Pedagogics as a System

by Karl Rosenkranz

§ 26. It is necessary to draw a sharp line between work and play. If the Educator has not respect for work as an activity of great weight and importance, he not only spoils the relish of the pupil for play, which loses all its charm of freedom when not set off by its antithesis of earnest labor, but he undermines in the pupil's mind all respect for any real existence. On the other hand, he who does not give to the child space, time, and opportunity for play prevents the originality of his pupil from free development through the exercise of his creative ingenuity. Play sends the child back to his work refreshed, because in it he loses himself without constraint and according to his own fancy, while in work he is required to yield himself up in a manner prescribed for him by another.

Let the teacher watch his pupils while at play if he would discover their individual peculiarities, for it is then that they unconsciously betray their real propensities. This antithesis of work and play runs through the entire life, the form only of play varying with years and occupations. To do what we please, as we please, and when we please, not for any reason, but just because we please, remains play always. Children in their sports like nothing better than to counterfeit what is to be the earnest work of their after-lives. The little girl plays with her dolls, and the boy plays he is a soldier and goes to mimic wars.

It is, of course, an error to suppose that the play of a child is simply muscular. The lamb and the colt find their full enjoyment in capering aimlessly about the field. But to the child play would be incomplete which did not bring the mind into action. Children derive little enjoyment from purely muscular exercise. They must at the same time have an object requiring mental action to attain it. A number of children set simply to run up and down a field would tire of the exercise in five minutes; but put a ball amongst them and set them to a game and they will be amused by it for hours.

Exceptional mental development is always preceded, and is, indeed, produced by, an exceptional amount of exercise in the form of play on the part of the special faculties concerned. The peculiar tendencies exhibited in play are due to the large development of particular faculties, and the ultimate giant strength of a faculty is brought about by play. The genius is no doubt born, not made; but, although born, it would dwindle away in infancy were it not for the constant exercise taken in play, which is as necessary for development as food for the maintenance of life.

§ 27. Work should never be treated as if it were play, nor play as if it were work. Those whose work is creative activity of the mind may find recreation in the details of science; and those, again, whose vocation is scientific research can find recreation in the practice of art in its different departments. What is work to one may thus be play to another. This does not, however, contradict the first statement.

§ 28. It is the province of education so to accustom us to different conditions or ways of thinking and acting that they shall no longer seem strange or foreign to us. When these have become, as we say, "natural" to us—when we find the acquired mode of thinking or acting just what our inclination leads us to adopt unconsciously, a Habit has been formed. A habit is, then, the identity of natural inclination with the special demands of any particular doing or suffering, and it is thus the external condition of all progress. As long as we require the conscious act of our will to the performance of a deed, that deed is somewhat foreign to ourselves, and not yet a part of ourselves. The practical work of the educator may thus be said to consist in leading the mind of the pupil over certain lines of thought till it becomes "natural" or spontaneous for him to go by that road. Much time is wasted in schools where the pupil's mind is not led aright at first, for then he has to unlearn habits of thought which are already formed. The work of the teacher is to impress good methods of studying and thinking upon the minds of his pupils, rather than to communicate knowledge.

§ 29. It is, at first sight, entirely indifferent what a Habit shall relate to—i.e., the point is to get the pupil into the way of forming habits, and it is not at first of so much moment what habit is formed as that a habit is formed. But we cannot consider that there is anything morally neutral in the abstract, but only in the concrete, or in particular examples. An action may be of no moral significance to one man, and under certain circumstances, while to another man, or to the same man under different circumstances, it may have quite a different significance, or may possess an entirely opposite character. Appeal must be made, then, to the individual conscience of each one to decide what is and what is not permissible to that individual under the given circumstances. Education must make it its first aim to awaken in the pupil a sensitiveness to spiritual and ethical distinctions which knows that nothing is in its own nature morally insignificant or indifferent, but shall recognize, even in things seemingly small, a universal human significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral rectitude.

When we reflect upon habit, it at once assumes for us the character of useful or injurious. The consequences of a habit are not indifferent.

Whatever action tends as a harmonious means to the realization of our purpose is desirable or advantageous, and whatever either partially contradicts or wholly destroys it is disadvantageous. Advantage and disadvantage being, then, only relative terms, dependent upon the aim or purpose which we happen to have in view, a habit which may be advantageous to one man under certain circumstances may be disadvantageous to another man, or even to the same man, under other circumstances. Education must, then, accustom the youth to consider for himself the expediency or inexpediency of any action in relation to his own vocation in life. He must not form habits which will be inexpedient with regard to that.

§ 31. There is, however, an absolute distinction of habits as morally good and bad. From this absolute stand-point we must, after all, decide what is for us allowable or forbidden, what is expedient and what inexpedient.