バートランド・ラッセル「教育における知恵」
* 原著：Sceptical Essays, 1928, chapt. 14: Freedom versus authority in education
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』
以下は牧野力氏による要旨訳（ただし、少し字句を修正）ですが、牧野氏は原文の順序を一部無視してまとめているところがあり、添付した英文（原文）とそのまま対応していません。そのため注意してお読みください。
歴史は、自国のみの観点からだけでなく、外国の観点からも、教えられなければならない。・・・それによって、相手国の観点が理解でき、不和も起こりにくい。また、若い人は最後まで耳を傾けることを学ぶべきである。さもないと、ある正統派の信仰を青年に教えるために、有能な教師が自国だけを正当化する偽善者にならざるを得なくなる。狭量で悪質な群居本能を助長するから、甚だ有害である。
旧教系（カトリック）の学校の児童は新教（プロテスタント）を悪いと信じ、英語を話すどの学校の生徒も無神論者を、フランスの生徒はドイツ人を、ドイツ人生徒はフランス人を、悪いと信じている。合理的な思考習慣を育てずに、理性の攻撃を撃退するために、感情的な興奮を起こす癖を作る。その結果、児童に量、残忍、好戦性、無慈悲の癖がつく。これは、政治、道徳、宗教に関して、一定の意見のみを正統化する限り避け難い。
画一的な団体訓練も一つの悪の源となる。宗教が人間を救われるべき魂を持つ存在とみなしたように、教育もそうあるべきなのに、個人を社会計画のただの道具と視る。個人の人格を尊重する心が、社会問題における、特に教育における、知恵の始まりである。
( History should be taught not only from the point of view of one's own country, but also from that of foreigners. ... If history were taught by Frenchmen in England, and by Englishmen in France, there would be no disagreements between the two countries, because each would understand the other's point of view. A young man should learn to think that all questions are open, and that an argument should be followed wherever it leads. The needs of practical life will destroy this attitude all too soon when he begins to earn his living; but until that time he should be encouraged to taste the joys of free speculation.
Morally, also, the teaching of an orthodoxy to the young is very harmful. There is not only the fact that it compels the abler teachers to be hypocrites, and therefore to set a bad moral example. There is also, what is more important, the fact that it encourages intolerance and the bad forms of herd instinct. ...
So children in Catholic schools believe that Protestants are wicked, children in any school in an English-speaking country believe that atheists are wicked, children in France believe that Germans are wicked, and children in Germany believe that Frenchmen are wicked. When a school accepts as part of its task the teaching of an opinion which cannot be intellectually defended (as practically all schools do), it is compelled to give the impression that those who hold an opposite opinion are wicked, since otherwise it cannot generate the passion required for repelling the assaults of reason. Thus for the sake of orthodoxy the children are rendered uncharitable, intolerant, cruel, and bellicose. This is unavoidable so long as definite opinions are prescribed on politics, morals, and religion. ...
Regimentation is the source of the evil. Education authorities do not look on children, as religion is supposed to do, as human beings with souls to be saved. They look upon them as material for grandiose social schemes: future “hands” in factories or “bayonets” in war or what not. No man is fit to educate unless he feels each pupil an end in himself, with his own rights and his own personality, not merely a piece in a jig-saw puzzle, or a soldier in a regiment, or a citizen in a State. Reverence for human personality is the beginning of wisdom, in every social question, but above all in education. )
