The Reform of Education Part 9

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Referring to the old phrase, _purus mathematicus, purus asinus_.

CHAPTER XI

CONCLUSION

We may look upon the preceding chapters as a kind of general examination to which we submitted our consciences, by reflecting on the way we have always performed our duty as teachers, by considering our purposes, and by scrutinising the internal logic of our task. And our investigation has been eminently human, since indeed man's essence, we have now come to understand, is to acquire self-consciousness.

The patriotic character of the event which was the immediate cause of this work induced me to show that the common spirit which brought us together was not a mere political sentiment, of which we should rid ourselves in crossing the threshold of the school. For we could not but bring into the cla.s.sroom our own humanity and our living personality, in which the content of our teaching and of all education must live. This personality, however it may be considered, from whatever point of view it may be regarded, has no particular substance which is not also at the same time universal,--domestic as the case may be, or social, political, or whatever may be the phase in which it is determined in its historical development. And since, in this historical development of our universal personality, there is Italy with her memories perpetuated by our immanent sentiment, by our immanent consciousness and by our immanent will, we could not possibly be ourselves were we not at the same time Italian educators.

And looking attentively at this universal foundation on which our own human value is supported--call it language, logic, law,--we were led to study the relationship existing between individuality, which is the aim of all forms of education, and this universal spirit which here intervenes as it does in every moment of the human life. It intervenes in education, as the science and the conscience and the entire personality of the teacher. This personality seems to be violently imposed upon the pupil in such a way as to check or hinder his spontaneous development; but we saw that the immediate logical opposition between teacher and learner gradually resolves itself into the unity of the spiritual process in which education becomes actual.

Education therefore appeared to us, not as a fact which is empirically observable, and which may be fixed and looked upon as subject to natural laws, but rather as a mystical formation of a super-individual spirituality, which is the only real, concrete personality actualised by the individual. In order to understand it, we had to liberate it from every kind of contact with culture in its materialistic acceptance; and we therefore insisted on the speculative inquiry into what we called the realistic point of view. We endeavoured to explain how and why culture is the very process of education, and the very process of the personality in which education takes place. This conception would have lacked the necessary support, had we not carried our investigation further, and shown that this culture in which the spirit unfolds itself is not the attribute of a mind existing amidst other minds and face to face with surrounding nature, but is instead the most genuine signification of All. For it is the life of the spirit in which everything gathers to find its support and become thinkable. Man, as he is educated, is man rigorously considered as spirit,--spirit which is free, because infinite and truly universal in every one of its moments and att.i.tudes. This the educator must intently consider if he wants to conceive adequately his task and its enormous responsibilities, which become evident when he reflects how in the monad of the individual, in the simple soul of the child entrusted to his creative care, the infinite vibrates, and a life is born at every instant, which thence throbs over the boundless expanse of s.p.a.ce, of time, and of all reality.

This adequate conception need not be elaborated into a complete system of philosophy. The educator must sense and grasp this infinite over which every word of his is carried, every glance of his, every gesture.

As he enters the cla.s.sroom, as he approaches the child, to whom not only _magna reverentia_ is due, but the very cult which is shown to things divine, he cannot but feel himself exalted; he cannot but be fully conscious of the difficulties of his lofty station, and of the duty of overcoming them. He must therefore dismiss from within himself all that is petty in his particular personality, all his preoccupations and pa.s.sions, all his commonplace everyday thoughts. He must shake off the depressing burden of the flesh, which pulls him downward; and he will then open his soul to fortifying Faith, to the ruling and inspiring Deity. The man who is not capable of feeling in the School the sanct.i.ty of the place and of his work is not fit to be an educator.

The spirituality of education becomes however an empty formula, and a motif for rhetorical variations, if on the one hand we do not possess the concept of the essence or of the attributes of the spirit, and if on the other we do not sharply expose those realistic prejudices of pedagogy which have been maintained in the field of education by the materialistic conception of man and by a tradition which is both unreflecting and alien to all radical criticism. I tried to satisfy both these exigencies rather by arousing the reflection and impelling it on its way than by escorting it on a journey which must be undertaken with due preparation.

And finally, in the effort to provide ourselves with a motto, so to speak, and a rallying banner, I set forth the doctrine of educational unity--of the education which is always at all moments education of the spirit. For even physical culture is conceivable only as formation of the mind, and more properly of character. Education, we saw, may be made actual in a thousand different ways, only always on condition that we observe the law which proceeds from its innermost essence and const.i.tutes its immanent ideal. Every education is good, provided it is education--philosophical, human, mind-stirring education; provided it does not bring atrophy to any necessary function of the spirit, does not crush the spirit under the weight either of things or of the divinity, nor excessively exalt it in the consciousness of its own personal power; provided it neither hurls it into the free abstract world of dreams nor fetters it in the iron chains of an inhuman reality; and provided it does not shatter it and scatter its fragments by the multiple investigations of things innumerable, the knowledge of which can never bring satisfaction. For it is the function of education to enable the centralising unity of the reflective spirit to become articulate and varied through the multiplicity of life and of experience, which is the actuality of the spirit itself. Opposition to all abstractions, in behalf of the concrete spirit and of liberty--that is our educational ideal.

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THE REFORM OF EDUCATION. By GIOVANNI GENTILE. With an Introduction by Benedetto Croce. Translated by Dino Bigongiari.

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