I assume that as liberal men and women you have no use for the process
of cramming and stuffing of college-geese and mentally indolent, morally
obtuse and religiously “cultured” prigs and philistines, but that you
realize that your true vocation is to get access to the latent energies
of your children, to stimulate their reserve energies and educate, bring
to light, man’s genius. The science of psychopathology now sets forth a
fundamental principle which is not only of the utmost importance in
psychotherapeutics, but also in the domain of education; it is the
principle of stored up, dormant, reserve-energy,—the principle of
potential, subconscious, reserve energy.
It is claimed on good evidence, biological, physiological and
psychopathological, that man possesses large stores of unused energy
which the ordinary stimuli of life are not only unable to reach, but
even tend to inhibit. Unusual combinations of circumstances, however,
radical changes of the environment, often unloose the inhibitions
brought about by the habitual narrow range of man’s interests and
surroundings. Such unloosening of inhibitions helps to release fresh
supplies of reserve energy. It is not the place here to discuss this
fundamental principle; I can only state it in the most general way, and
give its general trend in the domain of education.
You have heard the psychologizing educator advise the formation of good,
fixed, stable habits in early life. Now I want to warn you against the
dangers of such unrestricted advice. Fixed adaptations, stable habits,
tend to raise the thresholds of mental life, tend to inhibit the
liberation, the output of reserve-energy. _Avoid routine._ Do not let
your pupils fall into the ruts of habits and customs. Do not let even
the _best_ of habits harden beyond the point of further possible
modification.
Where there is a tendency towards formation of over-abundant mental
cartilage, set your pupils to work under widely different circumstances.
Confront them with a changed set of conditions. Keep them on the move.
Surprise them by some apparently paradoxical relations and strange
phenomena. Do not let them settle down to one definite set of actions or
reactions. Remember that rigidity, like sclerosis, induration of tissue,
means decay of originality, destruction of man’s genius. With solidified
and unvariable habits not only does the reserve energy become entirely
inaccessible, but the very individuality is extinguished.
Do not make of our children a nation of philistines. Why say, you make
man in your own image? Do not make your schools machine-shops, turning
out on one uniform pattern so much mediocrity per year. _Cultivate
variability._ The tendency towards variability is the most precious part
of a good education. Beware of the philistine with his set, stable
habits.
The important principle in education is not so much _formation_ of
habits as the power of their _re-formation_. The power of breaking up
habits is by far the more essential factor of a good education. It is in
this power of breaking down habits that we can find the key for the
unlocking of the otherwise inaccessible stores of subconscious reserve
energy. _The cultivation of the power of habit-disintegration is what
constitutes the proper education of man’s genius._[1]
-----
[1] A well known editor of one of the academic Journals on Educational
Psychology writes to me as follows:
“Your remarks on the avoidance of routine would be like a red rag to a
bull for a number of educators who are emphasizing the importance of
habit formation in education at present.”
X
The power of breaking down or dissolving habits depends on the amount
and strength of the _aqua fortis_ of the intellect. The logical and
critical activities of the individual should be cultivated with special
care. The critical self, as we may put it, should have control over the
automatic and the subconscious. For the subconscious has been shown to
form the fertile soil for the breeding of the most dangerous germs of
mental disease, epidemics, plagues and pestilences in their worst forms.
We should try to develop the individual’s critical abilities in early
childhood, not permitting the suggestible subconsciousness to
predominate, and to become overrun with noxious weeds and pests.
We should be very careful with the child’s critical self, as it is weak
and has little resistance. We should, therefore, avoid all dominating
authority and categorical imperative commands. Autocratic authority
cultivates in the child the predisposition to abnormal suggestibility,
to hypnotic states, and leads towards the dominance of the subconscious
with its train of pernicious tendencies and deleterious results.
There is a period in the child’s life between the ages of five and ten
when he is very inquisitive, asking all kinds of questions. _It is the
age of discussion in the child._ This inquisitiveness and discussion
should by all means be encouraged and fostered. We should aid the
development of the spirit of inquisitiveness and curiosity in the child.
For this is the acquisition of control over the stored-up, latent
energies of man’s genius.
We should not arrest the child’s questioning spirit, as we are often apt
to do, but should strongly encourage the apparently meddlesome and
troublesome searching and prying and scrutinizing of _whatever interests
the child_. Everything should be open to the child’s searching interest;
nothing should be suppressed and tabooed as too sacred for examination.
The spirit of inquiry, the genius of man, is more sacred than any
abstract belief, dogma and creed.
A rabbi came to ask my advice about the education of his little boy. My
advice was: “Teach him not to be a Jew.” The man of God departed and
never came again. The rabbi did not care for education, but for faith.
He did not wish his boy to become a man, but to be a Jew.
The most central, the most crucial part of the education of man’s genius
is _the knowledge, the recognition of evil_ in all its protean forms and
innumerable disguises, intellectual, æsthetic and moral, such as
fallacies, sophisms, ugliness, deformity, prejudice, superstition, vice
and depravity. Do not be afraid to discuss these matters with the child.
For the knowledge, the recognition of evil does not only possess the
virtue of immunization of the child’s mind against all evil, but
furnishes the main power for habit-disintegration with consequent
release and control of potential reserve energy, of manifestations of
human genius. When a man becomes contented and ceases to notice the
evils of life, as is done by some modern religious sects, he loses his
hold on the powers of man’s genius, he loses touch with the throbbing
pulse of humanity, he loses hold on reality and falls into subhuman
groups.
The purpose of education, of a _liberal_ education, is not to live in a
fool’s paradise, or to go through the world in a post-hypnotic state of
negative hallucinations. The true aim of a liberal education is, as the
Scriptures put it, to have the _eyes opened_,—to be free from all
delusions, illusions, from the _fata morgana_ of life. We prize a
liberal education, because it _liberates_ us from subjection to
superstitious fears, delivers us from the narrow bonds of prejudice,
from the exalted or depressing delusions of moral paresis, intellectual
dementia-praecox, and religious paranoia. A liberal education liberates
us from the enslavement to the degrading influence of _all_
idol-worship.
In the education of man do not play on his subconscious sense by
deluding him by means of hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions of
positive and negative hallucinations, with misty and mystic, beatific
visions. Open his _eyes_ to undisguised reality. Teach him, show him how
to strip the real from its unessential wrappings and adornments and see
things in their nakedness. _Open the eyes of your children so that they
shall see, understand and face courageously the evils of life._ Then
will you do your duty as parents, then will you give your children the
proper education.