5. Education and Good Life
教育与美好生活
Bertrand Russell
伯特兰罗素
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伯特兰?罗素(1872—1970)是二十世纪伟大的哲学家、数学家、逻辑学家以及社会思想家、活动家 是诺贝尔文学奖的获得者。他先后在剑桥大学、芝加哥大学、加利福尼亚大学任教。1920 年到中
国讲学 宣传他的唯心主义哲学 对旧中国学术界有一定影响。第一次世界大战时 他是和平主义者。晚年反对战争 同时却宣扬战争恐怖。主要教育著作有 《教育与美好生活》、《教育与社会秩序》。
罗素曾于 1927—1934 年开办一所私立学校 名皮肯希尔 (Beaconhill) 学校试验他的教育理论是当时英国资产阶级的“进步学校”之一。他一直鼓吹资产阶级的“自由教育”、“爱的教育”和更多地发展
个人主义。他认为教育的基本目的是品格的发展 而“活力、勇气、敏感和智慧”是形成“理想品格”的基础 并深信通过对儿童的身体、感情和智力上的“恰当的处理” 可以使这些品质得到普遍的培养。
《教育和美好生活》是伯特兰?罗素在美国出版时书名 在英国出版时书名为《论教育 尤其是儿童早期教育》。本书出版后受到热烈欢迎 一版再版 成为二十世纪教育经典著作之一 罗素也因此跻身于二十世纪最杰出的教育家的行列。 教育是一门复杂的科学 它的理论基础几乎涵盖与人类相关的所有学科 而罗素就是这样一位文理兼通的集大成学者。他以一个睿智的哲人眼光 从常人难以企及的深度和广度 对素质教育方方面面的问题都作了深入的理性的辩证的分析。自我牺牲精神一直被视为一种美德 罗素却强调 孩子真正需要的是公平的观念而不是自我牺牲的观念。每个人在世上都占有一席之地 维护自己应得的一切 不应被视为罪恶。基于这一认识 再对孩子进行公平公正的教育才具有说服力和真正收到效果。诚实被罗素认为是比财富和声望更重要的东西。他坦言 这个虚伪的世界对诚实的人是有些不利 但诚实所带来的整体的长远的优势要高于这种不利。对于一个优秀的人 内在的自重和正直是必不可少的。诸如让孩子尽情地玩 玩中学 学中玩 不管学什么 孩子没兴趣或厌烦了就不要勉强等论调目前正大行其道。罗素则认为 要使一种真正的教育完全不显枯燥是不可能的 关键是要激励孩子的好奇心和理想 让孩子体验克服困难取得成功的乐趣 明白学习枯燥部分的重要性 他就会为了实现某个雄心壮志自愿忍受单调乏味的训练。
The American public schools achieve successfully a task never before attempted on a large
scale: the task of transforming a heterogeneous selection of mankind into a homogeneous nation. This is done so ably, and is on the whole such a beneficent work, that on the balance great praise is due to those who accomplish it. But America, like Japan, is placed in a peculiar situation, and what the special circumstances justify is not necessarily an ideal to be followed everywhere and always. America has had certain advantages and certain difficulties. Among the advantages were: a higher standard of wealth; freedom from the danger of defeat in war; comparative absence of cramping traditions inherited from the Middle Ages. Immigrants found in America a generally diffused sentiment of democracy and an advanced stage of industrial technique. These, I think, are the two chief reasons why almost all of them came to admire America more than their native countries. But actual immigrants, as a rule, retain a dual patriotism; in European struggles they continue to take passionately the side of the nation to which they originally belonged. Their children, on the contrary, lose all loyalty to the country from which their parents have come, and become merely and simply Americans. The attitude of the parents is attributable to the general of America; that of the children is
very largely determined by their school education. It is only the contribution of the school that concerns us.
In so far as the school can rely upon the genuine merits of America, there is no need to
associate the teaching of American patriotism with the inculcation of false standards. But where the old world is superior to the new, it becomes necessary to instill a contempt for genuine excellences. The intellectual level in Western Europe and the artistic level in Eastern Europe are, on the whole, higher than in America. Throughout Western Europe, except in Spain and Portugal, there is less theological superstition than in America. In almost all European countries the individual is less subject to herd domination than in America: his inner freedom is greater even where his political freedom is less. In these respects, the American public schools do harm. The harm is essential to the teaching of an exclusive American patriotism. The harm, as with the Japanese and the Jesuits, comes from regarding the pupils as means to an end, not as ends in themselves. The teacher should love his children better than his State or his church; otherwise he is not an ideal teacher.
When I say that pupils should be regarded as ends, not as means, I may be met by the retort that, after all, everybody is more important as a means than as an end. What man is as an end perishes when he dies; what he reduces as a means continues to the end of time. We cannot deny this, but we can deny the consequences deduced from it. A man's importance as a means may be for good or for evil; the remote effects of human actions are so uncertain that a wise man will tend to dismiss them from his calculations . Broadly speaking, good men have good effects, and bad men bad effects. This, of course, is not an invariable law of nature. A bad man may murder a tyrant, because he has committed crimes which the tyrant intends to punish; the effects of his act may be good, though he and his act are bad. Nevertheless, as a broad general rule, a community of men and women who are intrinsically excellent will have better effects than one composed of people who are ignorant and malevolent. Apart from such considerations, children and young people feel instinctively the difference between those who genuinely wish them well and those who regard them merely as raw material for some scheme. Neither character nor intelligence will develop as well or as freely where the teacher is deficient in love; and love of this kind consists essentially in feeling the child as an end . We all have this feeling about ourselves: we desire good things for ourselves without first demanding a proof that some purpose will be furthered by our obtaining them. Every ordinarily affectionate parent feels the same sort of thing about his or her children. Parents want their children to grow, to be strong and healthy, to do well at school, and so on, in just the same way in which they want things for themselves; no effort of self-denial and no abstract principle of justice is involved in taking trouble about such matters. This is apparental instinct is not always strictly confined to one's own children. Diffused form, it must exist in anyone who is to be a good teacher of little boys and girls. As the pupils grow older, it grows less important. But only those who possess it can be trusted to draw up schemes of education. Those who regard it as one of the purposes of male education to produce men willing to kill and be killed for frivolous reasons are clearly deficient in diffused parental feeling; yet they control education in all civilized countries except Denmark and China.
But it is not enough that the educator should love the young; it is necessary also that he should have a right conception of human excellence. Cats teach their kittens to catch mice and play with them; militarists do likewise with the human young. The cat loves the kitten, but not the mouse; the militarist may love his own son, but not the sons of his country's enemies. Even those who love all mankind may err through a wrong conception of the good life. I shall try,
therefore, before going any further, to give an idea of what I consider excellent in men and women, quite without regard to practicality, or to the educational methods by which it might be brought into being. Such a picture will help us afterwards, when we come to consider the details of education; we shall know the direction in which we wish to move.
We must first make a distinction: some qualities are desirable in a certain proportion of
mankind, others are desirable universally. We want artists, but we also want men of science. We want great administrators, but we also want ploughmen and millers and bakers. The qualities which produce a man of great eminence in some one direction are often such as might be undesirable if they were universal. Shelley describes the day's work of a poet as follows:
He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow-bees in the ivy bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be.
These habits are praiseworthy in a poet, but not─shall we say─in a postman. We cannot
therefore frame our education with a view to giving everyone the temperament of a poet. But some characteristics are universally desirable, and it is these alone that I shall consider at this stage.
I make no distinction whatever between male and female excellence. ain amount of occupational training is desirable for a woman who is to have the care of babies, but that only involves the same sort of difference as there is between a farmer and a miller. It is in no degree fundamental, and does not demand consideration at our present level.
I will take four characteristics which seem to me jointly to form the basis of an ideal character: vitality, courage, sensitiveness, and intelligence. I do not suggest that this list is complete, but I think it carries us a good way. Moreover, I firmly believe that, by proper physical, emotional, and intellectual care of the young, these qualities could all be made very common.