[81] than we have. BUT IS THIS PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION? Of course, we must ask what does education^a mean? It means a transformation of the personality in the direction of meaning and value. Now this happens always in individuals. But every individual can resist. And this resistance can have the character of not only forgetting, but of falling down to something which seems to belong to a state of things long ago overcome. The experience behind what I say is the shaking experience of the 20th century, when, after thousands of years of human education, and after two especially educational centuries (the 18th and the 19th), mankind fell down into a savagery which trespassed everything in former centuries! Now this means: the forms in which education^b is going on are changing; the techniques are progressive. But in the moment in which progressivistic [sic.] actions meet human freedom^c, NOTHING CAN BE DONE except to appeal to this freedom, and the appeal will be announced or not announced. This happens, again, with every new human being, it happens again with every new generation. Every education ends where the appeal to freedom starts: there, are its limits. You can give them much knowledge, you can give them civilized behavior, but you cannot give them the ultimate decision about ultimate concern and the consequences for the self-establishment of the personality, which is an act of freedom. Of course it is freedom implied, involved in destiny; it is not abstract or absolute freedom. It is limited by destiny, but in these limits it IS freedom, and in these limits no education can force mankind as a whole into something where freedom (and that means personal decision) is involved. This is the decisive limit. Therefore the belief in education as a progressive things [sic.], becomes a superstition in the moment in which a law of continuous progress is derived from it, and the belief is that the people in the creative realm--where personal decisions are involved, where ultimate concern is involved--are better in the year 1955 than they were in the year 1955 before Christ. THEY ARE NOT! The civilized forms--and that means ultimately techniques--are better; they are more adequate to the purpose of all techniques, about which I will speak more instantly. BUT THE PEOPLE ARE NOT BETTER! And that's what I wanted to express. Now let us imagine for a moment the opposite idea: the opposite idea would mean that the ethical decision can be PRODUCED by educatiors [sic.]. You can