Contents
supreme value
The former ideology left not at the behest of insidious people, as is sometimes thought and said, but because at its foundation there was a beautiful dream — but an unrealizable one. In fact, few people believed in it, so education was constantly ineffective. The official propaganda, which the school adhered to, strikingly did not correspond to real life.
Now we are back to the real world. That’s the main thing about it: it’s not Soviet, it’s not bourgeois, it’s real, real — the world in which people live. Good or bad, they live. Each nation has its own history, its own national character, its own language and its own dreams — each nation has its own, special. But in general, the world is one, real.
And in this real world there are values, there are higher goals for each person. There is also one supreme value, relative to which all other goals and values are built.
For a teacher, for an educator, for education, it is extremely important to understand what this highest value consists of.
In our opinion, such a supreme value is what people have been dreaming about and arguing about for thousands of years, what is the most difficult for human understanding — freedom.
They ask: who is now to educate?
We answer: a free man.
What is freedom?
Hundreds of books have been written to answer this question, and this is understandable: freedom is an infinite concept. It belongs to the highest concepts of man and therefore, in principle, cannot have an exact definition. The Infinite cannot be defined in words. It is beyond words.
As long as people live, they will try to understand what freedom is and strive for it.
There is no complete social freedom anywhere in the world, there is no economic freedom for every person and, apparently, there cannot be; but there are a great many free people. How does it work?
The word «freedom» contains two different concepts, very different from each other. In fact, we are talking about completely different things.
Philosophers, analyzing this difficult word, came to the conclusion that there is «freedom-from» — freedom from any kind of external oppression and coercion — and there is «freedom-for» — the inner freedom of a person for his self-realization.
External freedom, as already mentioned, is never absolute. But inner freedom can be limitless even in the most difficult life.
Free education has long been discussed in pedagogy. Teachers of this direction strive to give the child external freedom at school. We are talking about something else — about inner freedom, which is available to a person in all circumstances, for which there is no need to create special schools.
Internal freedom does not depend rigidly on external. In the freest state there can be dependent, not free people. In the most unfree, where everyone is somehow oppressed, there can be free. Thus, it is never too early and never too late to educate free people. We must educate free people, not because our society has gained freedom — this is a controversial issue — but because our pupil himself needs inner freedom, no matter what society he lives in.
A free man is a man who is free inwardly. Like all people, outwardly he depends on society. But internally he is independent. Society can be freed externally from oppression, but it can become free only when the majority of people are internally free.
This, in our opinion, should be the goal of education: the inner freedom of a person. Raising internally free people, we bring the greatest benefit both to our pupils and to the country striving for freedom. There is nothing new here; take a closer look at the best teachers, remember your best teachers — they all tried to educate free ones, that’s why they are remembered.
Inwardly free people keep and develop the world.
What is inner freedom?
Inner freedom is as contradictory as freedom in general. An internally free person, a free personality, is free in some ways, but not free in others.
From what is an inwardly free person free? First of all, from fear of people and of life. From popular opinion. He is independent of the crowd. Free from stereotypes of thinking — capable of his own, personal opinion. Free from prejudice. Free from envy, self-interest, from their own aggressive aspirations.
You can say this: it is free human.
A free person is easy to recognize: he just holds himself, thinks in his own way, he never shows either servility or defiant insolence. He values the freedom of every person. He does not boast of his freedom, does not seek freedom at all costs, does not fight for his personal freedom — he always owns it. She was given to him for everlasting possession. He does not live for freedom, but lives freely.
This is an easy person, it is easy with him, he has a full breath of life.
Each of us met free people. They are always loved. But there is something from which a truly free man is not free. This is very important to understand. What is a free man not free from?
From conscience.
What is conscience?
If you do not understand what conscience is, then you will not understand an inwardly free person. Freedom without conscience is a false freedom, it is one of the most severe types of dependence. As if free, but without conscience — a slave to his bad aspirations, a slave to the circumstances of life, and he uses his external freedom for evil. Such a person is called anything, but not free. Freedom in the general consciousness is perceived as good.
Notice an important difference: it doesn’t say that he’s not free from his conscience, as is commonly said. Because there is no conscience. Conscience and their own, and common. Conscience is something that is common to each individual. Conscience is what connects people.
Conscience is the truth that lives between people and in every person. It is one for all, we perceive it with language, with upbringing, in communication with each other. There is no need to ask what truth is, it is as inexpressible in words as freedom. But we recognize it by the sense of justice that each of us experiences when life is true. And everyone suffers when justice is violated — when the truth is violated. Conscience, a purely internal and at the same time social feeling, tells us where the truth is and where the untruth is. Conscience forces a person to adhere to the truth, that is, to live with the truth, in justice. A free man strictly obeys conscience — but only hers.
A teacher whose goal is to educate a free person must maintain a sense of justice. This is the main thing in education.
There is no vacuum. No state order for education is needed. The goal of education is the same for all time — it is the inner freedom of a person, freedom for the truth.
free child
The upbringing of an internally free person begins in childhood. Inner freedom is a natural gift, it is a special talent that can be silenced like any other talent, but it can also be developed. Everyone has this talent to one degree or another, just as everyone has a conscience — but a person either listens to it, tries to live according to conscience, or it is drowned out by the circumstances of life and upbringing.
The goal — free education — determines all forms, ways and methods of communication with children. If a child does not know oppression and learns to live according to his conscience, all worldly, social skills come to him by themselves, about which so much is said in traditional theories of education. In our opinion, education consists only in the development of that inner freedom, which even without us exists in the child, in its support and protection.
But children are self-willed, capricious, aggressive. Many adults, parents, and teachers feel that it is dangerous to give children freedom.
Here is the boundary between two approaches to education.
Anyone who wants to raise a free child accepts him as he is, loves him with a liberating love. He believes in the child, this faith helps him to be patient.
He who does not think about freedom, is afraid of it, does not believe in a child, he inevitably oppresses his spirit and thereby destroys, suppresses his conscience. Love for a child becomes oppressive. It is this unfree upbringing that produces bad people in society. Without freedom, all goals, even if they seem lofty, become false and dangerous for children.
free teacher
In order to grow up free, a child from childhood must see free people next to him, and first of all, a free teacher. Since inner freedom is not directly dependent on society, just one teacher can greatly influence the talent for freedom hidden in every child, as is the case with musical, sports, artistic talents.
The upbringing of a free person is feasible for each of us, for each individual teacher. This is the field where one is a warrior, where one can do everything. Because children are drawn to free people, trust them, admire them, are grateful to them. Whatever happens in the school, the internally free teacher can be the winner.
A free teacher accepts the child as an equal person. And by doing so, he creates an atmosphere around him in which only a free person can grow up.
Perhaps he gives the child a breath of freedom — and thereby saves him, teaches him to value freedom, shows that it is possible to live as a free person.
free school
It is much easier for a teacher to take the first step towards free education, it is easier to show his talent for freedom if he works in a free school.
In a free school, free children and free teachers.
There are not so many such schools in the world, but still they exist, and therefore this ideal is feasible.
The main thing in a free school is not that children are allowed to do whatever they want, not exemption from discipline, but the teacher’s free spirit, independence, respect for the teacher.
There are many very strict elite schools in the world with traditional orders that produce the most valuable people. Because they have free, talented, honest teachers, devoted to their work, and therefore the spirit of justice is maintained in the school. However, in such authoritarian schools, not all children grow up free. For some, the weakest, the talent for freedom is stifled, the school breaks them.
A truly free school is one to which children go with joy. It is in this school that children acquire the meaning of life. They learn to think freely, to be free, to live freely, and to value freedom — their own and each person’s.
The Path to the Education of the Free
Freedom is both a goal and a road.
It is important for the teacher to enter this road and walk along it without deviating too much. The road to freedom is very difficult, you will not pass it without mistakes, but we will stick to the goal.
The first question of the educator of the free: Am I oppressing children? If I force them to do something, for what? I think it’s for their benefit, but am I killing the childish talent for freedom? I have a class in front of me, I need a certain order in order to conduct classes, but am I breaking the child, trying to subordinate him to general discipline?
It is possible that not every teacher will find the answer to every question, but it is important that these questions are asked to oneself.
Freedom dies where fear appears. The path to the education of the free is perhaps the complete elimination of fear. The teacher is not afraid of the children, but the children are not afraid of the teacher either, and freedom comes to the classroom by itself.
Letting go of fear is the first step towards freedom in school.
It remains to add that a free man is always beautiful. Raising spiritually beautiful, proud people — isn’t this a teacher’s dream?