Part 32 (1/2)
People who, like Eugen Richter, indignate at the idea of a young mother being placed in a lying-in establishment, where she is surrounded by all that to-day is possible only to the very wealthiest, and which even these cannot furnish in the fullness attainable at inst.i.tutions especially equipped for the purpose--such people we wish to remind of the fact that, to-day, at least four-fifths of the population are born under the most primitive circ.u.mstances and conditions, that are a disgrace to our civilization. Of the remaining one-fifth of our mothers, only a minority is able to enjoy the nursing and comforts that should be bestowed upon a woman in that state. _The fact is that in cities with excellent provisions for child-birth--Berlin for instance, and all University cities--even to-day not a few women resort to such inst.i.tutions as soon as they feel their time approaching, and await their delivery. Unfortunately, however, the expenses at such inst.i.tutions are so high, that but few women can use them, while others are held back by prejudice._ Here again we have an instance of how everywhere bourgeois society carries in its own lap the germ of the future order.
For the rest, maternity among the rich has a unique taste; the maternal duties are transferred as soon as possible to a _proletarian nurse_. As is well known, the Wendt Lausitz (Spreewald) is the region that the women of the Berlin bourgeoisie, who are unwilling or unable to nurse their own babies, draw their wet-nurses from. The ”cultivation of nurses” is there carried on as a peculiar trade. It consists in the girls of the district causing themselves to be impregnated, with the end in view of being able, after the birth of their own children, to hire themselves out as nurses to rich Berlin families. Girls who give birth to three or four illegitimate children, so as to be able to go out as nurses, are no rarity; and they are sought after by the males of the Spreewald according to their earnings in this business. Such a system is utterly repellant from the view-point of bourgeois morality; from the view-point of the family interests of the bourgeoisie it is considered praiseworthy and desirable.
So soon as in the society of the future the child has grown up, it falls in with the other children of its own age for play, and under common surveillance. All that can be furnished for its mental and physical culture is at hand, according to the measure of general intelligence.
Whosoever has watched children knows that they are brought up best in the company of their equals, their sense of gregariousness and instinct of imitation being generally strong. The smaller are strongly inclined to take the older ones as example, and rather follow them than their own parents. These qualities can be turned to advantage in education.[215]
The playgrounds and kindergartens are followed by a playful introduction into the preliminaries of knowledge and of the various manual occupations. This is followed up by agreeable mental and physical work, connected with gymnastic exercises and free play in the skating rink and swimming establishments; drills, wrestling, and exercises for both s.e.xes follow and supplement one another. The aim is to raise a healthy, hardy, physically and mentally developed race. Step by step follows the induction of the youth in the various practical pursuits--manufacturing, horticulture, agriculture, the technique of the process of production, etc.; nor is the development of the mind neglected in the several branches of science.
The same process of ”dusting” and improvement observed in the system of production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when ”religion” is taught on one hand, and on the other natural sciences and natural history. The equipment of the school rooms and educational establishments is in keeping with the high degree of culture of the new social order. All the means of education and of study, clothing and support are furnished by society; no pupil is at a disadvantage with another.[216] That is another chapter at which our ”men of law and order” bristle up indignantly.[217] ”The school-house is to be turned into barracks; parents are to be deprived of all influence upon their children!” is the cry of our adversaries. All false! Seeing that in the future society parents will have infinitely more time at their disposal than is the case to-day with the large majority--we need but to call attention to the ten to fifteen hour day of many workingmen in the post office, the railroads, the prisons, the police department, and to the demands made upon the time of the industrial workers, the small farmers, merchants, soldiers, many physicians, etc.--it follows that they will be able to devote themselves to their children in a measure that is impossible to-day. _Moreover, the parents themselves have the regulation of education in their hands; it is they who determine the measures that shall be adopted and introduced. We are then living in a thoroughgoing democratic society. The Boards of Education, which will exist, of course, are made up of the parents themselves--men and women--and of those following the educational profession._ Does any one imagine they will act against their own interests? That happens only to-day when the State seeks but to enforce its own exclusive interests.
Our opponents furthermore demean themselves as though to-day one of the greatest pleasures of parents was to have their children about them all day long, and to educate them. It is just the reverse in reality. What hards.h.i.+ps and cares are to-day caused by the education of a child, even when a family has but one of them, those parents are best able to judge who are themselves so situated. Several children, in a manner, facilitate education, but then again they give rise to so much more trouble that their father and especially the mother, who is the one to bear the heaviest burden, is happy when the school hour arrives, and thus the house is rid of the children for a portion of the day. Most parents can afford but a very imperfect education to their children.
The large majority of fathers and mothers lack time; the former have their business, the latter their household to attend to, and their time is furthermore taken up with social duties. Even when they actually have time, in innumerable instances they lack the ability. How many parents are able to follow the course of their children's education at school, and to take them under the arm in their schoolwork at home? Only few.
The mother, who in most such cases has greater leisure at her disposal, lacks capacity; she has not herself received sufficient training.
Moreover, the method and the courses of education change so frequently that these are strange to the parents.
Again, the home facilities are generally so poor that the children enjoy neither the necessary comfort, nor order, nor quiet to do their schoolwork at home, or to find there the needed aid. Everything necessary is generally wanting. The home is narrow and overcrowded; small and grown-up brothers and sisters move about over that narrow s.p.a.ce; the furniture is not what it should be, and furnishes no facilities to the child for study. Not infrequently light, also air and heat are wanting; the materials for study and work, if there be any of them, are poor; frequently even hunger gnaws at the stomach of the child and robs it of mind and pleasure for its work. As a supplement to this picture, the fact must be added that hundreds of thousands of children are put to all manner of work, domestic and industrial, that embitters their youth and disables them from fulfilling their educational task.
Again, often do children have to overcome the resistance of narrow-minded parents when they try to take time for their schoolwork or for play. In short, the obstacles are so numerous that, if they are all taken into account, the wonder is the youth of the land is as well educated. It is an evidence of the health of human nature, and of its inherent ambition after progress and perfection.
Bourgeois society itself recognizes some of these evils by the introduction of public education and by facilitating the same still more through the free supply, here and there, of school material--two things that, as late as about the year 1885 the then Minister of Education of Saxony designated as a ”Social Democratic demand,” and as such flung the designation in the face of the Socialist Representative in the Landtag.
In France, where, after long neglect, popular education advanced so much more rapidly, progress has gone still further. At least in Paris, the school children are fed at public expense. The poor obtain food free, and the children of parents who are better circ.u.mstanced contribute thereto a slight tax toward the common treasury--a communistic arrangement that has proved satisfactory to parents and children alike.
An evidence of the inadequacy of the present school system--it is unable to fulfil even the moderate demands made upon it--is the fact that thousands upon thousands of children _are unable to fulfil their school duties by reason of insufficient food_. In the winter of 1893-94, it was ascertained in Berlin that _in one school district alone 3,600 children went to school without breakfast_. In such shocking conditions there are hundreds of thousands of children in Germany to-day at certain seasons of the year. With millions of others the nourishment is utterly insufficient. For all these children public alimentation and clothing also would be a G.o.dsend. A commonwealth that pursued such a policy and thus, by the systematic nouris.h.i.+ng and clothing of the children, would bring humanity home to them, is not likely to see the sight of ”penitentiaries.” Bourgeois society cannot deny the existence of such misery, which itself has called forth. Hence we see compa.s.sionate souls foregathering in the establishment of breakfast and soup houses, to the end of partially filling by means of charity what it were the duty of society to fill in full. Our conditions are wretched--_but still more wretched is the mental make-up of those who shut their eyes to such facts_.
The system of reducing so-called home school work, and of having the same done at school under the supervision of a teacher is progressing; the inadequacy of home facilities is realized. Not only is the richer pupil at an advantage over the poorer by reason of his position, but also by reason of his having private teachers and such other a.s.sistance at his command. On the other hand, however, laziness and s.h.i.+ftlessness are promoted with the rich pupil by reason of the effects of wealth, luxury and superfluity; these make knowledge appear superfluous to him, and often they place before him such immoral sights that he easily slides into temptation. He who every day and every hour hears the praises sung of rank, position, money, property, and that they are all-essential, acquires abnormal conceptions regarding man and his duties, and regarding State and social inst.i.tutions.
Closely looked into, bourgeois society has no reason to feel indignant at the communistic education, which Socialists aim at. Bourgeois society has itself partly introduced such a system for the privileged cla.s.ses, but only as a caricature of the original. Look at the cadet and alumni establishments, at the seminaries, at the schools for clergymen, and at the homes for military orphans. In them many thousands of children, partly from the so-called upper cla.s.ses, are educated in a one-sided and wrongful manner, and in strict cloister seclusion; they are trained for certain specific occupations. And again, many members of the better situated cla.s.ses, who live in the country or in small places as physicians, clergymen, government employes, factory owners, landlords, large farmers, etc., send their children to boarding schools in the large cities and barely get a glimpse of them, except possibly during vacations.
There is, accordingly, an obvious contradiction between the indignation expressed by our adversaries at a communistic system of education and at ”the estrangement of children from their parents,” on the one hand, and their own conduct, on the other, in _introducing the identical system for their own children--only in a bungling, absolutely false and inadequate style_.
In equal tempo with the increased opportunities for education must the number of teachers increase. In the matter of the education of the rising generations the new social order must proceed in a way similar to that which prevails in the army, in the drilling of soldiers. There is one ”under-officer” to each eight or ten men. With one teacher to every eight or ten pupils, the future may expect the results that should be aimed at.
The introduction of mechanical activities in the best equipped workshops, in garden and field work, will const.i.tute a good part of the education of the youth. It will all be done with the proper change and without excessive exertion, to the end of reaching the most perfectly developed beings.
Education must also be equal and in common for both s.e.xes. Their separation is justifiable only in the cases where the difference in s.e.x makes such separation absolutely necessary. In this manner of education the United States is far ahead of us. There education of the two s.e.xes is in common from the primary schools up to the universities. Not only is education free, but also school materials, inclusive of the instruments needed in manual training and in cooking, as also in chemistry, physics, and the articles needed for experimenting and at bench-work. To many schools are attached gymnastic halls, bath houses, swimming basins and playgrounds. In the higher schools, the female s.e.x is trained in gymnastics, swimming, rowing and marching.[218]
The Socialist system of education, properly regulated and ordered and placed under the direction of a sufficient force, continues up to the age when society shall determine that its youth shall enter upon their majority. Both s.e.xes are fully qualified to exercise all the rights and fill all the duties that society demands from its adult members. Society now enjoys the certainty of having brought up only thorough, fully developed members, human beings to whom nothing natural is strange, as familiar with their nature as with the nature and conditions of society which they join full-righted.
The daily increasing excesses of our modern youth--all of them the inevitable consequences of the present tainted and decomposing state of society--will have vanished. Impropriety of conduct, disobedience, immorality and rude pleasure-seeking, such as is especially noticeable among the youth of our higher educational inst.i.tutions--the gymnasia, polytechnics, universities, etc.--vices that are incited and promoted by the existing demoralization and unrest of domestic life, by the poisonous influence of social life such as the immoral literature that wealth procures--all these will likewise have vanished. In equal measure will disappear the evil effects of the modern factory system and of improper housing, that dissoluteness and self-a.s.surance of youths at an age when the human being is most in need of reining and education in self-control. All these evils future society will escape without the need of coercive measures. The nature of the social inst.i.tutions and of the mental atmosphere, that will spring from them and that will rule society itself, rendering impossible the breaking out of such evils; as in Nature disease and the destruction of organisms can appear only when there is a state of decay that invites disease; so likewise in society.
No one will deny that our present system of instruction and of education suffers of serious defects--the higher schools and educational establishments even more so than the lower. The village school is a paragon of moral health compared with the college; common schools for the manual training of poor girls are paragons of morality compared with many leading boarding schools for girls. The reason is not far to seek.
In the upper cla.s.ses of society, every aspiration after higher human aims is smothered; _those cla.s.ses no longer have any ideal_. As a consequence of the absence of ideals and of n.o.ble endeavor, an unbounded pa.s.sion for physical indulgence and hankering after excesses spread their physical and moral gangrene in all directions. How else can the youth be that is brought up in such an atmosphere? Purely material indulgence, without stint and without bounds, is the only aim that it sees or knows of. Why exert themselves, if the wealth of their parents makes all effort seem superfluous? The maximum of education with a large majority of the sons of our bourgeoisie consists in pa.s.sing the examinations for the one year's service in the army. Is this goal reached, then they imagine to have climbed Pelion and Ossa, and regard themselves at least as demi-G.o.ds. Have they a reserve officer's certificate in their pocket, then their pride and arrogance knows no limit. The influence exercised by this generation--a generation it has become by its numbers--weak in the character and knowledge of its members, but strong in their designs and the spirit of graft, characterizes the present period as the ”Age of Reserve Officers.” Its peculiarities are: Characterlessness and ignorance, but a strong will; servility upward, arrogance and brutality downward.
The daughters of our bourgeoisie are trained as show-dolls, fools of fas.h.i.+on and drawingroom-ladies, on the chase after one enjoyment after another, until, finally, surfeited with _ennui_, they fall a prey to all imaginable real and supposed diseases. Grown old, they become devotees and beads-women, who turn up their eyes at the corruption of the world and preach asceticism. As regards the lower cla.s.ses, the effort is on foot to lower still more the level of their education. The proletariat might become too knowing, it might get tired of its va.s.salage, and might rebel against its earthly G.o.ds. The more stupid the ma.s.s, all the easier is it to control and rule.
And thus modern society stands before the question of instruction and education as bewildered as it stands before all other social questions.
What does it? It calls for the rod; preaches ”religion,” that is, submission and contentment to those who are now but too submissive; teaches abstinence where, due to poverty, abstinence has become compulsory in the utmost necessaries of life. Those who in the rudeness of their nature rear up brutally are taken to ”reformatories,” that usually are controlled by pietistic influences;--and the pedagogic wisdom of modern society has about reached the end of its tether.