Facs
Transcript
on what was called in German Sozialpädagogik, social pedagogy, then the pattern which we had in mind when we gave such lectures was the desire of the whole younger generation for subjection to strong authoritarian demands, in which the burden of decision and the emptiness of contents is taken away from them. They were seeking for every price, [i.e. at any] and they paid the price, for security, spiritual security, not economic. And this spiritual security was given them in a quasi- demonic way, or in a demonic quasi-religious way, by the totalitarian movements, both Communist and Fascist, which fought against each other on the streets and in the soul of every individual. And partly this was also, at that time and after the War, the great attraction of the Roman Church where they had to subject themselves to similar total demands, to heteronomous laws against their humanistic autonomy, but on the other hand got the security of a tightly-knit system of symbols, which was very rich and not destroyed by criticism.
Now this is the third form. Here the school is important, and here the house [i.e. home] was not important – at least not definitively important – but those groups into which the young people were driven, the “gang,” if you want an American word. But it was more than a gang; a gang usually does not have a thoroughly developed ideology – but these totalitarian groups had it.
This induces me to say a few words about the overestimating of the school, in American education. It is an interesting thing that if you hear the word “educator,” you always think of presidents of big schools, colleges, high schools, etc. – they are the educators of this country.