Education in A Society Uncertain of Its Values Contributions To Practical Pedagogy 1st Edition Wolfgang Brezinka

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Education in a Society
uncertain of its Values
Selected Books by Wolfgang Brezinka
Philosophy of Educational Knowledge
Basic Concepts of Educational Science
Belief, Morals, and Education
Socialization and Education
Educational Aims, Educational Means,

Educational Success
Education and Pedagogy in Cultural Change

Education in a Society
uncertain of its Values
Contributions to Practical
Pedagogy
By
Wolfgang Brezinka
Translation by James Stuart Brice

Education in a Society uncertain of its Values
Contributions to Practical Pedagogy
By Wolfgang Brezinka
Translation by James Stuart Brice
This book first published 2016
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2016 by Wolfgang Brezinka

Previously published in German with the title: Erziehung in einer wert-
unsicheren Gesellschaft. Beiträge zur Praktischen Pädagogik, third edition
1993 by the Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, Munich/Basel.
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-8821-4

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8821-9
CONTENTS
Preface to the English Edition ................................................................. ix
REORIENTATION OF EDUCATION IN A SOCIETY UNCERTAIN OF ITS

VALUES ........................................................................................................1
Orientation Crisis, Valuation Crisis, Educational Crisis .........................2
Intellectual Sources of Our Crisis ...........................................................5
Rationalism .............................................................................................6
Individualism ..........................................................................................9
Hedonism ..............................................................................................12
Ways to Overcome Our Educational Crisis ..........................................14
Realistic Picture of Human Beings .......................................................15
Shared Ideals .........................................................................................16
Courage to Use Essential Means...........................................................18
“EMANCIPATORY PEDAGOGY” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES .......................21

Scientific or Worldview Pedagogy? .....................................................22
Worldview Foundations ........................................................................23
Content of “Emancipatory Pedagogy” ..................................................25
Analysis and Critique of Ends ..............................................................25
Analysis and Critique of Means ............................................................29
Effects of “Emancipatory Pedagogy” ...................................................34
EDUCATION FOR LIFE-COMPETENCE IN A TIME OF ORIENTATION

CRISIS .........................................................................................................39
Educational Inadequacies and Their Consequences..............................40
Conditions for Creating Life-Competence and Educational Aids.........42
i. Families and Larger Communities of Like-Minded Persons .............43
ii. Possibilities to Act ............................................................................45
iii. Sentimental Education .....................................................................48
iv. Moral Education ..............................................................................50
v. Civic Virtues .....................................................................................52
vi Contents
CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL AIMS: PROBLEMS AND TASKS

OF FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS ......................................................................55
Education, Educational Duty, Educational Aims ..................................55
Problems of Educational Aims in Contemporary Pluralistic Societies .60
Tasks for Families .................................................................................69
i. Self-Confidence and Trust in Life and the World..............................70
ii. Readiness for Self-Sufficiency Through Personal Effort .................72
iii. Realistic Understanding of the World and Ourselves ......................73
iv. Culture of the Heart .........................................................................75
v. Self-Discipline ..................................................................................77
Tasks for Schools ..................................................................................79
vi. Public Spirit .....................................................................................80
vii. Patriotism ........................................................................................82
CHRISTIAN EDUCATIONAL AIMS TODAY: EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE

PERSPECTIVE .............................................................................................85
Doctrines of Faith and Canon of Virtues ..............................................86
Virtue of Faith as the Fundamental Christian Educational Aim ...........87
Conditions for the Creation and Maintenance of Faith .........................89
i. Believer’s Way of Life ......................................................................89
ii. Will to Believe ..................................................................................90
iii. Action Based on Faith .....................................................................93
VALUE CHANGE AND SCHOOL EDUCATION ..............................................97

What Does “Value Change” Mean?......................................................97
Types of Collective Value Change that Matter for School Education 102
i. Work, Profession, Achievement ......................................................103
ii. Marriage and the Family .................................................................104
iii. Self-Discipline...............................................................................106
iv. Religion .........................................................................................107
v. Public Spirit and Patriotism ............................................................108
Value-Change Phenomena and School Educational Mandates ...........110
Value Change and Educational Aims .................................................111
EDUCATIONAL POLICY WITHOUT ILLUSIONS .........................................121

Significance of the Educational System for Individuals and Society.....121
Educational Political Illusions as Threats ...........................................123
Expansion of the Generally Educating Higher School System
and Its Consequences ....................................................................126
Illusions of Need for University Graduates ........................................131
Illusions of Possibilities for Financing................................................133
Education in a Society uncertain of its Values vii
Illusions of Equal Opportunity and Chances of Upward Mobility .....134

Illusions of Students’ Resilience Under Pressure ...............................136
Viewpoints for Realistic Educational Policy ......................................140
HEREDITY, EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, AND SCHOOL

ORGANIZATION ........................................................................................145
Ideal of Equality and Belief in the Power of the Environment ...........146
Illusion of Unlimited Learning Ability ...............................................146
Acknowledgment of Heredity-Determined Differences as a
Prerequisite for Proper Educational Treatment of Individual
Differences ....................................................................................147
Theories of Heredity and School Organization...................................148
“Can” Implies Nothing About “Ought” ..............................................149
Equality of Opportunity, Desire for Upward Mobility and Needs of
Society...........................................................................................150
PROFESSIONAL ETHOS OF TEACHERS: NEGLECTED PROBLEM

OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND POLITICS ...............................................153
Compulsory School Attendance and Student Welfare ........................153
State Responsibility for Teachers’ Professional Competence .............154
Forgotten Professional Ethos of Teachers...........................................156
Professional Ethos, Professional Morals, Professional Ethics ............157
Professional Ethos of Teachers as a Necessary Condition
for Fulfilling Their Educational Mandate .....................................160
Educational Duties of Teachers ..........................................................162
Professional Competence and Pedagogical Freedom .........................164
Professional Ethos as Part of Professional Competence .....................164
Conjectures on the Situation of Pedagogical Professional Ethos
and the State of Its Cultivation ......................................................166
Voices on the Situation of Professional Ethos ....................................167
Neglected Possibilities to Further Professional Ethos ........................170
Examination of Candidates’ Suitability for the Profession .................171
Missed Opportunities During Professional Training ..........................174
Crisis of Pedagogy and Its Consequences...........................................176
Crisis of Scientified Teacher Training ................................................178
Rationalism Instead of Forming Convictions .....................................179
Inadequacies of Preparatory Training for Teaching Practice ..............180
Shortcomings of Further Support for Ethos During Professional
Praxis.............................................................................................182
Further Teacher Training ....................................................................183
Restraint Exercised by Professional Colleagues .................................184
viii Contents
Teachers Associations.........................................................................184
Colleagues...........................................................................................186
School Principals ................................................................................187
School Supervisory Organs.................................................................188
Educational Policy Opportunities for Furthering Teachers’
Professional Ethos .........................................................................189
Examination of Professional Suitability Before Professional
Training.........................................................................................190
Reform of Teacher Training Regulations ...........................................191
“Professional Ethics for Teachers” – Required Subject? ....................192
Examination and Study Regulations ...................................................192
Principles for Reorganization of Teacher Training .............................194
Further Training of Teachers and Social Control ...............................197
Assistance by Professional Colleagues .............................................. 197
Students, Parents, and Public Opinion ............................................... 198
FAMILY EDUCATION TODAY ...................................................................201

Parental Responsibility .......................................................................201
Order of the Life Space .......................................................................202
Indirect Education...............................................................................203
Self-Evident Aims and Simple Means ................................................204
LITERATURE ............................................................................................207
PERSON INDEX .........................................................................................239
SUBJECT INDEX ........................................................................................245

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
In recent decades, there have been far-reaching changes in the life circum-
stances of millions of people around the globe. Many in Western societies
have come to accept the affluence, social welfare and individual liberty
they enjoy as self-evident. Many have adopted a self-indulgent life of
luxury and consumption and are neglecting the essential moral precon-
ditions for life-competence and community well-being. The intellectual
Left is spreading illusions of a “dominance-free society” without “perfor-
mance pressure”, with increased opportunities for private happiness and
self-fulfillment but without civic duties or obligations to others in one’s
life circle. These self-centered attitudes have weakened many persons’
sense of realism and negatively affected the educational system.
But illusions are in the meantime yielding to sober reflection. Many are
again concerned about scarcity and economic crises, threats of war, terror-
ism and societal deterioration. Tendencies toward selfishness and misuse of
freedom, irresponsible behavior, waywardness and immorality are increas-
ingly recognized as threats to both society and individual citizens. The de-
cline in the West of support-giving religious, ideological, and moral tradi-
tions has led to great uncertainty about values. Citizens increasingly exper-
ience this as a burden and are becoming open to reassessment. More and
more are seeking to reorient their lives. Anyone responsible for children or
youth needs a reorientation with special urgency, because uncertainty in
value orientations also creates uncertainty in education.
Are there ways to solve our problems? How can we achieve new
clarity on the worldview and moral foundations of education? To what
ends should we direct our educational efforts? With what difficulties
should we reckon? What means are suitable? What tasks must parents
fulfill and which should we assign to teachers? These are among the issues
dealt with in this book. It contains contributions to practical pedagogy1 in-
tended to provide answers to the questions and concerns of parents,
teachers and other educators, as well as to those of educational politicians,
economic leaders and pastoral counselors. With this book, I would like to
stimulate thought and contribute to building consensus on the central
1. On the types, goals and attributes of educational theories see BREZINKA (1978:
236 ff. and 1992a: 209 ff.). For a detailed bibliography of my other publications up
to 1997, cf. UHL (1997).
x Preface to the English Edition
educational tasks of our time.

The present book appeared in German as the third, revised and ex-
panded edition of Erziehung in einer wertunsicheren Gesellschaft. Bei-
träge zur Praktischen Pädagogik, published in 1993 by the Ernst Rein-
hardt Verlag, Munich/Basel. In 1989, the Armando Publishing House in
Rome produced an Italian edition (L’educazione in una società disorien-
tata). It was also published in 1990 in Spanish (La educación in una
sociedad en crisis) by Editorial Narcea, Madrid. A Japanese edition (Kachi
tayouka jidai no kyouiku) was issued in 1992 by Tamagawa University
Press, Tokyo; and a 1997 Korean edition was released by the Seomoon-
dang Publishing Company, Seoul, South Korea.
Also available in English are several other works of interest to readers
of the present text. I explain the epistemological foundations of education-
al theories in Philosophy of Educational Knowledge. An Introduction to
the Foundations of Science of Education, Philosophy of Education and
Practical Pedagogy 1992, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Bos-
ton/London. I examine the conceptual foundations of science of education
and educational practice in Basic Concepts of Educational Science: Anal-
ysis, Critique, Proposals 1994, University Press of America, Lanham,
MD. I analyze the relationship of socialization theories and education in
Socialization and Education: Essays in Conceptual Criticism 1994, Green-
wood Press, Westport, CT. I also discuss certain topics of the current book
in Belief, Morals and Education: Collected Essays on the Philosophy of
Education 1994 (Avebury, Aldershot, UK). My systematic contribution to
the empirical science of education appeared in 1997 as Educational Aims,
Educational Means, Educational Success (Avebury, Aldershot, UK).
These translations are a sign that all highly developed contemporary plur-
alistic societies are experiencing similar problems. Everywhere in the
world we see that ties to religious and moral traditions have weakened,
without science being able to find a substitute for them. Everywhere there
are struggles for new ways of life that can protect the rights of individual
persons without releasing them from community obligations. Everywhere
today concern for the religious-worldview and moral preconditions of life
competence occupy the center of pedagogical discussion. This book is
dedicated to finding solutions to these urgent problems.
I wish to thank James Stuart Brice for an excellent translation and
formatting. I have carefully read the text and given it my approval.
WOLFGANG BREZINKA
A-6165 TELFES IM STUBAI, TYROL, AUSTRIA
REORIENTATION OF EDUCATION
IN A SOCIETY UNCERTAIN OF ITS VALUES
Never before in history have there been such great differences between
children’s helpless states at birth and the personality qualities needed by
life-competent adults in our society. Never before have children had to
learn and unlearn so much to be able to live independently and in harmony
with the good of other people in their community. There have never been
as many possibilities to lose their bearings and come to harm while pursu-
ing their goals. Consequently, more than in the past and longer than ever
before, the younger generation is dependent on good education.
Good education presupposes many things, especially that educators
should have good mental constitutions and show this in their personal be-
havior. Children learn above all from examples given by those closest to
them. Consequently, they need to experience a sufficient number of good
examples in their life space in order to learn the essential social knowledge
and skills, attitudes and virtues. With both a desire and a need to learn,
they orient themselves largely to other people’s expectations. However,
this can only happen if their adult educational partners are in agreement,
and the same standards are maintained over time. Good education be-
comes much easier to provide when there are good morals in the shared
life space, and both adults and children orient themselves to these ideals.
Good morals include ideals that hold for all community members: the so-
cially recognized image of the good person and good way of life. These in-
fluence the attitudes of individual persons and support them. At the same
time, they constitute shared goals for educating younger generations.
In our society, these prerequisites for good education and its success
are seldom completely present. Especially today, when youth take longer
to become mature and self-sufficient and face more threats than ever be-
fore, in many life spaces there is a lack of morals, shared ideals and con-
sistent standards. Our younger generation must live with a Zeitgeist that is
morally weak, indecisive and undemanding. Children grow up surrounded
by persons who are themselves uncertain of their ideals or suppose that
they can get by in life without ideals. They live in a society that, as its
leading thinkers admit, is undergoing a severe orientation crisis with un-
foreseeable outcomes.
2 Reorientation of Education in a Society uncertain of its Values
Orientation Crisis, Valuation Crisis, Educational Crisis

The orientation crisis is a crisis of value orientation. By this, I mean a cri-
sis of convictions about what has value, what we should or should not do,
what we should value more or less highly, what deserves approval and
what disapproval. In individual persons, we see uncertainty of value con-
sciousness and value attitudes. In community life, we find a lack of con-
sensus on fundamental norms and a shared hierarchy of goods.
Every value orientation crisis also causes an educational crisis. Uncer-
tainty in valuing leads to uncertainty in educating. A society uncertain of
its values is a society uncertain about education. This follows from the
simple fact that no one can educate without valuing1. Education presup-
poses choices: Those who educate must know what they want to accom-
plish. They need educational aims and must choose means suitable to
reaching them. The aims or ends of education are personality qualities they
wish to further in educands (persons to be educated). Relevant educational
laws refer to the sum of positively evaluated qualities as “competence”2 or
“life-competence”3.
Competence is the most general educational aim. Parents, teachers and
all other educators have an obligation to influence their children, pupils
and dependents so that they acquire and retain the valuable personality
qualities necessary for life-competence. Likewise, they should ensure that
educands do not acquire negatively evaluated qualities or – if they are pre-
sent – should eliminate them using educational measures. Every member
of society is obligated not only morally, but also legally to protect children
and youth “against severe moral, mental or physical damage”4.
1. Cf. BREZINKA (1978: 92 ff.; 1981: 148 ff. and 106 ff.; 1992: 82 ff.).
2. German: “Tüchtigkeit”. Cf. Weimar Constitution of August 11, 1919, Article
120; Law for Youth Welfare of July 9, 1922, § 1; Constitution of the Free State of
Bavaria of December 2, 1946; Article 126; Constitution of the State of Hesse of
December 1, 1946, Article 55; Constitution of Rhineland-Palatinate of May 18,
1947, Article 25; December 15, 1947 Constitution of the Saarland, Article 24. For
an interpretation, cf. BREZINKA (1987).
3. Cf. the October 21, 1947 Constitution of Bremen, Article 23: “Parents have … a
duty to educate their children to be … life-competent persons”.
4. August 11, 1919 Weimar Constitution, Article 122; similar, Constitution of Ba-
varia, Article 126, Para 3; Constitution of Bremen, Article 25; Constitution of
Rhineland-Palatinate, Article 25. In the phrase “sittliche, geistige oder körperliche
Verwahrlosung”, the final term means that due to parental or other neglect, in all
regards a child’s development falls greatly below the norm for children of its age.
Because of this “Verwahrlosung”, the child is then socially, intellectually, emo-
tionally, morally, physically or otherwise not as it should be. The deviation from
Education in a Society uncertain of its Values 3
Younger generations can only be educated for competence and pro-

tected against developing bad habits if educators possess value attitudes
that enable them to make prompt and trustworthy value judgments in the
rapidly changing situations of modern life. Among the necessary value at-
titudes are habitualized agreement with personality ideals set as educa-
tional aims and their hierarchy. This also means habitualized rejection of
all behaviors incompatible with these ideals. Furthermore, it means that
educators should have value attitudes that can help them to distinguish
quickly between sources of influence useful for achieving educational
aims and ones that can be harmful. Only on the basis of such value atti-
tudes can we make educational decisions that are neither arbitrary nor
unwise.
We call value attitudes that are especially important for living funda-
mental value attitudes5. Good education also presupposes that educators
possess good value attitudes. Moreover, it is clear that educands cannot
acquire these attitudes on their own, nor can they maintain them solely
through their own efforts. Fundamental value attitudes need reinforce-
ment by external standards and supports: from those close to educands,
from communities they depend on and their society’s culture.
These relationships are seldom noted. Legislators and public opinion
are content to assign parents, teachers and all other professional educators
a duty to educate the younger generation in life-competence. They devote
too little attention to the worldview and moral preconditions that must be
present so that educators can fulfill this duty. The ability to give students a
good education and the success of this education depend essentially on the
value hierarchies of communities to which educators and educands belong.
The inner value orientations of individual persons can be little better than
the external value hierarchy they perceive in people close to them. Every
value hierarchy has worldview and moral foundations. Hierarchies of val-
ues can only provide orientation certainty if these foundations are unam-
biguous and stable.
It follows from this that we cannot overcome the educational crisis of
our time without first overcoming the value-, worldview- and moral-crises
that many are experiencing today. We cannot find a solution merely by
calling for “courage to educate”6. In our society, the problem is not a lack
of educational activities, but rather of too many, or at least of too much
the norm is not slight or insignificant, but rather great and harmful: for both the
child and fellow human beings. Other possible translations are severe deterioration,
deficiency, degradation, effects of serious neglect. Information: SIEGFRIED UHL.
5. “Gesinnungs-Einstellungen”. Cf. ROHRACHER (1976: 393 ff.).
6. Cf. the Bonn Forum “Mut zur Erziehung” (Courage for Education) (1978).
useless education. What we need are value communities that teach and
reinforce faith in a viable world interpretation and unselfish shared ideals.
We often lack strength to bind ourselves to such belief contents and win
the younger generation for making such commitments. The value crisis
and fears of binding ties are among the sources of our contemporary edu-
cational crisis.
The situation would be hopeless if this crisis burdened all citizens in
all communities to the same degree. Fortunately, this is not the case. Many
citizens remain unaffected by the value crisis, and many have already
overcome it. There are many close friendships, many successful marriages,
and many happy families. Many larger groups exist whose members be-
lieve in experience-tested and proven ideals and live according to them.
Even persons who are uprooted and uncertain of their values are seldom so
in every respect. There are ways to escape the value crisis: we can over-
come it. It appears worse when we read published opinions of intellectuals
and sensational reports in mass media than when we examine the public’s
fundamental value attitudes. There are not just signs of decadence, but also
many examples of successful lives and much willingness for self-reflec-
tion. This can be a starting point for finding a way out of the crisis. How
can we find a reasonable, intelligent solution?
We learn the most from mistakes. This holds not only for private but
also for public life. Every reorientation depends on critical examination of
formerly valid orientations. What was inadequate, one-sided and harmful
in the worldview, moral and pedagogical ideas that determined the spirit of
the last few decades? What was overlooked, neglected and left undone,
despite being necessary not only for individual well-being, but also for the
commonweal?
We can answer these questions only if we have standards for evaluat-
ing ideas and events. All ideological and political camps agree on two em-
pirical standards: individual mental health and the conditions for preserv-
ing a community blessed with peace, freedom and prosperity. While I also
support these standards, I believe that taken alone they are inadequate.
This is clear simply from disagreements over which attributes belong to
these standards. Consider, as an example, belief in God: Is it necessary for
a person’s mental health? Or is it harmful, as many have claimed? Another
example is readiness for military service. Is this still necessary for national
survival in a nuclear age? Or is more to be said for willingness to submit
to superior military force? Is pacifistic non-violent resistance a viable al-
ternative?
Not only are there differences of opinion concerning standards, but al-
so concerning their application. The intellectual disputes of our times are
over both: not only over value standards and their interpretation, but also
over the evaluations we make, using these standards, of specific ideas and
norms, states of affairs and events. These evaluations never depend solely
on the named standards, but rather, like these standards themselves, are co-
determined by underlying ideological and moral basic convictions. The
important issues, as I see it, are conservative convictions about our re-
sponsibility for valuable stocks of European culture, the limits of reason
and science7, the value of tradition8, the justifiability of authority9 and the
indispensability of psychologically beneficial myths10. What does this im-
ply for evaluating the intellectual sources of our situation?
Intellectual Sources of Our Crisis

Countless influences have interacted to bring about our current historical
situation. Most readers are familiar with the massive and rapid changes in
material life conditions11 over the last century. Therefore, I will concen-
trate on the most significant intellectual influences affecting value con-
sciousness since the Second World War.
Above all, three intellectual currents have contributed to the crisis of
orientation, values and education in our times: rationalism, understood as
the one-sided overvaluing of reason; individualism, understood as one-
sided overemphasis on the individual person’s self-interest; and hedonism,
understood as one-sided belief in sensual pleasure, self-indulgence and
personal comfort as the highest goods. Each of these intellectual currents
in our external cultural environment has influenced our inner culture of
personal value attitudes. Each has also influenced educational theories and
educational practices.
Let us first examine in detail these three intellectual currents of the
modern Zeitgeist. To what extent have they co-determined our present val-
ue uncertainty?
7. Cf. BREZINKA (1971: 166 ff.; 1978: 253 ff. and 1992a: 45 ff.; 1992: 224 ff. and
1994a: 33 ff.).
8. Cf. LANDMANN (1961: 147 ff.); LORENZ (1973: 68 ff.); BREZINKA (1981: 62 ff.
and 1994a: 121 ff.).
9. Cf. STROHAL (1955).
10. In the sense of KOLAKOWSKI (1984). Cf. also BREZINKA (1992: 99 ff. and
1994a: 61 ff.).
11. Cf. BELL (1973); FRITSCH (1981).
Rationalism
This is frequently also called “intellectualism”. It refers to uncritical belief
that reason, intellectual abilities or rational thinking suffice for living suc-
cessful and meaningful lives. A special form of rationalism is “scientism”:
one-sided overvaluation of science, scientific ways of thinking and a sci-
entific mentality at the cost of other cultural goods, ways of thinking and
forms of consciousness.
Here the terms “rationalism”, “intellectualism” and “scientism” are
used in rebuke. The rebuke pertains only to one-sided overvaluation of in-
telligence and knowledge as goods, combined with blindness to the value
of sentimental supports and faith goods. This rebuke does not, however,
mean disdain for reason and science. “The accusation against rationalism
is thus not directed at too much reason, but rather at reason in the wrong
place and in the wrong application”12.
The guiding spirit of the nineteenth century was uncritical belief in rea-
son and science as the highest goods and in progress through science and
technology. The First World War profoundly challenged these beliefs. Af-
ter that catastrophe, powerful counter-movements arose and found expres-
sion in cultural pessimism, philosophical irrationalism, messianic political
ideologies and totalitarian movements. They attacked reason as hostile to
life, and analytical thinking as destructive of culture and community. Ideo-
logues instead exalted intuition and feeling, myths, uncritical commitment
to ideological doctrines and the will to power as superior to reason13.
In 1917, a communist dictatorship seized control of Russia; in 1922,
fascism came to power in Italy; and in 1933 National Socialism in Ger-
many. Each country’s dictatorial elite indoctrinated its citizens with vio-
lent, irrational worldviews and persecuted both adherents of conventional
morals and independent thinkers. These totalitarian systems demanded that
citizens orient themselves not to analytical reason, but instead should have
unquestioning faith in and total obedience to an inhumane ideology and re-
gime. In 1939, the German National Socialist regime plunged Europe into
a war of unprecedented violence and inhumanity.
By the time the Allies ended the National Socialist reign of terror in
1945, the German people themselves could look back on years of suffering
and were completely demoralized. Those who survived and reflected on
the causes were not content merely to hope for the best in the future: “No
more dictatorships! No more wars!” They also wanted to break with the
intellectual preconditions that had led to war and totalitarian dictatorship.
12. RÜSTOW (1957: 15).

13. For a good overview, cf. HOLM (1963).
Yet this necessitated decisions and actions that are so difficult they are
seldom tried. It was much easier to condemn unreservedly everything the
Nazis valued and to idealize everything they despised. In many ways, Ger-
many needed a revaluation, and yet not every ideal the Nazis misused, and
not all the virtues they distorted deserve total condemnation. Provided they
were understood rightly and in a balanced way, these ideals were and re-
main indispensable for personal mental health and productive community
life. It is only necessary to assign them their proper value and to combine
them with the neglected opposite pole: sentimental ties with critical think-
ing, belief convictions with knowledge, readiness to accept authority with
courage to examine critically the claims of authorities. Instead, old one-
sided attitudes have often simply reappeared in new garb. After hate- and
pain-filled years of inhumane oppression, disillusioned citizens turned for
help to rationalistic counter-ideals. The promise of enlightenment enjoyed
renewed popularity. What effects has this had on value consciousness and
education?
i. There has been an upgrading of rational intelligence and critical think-
ing combined with a downgrading of sentiments. This has meant turning
away from a realistic picture of man and the old ideal of balance between
reason and sentiment, head and heart, thinking and feeling or, expressed
more academically, “noesis” (noetic) and “thymos” (-thymia)14. From a
psychological perspective, there is no doubt that people’s value orienta-
tions depend on emotional ties. What gives meaning and support is not ra-
tional thinking about a multiplicity of constantly changing goods, but ra-
ther enduring love for a few selected ones – whether persons, ideas or ob-
jects of nature and culture. In everyday language: We orient our lives to
“things we have become attached to” or things “close to the heart”.
To “become attached to” something requires time, care and protection
against uprooting. Ties to worthwhile goods can only arise if we concen-
trate on a few and defend them against competing goods and critique.
They cannot flourish in a climate of skepticism and doubt. In traditional
life worlds where there was no excess of stimuli, people seldom had to
provide for character education. In our pluralistic mass and media society,
to the contrary, great educational efforts are needed to make the best of
children’s mental receptivity for character-building experiences and to
safeguard support-giving emotional ties. This effort has been inadequate in
the last few decades.
ii. The consequence of one-sided over-valuation of scientific knowledge
14. Cf. LERSCH (1952: 450 ff.); on the ideal of “balanced education”, cf. BREZINKA
(1992: 121 ff. and 1994a: 101-120).
has been insufficient awareness of its limitations and dangers. With regard
to limitations, many forgot to consider that scientific knowledge alone is
not a satisfactory basis for value orientation. Because people regarded sci-
entific knowledge as the highest good, and because religious, worldview
and moral belief convictions cannot be scientifically verified, they were
devalued, even though science could not replace them. Instead of acknowl-
edging their usefulness for a community’s orientation and spiritual anchor-
ing, critics opposed them as burdensome impediments to the spread of en-
lightened thinking.
This view would make sense only if scientific knowledge and thinking
were suitable to provide evaluative certainty and to create a foundation for
community. In fact, however, the sources of community spirit lie in senti-
mental attachment to shared non-scientific goods whose value people feel
and believe in: shared faith, ideals and ways of life, a common homeland,
shared history and cooperative public tasks.
The adherents of rationalism were blind to the dangers that threaten
these support-giving emotional attachments through one-sided furthering
of scientific goods. Too much knowledge of differences among people,
their ideas and institutions weakens ties people have to their own way of
life. Psychological and historical knowledge about the genesis of religions,
worldviews, morals and hierarchies of authority can easily discourage
faith. Doubt, pessimism, anxiety and feelings of despair may arise from a
critical awareness of how open to question and controversy all religious,
ideological, worldview, moral and political belief contents are from the
perspective of the philosophy and sociology of knowledge. Rationalists
who stubbornly cling to faith in science have failed to see that even great
knowledge has drawbacks. People were aware of this as long ago as bibli-
cal times. Ecclesiastes already warned, “For in much wisdom is much vex-
ation; the more knowledge, the more suffering”15.
The suffering increased by excessive knowledge includes among many
other things uncertainty about values. An educational system intended to
support the younger generation’s mental health ought to do whatever it can
to minimize this suffering. Instead, due to naive rationalism, just the op-
posite has occurred. From the correct understanding that science has great
significance for society, people drew a false conclusion. They thought that
all societal members should be educated in a “scientifically-oriented”
manner – and in all regards: including language, politics, religion and the
arts16.
15. Revised English Bible. Old Testament (1989: 575) (Ecclesiastes 1: 18).
16. Cf., e.g.: DEUTSCHER BILDUNGSRAT: Strukturplan für das Bildungswesen
(Structural Plan for the Educational System) (1970: 30 and 33). The German Edu-
This program was inordinately overextended. To accomplish it, educa-

tors imposed senseless burdens on great numbers of students. Instead of
securing essential knowledge and ability, pseudo-knowledge, hubris and
verbosity were favored. Schools were turned over to radical proponents
and publicists of scienticity, instead of contributing to education in life-
competence and thus also to value certainty. Educational policymakers
forgot that besides knowledge, people also need inner support: not just an-
alytical ability, but also love of non-scientific cultural goods and reverence
for traditions.
Related to rationalism is also a second intellectual current that has con-
tributed to the valuation crisis of our times:
Individualism
This means an overemphasis on the individual personality, its privileges
and interests at the expense of community and attachment to shared norms.
Like rationalism, individualism also distorts an essential principle through
one-sided thinking. It is one-sided, because it emphasizes only the inherent
value of individuals and their basic rights, but not the value of commun-
ities, their ways of life and the duties of individual members.
Since the Age of Enlightenment, many reformers have drawn on the
guiding ideals of “liberalism” to expand the individual person’s rights and
increase his autonomy17. With the liberation of individuals from traditional
dependence on families, estates, lords, dynasties, churches, and authoritar-
ian regimes, there has also been a concomitant decline in emotional pro-
tection and orientation security. With the Industrial Revolution, the great
increase in population, urbanization and harsh industrial work conditions,
people became receptive to new movements that promised to raise their
standard of living. Uprooted masses turned for aid and support to the so-
cialist movement18. Since 1917, when its radical wing established the first
totalitarian state in Russia, collectivism has been the chief threat to human
freedom. In Germany, this mentality produced a National Socialist reign of
terror that Germans were unable to stop by their own efforts.
What led in only twelve years to the ignominious downfall of the Ger-
man national state began with a program of “common benefit before pri-
vate benefit”19. The catastrophe’s survivors now knew the meaning of a
cational Council (1965-75) was an influential semi-public advisory body that pro-
posed sweeping structural changes in German education.
17. Cf. SCHNABEL (1964: 121 ff.); WIESE (1917).
18. Basics on this are found in HAYEK (1956).
19. “Party Program of the NSDAP”, Point 24, HOFER (1957: 31).
“total state” with a “total community ethos”20. One of its propagandists

characterized this as early as 1933 in the following terms: “The total state
… represents the total obligation of every individual to the nation. This
obligation does away with the private character of individual existence”21.
In ADOLF HITLER’s own words: “No one ought to be able to say that he
has any time left to devote exclusively to himself”22.
After 1945, anyone who had personally experienced this collectivist
program in National Socialist Germany was better able to appreciate the
freedom of private life and individualism made possible by a liberal demo-
cratic state. This awareness was strengthened by knowledge that East Ger-
mans and other Europeans behind the Iron Curtain could not escape the
control of leftist dictatorships. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989
and 1990, they had to live without liberties that West Germans already en-
joyed. Due to their knowledge and comparisons they made, Germans de-
veloped a basic orientation to individualism. They came to believe that the
highest good was liberty to pursue private interests with as few restrictions
as possible. People could even appeal to the German constitution, which
guarantees every citizen “the right to free development of his personal-
ity”23, without sufficiently emphasizing the basic duties of citizens as a
counterweight to their basic individual rights24. What effects has individ-
ualism had on value consciousness and education?
i. One-sided over-emphasis of individual persons’ interests weakened their
readiness to accept their place in the community and acknowledge the jus-
tified claims of legitimate authorities. Unlimited autonomy became a guid-
ing ideal, and Germans devalued ties to pre-existing communities and their
norms. They viewed them simply as limitations on personal freedom and
failed to see how much they contribute to inner security and personal value
certainty. They considered themselves progressive because they were fun-
damentally skeptical toward bearers of authority and questioned their reg-
ulations. Some even regarded the duty to obey the law as subject to per-
sonal discretion: in some cases mitigating circumstances seemed to justify
pursuing personal moral or political aims through illegal means such as
20. FORSTHOFF (1933: 45). German: “totale Gemeinschaftsgesinnung”.

21. FORSTHOFF (1933: 42 f.).
22. ADOLF HITLER at the 1935 Nuremberg NSDAP Convention (Parteitag), ac-
cording to HEHLMANN (1942: 179). With an approving nod to Sparta, ARISTOTLE
similarly concluded: “Neither must we suppose that anyone of the citizens belongs
to himself, for they all belong to the state”. Politics VIII, 1 (1988: 185).
23. Basic Law of Germany (Grundgesetz) of May 23, 1949, Article 2, Para 1. In:
BLAUSTEIN and FLANZ (1994: 106). Basic Law (2012).
24. Cf. ISENSEE (1982).
civil disobedience, occupying buildings, blocking traffic, or boycotting un-

iversity instruction25.
Even for educating the younger generation, “liberation” and “emanci-
pation” were elevated to ultimate principles. The legal justification offered
for this was past abuse of power. Thereby people globally demonized au-
thority and power, leadership and obedience. Parents, teachers and school
administrators came under attack and yielded to intimidation. Indulgence
was considered benevolent and “democratic”, insistence on morals inhu-
mane and “authoritarian”. Children and youth were called on to be critical
and “question” bearers of authority and their directives, to insist on their
rights in every life domain and to emancipate themselves from dependen-
cy.
In Germany, the government supported these tendencies by reducing
the age of majority from twenty-one to nineteen26. Policymakers did not
consider that in complex modern societies it takes longer to achieve men-
tal and moral maturity, not to mention financial independence. Greatly
weakened by this were parental authority and the family’s guiding influ-
ence.
ii. Propaganda for equality has enormously increased the individualistic
over-emphasis on personal interests. The ideal of equality – insofar as it
goes beyond legal and political equality – is among the most vague and
controversial of all ideals. To a considerable extent, it is furthered by envy
of all who have higher rank, are more competent or more successful27. It
serves as an ideological weapon to denigrate existing differences in status
and income as unjust. Viewed realistically, greater equality can only be
gained in exchange for reduced freedom. But in the short-run, a climate of
opinion overly sensitive to inequalities provides people in lower social
classes with an illusory sense of having greater freedom, because they can
more easily evade institutional constraints and the claims of leadership
groups for service, obedience to authority and fulfillment of duties. This
state of affairs cannot continue for long, however, because every society
needs a leadership elite. The only questions left open are which elite
should lead and with what value hierarchy and what means society should
expect agreement. A fundamental rejection of elites is unrealistic, yet pre-
cisely this is what happens when an individualistic Zeitgeist prevails.
25. For a critique, cf. WASSERMANN (1985).

26. In Germany, this became law in § 2 of the Civil Law Code (BGB) on January
1, 1975. Austria reduced the age of majority from 22 to 20 in 1973 (ABGB, § 21 in
Civil Law Code No. 108/1873). Switzerland, however, kept 21 as the age of major-
ity (Swiss Civil Law Code, Article 14).
27. Cf. SCHOECK (1973 and 1979).
In our time, the devaluation of service-oriented elites, their ideals and

virtues in favor of permissive, mediocre individualistic morals has contrib-
uted greatly to widespread uncertainty about valuations. This arises not
only from envy of those who are better off materially, but also from re-
sentment of those who are more competent and strive for moral self-im-
provement by accepting personal responsibility for higher moral standards.
Those who want to work less, but dislike being negatively compared with
others who accomplish more, have no alternative but to devalue high
achievers and minimize their influence. The consequence is that under the
banner of equality, the Left also denigrates differences among people aris-
ing from belief convictions and value attitudes.
Misuse of the ideal of tolerance has thereby played an important role.
Tolerance means acknowledging and respecting other people’s opinions
and actions, even if one disagrees with them. Of course, this is an indis-
pensable virtue for getting along with others in society, but its positive
name can also be used to justify indifference to religious and worldview
attachments. It encourages people to ignore inequalities in the truth con-
tent of different ideas and the value content of different ideals. It became
common, under the imperative of tolerance, to avoid all criticism of per-
sonal ways of living and thinking, no matter how harmful and irrespon-
sible they are. The belief that they should tolerate all non-conforming be-
havior or ideas has made many persons insecure about their sense of val-
ues and increasingly weakened educators’ will to educate.
Hedonism
This intellectual current (from the Greek: hedoné) also exaggerates a justi-
fiable basic principle: the value of pleasure, consumption, gratifying de-
sires or sensuality for private happiness. Certainly many sorts of pleasure
deserve to be valued as goods, but pleasure, gratification and sensual self-
indulgence are not the primary goods in life28. If we concentrate on them
alone, we will fail to reach our full potential as human beings. If we value
them as the highest goods, we will neglect other goods that are more im-
portant for individual well-being and the commonweal. People who want
increasing amounts of pleasure and goods conducive to pleasure thus risk
self-inflicted harm through their neglect of more important goods. There-
fore, all traditional wisdom teachings value abstinence as a counterweight:
restraining desires, keeping a sense of proportion and exercising self-disci-
28. Cf. BRENTANO (1952: 165 ff.); PAULSEN (1903, Vol. 1: 245 ff.). Collins Co-
build English Language Dictionary (1987: 677): Hedonism is “the belief that gain-
ing pleasure is the most important thing in life”.
pline. Ever greater hedonistic self-indulgence is a symptom of decadence.

It arises especially from a negative sense of life, boredom, dissatisfaction,
indolence and self-absorption29.
There was little scope for private luxury during the Third Reich, total
mobilization of society and the Second World War. Instead, duty and obe-
dience ideals were paramount: readiness to sacrifice personal interests,
self-discipline and will to serve. Immediately after the war, people began
to have second thoughts about unquestioning commitment to nation and
state, but there was still great selflessness in the service of family, rela-
tives, friends and neighbors, churches and other belief communities. By
the 1950s and 1960s, Germany had largely overcome war-caused need and
privation, and an era of prosperity began, surpassing any it had previously
enjoyed. There arose a tendency to avoid community obligations and in-
stead pursue a self-indulgent lifestyle. Germans wanted to make up in the
“fat years” for pleasures they had missed in the “lean”. They forgot grat-
itude for surviving the war; consumerism spread; claims to entitlement
multiplied. People became dissatisfied because they took for granted their
new high standard of living and increasingly focused on whatever material
goods they had not yet acquired.
Increasing numbers of people started caring only about their own inter-
ests, understood as the greatest possible material wealth, pleasure and con-
sumption. Soon many people even began to consider it a civic duty to con-
sume beyond their needs, indulge in conspicuous displays of luxury and
pursue individual satisfaction, because this helped maintain and stimulate
market demand, long after all basic needs were satisfied.
The decline of Christian faith, combined with Cold War fears of a nu-
clear attack, essentially co-determined the spread of hedonism. NIETZSCHE
well understood the prevailing state of mind: “The pursuit of pleasure will
never be greater than when it must be seized between today and tomorrow:
because the day after tomorrow there may be no more chances to pursue
it”30. What effects has hedonism had on value consciousness and educa-
tion?
The overvaluation of pleasure, enjoyment and indulgence – combined
with an individualistic attitude toward life – has produced indecisiveness
in adult attitudes toward morals and impeded young people’s progress to-
ward life-competence. Individual persons experience moral indecisiveness
in feeling torn between excessive claims to freedom and pleasure, on the
one hand, and the necessity of accepting responsibilities, restraining
drives, and practicing self-discipline, on the other. Externally there is an
29. Cf. SCHELER (1954: 357).

30. NIETZSCHE (1976, Vol. 1: 313).
atmosphere that encourages pleasure seeking, and inwardly people burn

with hedonistic desires. Sacrifices demanded by work, profession and
community duties no longer seem self-evident, but instead people experi-
ence them as burdensome. They view abstinence as a necessary evil in-
stead of a virtue in which they can take pride. This naturally makes it hard
for young people to learn to find enjoyment in accomplishment, readiness
to serve, self-discipline and self-restraint.
Not only has hedonism divided the minds of many individual persons,
it has also morally divided society as a whole. To flourish, society is and
remains dependent on citizens’ diligence, readiness to obey authority and
self-discipline. Those who bear responsibility for the economy, govern-
ment, public administration and technology do not doubt this in any way.
In the socio-cultural domain, however, these necessary virtues have long
been disputed. Here radical leftists propagate the ideal of the self-exalted
ego rebelling against every constraint and savoring all the pleasures the
world can offer.
A new class of opinion leaders has arisen who disparage the very du-
ties and value attitudes essential for the long-term well-being of both indi-
viduals and the community as a whole. They promote a nihilistic counter-
culture centered above all on youth31. This thereby endangers the basic
minimum of moral consensus that our children, if they are to become life-
competent, must experience in the traditional moral practices of their com-
munity.
Ways to Overcome Our Educational Crisis

In the modern world, there are no simple solutions, because there are no
simple life situations. Proposals for reorienting education are only useful if
they start from pre-existing self-healing powers. Insofar as our educational
crisis is a result of value uncertainty, we can only overcome it by helping
one another find certainty in our value orientations. In a pluralistic society,
this is not possible for everyone in the same way, because citizens’ basic
worldview and moral convictions vary greatly. What is the chief issue
from a forward-looking, democratic-conservative viewpoint? We need a
realistic picture of human beings and their education: clarity about shared
ideals that ought to hold for our children and ourselves and courage to use
the necessary means to achieve these ideals.
31. Cf. BELL (1973: 475 ff.); GEHLEN (1973: 141 ff.); ORTLIEB (1971 and 1978);
SCHELSKY (1975); HERSCH (1982); RECUM (1983).
Realistic Picture of Human Beings

For many decades, rationalistic, individualistic and hedonistic illusions
about the nature of individual personalities and the conditions for their
happiness have dominated the spirit of our age. These illusions are still
widespread, but their hegemony is no longer unchallenged. Many people
have become more cautious, having realized the harmful consequences of
these one-sided teachings. They are thus opening themselves to previously
neglected truths. What are the most important insights educators should
take into account?
i. People are not purely rational beings. They have powerful biological
drives that can serve both good and bad ends. By nature, at birth they are
unprepared for life and formable, influenceable and in need of learning.
Consequently, to achieve inner stability they need discipline and training.
ii. For inner stability, they also depend on external support. They need a
community with firmly established patterns of life and must experience
good customs and morals in order to become and remain morally good.
iii. Inner stability is only possible if children experience the sheltered se-
curity of growing up in small groups. This security arises from emotional
attachments32 to mothers and fathers, other respected family members and
persons in their immediate surroundings. Through love and respect for
these persons, a group’s ideals become the child’s personal ideals.
iv. Children can gain and preserve inner support only through acceptance
of authority. This is initially the authority of persons they love, but later
also the authority of supra-personal institutions, of a prevailing belief sys-
tem and morals, of a long, respected tradition.
v. Reason and science alone do not suffice as means of achieving value
orientation. Belief systems such as religions, myths and worldviews (or
ideologies) remain indispensable, even in modern societies33, and people
are born with a need to believe in and revere them.
vi. Knowledge of the good does not suffice to be able to do good things:
People must also want the good. Moral life-competence presupposes moral
striving: self-control, rejecting the bad and superfluous, concentrating on
the essential, consistently doing what is right and practicing self-disci-
pline.
vii. As a rule, people strive for moral virtues only if everyone in a clearly
understandable life community expects this and is responsive to morals. In
32. Cf. MOOR (1951: 194 ff.).

33. Cf. LEMBERG (1974); BREZINKA (1992 and 1994a).
large groups with impersonal relationships, readiness to strive for a moral

life is negligible, and the temptation is strong to free ride at others’ ex-
pense and exploit public benevolence34.
viii. Education has prospects of success to the extent that necessary pre-
conditions are present. This in turn depends on worldview and moral
choices and decisions. Fundamental thereby are decisions about shared
ideals.
Shared Ideals
At least on paper, there are many educational aims. In all countries, school
laws specify personality ideals as aims, and in many states, state constitu-
tions do so as well. Yet, personality ideals are of little use if they are not
taken seriously in everyday community life, if people think they apply on-
ly to students and their teachers. Children cannot orient themselves solely
to what they see and hear in school. They learn from interacting with eve-
ryone they encounter in life; they are capable of imitating and in need of
adapting. Therefore, the most important things for their well-being are the
examples they encounter in their life-world and the ideals accepted there.
This holds not only for children, but also for adults. We all need shared
ideals of the good person to which we can dedicate not just our children
but above all ourselves. Ideals of the good society are no substitute for
this.
For decades, in an atmosphere of rationalism, individualism and he-
donism, shared personality ideals were seldom expected. People avoided
confronting the issue, because these ideals inevitably remind us that free-
dom must have limits and that citizens should work to improve them-
selves. Instead, we have seen a one-sided promulgation of societal ideals
that do not demand much of individual persons: freedom, social justice,
equal opportunity, social welfare, democratization, co-determination and
peace. Along with these societal ideals came individualistic guiding ideals
such as “emancipation” and “self-realization”, which are purely formal
and impose no limitations on what people choose to do. What reorientation
is necessary, given this situation?
i. We must abandon the one-sided idealization of intellectual abilities, sci-
entific knowledge and technical skill at the cost of all other life-necessary
personality qualities. This also applies to information-based technical
knowledge and ability. Scientific-technical skills are fundamentally impor-
tant, but emotional attachments to other mental goods are and will also
34. Cf. WITTMANN (1980).

remain important.
ii. The vast increase in knowledge, division of labor, learning and action
possibilities of our time makes it indispensable for individual persons to
specialize. The greater the specialization, however, the more danger there
will be that specialists will fail to acquire essential shared personality qual-
ities, and social solidarity will thereby decline. The only thing that can
help against this is a personality ideal that consists of two components:
harmony of psychological strengths and familiarity with the intellectual
foundations of one’s culture.
iii. There is no agreement in our pluralistic society on the essential attrib-
utes belonging to the ideal of the good person and the indispensable core
of our culture. We must discourage people from drawing erroneous con-
clusions from this fact. It is wrong to discount and abandon values on
which people differ, simply because they divide them. If people give up
the ideals that are most important for meaning in life in favor of less im-
portant ones that everyone agrees on, the result will be a mediocre, homo-
geneous society whose uprooted, alienated members can easily be se-
duced.
iv. Our constitutions take into account the co-existence in society of var-
ious different religious and ideological beliefs, religious groups and world-
view communities35. “Their significance for the preservation and strength-
ening of the religious and moral foundations of human life is recogniz-
ed”36. These communities already possess shared personality ideals for
their members. We must encourage them to self-confidently further their
distinctive cultures, which make specific demands on members, instead of
feeling intimidated and letting rootless intellectuals destroy them. We must
strengthen the pluralism of small communities with their own traditional
cultural worlds, because only in such belief-tied private worlds is it possi-
ble for individuals to find a psychic haven.
v. A pluralistic state that exclusively depends for morals on all the differ-
ent group-specific ethos’ of its sub-groups is not viable. Conflicts due to
the differing ideals of religious, worldview and regional cultural communi-
ties can tear a state apart, unless a basic societal ideal applicable to all citi-
zens binds these communities together. This must also be an ideal suitable
35. Cf. the August 11, 1919 Weimar Constitution, Article 135-141, 146-149; the
May 23, 1949 Basic Law of Germany, Articles 4, 7, 140; the December 21, 1867
Austrian Constitution, Article 14-17; the March 20, 1952 European Convention for
the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Supplementary Pro-
tocol, Article 2. In: BERCHTOLD (1978: 116).
36. Constitution of Baden-Württemberg of November 11, 1953, Article 4.
for all the countless people not committed to religious or worldview com-
munities.
In individualistic times dominated by naïve-cosmopolitanism, it is es-
pecially necessary to support virtues that secure the common good and up-
hold the state. It is crucial to reflect on what our constitutions call the
“moral code”37. Contrary to the project of “role equivalence” or gender
equality for men and women, this includes the separate ideals of the good
mother and good father.
It is quite possible to achieve a minimum consensus on a basic societal
ideal. We must simply revive and strengthen the already existing agree-
ment on educational mandates and educational aims found in constitutions
and school laws. There is no need to start with an empty slate, for we can
draw on already existing moral traditions.
vi. In a pluralistic society, we cannot regain lost value orientation certainty
unless we make the necessary effort. Only those who summon up and per-
sist in the will to uphold ideals can find support and security in these ide-
als. We must defend personality ideals against two temptations: the de-
mands of our own inner urges and the objections of the critical intellect,
which regards ideals as unjustifiable and limiting. In the future, we will
only be able to withstand this double pressure if we join with other like-
minded persons for mutual support.
Courage to Use Essential Means

The duty to educate the younger generation implies a variety of subtasks.
We must fulfill them for many different people under very diverse circum-
stances. Consequently, there can be no universal means. Nor should edu-
cators feel intimidated by the vast number of factors that influence person-
ality development. The more particular details we know about them, the
greater the danger will be of overlooking the essential. What viewpoints
on means are indispensable for reorientation?
i. We need a public value climate favoring shared personality ideals and
affirming all citizens’ co-responsibility for educating their younger genera-
tion. Society should no longer expect parents and teachers to rely solely on
their own moral resources. They must be able to draw support from wide-
spread public agreement that neither virtue nor moral deterioration is a pri-
vate matter.
37. German: “Sittengesetz”. Cf. among others the German Basic Law (Grund-
gesetz), Article 2; Constitution of Baden-Württemberg, Article 1; Constitution of
Rhineland-Palatinate, Article 1.
ii. The best means of helping the younger generation become life-com-
petent is to support good families. There is no adequate substitute for edu-
cationally competent parents. Two-parent families with mothers who are
committed to educating their children well deserve special support with
tax and civil law measures. They should not be disadvantaged compared
with two-income married couples and unmarried cohabiting partners.
Moreover, we should once again show “housewives” the respect they de-
serve, as they surely contribute more to community welfare than do many
childless “professional women”38.
iii. To support the educationally competent family does not mean that we
should neglect the needs of the many troubled families. Obviously, public
institutions must support children who lack a secure home. Nevertheless,
the deficiencies of particular families do not justify limiting the education-
al influence of parents in general by introducing compulsory pre-school at-
tendance or all-day schools. No country should organize its educational
system as though broken marriages and irresponsible parents were the
norm. Regrettable signs of dereliction should not hold the center of atten-
tion in educational policy planning, although they should still be among
the most important peripheral concerns.
iv. Indirect education is more important than direct. This means organizing
life spaces for children and youth so that, on their own, they can learn as
much as possible of what they need to know. It also includes creating op-
portunities for enriching experiences with nature, culture and other people,
possibilities for age-appropriate activities and tasks, shielding against both
excessive stimuli and seduction to self-indulgent lifestyles. Traditional or
newly created social practices with which every member of society con-
forms are essential: morals, customs, rules and manners. Only if we can
again appreciate and educationally employ the support-giving strength of
good morals and good customs can we prevent the spread of pervasive
moral deterioration39.
v. All value attitudes are rooted in sentiments, in personal emotions. Ac-
cordingly, the quality and stability of value orientations depend on satisfy-
ing children’s emotional needs for security and shelter, affection and au-
thority figures. Rational instruction about values and norms does not help
if children lack emotional ties to revered persons as value bearers and thus
have neither a desire to avoid their disapproval nor an aversion to things
they condemn. This means that youth can be assisted in finding value ori-
entation only if educators do not shy away from valuations, attachments
38. Cf. ZEIDLER (1983: 597 ff.).

39. Cf. BREZINKA (1971: 243 ff.).
and standards. It is irresponsible to give children information without

providing orientation. Parents and teachers must work out and firmly ad-
vocate a moral viewpoint, but at the same time, they must make its logic
understandable and thereby help children come to terms with it.
vi. After families, schools have the greatest influence on value conscious-
ness – whether in a good or bad sense. Schools are society’s most impor-
tant means of purposefully transmitting its shared ideals to younger gener-
ations. “Purposefully” does not mean “directly”, however. It means, in this
case: Society should employ teachers who personally orient themselves to
societal ideals and shape school spirit in accord with these ideals. They
should plan curricula, personal contacts, festivals and ceremonies that
make possible constructive value experiences and further students’ recep-
tivity to values, instead of desensitizing them through excessive emphasis
on factual knowledge and premature or one-sided demands for critique40.
Many untried possibilities and thereby major tasks exist for those school
politicians and teacher trainers, institutes for teacher training and teachers
associations that do not want just to bemoan the value crisis, but instead to
overcome it through decisive action.
These are my theses on the most important subtasks for reorienting educa-
tion. They do not locate education in methods, techniques or organization-
al forms, but rather in adults’ belief convictions. There is no simpler or
easier way. However, this approach is only possible for self-assured per-
sons who do not see themselves as helpless victims of a society uncertain
of its values, but are rather committed to organizing their lives and their
circle of influence according to shared ideals and thereby to helping others
achieve value certainty.
40. Many thought-provoking ideas are offered by HENTIG (1976).

“EMANCIPATORY PEDAGOGY”
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
“Emancipatory pedagogy” is a collective name for a variety of pedagogi-

cal viewpoints that favor adopting “emancipation” and “liberation” as
guiding ideals for all education. Until 1968, the word “emancipation” sel-
dom appeared in the pedagogical technical vocabulary1. German pedagogy
originally borrowed it from the language of neo-Marxism in the heyday of
the extra-parliamentary opposition2 and anti-authoritarian protest move-
ments. “Emancipation” was among the most popular slogans and ideals of
the New Left3 (or “intellectual Left”4). Educational theorists, politicians
and practitioners adopted it with remarkable enthusiasm. Many saw it as a
magic formula that could solve the difficult orientation problems of edu-
cators in a pluralistic society.
Far beyond New Left circles, many decided it was self-evident that we
should accept “emancipation” as a basic norm for all educational actions
and all educational institutions. While the expression “emancipatory edu-
cation” was still unknown in 1968, as early as 1973 a pedagogical lexicon
affirmed that: “Currently the demand for emancipatory education can be
regarded as generally accepted”5. During its stormy rise, the political rally-
ing cry of “emancipation” became a key fashion word of West German
pedagogy.
After a rapid ascent, in the meantime a more gradual descent has en-
sued. I will name just one witness to this: In 1966, HERWIG BLANKERTZ
(drawing on HABERMAS) was one of the first to promote “emancipation”
as a “research-guiding interest” of pedagogy6. Only a decade later, at a
1. Cf. RÖSSNER (1974: 47).

2. Cf. WILFERT (1968); WINKLER (1968). The “Ausserparlamentarische Opposi-
tion” (APO) was a German leftist social movement in the late 60s, especially at
German universities. Its activities included e.g. boycotting courses, distributing
leaflets, holding public demonstrations, denouncing conservative professors, form-
ing leftist political groups and engaging in disruptive protest activities.
3. Cf. SCHRENCK-NOTZING (1968); WEISS (1969); RICHERT (1969).
4. HABERMAS (1979: 8 ff.) favors this term.
5. WEHLE (1973: 43).
6. German: “erkenntnisleitendes Interesse”. BLANKERTZ (1966a: 74).
22 “Emancipatory Pedagogy” and its Consequences
1978 Conference of the German Society for Educational Science, he dis-

missed “emancipatory pedagogy” with the comment: “How threadbare the
concept has in the meantime become needs no explanation”7.
Scientific or Worldview Pedagogy?

Someone who knew little about the state of German pedagogy today might
be tempted to ask: What could be scientific about a concept that today is
already “threadbare”, even though until recently it was regarded as a basic
concept, even the guiding idea for a whole scientific discipline? This ques-
tion is about the scientific character of “emancipatory pedagogy” and the
scientific value of its statements.
The answer is simple. Although many university professors and intel-
lectuals have indeed promoted “emancipatory pedagogy”, it has never had
anything to do with science. It is a worldview or ideological construct, a
product of political wishes, not of scientific knowledge. This is no vague
objection, but is quite clear to everyone who understands science in the
contemporary sense8.
Whatever the word “emancipation” means specifically in “emancipa-
tory pedagogy”: generally, it refers to an ought-demand, a norm, an ideal,
a wish image, something wanted. Moral norms are indispensable for hu-
man action and thus also for education. They can, however, neither be de-
rived from empirical scientific statements nor arrived at using scientific
methods, but rather we formulate them through moral reflection and deci-
sions. Such decisions can in principle be made in different ways. This is
because they do not depend solely on knowledge of facts, but rather on
valuations, and thereby in the end on worldview considerations. World-
views (or ideologies in a value-neutral sense of the word9, also called
Weltanschauungen), are of a different nature than science. Every person
has and needs a worldview going beyond scientifically ascertained knowl-
edge. As well for education, we need moral norms, and unavoidably these
have a worldview foundation.
Accordingly, it is no critique when I answer our first question of the
scientific character of “emancipatory pedagogy” with the following thesis:
“Emancipatory pedagogy” is not a scientific, but rather an ideological
pedagogy. Expressed differently: not a scientific but rather a practice-ori-
7. BLANKERTZ (1978: 177).

8. Cf. WOHLGENANNT (1969); DIEMER (1970); RADNITZKY (1978, 1979); on edu-
cational science in particular BREZINKA (1978 and 1992a).
9. Cf. LEMBERG (1974: 34).
ented theory of education10. It is “not disinterested knowledge of what is,

but rather interested promulgation of what ought to be”11 from a specific
ideological (worldview) standpoint. To disguise its worldview character
and to present it to unsuspecting contemporaries as science would be
wrong, in the sense of being dishonest. Another thing that would be
wrong, in the sense of being uncritical, would be for people who claim to
have scientific training to fall for such deception.
Worldview Foundations
The second question is: What worldview underlies “emancipatory peda-
gogy”? What do those who promote this concept believe? And what do
they want?
This question is hard to answer. People holding quite a wide variety of
different worldviews have endorsed “emancipatory education”, but only a
few proponents have more or less clearly specified what they mean by it.
The slogan “emancipation” seems to have gained a foothold in German
pedagogy thanks to the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school of philosophy. In the
meantime, however, it has unexpectedly become part of a hazy left-liberal
worldview. The idea was present even before the New Left appeared on
the intellectual scene and has survived its political and cultural eclipse.
Today, it continues to influence the intellectual climate of the West’s lib-
eral-democratic welfare states. We can broadly characterize it using the
following key terms: left liberalism, extreme individualism, utopian anar-
chism and nihilism12. A German social democrat, HEINZ-DIETRICH ORTLI-
13
EB, pointedly called it “playboy democratism” . He meant the mentality
of the person who has “entered upon life to do ‘what he jolly well
likes’”14. This worldview regards the individual person’s rights as far more
important than his duties, and grants individuals absolute claims to un-
limited private affluence, freedom, autonomy, satisfaction of desires and
personal happiness.
One reason why the slogan “emancipatory education” spread so rapidly
was the adoption by broad population segments of this mentality, hostile
as it is to both community and authority. Many understood it quite uncrit-
ically as a legitimating formula for a life and educational praxis that has
10. For a detailed defense of this thesis, cf. BREZINKA (1978: 19 ff. and 73 ff. and
1992a: 18 ff. and 65 ff.).
11. FRISCHEISEN-KÖHLER (1921: 13).
12. Cf. ORTLIEB (1971: 1978).
13. ORTLIEB (1974: 187 ff.).
14. ORTEGA Y GASSET (1932: 112).
become widespread. “Emancipatory education” seems to be an appropriate

slogan for everyone who thinks that competence consists chiefly in ex-
ploiting all “opportunities to satisfy needs”15, who reduces “social depen-
dencies” and as adeptly as possible circumvents barriers along the path to
fulfilling personal wishes. Correctly understood, in this individualistic in-
terpretation “emancipatory education” is nothing more than education for
self-interest, for clever egoism. Naturally people would rather avoid ad-
mitting this and prefer to speak of “education for self-realization” or in-
deed of “emancipatory education”. This individualistic variant of “eman-
cipatory pedagogy” is of course widespread, but it is at most a pale reflec-
tion of what its neo-Marxist originators intended.
This also holds for all declarations of belief in “emancipatory educa-
tion” that are nothing more than variants of old pedagogical ideals repack-
aged in new fashion words. Among them are numerous statements that try
to say nothing more with “emancipation” than what pedagogues once in-
tended by using the terms “maturity”, “independence” or “autonomy”. I
call these meaningless, vapid terms the fashionable-speech opportunistic
variants or synonyms of “emancipatory pedagogy”.
Both the individualistic and fashionable-speech opportunistic variants
are sham manifestations of “emancipatory pedagogy”. We must see them
for what they are and not confuse them with authentic “emancipatory ped-
agogy”. The authentic version is not primarily concerned with the individ-
ual person’s welfare, but rather with bettering the societal order. Nor is au-
thentic “emancipatory pedagogy” a new version of the pedagogical com-
monplaces of apolitical middle-class intellectuals (Bildungsbürgertum)
translated into modern idiomatic garb, insofar as it is political pedagogy.
This means: it expresses a political wish, and its purpose consists in con-
tributing to realizing this wish. The goal of emancipatory educationists is a
society they consider better than society as it is today. This can be roughly
characterized with the following key phrases: freedom from domination,
absence of pressure, abolishing determination by other persons, co-deter-
mination by everyone of whatever concerns them, eliminating exploitation
of people by others, reducing class distinctions and privileges, “uncon-
strained” and “distortion-free communication”, well-rounded unfolding of
human potentialities. Put simply: advocates of emancipatory pedagogy de-
sire a society with the greatest conceivable liberty, equality and happiness
for all.
For authentic “emancipatory pedagogy”, we can now answer our sec-
ond question of the underlying worldview: it is the ideology of utopian so-
cialism. My second thesis is thus: Authentic “emancipatory pedagogy” is
15. LEMPERT (1973: 219).

a utopian-socialist pedagogy. This also makes clear: It is not a Marxist-

Leninist pedagogy and has almost nothing in common with orthodox or
dogmatic communist pedagogy16. Therefore, communists despise it as
“petit bourgeois revolutionist” or “anarchistic” pedagogy17.
Conversely, most supporters of “emancipatory pedagogy” distance
themselves more or less strongly from socialism as actually practiced in
twentieth century socialist countries. This occurs not only for tactical rea-
sons, but rather accords with the conviction that a socialist utopia has not
been realized in countries dominated by Marxist-Leninist parties and could
never be realized under conditions of bureaucratic dictatorship. In contrast
to communists, who believe in, or pretend to believe in their dogmas and
their party, advocates of “emancipatory pedagogy” are in many respects
decidedly non-dogmatic. They want to discuss and solve all problems in a
so-called “dominance-free discourse of everyone with everyone else”18,
that is, in discussions in which all interested persons should have an equal
right to participate.
Content of “Emancipatory Pedagogy”

We have thus far clarified two issues: the scientific character and world-
view foundations of “emancipatory pedagogy”. Regarding a third major is-
sue, we should ask: What does it consist in, and how should we judge its
basic ideas? After discussing this issue, I will examine its effects.
First, I will discuss the content of “emancipatory pedagogy”. As a
practice-oriented theory of education, its advocates intend their statements
to orient educators to their tasks and guide them to educational action. Ed-
ucational actions are always means to ends19. Consequently, the core of
every educational theory consists of two types of statements: first, state-
ments about ends, and second, statements about means that under certain
circumstances are considered appropriate and recommended for achieving
intended goals. In principle: without precise statements about specific
aims, we cannot formulate empirically testable hypotheses about means.
Analysis and Critique of Ends

First, let us examine what “emancipatory pedagogy” says about education-
al aims. Its highest goal is not a personal, but rather a political aim: the
16. Cf. BREZINKA (1981a: 212 ff.).

17. Cf. for example SIELSKI (1972); MEHNERT (1973).
18. HABERMAS (1968: 164).
19. Cf. BREZINKA (1981: 106 ff.).
“betterment of society”20. The central issue for this pedagogy is not the
well-being of specific persons who are to be educated here and now, but
rather the improvement of that abstract collectivity “society”. Therefore,
its statements about ends of education seldom refer to persons, but prefer-
ably to “generations”, that is, again to abstract collectivities. Thus, for ex-
ample, KLAUS MOLLENHAUER stated that the task of “education under the
claim of emancipation” is “to create the potential for societal change in the
developing generation”21. KLAUS SCHALLER held that “the developing
generation is to be introduced into the social system in such a way that it
does not accept and adapt to it as a necessarily existing state of affairs, but
rather changes it in the direction of its inner potential for a better social
life”22. HANS-JOCHEN GAMM advised that: “The younger generation is to
be ‘endowed’ with ability to correct the failings of its predecessors and
pioneer the way to a new socialism as a more humane way of life”23.
The individual person is of interest for emancipatory pedagogy only as
a means of realizing social-policy goals. Political considerations of what
personality constitution would help to create a desired better society are
what chiefly determine its educational aims. What is the nature of this per-
sonality constitution? In other words: What personality qualities does
emancipatory pedagogy set as educational aims?
Most statements on this are extremely vague. Usually emancipatory
pedagogy calls for the following: “critical rationality”, “reasonableness”,
“maturity”23, “critical awareness”24, ability for “autonomy”25, “critical abil-
ity”26, “emancipated identity”27, etc. All these expressions are ambiguous
and require interpretation. If we interpret them against the background of
the texts in which they appear, they seem to have different meanings in
“emancipatory pedagogy” than in ordinary language.
Proponents link these meanings with “intellectual Left” radical social
critique. Above all, they set as educational aims qualities that express free-
dom from binding ties to existing society, or qualities that we could pre-
sumably only acquire in an ideal socialist society. Two abilities are re-
garded as the most important for our society here and now: ability for so-
20. SCHALLER (1974: 2).

21. MOLLENHAUER (1968: 11 and 67).
22. SCHALLER (1974: 4).
23. MOLLENHAUER (1968: 67 and 70).
24. BRÜCKNER (1973: 125).
25. GAMM (1970: 216).
26. KLAFKI (1970: 85).
27. WELLENDORF (1970: 91).
cial critique and ability for ideological critique28, that is, ability to criticize
all worldviews except one’s own. Supporters mean these abilities above all
when they speak of “rationality”, “reasonableness”, “critical ability”, etc.
I will offer a few examples. According to GAMM, “emancipation”, as
the “central idea of all educational reflection”, means the “political and
social self-liberation of the learning person, in order thereby to enable him
to boldly and decisively distance himself from bourgeois life and forms of
dominance”29. ERNEST JOUHY explained what “critical knowledge” means:
“Emancipatory educators convey … critical knowledge” of “existing soci-
etal life conditions … only as the prerequisite and task of their possible
overcoming, thus respectively as a perspective on the ‘old’ society that be-
comes pregnant with the new one, whereby the unborn children are just
those persons for whom emancipatory education strives”30. HEINZ-JOACH-
IM HEYDORN clarified what “rationality” means in this context as follows:
“Where there is rationality, there is also negation, the possibility of nega-
tion. The possibility of great doubting. This must be set free”31.
Finally, here are a few more examples of educational aims asserted by
their advocates to be completely unrealizable in existing society. The rea-
son for saying this is of course to encourage creating the supposedly still
lacking preconditions for their realization, that is, to contribute to over-
coming existing social forms. WOLFGANG KLAFKI, writing on the aim of
“autonomy”, concluded that, “The possibility of really helping the individ-
ual to achieve autonomy, emancipation” is “only given in a suitably struc-
tured society”. Therefore, he held, “Educational science in the sense of
critical theory must necessarily become a permanent social critique or ally
itself with social critique”32. Another aim, “maturity”, consists, according
to GAMM, in “knowledge that the individual cannot truly liberate himself
in this society”33. MARTIN RUDOLF VOGEL considered it “false” to “sug-
gest” that “maturity” is “realizable in the given context of capitalist dom-
ination”34.
In another thesis, I will summarize my answer to the question of what
“emancipatory pedagogy” teaches about educational aims: “Emancipatory
28. Cf., e.g., BLANKERTZ (1966b: 82). On its neo-Marxian origin (HABERMAS), and
for negative evaluation of “ideological critique”, cf. HEUSS (1975: especially 70
ff.).
29. GAMM (1972: 11 f.).
30. JOUHY (1972: 148).
31. HEYDORN (1970: 313).
32. KLAFKI (1971: 383) (emphasis in original).
33. GAMM (1972: 159) (emphasis in original).
34. VOGEL (1970: 253 f.).
pedagogy” one-sidedly propagates as educational aims personality quali-

ties assumed to enable people to distance themselves from existing society
and to cooperate politically in creating a utopian socialistic society. Ad-
vocates specifically understand “emancipatory education” as “socially crit-
ical education”35 and thereby as a counter-pole to so-called “education for
affirmation”36, i.e., education that affirms the society in which educands
and their educators live.
How should we evaluate these educational aims? We all know that
people and their institutions are imperfect. We also know that we should
try as much as possible to improve the imperfect. Consequently, there is
no intrinsic reason for objecting to the political aim “betterment of so-
ciety”. However, it remains an empty demand, as long as we do not know
what concrete aspects of society we should improve in what regard and in
what manner. The empty norm “betterment of society” offers absolutely
no help in orientation for political action. We cannot refute it, because it
says nothing specific.
If the highest socio-political end of “emancipatory education” is so
vague, then likewise no one can more precisely specify educational aims
conceived of as simple intermediate aims for reaching ultimate political
aims. When people do not know what they want in a positive sense, they
proclaim what they do not want: sentimental attachment to existing so-
ciety, adopting cultural elements that support it, internalizing its norms,
positively accepting its order. Thus, we are at a point where for the first
time in pedagogical history a negative concept has been chosen to desig-
nate at least the highest principle for setting educational aims. Today,
“emancipation” means liberation from a state of dependency37. It is always
liberation from something, directed against something and thus merely a
slogan of negation.
Certainly many things in the world deserve negation. Yet, anyone who
elevates the negation of the existing social order to the ultimate guiding
principle of education has more interest in winning allies in the political
35. SCHALLER (1974: 6).

36. SCHALLER (1974: 114 ff.).
37. American Heritage Dictionary (1982: 447); Oxford Dictionary of English Ety-
mology (1967: 550): from the Latin “emancipare”: “ex” (out of) and “mancipium”
(ownership), as well as “mancipium” (purchase, slave). DUDEN (1976, Vol. 2:
679). On the etymology of the term, cf. GRASS and KOSELLECK (1975); HERRMANN
(1974). FISCHER (1972: 85 ff.) offers a “catalogue of emancipatory abilities”: He
includes i. ability to liberate oneself from dependencies, ii. ability to exist in liber-
ty, iii. ability for autonomy, iv. ability for emancipating others – for participating in
social emancipation.
arena than in helping young people become life-competent. Among other

things, life-competence presupposes zest for life. Children cannot acquire
this if we teach them from the start to adopt an attitude more of denial, dis-
trust, dissatisfaction and critique than of affirmation, trust and gratitude for
the good they experience. Certainly, ability for critique is an aspect of life-
competence. It is a partial attribute of wisdom, which already in Antiquity
philosophers viewed as the noblest virtue. Wisdom means above all that
we should be able to view concrete situations as they really are instead of
dreaming of an ideal world that we would like to create and interpreting
the real world in terms of this utopia.
The example of the educational aim “ability for critique” enables us to
recognize the chief defect of aim statements propagated by emancipatory
pedagogy. A few partial virtues are one-sidedly over-valued and priori-
tized at the expense of all other virtues. People devalue and leave out of
consideration all those virtues they assume are unfavorable to their own
political ends. The result is a paltry list of educational aims in an unrealist-
ic hierarchy. People only resort to them if they are more interested in striv-
ing for an illusory future society than in knowing what developing young
people need here and now in terms of knowledge and ability, belief con-
victions and virtues, in order to be able to become life-competent under
existing societal conditions.
Analysis and Critique of Means

After having clarified what “emancipatory pedagogy” teaches about ends
of education, we can now turn to the second sub-question about its con-
tents: What does it assert about means to reaching its intended aims?
What it says about this is quite vague. Entirely lacking in it are con-
crete, scientifically grounded statements about end-means relationships.
This is not surprising when we consider how unclear and unrealistic New
Left views are about educational aims. Naturally, if people do not know
exactly what they want, they cannot know with any specificity how they
can achieve it. “Emancipatory pedagogy” offers no useful instructions for
educational action in concrete educational situations. It gives educators no
assistance in solving the problems of everyday education and lacks any
relationship to the practical details of educational work. Rather, it express-
es the cultural-critical politicizing bombast of pedagogy professors who
fundamentally despair of the meaningfulness of education and understand
nothing of the art of education.
Characteristic is that advocates of “emancipatory education” frequently
understand it not as educational action, but rather as political action. Thus,
for example, in JOUHY’s words, “Emancipatory education understands it-

self not as the isolated pedagogical … child- or youth-related activity of
specialists, but rather as the total societal … praxis of still relatively imma-
ture masses. It is … a political activity in the most comprehensive, but also
most particular sense”38. JOHANNES BECK and his colleagues formulated
this similarly in their “Theses on Emancipatory Education”:
i. Emancipatory education is not a basic pedagogical concept, but rather

the … praxis of political struggle. … ii. This struggle begins with the for-
mation of free spaces in socially relevant institutions. Emancipatory educa-
tion must use the free spaces it has won politically. … iii. In this society,
free spaces of emancipatory education can primarily be created in educa-
tional institutions. … The comprehensive school [is] the central basis of
emancipatory education. … v. Preparation for the struggle against the au-
thoritarian achievement society … can take place … in the created low-op-
pression spaces (in schools ... etc.)39.
The confusion regarding means is shown by the typical demand to disem-

power educators. JOUHY commented that, “Emancipatory education … re-
leases the self-movement of persons who themselves help to plan and car-
ry out their increasing liberation from historically outdated limitedness.
Emancipatory education is, ultimately, the educands’ task; emancipatory
educators are” only “organizers of information, insights and actions” that
their “youthful partners” “themselves bring forth”40. However, JOUHY con-
cluded that not everyone is suitable for “emancipatory education”: “Those
who directly participate in economic, political or ideological power are …
unsuitable as bearers of emancipatory education”. They must “to the con-
trary accept the fact that their efforts to train people to fulfill the tasks they
assign will be put in question theoretically and opposed practically by the
bearers of emancipatory education”41.
I cannot sufficiently emphasize that the expression “emancipatory edu-
cation” serves here merely as camouflage to conceal the fact that this name
is not really a call for performing any education at all. It is rather a de-
mand for political struggle against all those persons and groups that do not
share the New Left worldview and instead wish to educate their children
and youth in accord with their own ideals. In order to lure them away from
their families and culture, a single means suffices for supporters of “eman-
cipatory pedagogy”: critique. Global critique of existing society and cul-
38. JOUHY (1972: 148).

39. BECK et al. (1970: 149).
40. JOUHY (1972: 148 f.).
41. JOUHY (1972: 146).
ture and radical rejection of all non-socialist worldviews and their repre-
sentatives: this is the core of what “emancipatory pedagogy” teaches about
means. Because critique, in the sense of social and ideological criticism, is
its most important attribute, advocates also call it “critical pedagogy”.
This concentration on ability for critique as the highest educational aim
and criticism as the most important means reveals the deep cultural pessi-
mism of rootless intellectuals. Those who suffer from this pessimism will
also doubt the value of education. In the extreme case, they suppose that
education will only be possible after the destruction of contemporary cul-
ture. For example, at the highpoint of German leftist terrorism in 1973,
JOUHY justified it as follows: “The seemingly destructive behavior of crit-
ique and of those who draw materially and institutionally destructive con-
sequences from it are indispensable midwives of … [a culture expe-
riencing] birth pangs, without whose maturation no more education is pos-
sible”. He believed that contemporary education could “only be a process
of leading to the forces and powers which initially make it possible for
culture to come about, not to those which through historical inertia still re-
present it”. In addition, he called on the public to begin taking seriously
only those pedagogical ideas that contribute “to the process of transforma-
tion, change and thereby – nolens volens – also to destruction”. However,
he combined this vague demand with an admission of “pedagogical help-
lessness”42. This is an unusually frank confession of the essentially anar-
chistic character of “emancipatory education”.
Not all emancipatory pedagogical theorists go as far as JOUHY in de-
mands to disempower educators, replace education with culturally critical
agitation and rely on the ability of growing persons for “self-liberation”. All
these authors’ statements about means are, however, equally threadbare.
Typically, emancipatory educationists express even vague conceptions
of correct educational style in purely negative terms: typical slogans are
“anti-authoritarian education”, “non-repressive education” or “domin-
ance-free education”. As KLAUS SCHALLER phrased it, this means the fol-
lowing: “education that is not education in the usual sense”; … that does
not have the will of the growing generation as its object and in an ‘authori-
tarian’ manner imposes this or that command on it”; … “that does not
have to meet the normative standards of a government, a party, a ruling
minority; that does not permit itself to be placed in the service of what is
respectively established in a society”; … “it knows no obligatory author-
ities, no norms that must be accepted and transmitted”43. These are all neg-
ative statements. They teach only what educators should not accept, not
42. JOUHY (1973: 8 f.).

43. SCHALLER (1973: 190 and 199).
want and not do.

Now, what can and should educators do in a positive sense according
to “emancipatory pedagogy”? The answer to this is different for left-lib-
erals than for socialists. Left-liberals like SCHALLER presuppose that none
of society’s valid norms deserves to be unquestioningly recognized and
promulgated. Therefore, adults and “developing persons”, teachers and
students must begin together with an ideological and moral clean slate.
They should talk to one another “with the same authority”44 and should
“negotiate” about what should be respectively called for and done. In ac-
cord with HABERMAS’ vision, “all standpoints, all interests” should conse-
quently “be brought to expression with reason and counter-reason”45. The
obligatory nature of norms and tasks is thus made dependent on all partic-
ipants coming to an agreement on them. Education is here limited essen-
tially to educators’ not leaving youth to their own devices in these discus-
sions – while nevertheless giving up their “usual educator’s role as super-
ior and, due to their better knowledge, ‘dominant persons’”46. In contem-
porary pedagogical jargon, people call this old, simple means not “discus-
sion”, but rather “discourse” or “communication” and deceive themselves
and others that it is a new and especially sophisticated educational means.
Despite a great expenditure of empty verbiage, emancipatory pedagogy
offers nothing more than a vague, uncritical recommendation of discussion
as the chief educational means.
Convinced socialists like GAMM naturally do not think much of such
discussions starting with a clean slate. They have socialist convictions and
want to propagate them. For them, “anti-authoritarian education” means
simply political “counter-education”47 against so-called “bourgeois so-
ciety”. They mean thereby education that is “critical of dominance”, “anti-
capitalistic” or “system overcoming”, but they prefer to hide this program
behind the seemingly harmless slogan of “emancipatory education”.
It is thus, according to PETER BRÜCKNER, a matter of “overturning” or
“changing consciousness”. Thereby, he at the same time calls for attacking
institutions that strengthen a society-affirming consciousness, and espe-
cially for attacking the family48. This task “demands … of educators, first
of all, not a change in maneuvers, but rather correct consciousness”49. It is
not essentially a program requiring use of specific educational methods,
44. SCHALLER (1974: 128).

45. SCHALLER (1974: 127).
46. SCHALLER (1973: 199).
47. GAMM (1970: 39). Further information on this in BREZINKA (1981a: 171 ff.).
48. BRÜCKNER (1973: 27 f.).
49. BRÜCKNER (1973: 120).
such as discussion, dialogue, etc. The real aim is subversion of the society-
protecting contents of consciousness and communication of the socially
critical and socialist contents of a worldview, life interpretation and self-
understanding. The leftist socialist publicist GÜNTHER NENNING stated,
“the New Left holds radical questioning to be intrinsically valuable. … A
revolution of consciousness is therefore the actual New Left form of revo-
lution”50. It follows from this that the content of instruction, the teaching
material, is the most important means of cultural-revolutionary prepara-
tion for a socialist society. Based on this strategy, things have gone so far
that today educational-political struggles are fought above all over teach-
ing plans, curricula, textbooks and instructional materials for teacher train-
ing.
In the following thesis, I summarize my answer to the question of what
“emancipatory pedagogy” teaches about means of achieving educational
ends: According to “emancipatory pedagogy”, the preferred educational
means are guidance for social, cultural and ideological critique. Its advo-
cates believe they can overcome the orientation uncertainty this creates in
two ways: formally through dominance-free discourse on a foundation of
equality between educators and educands, and substantively by commun-
icating socialistic counter-ideals.
How should we evaluate these means? Actually, they are just as
threadbare as the educational aims of “emancipatory pedagogy”. Let us
first examine them from the viewpoint of useful teaching methods. Psych-
ologically, it is quite unlikely that one-sided guidance of children and
youth toward critique of their life world, fellow human beings and belief
convictions is a suitable means of enabling them to better society. It is far
more likely that by stubbornly fixating on negative experiences, distrust
and doubt they will become morose, egoistical and nihilistic and thereby
lose precisely those mental preconditions that people need in order to bet-
ter themselves and their environment: courage, trust, mental security.
Overemphasis on criticism, dissent, disparagement and scandal is not use-
ful for reaching the vague long-term political goal of bettering society, but
rather only for the short-term political aim of increasing the number of dis-
contented, uprooted persons, of creating “revolutionary potential”.
What can we say about these means from an ethical viewpoint? Moral-
ly seen, there is an urgent need for guidance toward reflection and critique,
in order that young people can learn to orient themselves in our confusing
world, develop a sense of the influences exerted on them, and decide on
the ones to affirm51. It is accordingly a matter of specific critique of the
50. NENNING (1973: 258).

51. Cf. BREZINKA (1988: 116 ff.).
concrete inadequacies of particular ideas, institutions, events or persons,

not of blanket critique of our way of life as a whole.
Educational guidance for critique is necessary, but only as a supple-
ment to guidance for affirmation of and agreement with life forms and life
interpretations that support the community to which children belong. For
developing persons, acceptance of the given social world and trust in its
meaningfulness have priority. Anyone who disputes this, who denigrates
and opposes it as “education for affirmation” is acting against the good of
the whole by attempting to destroy basic conditions for society to flourish.
Moreover, he is also acting contrary to the good of children and youth.
He alienates them from their familiar life world and overburdens them
with one-sided knowledge of the world’s shadow side. He sets the impos-
sible goal of radically bettering society and thereby burdens them with
problems that adults themselves are unable to solve. He tries to persuade
them of their responsibility for “society”, or even for “humanity as a
whole”52. Such responsibility does not exist, because responsibility is only
possible for a limited, understandable aspect of the life world53. Down-
grading society under the pretext of higher morals can hardly produce any-
thing other than a sense of meaninglessness, world-weariness, and self-
pity in some persons, or indifference and moral deterioration in others.
Personality damage can hardly be corrected through “dominance-free dis-
course” between damaged children and disoriented, reluctant educators,
themselves skeptical of their society’s moral foundations.
This is how I understand the contents of “emancipatory pedagogy” and
evaluate them from the viewpoint of educational science and ethics54. Fin-
ally, below I offer another look at effects this political-educational teach-
ing has had up to now.
Effects of “Emancipatory Pedagogy”

From the perspective of its supporters, I will distinguish welcome direct
effects, welcome indirect effects and unwelcome effects of emancipatory
pedagogy.
For supporters, the welcome direct effects were a dream come true.
Previously no one would have thought it possible that respected education-
al spokespersons of a society blessed with liberty and prosperity would un-
critically adopt such a mixed-bag of ambiguous Marxist slogans as a peda-
52. KLAFKI (1971: 383).

53. Cf. FREYER (1957: 57 ff.).
54. More on this in BREZINKA (1981a); also BATH (1974); RÖSSNER (1974); SPAE-
MANN (1975).
gogical doctrine of salvation suitable for our societal situation, or that it

would spread virtually like wildfire. For some strange reason professors
and educational politicians, school administrators and teachers, pastoral
counselors and social workers alike suddenly adopted the cause of “eman-
cipatory education”.
As early as 1973, the following comments were included in guiding
principles for political instruction developed by North Rhine-Westphalia’s
Minister of Education:
Emancipation as the aim of political learning means that young persons

should be enabled to freely and self-responsibly either accept or reject pre-
given societal norms and should the occasion arise, decide in favor of oth-
ers. This presupposes ability to distance themselves from traditional and
currently effective societal molding with the aim of extensive self-deter-
mination55.
It is unprecedented in history for a state to give its young people the option
to either “accept or reject” the legal order of their community and its legit-
imate moral duties. In the past, governments everywhere in the world con-
sidered it self-evident that public school systems should help students in-
ternalize legitimate existing norms and should not encourage alienation
from them56. Neo-Marxist pedagogy could not have hoped for swifter and
greater success when it expressly introduced the slogan of “emancipatory
education” as a “subversive” educational principle57.
Even after the New Left’s fragmentation and decline in influence, its
educational-political theories had, and still have, welcome indirect effects.
NENNING assessed the situation as follows: “The New Left is dead. Yet, its
defeat was highly successful. New-Left thinking-, life- and action-styles
are subverting the society of late capitalism”58. By “dead” he obviously
meant only that the New Left had lost its viability as a socialist counter-
movement to the now bourgeois social democratic parties. As a cultural
revolutionary political movement, it lives on, above all in socialist frac-
tions of social democratic parties, but also in other parties and even in
some churches. Today it pursues an “overall socialist strategy” of coopera-
tion between “social-democratoid parties”, which for NENNING also in-
cluded Western communist parties, with the aim of fomenting a “pink rev-
55. Minister of Education of North Rhine-Westphalia: “Guiding Principles for Pol-

itical Instruction”. In: KULTUSMINISTER DES LANDES NORDRHEIN-WESTFALEN
(1973: 7).
56. For a critique, cf. LÜBBE (1976: 20 ff.).
57. BECK (1970: 151).
58. NENNING (1973: 297).
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I carried it home; arrived there, I took it from my pocket: the pebble was
dry, its splendour had vanished, and I held it for what it was—a pebble.
Such is life, with and without its illusions.
CHAPTER V.
A TRAIT OF JULIUS ST. JOHN.
As Cecil was dressing for dinner that day, he asked himself whether he
really loved Violet; the answer was a decided negative. He had loved her till
that afternoon: but that one fatal incident as completely turned his love into
dislike, as it had turned Violet's into scorn. He disliked her, as we dislike
those who have humiliated us, or who have witnessed some action which
we know must appear contemptible in their eyes, but which we feel is not
really so contemptible. He resented her superior courage; called her coarse
and unwomanly, reckless and cruel. He remembered her beating Shot on the
morning of their first interview, and it now seemed to him, as then, an act of
wanton severity. He remembered what her father and mother said of her
temper. They were right; she was a devil!
He went down to dinner quite satisfied that she was not at all the
woman he should choose.
She was seated on the sofa, talking to Mrs. Broughton, and caressing the
head of her favourite Shot. Marmaduke stood by her side, gazing enraptured
upon her beauty.
Never was there a more adorably imperial creature than Violet. If in her
riding habit, the prompt decision and energy of her manner conveyed the
impression of her being somewhat masculine; directly she doffed it for the
dress of her sex, she became at once a lovely, loveable woman.
I have a particular distaste to masculine women, and am therefore
anxious that you should not imagine Violet one. She had, indeed, the virile
energy and strength of will, which nature seems to have appointed to our
sex; but all, who had any penetration, at once acknowledged that she was
exquisitely feminine. Her manner had such grace, dignity, softness, and
lovingness, tempering its energy and independence. She had grandeur
without hardness, and gentleness without weakness. Her murderous eyes,
whose flashing beauty few could withstand—there was something
domineering in their splendour and fulness of life—had, at the same time, a
certain tenderness, the effect of which I know not how better to describe,
than in the bold felicitous comparison used by Goethe's mother, when she
wrote to Bettina thus: "a violoncello was played, and I thought of thee; it
sounded so exactly like thy brown eyes."
I dwell with some gusto on the beauty of this creature; she was so
beautiful! Majesty generally implies a certain stiffness: dignified women
are detestable; but there was such majesty in Violet—such commanding
grace—accompanied by such soft, winning manners, that, in the midst of
the sort of awe she inspired, you felt a yearning towards her. Firenzuola
would have said of her, and said truly, that "getta quasi un odor di regina,"
and yet, withal, no one was more simple and womanly.
As Cecil entered the room, he just caught this conclusion of Violet's

speech:—
"Besides, had it come to the worst—had the bull made his rush, I was in
very good hands. Mr. Chamberlayne and Shot were with me."
This was uttered before she saw Cecil. She coloured slightly as he came
in, but continued her conversation in an unaltered tone. He felt no gratitude
to her for sparing him, as, by this account of the affair, it was evidently her
intention of doing; his self-love was so deeply wounded, that he only
perceived the covert sarcasm of again coupling him with Shot. It made him
congratulate himself on being no longer in danger of offering her his hand.
"What a wife!" he mentally exclaimed, as he walked up to Rose and

Julius, and broke in upon their tête-à-tête, for which neither thanked him.
At dinner he sat between Mrs. Broughton and her niece, who, regarding
him as a wit, giggled at whatever he said. He was in high spirits. His gaiety
was forced, indeed, but it inspired some brilliant things, which I do not
chronicle here for two reasons. First, they had no influence whatever on
subsequent events. Secondly, very few repartées bear transplantation; they
have an àpropos which gives them their zest, and are singularly tame
without it.
"By the way, Mr. St. John, Wincot has a mysterious story about you
which ought to be cleared up."
"Pray, what is it?"
"Oh! something impossible, grotesque, inconceivable, but true; at least,

he swears to it," said Cecil.
"Let's hear it," said Mrs. Langley Turner.
"By all means," added Mrs. Broughton.
"By all means," echoed Julius. "I find myself the hero of a romance
before I was aware of it."
All eyes were turned upon Tom Wincot.
He was not averse to be looked at, so neither blushed, nor let fall the
glass suspended to his eye.
Wincot is young, good-looking, well-dressed; rides well, waltzes well;

gains his livelihood at whist and écarté; pays debts of honour; has no ideas;
knows nothing beyond the sphere of a club or a drawing-room, and has no
power over the consonant r.
"I consider this vewy twaitewous," he said; "when I told Chamberlayne

the stowy it was under strict secrecy."
"That is to say," rejoined Cecil, "that you wished me particularly to

divulge it."
"Not at all, not at all, a secwet is a secwet."
"You excite our curiosity to the highest pitch," said Mrs. Langley
Turner.
"Quite thrilling," said Rose.
"Tell us the story yourself, Mr. Chamberlayne," said young Lufton.
"No, no; it is Wincot's story."
"Well; if your cuwiosity is excited, I must gwatify it. Besides, Mr. St.
John has pewhaps some explanation. Yesterday, as I was wambling along
the woad to town I saw him wide down by the wiver. Well, would you
cwedit it? he was cawying, its twue I vow, cawying a side of bacon!!!"
"Is that all?" asked Violet.
"All!" exclaimed the astonished dandy; "All! why Miss Violet, I pledge
you my vewacity that I wefused to believe it, it was so twemendous an
appawition! Fancy, widing acwoss countwy with a side of bacon on your
saddle! It must have been a wager. It must. Why, I would as soon have
dwiven my gwandmother down Wegent-stweet; dwank clawet at an inn;
gone to a soiwee in shoes; or anything equally atwocious!"
"But let Mr. St. John explain," said Cecil gaily. "This is a serious
imputation on his dandyism. Unless he can clear himself of the charge, he
will be utterly lost."
"What was it Julius, my dear?" said Mrs. St. John.
"One of those things which he alone is capable of," interposed

Marmaduke, warmly. "I will ask the ladies present to judge. Happening to
meet Julius with that same side of bacon, I naturally asked him how he
came to have it, and he told me the story with his usual simplicity. This it is.
He was riding through Little Aston on his way home, he stopped opposite a
broker's shop where an auction was going on. A side of bacon was knocked
down to him, much to his astonishment, but he paid for it, threw it across
his saddle, and carried it twelve miles as a present to one of his poor
cottagers. The poor woman was as much shocked as Mr. Wincot, to see the
young squire so equipped, but her gratitude was unbounded. I could have
hugged him for it; the more so, as, with all my admiration for the simple
goodness and courage of the act, I doubt whether even now I should have
courage to imitate it, and certainly should never have had such an idea
come unassisted into my head."
"You are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, Marmaduke,"

said Julius. "The thing was quite simple. I had to pay for the bacon; why
should not one of my cottagers benefit by it?"
"Yes, yes; but carrying it yourself."
"I had not my servant with me. It was no trouble. As to what people
thought, that never troubled me. Those who knew me knew what I was;
those who knew me not did not bestow a thought about me."
Every one declared that it was an act of great kindness and philosophy;
except Tom Wincot, who pronounced it vewy extwaowdinawy, and seemed
to think nothing could justify such a forgetfulness of what was due to
oneself. But of all present, no one was more proud, more pleased than Rose,
who looked at her "dear, little, ugly man," as she called him, with fresh
admiration all the evening afterwards. It was a trait to have won her heart;
if, indeed, her heart had not been won before.
CHAPTER VI.
HIDDEN MEANINGS.
The subject of private theatricals was again started that evening, when
all were assembled in the drawing-room; and as the conversation happened
by chance to be one of those underneath which there runs a current of deep
significance to certain parties, while to the apprehension of the rest there is
nothing whatever meant beyond what is expressed; I shall detail some
portions of it.
But first to dispose of the scene, as it is rather crowded. In the right-

hand corner there is a rubber of whist played between Meredith Vyner and
Mrs. Broughton, against Sir Harry Johnstone and Mrs. St. John.
Seated on the music-stool is Rose, who has just ceased playing, and by
her stands Julius, who, having turned over her leaves, is now talking to her.
At the round table in the centre, Mrs. Meredith Vyner, Mrs. Langley
Turner, Miss Broughton, and Violet are disposed among Marmaduke,
Maxwell, Tom Wincot, Captain Heath, and young Lufton; the ladies
knitting purses, and engaged on tambour work: the gentlemen making
occasional remarks thereon, and rendering bungling assistance in the
winding of silk.
To the left, Blanche and Cecil, the latter with his guitar in his hand.
The fire blazes cheerfully. The room is brilliant with light. Mrs.
Meredith Vyner is applauding herself secretly at her increasing success with
Marmaduke, who she doubts not will soon have lost all his anger towards
her. Maxwell looks blacker than ever, but is silent. Violet is recovering from
her disappointment, and settling into calm contempt of Cecil. Marmaduke
laughs in his sleeve at Mrs. Vyner's attempts, but is too much struck with
Violet, not to be glad of anything which seems likely to smooth the path of
acquaintance with her. Captain Heath is rather annoyed at having lost his
accustomed seat next to Blanche, with whom he best likes to converse.
Cecil has completely shaken off his depression, and is wondering he never
before discovered what incomparable eyes Blanche has.
"But about these theatricals," said Mrs. Langley Turner. "I am dying to
have something settled. You, Mrs. Vyner, are the cleverest of the party, do
you suggest some play. What do you say to Othello?"
"Oh!" said Mrs. Broughton, "don't think of tragedy."

"No, no," rejoined Mrs. Vyner; "if the audience must laugh, let it at least
be with us."
"By all means," said Vyner, shuffling the cards; "remember, too,
Male si mandata loqueris

Aut dormitabo aut ridebo.
"At the same time," observed Mrs. Vyner; "Mr. Ashley would make a
superb Othello."
"I rather think," replied Marmaduke, slightly veiling his eyes with the
long lashes; "Iago would suit me better."
Mrs. Vyner affected not to understand the allusion.
"You would not look the villain," she said.
"Perhaps not," he replied, laughing; "but I could act it."
"By the way," interposed Julius, "surely that's a very false and un-
Shakespearian notion current, respecting Iago's appearance: people
associate moral with physical deformity, though as Shakespeare himself
says—
There is no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.
The critics, I observe, in speaking of an actor, as Iago, are careful to say, 'he
looked the villain.' Now, if he looked the villain, I venture to say he did not
look Iago."
"Mr. St. John is right," said Cecil. "Had Iago 'worn his heart upon his
sleeve,' no one could have been duped by him. Whereas everybody places
implicit confidence in him. He is 'honest Iago'—a 'fellow of exceeding
honesty;' and he is this, not only to the gull Roderigo, and the royal Othello,
but equally so to the gentle Desdemona, and his companion in arms, the
'arithmetician' Cassio."
"So you see," said Marmaduke, turning to Mrs. Vyner, "in spite of your
handsome compliment, I might have the physique de l'emploi. Then Cecil
would be a famous Cassio,
Framed to make women false."
Mrs. Vyner asked herself, "Is he showing me his cards? Does he mean
to play Iago here, and to select Cecil as his tool? No; he can't be such a
blockhead; but what does he mean then?"
"If we are not to play tragedy," observed Mrs. Broughton; "what use is
there in wasting argument on it. Let us think of a comedy."
"The Rivals," suggested Captain Heath; "it has so many good parts, and
that I take to be the grand thing in private theatricals, where every one is
ambitious of playing primo violino."
"Very natural too!" said Julius.
"Very!" rejoined Heath, sarcastically.
"When people laugh," said Julius, "at the vanity displayed by amateur
actors, in their reluctance to play bad parts, it is forgotten that there is a
wide distinction between playing for your amusement, and playing for your
bread. Every actor on the stage would refuse indifferent parts, were it
possible for him to do so. And when gentlemen and ladies wish to try their
skill at acting, they very naturally seek to play such parts as will give their
talents most scope."
"We really ought to thank Mr. St. John," said Mrs. Vyner, "for the
ingenious excuse he has afforded our vanity, and he must have a good part
himself as reward."
"You are very kind," said Julius; "but I have no notion whatever of
acting, and must beg you to pass me over entirely, unless you want a
servant, or something of that kind."
"I am sure," said Rose, in a low tone, "you would act beautifully."
"Indeed, no."
"Did you ever try?"
"Never. I have no vis comica; and as to tragedy, my person excludes me

from that."
Rose was silent and uncomfortable; all people are when others allude to
their own personal deficiencies.
"Will you play Sir Anthony, Sir Harry?"
"Two by cards ... I beg your pardon, Mrs. Vyner .... Sir Anthony
Absolute? Yes, yes, you may put me down for that."
"And who is to be Captain Absolute? You, Mr. Ashley?"
"Perhaps Mr. Ashley would play Falkland," suggested Mrs. Broughton.
"No, no, Falkland is cut out for Mr. Maxwell—he is the most tragic
amongst us."
Maxwell answered with a grim smile.
"At any rate," said Mrs. Langley Turner, "let me play Mrs. Malaprop. I
quite long to be an allegory on the banks of the Nile."
"And Violet," said Mrs. Vyner, with the slightest possible accent of
sarcasm, "can be Lydia Languish."
"No, mama," replied Violet, "you ought to play that—it would suit
you."
"I play? ... my dear child!"
"Do you not intend to take a part?"
"My dear Violet, how could you suppose such a thing?"
"I imagined," replied Violet, with exquisite naturalness, "that you were
an accomplished actress."
"So I should have said, from the little I have the pleasure of knowing of
Mrs. Vyner," observed Marmaduke.
The two arrows went home; but Mrs. Vyner's face was impassive.
"How imprudent Violet is!" said Blanche, in a whisper, to Cecil.
"Do you understand that?" said Rose to Julius.
"What?"
"Nothing, if you did not catch it."
"But who is to be Sir Lucius, we haven't settled that," said Mrs.

Broughton.
"I wather think I should play Sir Lucius O'Twigger, as my bwogue is

genewally pwonounced so vewy Iwish."
"But," interposed Marmaduke, "we have forgotten Cecil ... Oh! there is
Acres—a famous part!"
"Surely, Captain Absolute would be better," suggested Violet.
"Is that a sarcasm?" Cecil asked himself.
"Anybody," rejoined Marmaduke, "can play the Captain, whereas Acres

is a difficult part. It is not easy to play cowardice naturally."
This is one of those observations, which, seeming to have nothing in
them, yet fall with strange acrimony on the ears of certain of the parties. It
made Violet and Cecil uncomfortable.
"Besides," pursued Marmaduke, "it is a rule in acting, that we always

best play the part most unlike our own; and as Cecil happens to be the
coolest of the cool in a duel, he ought to play the duel scene to perfection."
"Did you ever fight a duel, then?" exclaimed Miss Broughton. "How
romantic!"
Violet was astonished. Cecil, delighted at this opportunity of redeeming

himself in her eyes, said, "Marmaduke, who was my second, will tell you
that it was by no means romantic, Miss Broughton. A mere exchange of
harmless shots about a very trivial circumstance."
"And," inquired Miss Broughton, with inimitable naïveté, "were you not
afraid?"
A general laugh followed this question, except from the whist players,
who were squabbling over some disputed point, and from Violet, who was
asking herself the same question.
"Why," rejoined Cecil, gaily, "I suppose you would hardly have me
avow it, if it were so; cowardice is so contemptible."
"Oh, I don't know," said Miss Broughton.
"If I may speak without bravado, I should say that, although I am a

coward by temperament, I do not want bravery on reflection."
"What the deuce do you mean by bwavewy on weflection?"
"Some people," interposed Rose, laughing, "have de l'esprit après coup;

so Mr. Chamberlayne doubtless means that he has courage when the danger
is over. I had you there, Mr. Chamberlayne. That is my return for your
uncomplimentary speech to me at dinner."
Violet blushed; Rose's jest seemed to her so cruel that she quite felt for
Cecil. He also blushed, knowing the application Violet would make. The
rest laughed.
"Without accepting Miss Rose's unpardonable interpretation," said

Cecil, "I may acknowledge some truth in it; and as I am thus drawn into a
sort of confession, forgive my egotism if I dwell a little longer on the
subject. I am of a very nervous, excitable temperament. I shrink from
anything sudden, and always tremble at sudden danger. Therefore am I
constitutionally a coward. My instinct is never to front danger, but to escape
it; but my reason tells me that the surest way of escaping it, in most cases, is
to front it; and as soon as the suddenness is over, and I have familiarized my
mind with the danger, I have coolness and courage enough to front it,
whatever it may be. This is what I call bravery on reflection. My first
movement, which is instinctive, is cowardly; my second, which is
reflective, is courageous."
"This is so pwofoundly metaphysical that I can't appwehend it at all."
"I think I can," said Violet; "and the distinction seems to me to be just."
Cecil was greatly relieved, and he thanked her with a smile as he said, "I
remember, some years ago, being with some ladies in a farm-yard, when a
huge mastiff rushed furiously out at us. Before I had time to check my first
instinctive movement, I had vaulted over the gate and was beyond his
reach; but no sooner was I on the other side than I remembered the ladies
were at his mercy. I instantly vaulted back again; but not before the dog was
wagging his tail, and allowing them, to pat his head. But imagine what they
thought of my gallantry! They never forgave me. I could offer no excuse—
there was none plausible enough to offer—and to this day they despise me
as a coward."
"Had you given them on the spot," said Violet, gravely, "the explanation
you have just given us, they would not have despised you."
"I am greatly obliged to you for the assurance."
He looked his thanks as he said this.

"Still, it must be deuced stwange to find oneself in a pwedicament, and
no cowage àpwopos, but only on delibewate weflection."
"It is one of the misfortunes of my temperament."
"It certainly is a misfortune," said Violet.
She became thoughtful. Cecil was radiant.

CHAPTER VII.
MUTUAL SELF-EXAMINATION.
The entrance of tea changed the conversation, and changed also the
positions of the party. Cecil relinquished his place by the side of Blanche,
much to her regret, and managed to get near Violet, who was anxious to
make up for her previous coldness and contempt. She felt that she had
wronged him. She admitted to the full his explanation of the incident which
had so changed her feelings, and, with the warmth of a generous nature
owning its error, she endeavoured to make him understand that she had
wronged him. Two happier hearts did not beat that night.
Could they have read aright their feelings, however, they would have
seen something feverish and unhealthy in this warmth. It was not the
sympathy of sympathetic souls but a mutual desire to forget, and have
forgotten the feelings which had agitated them a little while ago.
Mrs. Meredith Vyner was more taciturn than was her wont. The covert
insinuations Marmaduke had thrown out puzzled her extremely; while they
were in sufficient keeping with what had gone before, to prevent her
supposing he attached no meaning to them.
"Could he really suppose her in love with Cecil?" she asked herself;
"and was he serious in thus presenting himself in the character of an Iago?"
Much did she vex her brain, and to little purpose. The truth is, she was
attributing to these words a coherence and significance which they had not
in Marmaduke's mind. She assumed them to be indications of some deeply-
laid scheme; whereas they were the mere spurts of the moment, seized upon
by him as they presented themselves, and without any ulterior purpose. He
had no plan; but he was deeply enraged against her, and lashed her with the
first whip at hand. Had he been as cunning as she was, he would never have
betrayed himself in this way; but being a man of vehement passions, and
accustomed to give way to his impulses, it was only immense self-
command which enabled him to contain himself so much as he did. Julius
went home to dream of Rose. Marmaduke to pass a sleepless night thinking
of Violet. He had never seen a woman he admired so much. For the first
time in his life, he had encountered a gaze that did not bend beneath his
own; for the first time he had met with one whose will seemed as
indomitable as his own, whose soul was as passionate. It was very different
from the effect which Mary Hardcastle had excited: it was not so irritating,
but more voluptuous. In one word, the difference was this: Mary excited the
lower, Violet the higher qualities of his nature. There was reverence in his
feeling for Violet; in his feeling for Mary there had been nothing but a
sensual fascination.
Maxwell was restless. He was growing very jealous of Marmaduke—

Mrs. Vyner's interest not escaping him. Violet was also sleepless. She
thought of Marmaduke, and of the two interchanged glances which told her
how they had both read alike the character of her mother; and wondered by
what penetration he had discovered it. She thought him also a magnificent
—a manly man; but she thought no more. Cecil occupied her mind.
As I have said, her first impulse was to admit to the full Cecil's
explanation, and to revoke her sentence of contempt. As she lay meditating
on the whole of the circumstances, and examined his character calmly, she
was forced to confess that if he did not deserve the accusation of cowardice,
yet by his own showing his first impulse was to secure his own safety, and
then to think of others. This looked like weakness and selfishness: two
odious vices in her eyes.
The result of her meditations was, that Cecil had regained some portion
of her liking, but had lost for ever all hold upon her esteem. Pretty much the
same change took place in his mind with regard to her. He admitted that she
was high-minded, generous, lovely—but not loveable. There was something
in her which awed him, and which he called repulsive.
He went to sleep thinking what a sweet loveable creature Blanche was,

and how superior to Violet.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DISADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS.
The next day Julius was meditatively fishing in the mill-pool adjoining
the village school, and trying to decipher the character of Rose, who
alternately fascinated and repulsed him by her vivacity.
I have said that he was utterly destitute of all personal beauty. This is so
common an occurrence, that it would scarcely be worth mentioning in any
other case: beauty being the quality which, of all others, men can best
dispense with. A charm when possessed, its absence is not an evil. In
Julius's case, however, it happened to be important, from the importance he
attributed to it, and the excessive importance given to it by him thus
originated.
His nurse was a very irascible woman, and whenever she was angry,
taunted him with being such "an ugly, little fright." As she never called him
ugly but when she punished him, he early began to associate something
peculiarly disagreeable with ugliness. This would have soon passed away at
school, had not the boys early discovered that his ugliness was a sore point
with him; accordingly, endless were the jests and sneers which, with the
brutal recklessness of boyhood, they flung at him on that score. The climax
of all, was on one cold winter morning, when the shivering boy crept up to
the fire, and was immediately repulsed by a savage kick from one of the
elder boys there warming himself. Crying with the pain, he demanded why
he was kicked. The why really was a simple movement of wanton brutality
and love of power, usual enough among boys; but the tyrant chose to say,
"Because you're such a beast!"
"No, I'm not," he sobbed.
"Yes, you are, though!"

"You've no business to kick me; I didn't do anything to you."
"I shall kick you as much as I like; you're so d—d ugly!"
It had never occurred to him before to be thrashed for his ugliness; and
although he deeply felt the injustice, yet he, from that day, imagined that his
appearance was a serious misfortune.
Increasing years, of course, greatly modified this impression, but the

effect was never wholly effaced. From the constant dinning in his ears that
he was ugly, he had learned to accept it as a fact, about which there could be
no dispute, but which no more troubled him than the consciousness that he
was not six feet high. He became hardened to the conviction. Sneers or
slights affected him no more. He was ugly, and knew it. To tell him of it
was to tell him of that to which he had long made up his mind, and about
which he had no vestige of vanity.
It is remarkable how conceited plain people are of their persons. You

hear the fact mentioned and commented on in society, as if it were
surprising; and you catch yourself "wondering" at some illustration of it, as
if experience had not furnished you with numberless examples of the same
kind. But the explanation seems to me singularly simple. You have only to
take the reverse of the medal, and observe that beauty is not half so
solicitous of admiration as deformity, and the solution of the question must
present itself. Conceit—at least that which shows itself to our ridicule, is an
eager solicitation of our admiration. Now, beauty being that which calls
forth spontaneous admiration, needs not to be solicitous; and the more
unequivocal the beauty, the less coquettish the woman. When, however, a
woman's beauty is so equivocal that some deny it, while others admit it, the
necessity for confirmation makes her solicitous of every one's praise; and
she exhibits coquetry and conceit—due proportion being allowed for the
differences in amount of love of approbation inherent in different
individuals (a condition which influences the whole of this argument).
Carry this further, and arrive at positive plainness, and you have this result:
the amour propre of the victim naturally softens the harsh outlines of the
face. He sees himself in a more becoming mirror. However, the fact may
have been forced upon him, that he is ill-looking, he never knows the extent
of his ugliness, and he is aware that people differ immensely in their
estimates of him; he has—fatal circumstance! even been admired. Now,
admiration is such a balm to the wounded self-love, that he craves for more
—he is eager to solicit an extension of it, and hence that desire to attract
closer attention to him manifested by audacity of dress, certain that the
closer he is observed, the more he must be admired. He feels he is not so
ugly as people say; he knows some do not think so; he wants your
confirmation of the discerning few. In a thousand different ways he solicits
some of your admiration. You see his object, and smile at his conceit.
Now the effect of Julius St. John's education had been to cut out, root
and branch, that needless desire to be admired for what he knew was not
admirable. He had made up his mind to his ugliness. The benefit was
immense. It saved him from the hundred tortures of self-love to which he
must otherwise have been exposed—that Tantalus thirst for admiration
which cannot be slaked; and it imparted a quiet dignity to his manner,
which was not without its charm.
The deplorable circumstance was, that he had also imbibed a notion of

the great importance of beauty in the eyes of women, which made him
consider himself incapable of being loved. As a boy, maid-servants had
refused to be kissed by him, because he was "a fright." As a young man, he
had often been conscious that girls said they were engaged when he asked
them to dance, because they would not dance with one so ugly. In the
novels which he read the heroes were invariably handsome, and great stress
was laid upon their beauty; while the villains and scoundrels were as
invariably ill-favoured. The conversation of girls ran principally upon
handsome men; and their ridicule was inexhaustible upon the unfortunates
whom Nature had treated like a stepmother.
One trait will paint the whole man. They were one day talking about
ugliness at the Hall, when Rose exclaimed: "After all beauty is but skin
deep."
"True," he replied, "but opinion is no deeper."
That one word revealed to her the state of his mind on the subject. And
although he often thought of Swift, Wilkes, Mirabeau, and other hideous
men celebrated for their successes with women; he more often thought of
the bright-eyed, hump-backed, gifted, witty, humble Pope, who so bitterly
expiated his presumption in raising his thoughts to the lovely Mary Wortley
Montague. If genius could not compensate for want of beauty, how should
he, who had no genius, not even shining talents, succeed in making a
woman pardon his ugliness?
That Julius was strangely in error you may easily suppose; but this was
perhaps the only crotchet of his honest upright mind. A truer, manlier
creature never breathed. He was carved from the finest clay of humanity;
and, although possessing none of those distinguished talents which separate
a few men from their contemporaries, and throw a lustre over perhaps weak
and unworthy natures, yet of no one that I have ever known could I more
truly say,—
His life was gentle; and the elements

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!
To know him was to love him; it was more, it was to revere him. There
was something ennobling in his intercourse. You felt that all he did and said
sprang from the purest truth. He was utterly unaffected, and won your
confidence by the simple truthfulness of his whole being. There was
perhaps as little of what is supposed to captivate women in his person and
manner as in any man I ever knew; but, at the same time, I never knew a
man so calculated to make a wife adore him. In a word—he could not flirt,
but he could love.
The reader will be at no loss to discover the reason of certain doubts and
hesitations on his part respecting Rose, with whom he was greatly charmed,
and of whom he was also greatly afraid. The very vivacity which allured,
alarmed him. She was so bright, so brilliant, that he was afraid to trust his
heart in her keeping, lest she should be as giddy as she was gay; and, above
all, lest she should scorn the mediocrity of such a man as he knew himself
to be. His first impulse was always to seek her society, to sun himself in her
eyes, to let his soul hold unrestrained communion with hers; but, when he
came to reflect on the delicious hours he had spent by her side, he trembled
lest they should be only luring him into an abyss from which there would be
no escape.
Early in life he had suffered bitterly from such a deception. He fell in

love with a beautiful and lively cousin of his, who, perhaps from coquetry,
perhaps from thoughtlessness, certainly exhibited such signs of returning
his affection, that he one day ventured to overcome his timidity, and
declared his passion. She only laughed at him; and that very evening he
heard her answer her mother's remonstrances on the giddiness of her
conduct towards him by saying, "But, dear mama, who could have
supposed that he was serious; the idea of a woman marrying him."
"He is an excellent creature," said the mother.
"Perhaps so, but you must confess he is very ugly."
Julius heard no more; it was a girl of sixteen in all her thoughtlessness

who spoke, but those words were never effaced from his memory.
The truth is, Rose was as saucy as youth, beauty, and uncontrollable
spirits could make her, and the general impression she made on men was,
that of being too flirty and giddy for love.
Julius was fishing that day with no sport but in the chase of his own
fantastic thoughts; which every philosophic fisherman must admit is part of
the great pleasure in throwing out the line. People wonder what amusement
can be found in fishing, and Dr. Johnson's definition is thought triumphant;
but if they will allow one of the most unskilful anglers that ever handled a
rod to answer, I would say, that when you have good sport, it is a pleasant
excitement, and when you catch nothing, it is a most dulcet mode of
meditating. You sit in the boat or stand on the bank: the river runs gently
and equably before you; the float wanders with it; and the current of your
thoughts is undisturbed.
No sport did Julius have that day; not a single "run;" but as a
compensation he was joined by Rose herself, who had been to visit Mrs.
Fletcher, the schoolmistress, to encourage the children.

Education in A Society Uncertain of Its Values Contributions To Practical Pedagogy 1st Edition Wolfgang Brezinka

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Education in A Society Uncertain of Its Values Contributions To Practical Pedagogy 1st Edition Wolfgang Brezinka

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Copyright:

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Education in a Society uncertain of its

Values Contributions to Practical

Heterogeneous Contributions to Numerical Cognition:

Pedagogy of the Clown: Clowning Principles in Education

Life in Schools An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in

Big Data in Education Pedagogy and Research Policy

Big Data in Education: Pedagogy and Research Theodosia

Introduction to Buddhist Economics: The Relevance of

Education and Society in Post-Mao China (Routledge

Winding Paths to Success Chart a Career in Uncertain

Philosophy of Educational Knowledge

Basic Concepts of Educational Science

Belief, Morals, and Education

Socialization and Education

Educational Aims, Educational Means,

Education and Pedagogy in Cultural Change

Translation by James Stuart Brice

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2016 by Wolfgang Brezinka

ISBN (10): 1-4438-8821-4

Preface to the English Edition ................................................................. ix

REORIENTATION OF EDUCATION IN A SOCIETY UNCERTAIN OF ITS

“EMANCIPATORY PEDAGOGY” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES .......................21

EDUCATION FOR LIFE-COMPETENCE IN A TIME OF ORIENTATION

CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL AIMS: PROBLEMS AND TASKS

CHRISTIAN EDUCATIONAL AIMS TODAY: EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE

VALUE CHANGE AND SCHOOL EDUCATION ..............................................97

EDUCATIONAL POLICY WITHOUT ILLUSIONS .........................................121

Illusions of Equal Opportunity and Chances of Upward Mobility .....134

HEREDITY, EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, AND SCHOOL

PROFESSIONAL ETHOS OF TEACHERS: NEGLECTED PROBLEM

FAMILY EDUCATION TODAY ...................................................................201

PERSON INDEX .........................................................................................239

SUBJECT INDEX ........................................................................................245

educational tasks of our time.

Orientation Crisis, Valuation Crisis, Educational Crisis

Younger generations can only be educated for competence and pro-

Intellectual Sources of Our Crisis

12. RÜSTOW (1957: 15).

This program was inordinately overextended. To accomplish it, educa-

“total state” with a “total community ethos”20. One of its propagandists

20. FORSTHOFF (1933: 45). German: “totale Gemeinschaftsgesinnung”.

civil disobedience, occupying buildings, blocking traffic, or boycotting un-

25. For a critique, cf. WASSERMANN (1985).

In our time, the devaluation of service-oriented elites, their ideals and

pline. Ever greater hedonistic self-indulgence is a symptom of decadence.

29. Cf. SCHELER (1954: 357).

atmosphere that encourages pleasure seeking, and inwardly people burn

Ways to Overcome Our Educational Crisis

Realistic Picture of Human Beings

32. Cf. MOOR (1951: 194 ff.).

large groups with impersonal relationships, readiness to strive for a moral

34. Cf. WITTMANN (1980).

Courage to Use Essential Means

38. Cf. ZEIDLER (1983: 597 ff.).

and standards. It is irresponsible to give children information without

40. Many thought-provoking ideas are offered by HENTIG (1976).

“Emancipatory pedagogy” is a collective name for a variety of pedagogi-

1. Cf. RÖSSNER (1974: 47).

1978 Conference of the German Society for Educational Science, he dis-