Pedagogical
tragedy
Boris Gulko
In
the last hundred years, civilization has experienced two failures - Russian and
German, and now it is watching in horror the approaching third - American. It
is possible to single out the particular reasons for each of them, but there is
a general one. This reason nests in the dominant doctrines of upbringing and
education in these failed societies.
Education
begins with fairy tales. In Russian and European traditions, it was believed
that a child should be frightened as much as possible in childhood. Russian
baba Yaga eats children. There is Kashchei the Immortal to match her. The
Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, (author of “Cinderella) told scary fairy
tales - in them children were devoured by giants, and parents could easily take
their children to the woods to be eaten by wild animals.
The
most Russian of the fairy tales - about Emelya, whose desires were fulfilled
"at the behest of a pike," inspired in kids a dream to live a
luxurious carefree life of doing nothing. The Russian literary leaders and
teachers of the people in 19th century pointed the way to this happy future:
Chernyshevsky[Unknown A1] called the people "to take an ax", Nechaev
founded the "Society of People's reprisal",
Bakunin and Kropotkin became theorists of anarchism, and ESERs (the Social Revolutionaries) practiced terrorism. Lenin, communist leader
called for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
expropriation of the expropriators, in other words - to take everything from
those who have and divide it up between those who have not. Adepts of
progressive ideas, leaving their class, carried these ideas to the people. The
Narodniks, Social Democrats, propagated in workers' circles.
Great
Russian writer Bunin[Unknown A2] reported in “Cursed Days” about the most famous of these
“teachers”, Alexandra Kollontai:[Unknown A3] “She once looked like an angel. In the morning she got
dressed in the most unpretentious dress and rode to the slums where the workers
lived - “she went to work”. Upon returning home, she took a bath, put on a
little blue shirt, grabbed a box of chocolates and cuddled up with her
girlfriend in bed: "Come on,
friend, now let's have a good chat!"
The
monstrous atrocities of the revolution and the Civil
War in Russia can be explained by the fact that the country did not know the
Renaissance with its humanistic ideals. Germany is another matter. The local
national socialists of the thirties worked for their people, united them with
the Nazism ideology, the aggression of which was directed outside, at others.
In Soviet books, they wrote a lie that Nazism was the ideology of the petty
bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, butchers. Historian Paul Johnson, in his book “The
Intellectuals”, reports that the Fuhrer's most ardent supporters were students
and schoolteachers. The latter taught their pupils not class hatred, but racial
hatred. On the whole, with their Renaissance, they got no less ferocious then
Russians.
Modern
American pedagogy has rejected overseas educational methods. Children in the
United States are protected from the cradle from every cruelty and any encounter
with violence - both in life and in books. It is clear - no "Brothers
Grimm" for them! American teachers
create conflict-free fairy tales for children. This is how the current
generation of young people, called the “generation of snowflakes” for their sensitivity,
lives, stepping from kindergartens to schools, and from there to colleges and
universities, with illusion, and then with the demand for a conflict-free world
around them. In the American educational space, new concepts have emerged:
"micro-aggression" - something insignificant, which, if desired, can
be considered aggression directed against minorities, which include everyone
except heterosexual white men; "Safe space" - a place where the
student is guaranteed to be protected from the danger of hearing something that
may upset him; trigger-warning that the student's "safe space" is in
danger. For example, when the instructor is going to tell biology students that
wolves eat hares. This can be frustrating for vegetarians and animal advocates.
The "culture of abolition" is adopted by "snowflakes" -
this is when a professor, thinker or writer who carries views not shared by the
"snowflakes" is "abolished" - banished from life -
professional and social - by united efforts. It’s clear that jokes are prohibited,
since a joke may contain something that may offend someone. And it takes truly
little to offend a "snowflake". Therefore, Halloween outfits suddenly
became a cause of a scandal in Yale University.
According
to this description, one might get the impression that a touchingly tender,
defenseless generation has grown up in America. Not so. "Snowflakes"
are extremely aggressive when something can disturb the crystal palace of
political correctness and progressive values they have created. Several years
ago, a liberal sociology professor invited the distinguished scientist Charles
Murray to give a lecture to her students. Murray was one of the authors of the
classical study “The Bell Curve” on the uneven distribution of intelligence
among human races. Murray managed to escape safely from the angry crowd of
students, but the professor who invited Murray was less fortunate - some
"snowflake" tried to remove the scalp from her, grabbing her hair
with both hands. The professor required medical help.
In
general, the educational process in American universities has acquired the
opposite dynamics: now it is not the professors who decide what to teach the
"snowflakes", but they choose what they agree to study. If you try to
teach them something that does not correspond to their "snowflakes"
idea of "safe space", then you can share the fate of the injured
professor.
In
early 2016, I published an essay, "American Universities as Grand
Inquisitor," on the indoctrination of students by leftist professors. This
essay is out of date today. Now the "snowflakes" students themselves
are throwing out even leftist professors from universities, if the leftism of
those is not what they need. One of these unfortunate people came to complain
about his fate to channel "Fox" known to be “right wing” - who else
will listen to him? "Of course, you voted for Hillary in the last
election?" - the presenter asked the professor, wanting to make sure that
the professor was from the “left.” “Of course not,” he replied. “I’m progressive,”
which meant voting for some extreme socialist or environmentalist.
A
special place in the ideology of American youth - a category expanded today for
everyone under 40 - is occupied by the fight against the "white
privilege" - the innate guilt of white-faced, it is assumed - men, which
consists of their success in science, culture, entrepreneurship, management,
success that humiliates the rest. Noel Ignatiev, the ideologist of the “new
left” suffering from “white privilege”, planning to destroy the white race,
made an exception for women: “Some brothers love to have white women. After
all, white females can be used to reproduce.”
The
Cultural Revolution [Unknown A4] taking place in the United States is assembled from parts
of the Russian, Chinese and German Revolutions. From the first
"snowflakes" they learned aggressiveness and anarchism, from the
second - the totality of indoctrination of youth, and the American struggle
against the "white privilege" is inverted Nazism. The doctrine of the
guilt of the white race in its dominance in culture, science, economy is no
less absurd than the hatred of the Nazis for the Jews who gave Germany the
religion, the national poet and the greatest achievements in many areas of
life.
It
is disappointing that all attempts of pedagogy to overcome past failures - the
education of idealist terrorists in Russia, Nazis in Germany, Red Guards in
China - only lead to new failures. It seems that in America they took into
account the mistakes of the past and raised their children on a different
basis. But for some reason now in the USA the youth of Antifa and BLM have
grown up with the same hatred for the wrong race as among the German
stormtroopers, for culture - like among the Red Guards, for dissidents - like
among the Bolsheviks. We can say that all these ideologies, including current
progressivism, are anti-religious. So, after all, we do not miss the Holy
Inquisition too much. This is some kind of enchanted science doomed to failure
- pedagogy!
In
the late 1960s, Lord Chesterfield's “Letters to the Son”, according to Voltaire
- "the best thing ever written about education" was published in
Moscow. Students of the psychology department of Moscow State University rushed
to buy this great pedagogical work. I quickly yearned for the letters
themselves, but with interest I learned that Chesterfield, the son, to whom the
letters were addressed, grew up unlucky and died at 36, having not
distinguished himself in anything worthy in our world. And this is a typical
fate of the children of great pedagogue, who
usually grew up useless.
Particularly
surprising is the fate of the children of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of
the theory of the natural development of the child, which he outlined in the
book "Emile, or On Education". “Everything is fine when it comes out
of the hands of the Creator: everything deteriorates in the hands of man” -
wrote the great pedagogue and suggested not to interfere with the
process of education, leaving it to nature. This expression of extreme
pedagogical pessimism is fraught with the production of a savage.
Rousseau
gave his five children to an orphanage so as not to interfere with his work.
The inmates of these orphanages, wrote Paul Johnson, had two ways: to the
churchyard or to vagrants. It is not surprising that, according to
Jean-Jacques's biographers, he was killed by his wife, who gave birth to these
unfortunate children.
However,
mankind had one genuinely great teacher. 33 and a half centuries ago, Moses,
over 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, raised from the crowd of former
slaves whom he brought out of Egypt, grumpy idolaters - a great nation. A
significant part of the descendants of the people created by Moses still remain
faithful to his lessons.
According
to Maimonides[Unknown A5] , one of the 13 principles of Judaism is faith in the
coming of the Messiah. Mist is his intended role.
Maimonides
believed that the Messiah would win the wars and gather Jews in the Land of
Israel. The Israelis have miraculously won their wars. And current events in
the United States could bring the last large Jewish community from Galut
(Jewish Diaspora) to Israel, completing the gathering. Messiah, or Mashiach as Jews call him, must
restore the Temple. Nothing prevents us now, without waiting for him, to do
this work ourselves.
Perhaps
the Mashiach will bring us the art of pedagogy? In this case, all Israelis will
become worthy of the messianic time in which we live, and our youth will not be
buzzing about with black flags at night, suspiciously reminding their American
peers of Antifa and BLM.
Translated by
Alla Axelrod 8/17/20
Nikolay Gavrilovich
Chernyshevsky was a Russian revolutionary, materialist philosopher, writer, editor,
critic, and socialist. He was the leader of the revolutionary movement of the
1860s, and had an influence on Vladimir Lenin, His most important work was a
novel “What is to be done” 1863.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was
the first Russian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted
for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian
traditions in the writing of prose and poetry
Alexandra Mikhailovna
Kollontai was a Marxist revolutionary and theoretician, first as a member of
the Mensheviks, then from 1915 on as a Bolshevik.
The term is used here
ironically (also called also called the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution). It refers to a political movement initiated by Mao Zedong China from 1966 to 1976 to purge the Communist Party
of his opponents and instill revolutionary values in the younger generation.
Moses ben Maimon, commonly
known as Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam, was a medieval
Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and
influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. In his time, he was also a preeminent
astronomer and physician.
18.08 19:20 MIGnews.com
Во избежание недоразумений — да, это таки плохо. Очень плохо, что сорвалась аннексия. Но в этом не стоит винить как бы договор с эмиратами, это — из другой фильмы. Нет худа без добра — по крайней мере, можем на минуточку заглянуть под тот ковер, где дерутся бульдоги, в ту ведьмину кухню, где варится дипломатия.
