The famous Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the Second World War was the inevitable product of good schooling. It's important to underline that Bonhoeffer meant that literally, not metaphorically – schooling after the Prussian fashion removes the ability of the mind to think for itself. It teaches people to wait for a teacher to tell them what to do and if what they have done is good or bad. Prussian teaching paralyses the moral will as well as the intellect. It's true that sometimes well-schooled students sound smart, because they memorize many opinions of great thinkers, but they actually are badly damaged because their own ability to think is left rudimentary and undeveloped.I would love to see the original source for this material.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Bonhoeffer on the power of government schooling
In an article by John Taylor Gatto, he makes the following statement about Bonhoeffer:
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What is interesting to me is that I read recently that Bonhoeffer was given a Charlotte Mason-style education--that his mother was somehow influenced by the PNEU schools of Britain and he was (possibly?) homeschooled by her. I wish I could remember where I read that.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of how CM said in her sixth volume that the German schools *and* WWI were the natural outcome of Darwinism.
Yes, while searching for info on the Gatto quote I came across this one from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge:
ReplyDelete"This home teaching, of course, implied some criticisms of traditional schooling. The Bonhoeffers did not want to hand their children over to others at an early, impressionable age. One of the family sayings was that Germans had their backs broken twice in the course of their lives: first at school, and then during military service."