To supply workers in these future schools, new normal schools must be provided. Patented pedagogy will give place to a type of teaching which considers the individual. Only the person who naturally or by training can play with children, live with children, learn from children, is fond of children, will be placed in the school to develop there for himself his individual methods. Positions will be given only after a year's trial. When this period is passed the teachers will not be tested by the examiner alone, one who has followed the instruction given by them during the year, but the children themselves will also be heard from on this question. Of course, no absolute value can be assigned to the judgment of children, but nevertheless it has a really great importance. The instinct of the child chooses with astonishing accuracy what is first-class. But what, in the case of the child, has this character? This question has been answered by Goethe, "The greatest fortune of the earth's children is personality alone."
At the present time objectivity in instruction is exalted, but every great educator has achieved success by being entirely subjective. The teacher should be a lover of truth. Therefore he should never force a resisting object to serve his own views. As a result of this attitude, the more subjective he is, the better. The fuller and richer he communicates to the children the essence and power of his own view of life and his own character, so much the more will he forward their real development, provided, however, that he does not force upon them his opinions with the claim of infallibility. In this as in all other matters, the young should be allowed to exercise free choice.
The teachers of both sexes in my school will have short hours of work, a long time to rest, and a large salary; that is, they will have the possibility of a continuous development. The limit of their service will be twenty years. After this period, they will become members of a school jury composed of parents and teachers, or they will assist in final examinations, as censors. These will be conducted as indicated above, in such a way that each censor shall pass a summer either at home or abroad, in company with young people, not more than five in number. By living with them the censor will be able to measure their capacity for absorbing an education; he can direct them in the choice of a profession. By a "Socratic" communication of practical wisdom, he will supply a substitute for the Confirmation Instruction which will no longer be given. The psychological value of this instruction is not to be actually found in what one learns from it, but in the direction of the mind to the serious questions and pursuits of life, in the awakening of ethical self-development, which is the factor of supreme importance in passing from childhood to youth. In this way the young will be initiated into the art of life. I mean by this the art of making one's own personality, one's own existence, an object of artistic interest and pursuit. The initiation will be conducted by a wise man, or by a woman who has kept her youthfulness, so that she understands the joys and pains of the young, their play and their seriousness, their dreams and aspirations, their faults and their dangers—leaders who can give indirect suggestions how young people should play their own melodies in the orchestra of life.
My school will not come into existence while governments make their greatest sacrifices for militarism. Only when this tendency is overcome, a point in development will be reached, where one can see that the dearest school programme is also the cheapest. People will realise that strong manly brains and heart have the greatest social value. I have already said that this is no reform plan for the present that I am outlining here, only a dream for the future. But in our wonderful existence dreams are becoming at last actual realities.[1]
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Since I wrote the above, there have been founded in England, France, also in Norway, reformed schools, working more or less in the direction I have outlined.
CHAPTER VII RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
At the present moment the most demoralising factor in education is Christian religious instruction. What I mean by this is principally catechism, Scripture history, theology, and church history. Even earnest Christians have said, regarding the ordinary instruction in these subjects, that nothing shows better how deeply religion is rooted in man's nature than the fact that "religious education" is not able to destroy religion.