"I've been a soldier and a slave. I've seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I've held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning 'Why?' I don't think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams... this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all... to see life as it is and not as it should be." -- Miguel de Cervantes, Man of La Mancha

Education is an Atmosphere

With due respect for the personality of the child as a person, with all the potentiality and dignity of a full person, it is not only destructive but immoral to use fear or love (or its withholding) as a motivator, or to play upon any one natural desire of the child. With that in mind, we are left with three tools: "the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas."

This post specifically deals with the first.

It is not an environment that these want, a set of artificial relations carefully constructed, but an atmosphere which nobody has been at pains to constitute. It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely as the atmosphere of the earth is about us.

Children learn from their surroundings. They learn from the affection of their parents, not just for the child but for each other. They learn from the rough-and-tumble play of their brothers and sisters. They learn from their pets and their garden. They learn from their friends. They don't need these to be padded, sweetened, watered-down, or half-digested for them.

We certainly may use atmosphere as an instrument of education, but there are prohibitions, for ourselves rather than for children. Perhaps the chief of these is, that no artificial element be introduced, no sprinkling of rose water, softening with cushions. Children must face life as it is; if their parents are anxious and perturbed, children feel it in the air.

This is not a condemnation to parents who feel anxiety. It's an admonition not to feel like everything has to be kept from the children, because, in reality, you're keeping less from them than you realize.

And what of school?

School, perhaps, offers fewer opportunities for vitiating the atmosphere than does home life. But teaching may be so watered down and sweetened, teachers may be so suave and condescending, as to bring about a condition of intellectual feebleness and moral softness which it is not easy for a child to overcome.

And if there is anything that can be readily perceived in most of today's schools, it's intellectual feebleness and moral softness. It is an epidemic, and exists in public and private schools alike. What most people have pegged as apathy or a disconnectedness with reality is, in reality, these two previously mentioned conditions. Whether our inability to acknowledge them as such is due to ignorance or convenience (or our own possession of these traits) is yet to be decided.

So what is the answer?

The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every school; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.

How is information treated at your school? On a "need to know" basis? Do we feel the need to filter reality for our students, out of fear that they might come to a conclusion we don't like? We may want to consider the idea that, in doing so, not only are we showing an immense amount of disrespect for the child's personality, but we may be intellectually and morally hobbling them without realizing it.