Karl Rosenkranz

“ Education in general consists in the development in man of his inborn theoretical and practical rationality; it takes on the form of labor, which changes that state or condition, which appears at first only as a mere conception, into a fixed habit, and transfigures individuality into a worthy humanity. Education ends in that emancipation of the youth which places him on his own feet. The special elements which form the concrete content of all Education in general are the Life, Cognition, and Will of man. Without life mind has no phenomenal reality ”

“ It is necessary to draw a sharp line between work and play. If the Educator has not respect for work as an activity of great weight and importance, he not only spoils the relish of the pupil for play, which loses all its charm of freedom when not set off by its antithesis of earnest labor, but he undermines in the pupil's mind all respect for any real existence. On the other hand, he who does not give to the child space, time, and opportunity for play prevents the originality of his pupil from free development through the exercise of his creative ingenuity. ”

“ To treat the youth after he has passed this point of time still as a youth, contradicts the very idea of Education, which idea finds its fulfilment in the attainment of majority by the pupil. Since the accomplishment of education cancels the original inequality between the educator and the pupil, nothing is more oppressing, nay, revolting to the latter than to be prevented by a continued dependence from the enjoyment of the freedom which he has earned. ”

“ The problem with which modern Education has to deal may be said, in general terms, to be the development in the individual soul of the indwelling Reason, both practical (as will) and theoretical (as intellect) . To make a child good is only a part of Education; we have also to develop his intelligence. The sciences of Ethics and Education are not the same. Again, we must not forget that no pupil is simply a human being, like every other human being; he is also an individual, and thus differs from every other one of the race. This is a point which must never be lost sight of by the educator. ”

“ The true teacher is free from any superstitious belief in any one procedure as a sure specific which he follows always in a monotonous bondage. This can only happen when he is capable of the highest method. The teacher has arrived at the highest point of ability in teaching when he can make use of all means, from the loftiness of solemn seriousness, through smooth statement, to the play of jest—yes, even to the incentive of irony, and to humor. ”

“ They did not believe in the Nemesis of a divine destiny; on the contrary, disbelief in the higher justice was taught. One must be so elastic as to suit himself to all situations, and, as a caricature of the ancient ataraxy, he must acquire as a second nature a manner perfectly indifferent to all changes, the impassibility of an aristocratic repose, the amphibious sang-froid of the "gentleman." The man in the world as the man of the world sought his ideal in endless dissimulation, and in this, as the flowering of his culture, he took the highest interest. ”

“ In the narrowest sense, which however is the usual one, we mean by Education the influence which one mind exerts on another in order to cultivate the latter in some understood and methodical way, either generally or with reference to some special aim. The educator must, therefore, be relatively finished in his own education, and the pupil must possess unlimited confidence in him. If authority be wanting on the one side, or respect and obedience on the other, this ethical basis of development must fail, and it demands in the very highest degree, talent, knowledge, skill, and prudence. ”

“ The principal feature of the practical culture consists in the misapprehension that one should ignore Nature, instead of morally freeing himself from her control. As she, again and again asserts herself, the monkish discipline proceeds to misuse her, and strives through fasting, through sleeplessness, through voluntary self-inflicted pain and martyrdom, not only to subdue the wantonness of the flesh, but to destroy the love of life till it shall become a positive loathing of existence. In and for itself the object of the monkish vow—property, the family, and will—is not immoral. ”

“ Mental and moral acts, thoughts, and feelings in the same way are, by repetition, converted into habits and become our nature; and character, good or bad, is only the aggregate of our habits. When we say a person has no character, we mean exactly this: that he has no fixed habits. But, as the great end of human life is freedom, he must be above even habit. He must not be wholly a machine of habits, and education must enable him to attain the power of breaking as well as of forming habits, so that he may, when desirable, substitute one habit for another. ”

“ Education within such a circle could not well recognize nature and history as manifestations of God, but it must consider them to be limitations to their union with God, from which death can first then completely release them. The soul which knew that its home could be found only in the future world, must feel itself to be a stranger upon the earth, and from such an opinion there must arise an indifference and even a contempt for science and art, as well as an aversion for a life of active labor, though an unwilling and forced tribute might be paid to it. ”

“ With this highest theoretical and practical emancipation, the general work of education ends. It remains now to be shown how the general idea of Education shapes its special elements into their appropriate forms. From the nature of Pedagogics, which concerns itself with man in his entirety, this exposition belongs partly to the history of culture in general, partly to the history of religion, partly to the philosophy of history. The pedagogical element in it always lies in the ideal which the spirit of a nation or of an age creates out of itself, and which it seeks to realize in its youth. ”

“ To resort to deprivation of food is cruel. But, while we condemn the false view of seeing in the rod the only panacea for all embarrassing questions of discipline on the teacher's part, we can have no sympathy for the sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child. It is wrong thus to confound self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, for to the average child himself a blow is the most natural form of retribution, and that in which all other efforts at influence at last end. ”

“ Every example of thorough work, every pleasure that comes from the solving of a problem or the acquisition of a new fact, is so much fortification against the advances of the enemy; while all shallow half work, all pretence or show tend to create an appetite in the child's mind which shall demand such food.
The true teacher should always have in his mind these far-away and subtle effects of his teaching; not present good or pleasure either for himself or his pupil, but the far-off good—the distant development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus he learned criticism, thus he rose from naturalness into spirit. This progress is at the same time a progress from necessity to freedom, because criticism always gradually opens a way for man into insight, so that he finds the will of God to be the truth of his own self-determination. Because God is one and absolute, there arises the expectation that His Will will become the basis for the will of all nations and men. The criticism of the understanding must recognize a contradiction in the fact that the will of the true God is the law of only one nation ”

“ That education which would emancipate a nation from the passivity of abstraction must throw it into the midst of an historical activity. A nation finds not its actual limits in its locality: it can forsake this and wander far away from it. Its true limit is made by another nation. The nation which knows itself to be actual, turns itself therefore against other nations in order to subject them and to reduce them to the condition of mere accidents of itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The real idea of Gymnastics must always be that the spirit shall rule over its naturalness, and shall make this an energetic and docile servant of its will. Strength and adroitness must unite and become confident skill. Strength, carried to its extreme produces the athlete; adroitness, to its extreme, the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both. All immense force, fit only for display, must be held as far away as the idea of teaching Gymnastics with the motive of utility ”

“ The idea that the body may be preserved in a healthy state longer by sparing it—i.e., by inactivity—is an error which springs from a false and mechanical conception of life. It is just as foolish to imagine that health depends on the abundance and excellence of food, for without the power of assimilating the food taken, nourishment of whatever kind does more harm than good; all real strength develops from activity alone. ”

“ When we have a harmony of the manifestation of the individual with the expression of the recognition of the equality of others we have what is called deportment or politeness, which combines dignity and grace, self-respect and modesty. We call it when fully complete, Urbanity. It treats the conventional forms with irony, since, at the same time that it yields to them, it allows the productivity of spirit to shine through them in little deviation from them, as if it were fully able to make others in their place. ”

“ The conscious amateur confesses this himself, makes no pretension to mastership, and calls himself—in distinction from the professional, who subjects himself to rules—an unlearned person. But sometimes the amateur, on the contrary, covers over his weakness, cherishes in himself the self-conceit that he is equal to the heroes of his art or science, constitutes himself the first admirer of his own performances, seeks for their want of recognition in external motives, never in their own want of excellence ”

“ According to its form of manifestation, Judaism is below the Greek spirit. It is not beautiful, but rather grotesque. But in its essence, as the religion of the contradiction between the idea and its existence, it goes beyond nature, which it perceives to be established by an absolute, conscious, and reasonable Will; while the Greek concealed from himself only mythically his dependence on nature, on his mother-earth. The Jews have been preserved in the midst of all other culture by the elastic power of the thought of God as One who was free from the control of nature. ”

“ To know that I am I, is to know the most general of objects, and to carry out abstraction to its very last degree; and yet this is what all human beings do, young or old, savage or civilized. The savage invents and uses language—an act of the species, but which the species cannot do without the participation of the individual.
It should be carefully noted that this activity of generalization which produces language, and characterizes the human from the brute, is not the generalization of the activity of thought, so-called. ”

“ In teaching by means of the dialogue, we try, by means of a reciprocal interchange of thought, to solve in common some problem, proceeding according to the necessary forms of reason. But in this we can make a distinction. One speaker may be superior to the rest, may hold in his own hand the thread of the conversation and may guide it himself; or, those who mingle in it may be perfectly equal in intellect and culture, and may each take part in the development with equal independence. ”

“ The system of humanitarian education began to unfold from this principle, which no longer accords the highest place to the natural unity of national individuality, nor to the abstract obedience of the command of God, but to that freedom of the soul which knows itself to be absolute necessity. Christ is not a mere ideal of the thought, but is known as a living member of actual history, whose life, sufferings and death for freedom form the security as to its absolute justification and truth. ”

“ Religion is the absolute relation of man to God which subsumes all other relations. In so far as Religion exists in the form of a church, those who are members of the same church may have instruction given on the nature of religion among themselves. Instruction on the subject is proper, and it is even enjoined upon them as a law—as a duty. But further than their own society they may not extend their rule. The church may exert itself to make a religious spirit felt in the school and to make it penetrate all the teaching ”

“ Let the teacher watch his pupils while at play if he would discover their individual peculiarities, for it is then that they unconsciously betray their real propensities. This antithesis of work and play runs through the entire life, the form only of play varying with years and occupations. To do what we please, as we please, and when we please, not for any reason, but just because we please, remains play always. Children in their sports like nothing better than to counterfeit what is to be the earnest work of their after-lives. ”

“ In a more restricted sense we mean by Education the shaping of the individual life by the forces of nature, the rhythmical movement of national customs, and the might of destiny in which each one finds limits set to his arbitrary will. These often mould him into a man without his knowledge. For he cannot act in opposition to nature, nor offend the ethical sense of the people among whom he dwells, nor despise the leading of destiny without discovering through experience that before the Nemesis of these substantial elements his subjective power can dash itself only to be shattered. ”