Modifications to the Educational System

First Modification in the Educational System: Simplification

The People’s State must reconstruct our educational system to embrace only what is essential as part of an allround education.

Beyond this, it will provide more advanced teaching in the various subjects for those who want to specialize in them.

He should study exhaustively and in detail only that subject in which he intends to work during the rest of his life.

A general instruction in all subjects should be obligatory, and specialization should be left to the choice of the individual.

In this way, the scholastic programme would be shortened. Thus, several school hours would be gained which could be utilized for physical training and character training, in will-power, the capacity for making practical judgments, decisions, etc.

The little account taken by our school training today, especially in the secondary schools, of the callings that have to be followed in after life is demonstrated by the fact that men who are destined for the same calling in life are educated in three different kinds of schools.

What is of decisive importance is general education only and not the special teaching. When special knowledge is needed it cannot be given in the curriculum of our secondary schools as they stand to-day.

Therefore the People’s State will one day have to abolish such half-measures.

Second Modification in the Educational System: Ideals

In our materialistic epoch, our scientific education gives emphasis on what is real and practical such as applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.

But it is perilous to base the general culture of a nation on these subjects. On the contrary, that general culture should always be:

• directed towards ideals.
• founded on the humanist disciplines
• giving only the groundwork of further specialized instruction in the various practical sciences.

Otherwise, we gain technical knowledge but sacrifice those forces that are more important for preserving the nation.

In the historical department, the study of ancient history should not be omitted.

Roman history, along general lines, is and will remain the best teacher for our own time and also for the future.

The ideal of Hellenic culture should be preserved in all its marvellous beauty.

The differences between the various peoples should not prevent us from recognizing the community of race which unites them on a higher plane.

The conflict of our times is one that is being waged around great objectives.

A civilization is fighting for its existence. It is a civilization that is the product of thousands of years of historical development, and the Greek as well as the German forms part of it.

A clear-cut division must be made between general culture and the special branches.

Today, the special cultures threaten to devote themselves exclusively to the service of Mammon. To counterbalance this, general culture should be preserved, at least in its ideal forms.

Industrial and technical progress, trade and commerce, can flourish only so long as a folk community is inspired by ideals.

Having ideals is the preliminary condition for a flourishing development of those enterprises.

That condition is not created by a spirit of materialist egotism but by a spirit of self-denial and the joy of giving one’s self in the service of others.

The system of education which prevails today sees its principal object in pumping into young people that knowledge which will help them to make their way in life.

This principle is expressed in the following terms: “The young man must one day become a useful member of human society.”

By that phrase they mean the ability to gain an honest daily livelihood.

The superficial training in the duties of good citizenship, which he acquires merely as an accidental thing, has very weak foundations.

For in itself the State represents only a form, and therefore it is difficult to train people to look upon this form as the ideal which they will have to serve and towards which they must feel responsible. A form can be too easily broken.

But the current idea of the State is obscure.

Therefore, there is nothing but the usual stereotyped ‘patriotic’ training.

In the old Germany the greatest emphasis was placed on the divine right of the small and even the smallest potentates.

The way in which this divine right was formulated and presented was never very clever and often very stupid.

Because of the large numbers of those small potentates, it was impossible to give adequate biographical accounts of the really great personalities that shed their lustre on the history of the German people.

The result was that the broad masses received a very inadequate knowledge of German history. Here, too, the great lines of development were missing.

In such a way no real national enthusiasm could be aroused.

Our educational system was incapable of selecting historical personages which the German people could be proud to look upon as their own.

• It could have united the nation by the ties of common heritage.

Pettifogging dynastic patriotism was more acceptable and more easily tolerated than the glowing fire of a supreme national pride.

Monarchist patriotism terminated in Associations of Veterans, whereas passionate national patriotism might have opened new roads

Since the revolution broke out in Germany, the monarchist patriotism was extinguished.

The purpose of teaching history was to merely add to the stock of objective knowledge.

The German people would not have stood on the battlefield for 4.5 years to fight under the battle slogan ‘For the Republic’.