Introduction: The Human Being Must Be Educated

The human being is the only creature that must be educated. By education we mean care (maintenance, support), discipline (training), and instruction together with formation. Accordingly, the human being is an infant, a pupil and an apprentice.

Animals use their powers, as soon as they have any, according to a plan — that is, in a way not harmful to themselves. It is indeed wonderful to see, for instance, how young swallows, when only just out of the egg, and still blind, know how to manage so that their droppings fall outside the nest. Animals therefore need no care; at most they need feeding, warmth and guidance, or a kind of protection. But the human being needs his own reason. He has no instinct, and must work out the plan of his conduct for himself. Since he is not able to do this immediately, but comes into the world, as it were, in an uncultivated state, others must do it for him.

Discipline changes animal nature into human nature. An animal is already all that it can be by its instinct; a foreign reason has provided everything for it. Discipline prevents the human being from being turned aside by his animal impulses from humanity, his appointed end. It must restrain him, for example, from venturing wildly and rashly into danger. Discipline is thus merely negative: it is the act by which a human being is deprived of his wildness. Instruction is the positive part of education.

Wildness is independence from laws. Children are therefore first sent to school, not so that they may learn something there, but so that they may become accustomed to sitting still, and doing exactly as they are told — so that in the future they may not actually put into practice every idea that strikes them.

The human being can become human only through education. He is nothing except what education makes of him. It is noticeable that a human being is educated only by human beings — human beings who have themselves been educated.

This sentence — "Der Mensch kann nur Mensch werden durch Erziehung" — is the most quoted in the book.

Perhaps education will become better and better, and each succeeding generation will advance one step towards the perfection of humanity; for behind education lies the great secret of the perfection of human nature. It is delightful to imagine that human nature will be better and better developed by education, and that this can be brought into a form fitting for humanity. This opens to us the prospect of a happier human race in the future.

The outline of a theory of education is a noble ideal, and it does no harm even if we are not at once able to realise it. One must not regard an idea as chimerical and as merely a beautiful dream simply because hindrances stand in the way of its being realised.

Two human inventions may be regarded as the most difficult: the art of government, and the art of education. And people are still in dispute about the very idea of them.

Education is an art, the practice of which must be perfected over many generations. Each generation, provided with the knowledge of the preceding ones, is ever better able to bring about an education that develops all the natural capacities of the human being in their due proportion and in relation to their end, and so to lead the whole human race towards its destiny.

One principle of the art of education, which those men especially who make plans of education ought to keep before their eyes, is this: children ought to be educated not for the present, but for a possibly improved condition of the human race in the future — that is, according to the idea of humanity and its whole destiny.

Kant notes that parents usually educate their children only to fit them for the present world, however corrupt it may be; and princes regard their subjects merely as tools for their own designs.

Kant praises the experimental schools of his time, especially the "Philanthropinum" founded at Dessau by J. B. Basedow, as the first schools that tried to put new principles into practice. Education, he says, must be founded on experiment; it cannot simply follow tradition.

The Four Tasks of Education

In education the human being must be:

1. Disciplined — that is, his animality must be prevented from overwhelming his humanity.
2. Cultivated — he must receive instruction and teaching, which give him skill, the possession of a capacity sufficient for all ends that he may have.
3. Civilised — he must acquire prudence, so that he fits into human society, is liked, and has influence. This requires manners, politeness, and a certain worldly wisdom.
4. Moralised — he must not only be skilled for all sorts of ends, but must also acquire the disposition to choose only good ends: those that are necessarily approved by everyone, and that may at the same time be the ends of everyone.

We live in a time of discipline, culture and civilisation, but we are still a long way from the time of moralisation.

Freedom under Constraint

One of the greatest problems of education is how to unite submission under lawful constraint with the capacity to use one's freedom. For constraint is necessary. How do I cultivate freedom under constraint? I must accustom my pupil to tolerate a constraint on his freedom, and at the same time lead him to make good use of his freedom.

Kant offers three rules. First, the child must be left free from earliest childhood in all things — except where he might harm himself, as by grasping a sharp knife, or harm others. Second, he must be shown that he can attain his ends only by allowing others to attain theirs. Third, it must be proved to him that he is constrained in order that he may learn to use his own freedom; that he is cultivated so that one day he may be free, that is, independent of the care of others.