Woman and Socialism

by August Bebel

The insufficiency of our present educational system—it often fails to accomplish the moderate aims it has set for itself—becomes evident from the fact that thousands upon thousands of children are unable to get along at school on account of insufficient nourishment.

Every winter there are thousands of children in our cities who come to school without breakfast. Hundreds of thousands of others are chronically underfed. To all these children public feeding and clothing would be a blessing. In a community that will, by proper care and nourishment, teach them what it means to be human, they will not become acquainted with a house of “correction.” Bourgeois society cannot deny the existence of this misery, and so compassionate souls unite to found free-lunch establishments and soup-kitchens, to perform, as a charity, what ought to be performed by society as a duty. Recently a few municipalities have undertaken to feed poor children at public expense. But all this is insufficient and must be accepted as a charitable gift, while it should be demanded as a right.[262]

It is well that the amount of home-work is being reduced in our schools, since the insufficiency of home facilities has been recognized. The child of wealthy parents is at an advantage over his poorer schoolmate, not only because he is privileged by outward circumstances, but also because he is helped at home by a governess or a tutor. On the other hand, laziness and carelessness are fostered in the child of wealthy parents, because their wealth makes study appear superfluous to him, and because demoralizing examples are frequently placed before him and he is approached by many temptations. He who learns daily and hourly that rank, position and wealth count for everything, acquires a peculiar conception of human duties and of the institutions of state and society.

When we examine this question more closely we find that bourgeois society has no reason to become indignant over the communistic methods of education aimed at by Socialists, for it has itself introduced such methods for privileged classes, but in a distorted manner. We need but point to the cadet schools, the seminaries and colleges for the clergy. Here thousands of children, some of them belonging to the upper classes, are trained in the most absurd and one-sided way and in strict monastic seclusion for certain occupations. Many members of the better classes, like physicians, clergymen, officials, manufacturers, large farmers, etc., who live in small towns where there are no higher institutions of learning, send their children to boarding-schools in large cities, and do not see them during the entire year, except at vacation time. It is a contradiction, then, when our opponents decry a communistic system of education and estrangement between parents and children, and at the same time introduce a similar system of education, only in a wrong, insufficient and distorted manner, for their own children. Only too frequently are the children of the rich not educated by their parents at all, but by nurses, governesses and tutors. A special chapter might be written on this subject that would not cast a favorable light on the family relations of these classes. Here, too, hypocrisy prevails and conditions are anything but ideal, both for the educated and the educators.

In accordance with the entirely altered system of education that aims at the physical and mental development and culture of the young, the teaching force must be increased. The training of the rising generation should be provided for in the same way as the training of the soldiers is provided for in the German army. Here one officer has charge of from 8 to 10 men. If in future a similar number of pupils will be placed under the guidance of one teacher, the desired aims will be attained. Introduction into mechanical activities in the splendidly equipped workshops, and into horticultural and agricultural activities, will also constitute an important factor in the future education of the young. Everything will be taught with a proper variation of occupations and without over-exertion, in order to educate harmoniously developed human beings.

Education must be the same for both sexes and must be given in common to both. Separation of the sexes is justifiable only in cases where the differences of sex make it absolutely necessary. In this manner of education the United States is far advanced over Europe. Here education has been introduced from the primary school to the university. Not only is education furnished free, but the school supplies also, inclusive of the tools for manual training, lessons in cooking, and articles used by the pupils in the study of chemistry and physics. Many schools are equipped with gymnasiums, swimming-pools and playgrounds. In the higher schools the girls are trained in gymnastics, swimming, rowing, running, etc., as well as the young men.[263]...

The Socialistic system of education will attain still higher results. Properly regulated and ordered and placed under able control, it will continue until the age at which society declares its young men and women to be of age. Then the members of both sexes will be fully prepared to perform all duties and to enjoy all rights. Then society will be certain of having educated capable, fully developed members, human beings to whom nothing human is foreign, who are as familiar with their own nature as they are with the nature and condition of society, into which they forthwith enter, enjoying full equality. So the excesses of our modern youth that are daily increasing, and that are a natural product of our disintegrating social conditions, will disappear. Unruliness, lack of self-control, immorality and brutal sensuality, which characterize the modern young men at our higher institutions of learning, our colleges and universities, and that are the result of domestic demoralization and unrest and of the baneful influences of social life, will not mark the young men of the future. The evil influences of the factory system and the congested dwellings, that cause young people to be self-assertive and unbridled at an age when human beings are in the greatest need of education and of being trained to exercise self-control, will also disappear. Future society will avoid all these evils without being obliged to resort to compulsory measures. The social institutions and the resulting intellectual atmosphere that will dominate society will simply make the existence of such evils impossible. In society, as in nature, diseases and the destruction of organisms take place only where a process of decay has set in.

None will deny that our present system of education is afflicted with great and serious defects, and, as a matter of fact, these defects are more marked with the higher schools and institutions of learning than with the lower ones. A village school is a model of moral healthfulness compared with a college; a sewing school for poor girls, a model of morality compared with a number of fashionable boarding schools. It is not hard to find the reason for this. Among the upper classes of society every striving after higher aims has been smothered; they are devoid of ideals. Owing to the lack of ideals and loftier aspirations, the unbounded love of enjoyment and the inclination to excesses are disseminated, with their resulting physical and moral deterioration. How can young persons, growing up in such an atmosphere, be different? A purely material enjoyment of life, carried to extremes, is all they see and know. Why should they strive after higher aims when the wealth of their parents makes every endeavor appear superfluous? The maximum education of the great majority of sons of the German bourgeoisie, consists in their passing the examination for one year’s voluntary service in the army. When they have attained this aim, they believe that they have absorbed all knowledge worth knowing and regard themselves as demi-gods. If they have obtained a reserve-officer’s certificate, their conceit and arrogance knows no bounds. The influence exercised by this generation, most of whose members are weak in character and knowledge, but strong in servility, characterize the present period as the “age of reserve officers.” Its peculiarities are: Ignorance, lack of character, and a servile disposition. Men fawn on their superiors, and are arrogant and brutal to their inferiors. Most of the daughters of the upper classes are trained to be society ladies, walking fashion plates and silly dolls. They rush from one enjoyment to another, until they grow weary with the boredom of their empty lives, and fall victims to many real and imaginary diseases. When they grow old they become religious fanatics, spiritualists and faith healers, who turn up their eyes at the wickedness of the world and preach asceticism. In regard to the lower classes, efforts are being made to further diminish their standard of education. The fear prevails that the proletarian might become too wise, that he might tire of his subjection and rebel against his earthly gods. The more ignorant the masses are, the more easily can they be governed and controlled. Large landowners from the East-Elbe province have repeatedly declared in their meetings: “The most stupid workingman is the one most welcome to us.” An entire program is contained in this one sentence.

So present-day society is as helpless and aimless in regard to the question of education as it is in regard to all other questions. What methods, then, does it resort to? It calls for punishment and preaches religion; that is, it preaches submissiveness and contentment to those who are far too submissive and contented already; it teaches abstinence, where poverty compels people to abstain from the very necessities of life. They who brutally rebel against this state of affairs are placed in so-called “reformatories” that are generally controlled by religious influences. That is the limit of the pedagogical wisdom of our society. The vicious methods of education applied to neglected and demoralized proletarian children become manifest by the frequent cases of abuse and ill-treatment committed by the directors, overseers, etc., in these “homes”(!) Here it has been shown time and again how religious fanatics of the deepest dye have, with a perverted pleasure, ill-treated poor, helpless children with unspeakable brutality; and how many of these horrors may never become known!