Structural shaming in the school system – part 2

Part 2 on shaming at school deals with the historical development of our school system and with the human “hierarchy of needs”.

When compulsory schooling was introduced in the 18th century, hierarchical thinking matched the conditions of society as a whole and was therefore generally accepted: those at the top gave the orders, and their subjects had to obey.

In the strenuous working life that began in early childhood for most subjects, the few hours of school were for many a welcome interruption and an equally welcome broadening of their mental horizons. In a few rare cases they even helped the pupil to a higher position.

In the 19th century, social reformers took up the cause of schooling. They wanted education to empower the working class to free itself from dependence on the churches and employers – a project that at least partly succeeded and is without doubt a milestone in the history of education.

The 20th century brought the final breakthrough for women’s rights. For the first time, women had the chance of higher education and thus of an independent life. As early as the first decades of the 20th century, bold school reformers appeared on the scene. They designed liberal forms of teaching that were meant to match the new social ideal of equality better than the drill in the traditional educational institutions for boys or girls.

The revolutionary approaches of brilliant educators such as Otto Glöckel, Janusz Korczak, Rudolf Steiner or Maria Montessori, to name only a few of the best known, were, however, nipped in the bud by the rise of National Socialism. The Nazis returned to the Prussian school regime, replaced compulsory education with strict compulsory school attendance in 1938 and thus left a trail of devastation in education too. After the Second World War, economic recovery had priority. The economisation of all areas of life, seeping in from America with the Marshall Plan, gradually conquered Austrian schools too. The classical educational ideal, already fragile, had to give way to curricula with more pragmatic goals.

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are in the midst of social upheavals whose scope can hardly be imagined. Computers and the internet have revolutionised production, trade and communication and have thus shaken old orders to their foundations. In the electronic age, school has long since lost its former monopoly as a provider of knowledge, but it has not yet found its new function, as the never-ending debates on education show. The ongoing crisis could, however, indicate that the paradigm shift heralded by the visionaries mentioned above a hundred years ago is finally imminent. Maria Montessori’s pedagogy, for example, is finding its way more and more often even into mainstream schools, although probably not all Montessori teachers are clearly aware that it is based on a completely different image of the human being.

The interplay of body, soul and spirit

The old-style mainstream school offers poor conditions for the creative feedback process between heart, head and hand. It is structurally geared towards competition, even though its representatives are very fond of claiming the opposite. Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Rebeca Wild and many other, often “nameless” advocates of children, on the other hand, rely on cooperation, symbiosis and synergy: both at the internal level – as the interplay of body, soul and spirit – and at the external level of the community. They hold an image of the human being that recognises the child’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs equally and also respects their natural order.

The easiest way to picture every person’s basic needs is as the floors of a house: physical well-being (safety and integrity, healthy food, enough sleep, sufficient opportunities to move) is the ground floor in this picture. The first floor is emotional security (the certainty of being accepted and loved unconditionally). And arching over it as a protective roof is spiritual orientation, without which a person loses the meaning of life and with it their dignity. Once these three fundamental preconditions are met and secured, numerous further floors can be added under the movable roof of the search for meaning, with the help of the intellect, and extended at will. However, no building will be like any other, because every child is unique and incomparable by nature. What happens when the natural order of human needs is ignored in children and young people is something we can read about in the newspaper every day in countless variations: a building without solid foundations is logically always in danger of collapse. If, however, the child’s individual well-being is given due consideration on all three levels, it no longer needs either coercion or external motivation.

For it becomes very clear that children are by nature curious and eager to learn (as modern brain research has long since shown), as long as their own motivation and individual pace of learning are respected. And it also becomes clear that they are naturally disposed to cooperate, and that they can best develop their social, practical, artistic, intellectual and spiritual talents when they are allowed to be with people of all ages.

Consuming knowledge instead of thirsting for it

It is the division of children by year of birth, taken over from the military, and the constant assessing and comparing that give rise to competitive behaviour. And it is the forced consumption of ready-made course content, often perceived by the child itself as meaningless, that causes its natural thirst for knowledge, fed by its own motivation, to wither more and more.

If we want finally to overcome these two main elements of structural shaming, we will not get round embarking on the adventure of genuine autonomy in education: the role of the authorities should be limited to approving and benevolently evaluating the various forms of (self-)education. Where the path is to lead in concrete terms will have to be decided, and answered for, in each individual case by the people concerned – parents, children and learning companions. Whether civil society is now finally mature enough to take its bearings from existing positive examples and to work for their spread, instead of expecting “those at the top” to come up with a ready-made solution to all problems, will decide the future of us all.

I think it is time for an INITIATIVE to enshrine EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM in law!

FURTHER READING

• Foerster, H. von: Wissen und Gewissen, Suhrkamp Wissenschaft, Frankfurt 1993
• Frankl, V.: Der Wille zum Sinn, Hans Huber, Stuttgart 1972
• Hüther, G.: Mit Freude lernen, ein Leben lang, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 2016
• Kahl, R.: Treibhäuser der Zukunft, Archiv der Zukunft 2004
• Illich, I.: Deschooling Society, Harper & Row, New York 1971
• Pennac, D.: Chagrin d’école, Éditions Gallimard, Paris 2007
• Rosenberg, M. B.: Gewaltfreie Kommunikation, Junfermann, Paderborn 2003