Woman under socialism

by August Bebel

Our opponents furthermore demean themselves as though to-day one of the greatest pleasures of parents was to have their children about them all day long, and to educate them. It is just the reverse in reality. What hardships and cares are to-day caused by the education of a child, even when a family has but one of them, those parents are best able to judge who are themselves so situated. Several children, in a manner, facilitate education, but then again they give rise to so much more trouble that their father and especially the mother, who is the one to bear the heaviest burden, is happy when the school hour arrives, and thus the house is rid of the children for a portion of the day. Most parents can afford but a very imperfect education to their children. The large majority of fathers and mothers lack time; the former have their business, the latter their household to attend to, and their time is furthermore taken up with social duties. Even when they actually have time, in innumerable instances they lack the ability. How many parents are able to follow the course of their children's education at school, and to take them under the arm in their schoolwork at home? Only few. The mother, who in most such cases has greater leisure at her disposal, lacks capacity; she has not herself received sufficient training. Moreover, the method and the courses of education change so frequently that these are strange to the parents.

Again, the home facilities are generally so poor that the children enjoy neither the necessary comfort, nor order, nor quiet to do their schoolwork at home, or to find there the needed aid. Everything necessary is generally wanting. The home is narrow and overcrowded; small and grown-up brothers and sisters move about over that narrow space; the furniture is not what it should be, and furnishes no facilities to the child for study. Not infrequently light, also air and heat are wanting; the materials for study and work, if there be any of them, are poor; frequently even hunger gnaws at the stomach of the child and robs it of mind and pleasure for its work. As a supplement to this picture, the fact must be added that hundreds of thousands of children are put to all manner of work, domestic and industrial, that embitters their youth and disables them from fulfilling their educational task. Again, often do children have to overcome the resistance of narrow-minded parents when they try to take time for their schoolwork or for play. In short, the obstacles are so numerous that, if they are all taken into account, the wonder is the youth of the land is as well educated. It is an evidence of the health of human nature, and of its inherent ambition after progress and perfection.

Bourgeois society itself recognizes some of these evils by the introduction of public education and by facilitating the same still more through the free supply, here and there, of school material—two things that, as late as about the year 1885 the then Minister of Education of Saxony designated as a "Social Democratic demand," and as such flung the designation in the face of the Socialist Representative in the Landtag. In France, where, after long neglect, popular education advanced so much more rapidly, progress has gone still further. At least in Paris, the school children are fed at public expense. The poor obtain food free, and the children of parents who are better circumstanced contribute thereto a slight tax toward the common treasury—a communistic arrangement that has proved satisfactory to parents and children alike.

An evidence of the inadequacy of the present school system—it is unable to fulfil even the moderate demands made upon it—is the fact that thousands upon thousands of children are unable to fulfil their school duties by reason of insufficient food. In the winter of 1893-94, it was ascertained in Berlin that in one school district alone 3,600 children went to school without breakfast. In such shocking conditions there are hundreds of thousands of children in Germany to-day at certain seasons of the year. With millions of others the nourishment is utterly insufficient. For all these children public alimentation and clothing also would be a godsend. A commonwealth that pursued such a policy and thus, by the systematic nourishing and clothing of the children, would bring humanity home to them, is not likely to see the sight of "penitentiaries." Bourgeois society cannot deny the existence of such misery, which itself has called forth. Hence we see compassionate souls foregathering in the establishment of breakfast and soup houses, to the end of partially filling by means of charity what it were the duty of society to fill in full. Our conditions are wretched—but still more wretched is the mental make-up of those who shut their eyes to such facts.

The system of reducing so-called home school work, and of having the same done at school under the supervision of a teacher is progressing; the inadequacy of home facilities is realized. Not only is the richer pupil at an advantage over the poorer by reason of his position, but also by reason of his having private teachers and such other assistance at his command. On the other hand, however, laziness and shiftlessness are promoted with the rich pupil by reason of the effects of wealth, luxury and superfluity; these make knowledge appear superfluous to him, and often they place before him such immoral sights that he easily slides into temptation. He who every day and every hour hears the praises sung of rank, position, money, property, and that they are all-essential, acquires abnormal conceptions regarding man and his duties, and regarding State and social institutions.

Closely looked into, bourgeois society has no reason to feel indignant at the communistic education, which Socialists aim at. Bourgeois society has itself partly introduced such a system for the privileged classes, but only as a caricature of the original. Look at the cadet and alumni establishments, at the seminaries, at the schools for clergymen, and at the homes for military orphans. In them many thousands of children, partly from the so-called upper classes, are educated in a one-sided and wrongful manner, and in strict cloister seclusion; they are trained for certain specific occupations. And again, many members of the better situated classes, who live in the country or in small places as physicians, clergymen, government employes, factory owners, landlords, large farmers, etc., send their children to boarding schools in the large cities and barely get a glimpse of them, except possibly during vacations.

There is, accordingly, an obvious contradiction between the indignation expressed by our adversaries at a communistic system of education and at "the estrangement of children from their parents," on the one hand, and their own conduct, on the other, in introducing the identical system for their own children—only in a bungling, absolutely false and inadequate style.

In equal tempo with the increased opportunities for education must the number of teachers increase. In the matter of the education of the rising generations the new social order must proceed in a way similar to that which prevails in the army, in the drilling of soldiers. There is one "under-officer" to each eight or ten men. With one teacher to every eight or ten pupils, the future may expect the results that should be aimed at.

The introduction of mechanical activities in the best equipped workshops, in garden and field work, will constitute a good part of the education of the youth. It will all be done with the proper change and without excessive exertion, to the end of reaching the most perfectly developed beings.