バートランド・ラッセル「学級内秩序と望ましい規律」
* 原著＊Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916, chapt.5: Education
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』
出典：
以下は、牧野力氏による要旨訳（ただし、字句を少し修正）に原文を追加したものです。
服従と規律は学級の秩序を保ち、何らかの教育・指導(instruction)を与える上で、不可欠と考えられている。ある程度それは真実だ。しかし、その必要の程度は服従と規律の支持者が考えるより少ない。・・・強情な子、狂人、犯罪者には不幸なことだが権威/権力が必要であり、従うように強いる必要も起りうる。教育効果をあげながら、服従と規律を最小限にできた点で、モンテッソーリ女史が達成したことは奇跡に近い。
学級における服従が必要と思わせるのは、誤った無駄省き（a false economy）によって要求される,児童数の多い学級及び担任教師の過労である。真に活きた授業は想像できないほど精神を消耗させるので、毎日の任務を機械的にこなすことが絶対的に必要となる。
・・・戦争で勝利を確実にするのと同様に、もし教育を真剣に考えるならば、教育を今とは全くちがったやり方で行う必要があり、教育予算が現在の百倍以上かかるとしてもそうしなければならない。
少ない量の授業（teaching 授業内容）は多くの人々にとって喜びであり（注：牧野氏は a small amount of teaching を「少人数に教える」と訳しているが、「少人数相手であっても授業時間が多すぎれば喜びでなくなってくる。）、新鮮な興味と活発さとで授業ができ、規律の必要なしに生徒の目が集まる・・・。対立ではなく友好的な関係から、児童にも、教育は押付けではなく、生命力の発展になるという自覚が生れる。教育に費用をかけ、教師に余裕を与え、適材適所の状況を作るべきである。
望ましい形の規律は内面から生れ、目的をたゆまず追求する力量の中に宿る。そこに自律性と方向性もある。この規律なしに首尾一貫した目的は果せない。教育のみが規律を生む。自分の意志から生れるのであって、外部の権威からは生れない。・・・この規律は考えを集中させる能力を養う。複雑な世の中で、職務上、精神集中を要求される人々に極めて必要な能力である。
子供の注意力は、遊びに現れるように、全く自発的である。その自発的なやり方で、子供は知識の獲得を楽しむ。自分の欲しない事物は身につかない。注目もしていない。
年少の子供たちの場合には、こうしたやり方が自然かつ効果的であり、教育の最良の方法と確信する。そのためには教師の過労を避けたい
（Obedience and discipline are supposed to be indispensable if order is to be kept in a class, and if any instruction is to be given. To some extent this is true ; but the extent is much less than it is thought to be by those who regard obedience and discipline as in themselves desirable..... Both may be necessary in certain cases. Refractory children, lunatics, and criminals may require authority, and may need to be forced to obey. But in so far as this is necessary it is a misfortune。... What Madame Montessori has achieved in the way of minimizing obedience and discipline with advantage to education is almost miraculous.
What makes obedience seem necessary in schools is the large classes and overworked teachers demanded by a false economy. Those who have no experience of teaching are incapable of imagining the expense of spirit entailed by any really living instruction. They think that teachers can reasonably be expected to work as many hours as bank clerks. Intense fatigue and irritable nerves are the result, and an absolute necessity of performing the day's task mechanically. But the task cannot be performed mechanically except by exacting obedience.
If we took education seriously, and thought it as important to keep alive the minds of children as to secure victory in war, we should conduct education quite differently : we should make sure of achieving the end, even if the expense were a hundredfold greater than it is.
To many men and women a small amount of teaching is a delight, and can be done with a fresh zest and life which keeps most pupils interested without any need of discipline. The few who do not become interested might be separated from the rest, and given a different kind of instruction. A teacher ought to have only as much teaching as can be done, on most days, with actual pleasure in the work, and with an awareness of the pupil's mental needs. The result would be a relation of friendliness instead of hostility between teacher and pupil, a realization on the part of most pupils that education serves to develop their own lives and is not merely an outside imposition, interfering with play and demanding many hours of sitting still. All that is necessary to this end is a greater expenditure of money, to secure teachers with more leisure and with a natural love of teaching.
The desirable kind of discipline is the kind that comes from within, which consists in the power of pursuing a distant object steadily, forgoing and suffering many things on the way. This involves the subordination of minor impulses to will, the power of a directing action by large creative desires even at moments when they are not vividly alive. Without this, no serious ambition, good or bad, can be realized, no consistent purpose can dominate. This kind of discipline is very necessary, but can only result from strong desires for ends not immediately attainable, and can only be produced by education if education fosters such desires, which it seldom does at present. Such discipline springs from one's own will, not from outside authority. It is not this kind which is sought in most schools, and it is not this kind which seems to me an evil.
... The kind I mean is that which enables a man to concentrate his thoughts at will upon any matter that he has occasion to consider, regardless of preoccupations or boredom or intellectual difficulty. This quality, though it has no important intrinsic excellence, greatly enhances the efficiency of the mind as an instrument.
The child's attention is wholly spontaneous, as in play ; it enjoys acquiring knowledge in this way, and does not acquire any knowledge which it does not desire. I am convinced that this is the best method of education with young children : the actual results make it almost impossible to think otherwise)
