[Sidenote: _Three Kinds of Punishment._]

§ 41. Generally speaking, we must make a distinction between the sexes, as well as between the different periods of youth; (1) some kind of corporal punishment is most suitable for children, (2) isolation for older boys and girls, and (3) punishment based on the sense of honor for young men and women.

§ 42. (1) Corporal punishment is the production of physical pain. The youth is generally whipped, and this kind of punishment, provided always that it is not too often administered or with undue severity, is the proper way of dealing with wilful defiance, with obstinate carelessness, or with a really perverted will, so long or so often as the higher perception is closed against appeal. The imposing of other physical punishment, e.g. that of depriving the pupil of food, partakes of cruelty. The view which sees in the rod the panacea for all the teacher's embarrassments is censurable, but equally undesirable is the false sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child, and confounds self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, to which a blow is the most natural form of reaction, in which all other forms of influence at last end.

--The fully-grown man ought never to be whipped, because this kind of punishment reduces him to the level of the child, and, when it becomes barbarous, to that of a brute animal, and so is absolutely degrading to him. In the English schools the rod is much used. If a pupil of the first class be put back into the second at Eton, he, although before exempt from flogging, becomes liable to it. But however necessary this system of flogging of the English aristocracy may be in the discipline of their schools, flogging in the English army is a shameful thing for the free people of Great Britain.--

§ 43. (2) By Isolation we remove the offender temporarily from the society of his fellows. The boy left alone, cut off from all companionship, and left absolutely to himself, suffers from a sense of helplessness. The time passes heavily, and soon he is very anxious to be allowed to return to the company of parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and fellow-pupils.

--To leave a child entirely to himself without any supervision, even if one shuts him up in a dark room, is as mistaken a practice as to leave a few together without supervision, as is too often done where they are kept after school, when they give the freest rein to their childish wantonness and commit the wildest pranks.--

[Sidenote: _Sense of Honor in the Pupil._]

§ 44. (3) This way of isolating a child does not touch his sense of honor at all, and is soon forgotten because it relates to only one side of his conduct. It is quite different from punishment based on the sense of honor, which, in a formal manner, shuts the youth out from companionship because he has attacked the principle which holds society together, and for this reason can no longer be considered as belonging to it. Honor is the recognition of one individual by others as their equal. Through his error, or it may be his crime, he has simply made himself unequal to them, and in so far has separated himself from them, so that his banishment from their society is only the outward expression of the real isolation which he himself has brought to pass in his inner nature, and which he by means of his negative act only betrayed to the outer world. Since the punishment founded on the sense of honor affects the whole ethical man and makes a lasting impression upon his memory, extreme caution is necessary in its application lest a permanent injury be inflicted upon the character. The idea of his perpetual continuance in disgrace, destroys in a man all aspiration for improvement.

--Within the family this feeling of honor cannot be so actively developed, because every member of it is bound to every other immediately by natural ties, and hence is equal to every other. Within its sacred circle, he who has isolated himself is still beloved, though it may be through tears. However bad may be the deed he has committed, he is never given up, but the deepest sympathy is felt for him because he is still brother, father, &c. But first in the contact of one family with another, and still more in the contact of an individual with any institution which is founded not on natural ties, but is set over against him as a distinct object, this feeling of honor appears. In the school, and in the matter of ranks and classes in a school, this is very important.--

§ 45. It is important to consider well this gradation of punishment (which, starting with sensuous physical pain, passes through the external teleology of temporary isolation up to the idealism of the sense of honor), both in relation to the different ages at which they are appropriate and to the training which they bring with them. Every punishment must be considered merely as a means to some end, and, in so far, as transitory. The pupil must always be deeply conscious that it is very painful to his instructor to be obliged to punish him. This pathos of another's sorrow for the sake of his cure which he perceives in the mien, in the tone of the voice, in the delay with which the punishment is administered, will become a purifying fire for his soul.