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バートランド・ラッセル 教育論 第16章
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第三部_知性の教育_第16章_大学入学前の数年間:後期中等教育(高校に相当)(OE16-060)
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(Pt. 3: Intellectual education) Chap.16 Last school years (OE16-060) If I were at the head of a school for older boys and girls, I should consider it equally undesirable to shirk current questions and to do propaganda about them. It is a good thing to make pupils feel that their education is fitting them to cope with matters about which the world is excited ; it gives them a sense that scholastic teaching is not divorced from the practical world. But I should not urge my own views upon the pupils. What I should do is to put before them the ideal of a scientific attitude to practical questions. I should expect them to produce arguments that are arguments, and facts that are facts. In politics, especially, this habit is as rare as it is valuable. Every vehement political party generates a cocoon of myth, within which its mentality peacefully slumbers. Passion too often kills intellect ; in intellectuals, on the contrary, intellect not infrequently kills passion. My aim would be to avoid both these misfortunes. Passionate feeling is desirable, provided it is not destructive ; intellect is desirable, with the same proviso. I should wish the fundamental political passions to be constructive, and I should try to make the intellect serve these passions. But it must serve them genuinely, objectively, not only in the world of dreams. When the real world is not sufficiently flattering we all tend to take refuge in an imaginary world, where our desires are gratified without great effort. This is the essence of hysteria. It is also the source of nationalist, theological, and class myths. It shows a weakness of character which is almost universal in the present world. To combat this weakness of character should be one of the aims of later school education. There are two ways of combating it, both necessary, though in a sense opposites. The one is to increase our sense of what we can achieve in the world of reality ; the other is to make us more sensitive to what reality can do in the way of dispelling our dreams. Both are comprised in the principle of living objectively rather than subjectively. |
(掲載日:2015.07.18/更新日: )