What Life Could Mean to You by Alfred Adler

Author:Alfred Adler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Business and Leadership Publishing
Published: 2014-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

VII. SCHOOL INFLUENCES

The school is the prolonged arm of the family. If parents were able to undertake the training of their children and fit them adequately for solving the problems of life, there would be no need for school education. Often in other cultures a child was trained almost completely in the family. A craftsman would bring up his sons in his own craft and teach them the skill he had acquired from his own father and from his practical experience. Our present culture, however, makes more complex demands on us, and schools are necessary to lighten the work of parents and carry on what they have begun. Social life needs a higher degree of education from its members than we can give them in the home.

In America schools have not gone through all the phases of development which have taken place in Europe; but sometimes we can still see relics of an authoritarian tradition. At first, in the history of European education, only princes and aristocrats received any schooling.

They were the only members of society to whom a value was accorded: others were expected to do their work and aspire no higher. Later on, the limits of society were enlarged. Education was taken over by religious institutions and a few selected individuals could be trained in religion, art, the sciences and professional disciplines.

When industrial technique began to develop, these forms of education were quite insufficient. The struggle for a wider education was long drawn out. The schoolmasters in the villages and towns were often cobblers and tailors. They taught with a stick in their hands and the results were very poor. Only the religious schools and the universities gave instruction in the arts and sciences and sometimes even emperors did not learn to read or write. Now it became necessary for the workers to read and write, do sums and draw, and the public schools as we know them were founded.

These schools, however, were always established in accordance with the ideals of the government; and the governments of the time aimed at having obedient subjects, trained for the benefit of the upper classes and capable of being turned into soldiers. The curriculum of the schools was adapted to this end. I myself can remember a time in Austria when these conditions, in part, survived; when the training for the least privileged classes was to make them obedient and fit them for talks appropriate to their status. More and more the insufficiencies of this type of education were seen. Freedom grew; the working classes became stronger and made higher demands. The public schools adapted themselves to these demands; and now it is the prevailing ideal of education that children should be taught to think for themselves, should be given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with literature, the arts and sciences, and should grow up to share in our whole human culture and contribute to it. We no longer wish to train children only to make money or take a Position under the industrial system.

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