Negative education, please
Education is not about providing positive descriptions of happy people who live the good life. The philosopher Per Jepsen argues that scepticism, a sceptical approach to authorities and even civil disobedience are pedagogical values that may help prevent barbarism.
By Claus Holm (clho@dpu.dk)
An educators' primary task is to prevent harmful influence on the subject. One of the primary representatives of a - negative - notion about the purpose of upbringing is the philosopher, sociologist and musical theorist Theodor W. Adorno. In his article Education nach Auschwitz, Adorno explains the aim, which is that "Auschwitz must never be repeated!" Auschwitz represents the ultimate barbarism, and all education must be organised to prevent it from ever happening again.
In other words, Adorno is a negativist: He tells us not what we should strive for, but what we must distance ourselves from. He does not explain to us the human, but rather the inhuman, the cruel. What he does provide, however, is that development of a sceptical maturity can prevent the negative.
I asked Per Jepsen from the University of Copenhagen to outline Adorno's notions on the contents and aim of such a negative education. Per Jepsen is currently writing his PhD-dissertation on Adorno's concept of self-determination.
Mature opposition
Why does the mature individual play such a key role in Adorno's view on upbringing? "To Adorno, being of age is more than just being able to think for yourself, it is the capability of self-determination. Maturity means to exist on your own terms," Per Jepsen explains.
How is that possible?
"In Adorno, we find a utopian as well as a critical maturity, the latter of which get its negative power from the utopian. The utopian ideal describes a human that exists precisely on the grounds of its own will, and which is not subject to irrelevant societal forms of coercion. The critical maturity refers to an individual, who is capable of critical reflection, and therefore also of opposition to the deformation of the individual that occurs in a late modern society. The deformations include loss of experience, loss of critical awareness and development of an authoritarian personality potential.
The first steps towards a culture which is free from repression is to throw light on repression and thereby to develop the notion of an individual capable of acting with critical maturity," Per Jepsen says.
To that end, Per Jepsen proposed that we establish civil disobedience as an educational value in a recently published Danish anthology (literally translated title: Educational Values and Politics).
"Teaching children civil disobedience means to give the child a sense of the separation of justice and actual legislation, and to avoid establishing a conceited respect for judicial and political authorities. The aim with such and educational practice is to instil in the child a healthy scepticism towards both the laws and the people who enforce the laws, enforcers that obviously are prone to errors. Thus, it is not just a matter of making civil disobedience a value in the specific educational- or teaching situation, but rather a matter of developing an oppositional consciousness, which later, when the child is of legal age, can inoculate the child against blind obedience to the law."
A society without families
Theodor W. Adorno is in many ways the embodiment of anti-authoritarian criticism. He explored and criticised the authoritarian personality during his exile in the United States before and during the Second World War, and when he returned to Frankfurt in 1951 to assume the position as professor in Philosophy and Sociology as well as head of the Institut für Sozialforschung, he remained the leading critical voice against the late modern society.
All the more interesting, then, that shortly before his death in 1969, and sparked by the student revolts at that time, Adorno emphasized the necessity of an encounter with authority in the individual maturation process. When he was interviewed by his friend Helmutt, Becker, Adorno said that:
"The way we become psychologically autonomous, i.e. a mature person, is not just by arguing against any kind of authority. The empirical surveys of the authoritative personality in the United States, which were conducted by my late colleague Else Frenkel Brunswik, demonstrated that the exact opposite was the case; so-called model children are easier swayed towards an autonomous and oppositional position as adults than the unruly ones, who tend to, as soon as they grow up, sit down with a beer with their teachers and echo the same utterances. Probably the process is more like what Freud dubbed the 'normal development', which means that children tend to identify with a father figure, i.e. they identify with a figure of authority, establish an emphatic bond with that figure and adopt its authority, only to - through a painful process that inexorably leaves scars - realise that the father is not the father figure of the ideal 'I' that they learned from him, and thereby break with him. This is the only way children can mature."
Per Jepsen's view of Adorno's claim that authorities are necessary for the development of a sceptical maturity is that: "The durability of the mature individual's I is formed through a complex process, during which you identify with and distance oneself from the father figure simultaneously. In that sense, it is correct that the maturation of the individual presupposes a bond to a figure of authority. But on the other hand, the individual maturity only becomes possible with the recognition of that bond. I think, however, that it is erroneous to interpret Adorno's maturity as a defence of a lost father-authority. There is more at stake here. His analysis of the structural changes in the late modern, capitalist society indicates that the private existence - family - is dissolved as a protective measure against the society in general. The family becomes impotent."
Children are hothouse flowers
The German sociologist Axel Honneth, who is the current head of the Institut für Sozialforschung, indicated that perhaps a normative conception of childhood and the family underlies Adorno's notions of education and upbringing. According to Per Jepsen, this idea has some merit:
"Adorno attempts to generalise his own childhood experiences when he talks about how fast early matured children develop in a protective family. He calls them hothouse flowers. His tendency to make an ideal out of the classical nuclear family is as such closely connected to his own upbringing."
Adorno was the son of a Jewish trader and a classical singer. They lived in Frankfurt am Main, and this was where Adorno, self-styled early matured child, lived a protected life as a hothouse flower. Per Jepsen, however, maintains that it is of more interest that Adorno is not just aware that the family may house both repressive and authoritarian elements. This is evident. But with the erosion of the classical family structure, it becomes more important for Adorno to preserve the subjective opportunities for opposition, which are disappearing, than to focus on the repressive and disciplinary elements of upbringing. This is why Adorno considers the family a protective bubble and the best possible breeding ground for resilience, autonomy and sceptical thinking."
Opposition to suffering
But what kind of practical authority would Adorno propose, then "Adorno is opposed to an authoritarian upbringing where someone demand obedience without any justification and use power and violence to ensure that obedience. But in his article XXX, he also says that it is all right to slap the child if it is tearing the wings off a fly. The slap is, to Adorno, an expression of a conscious, as opposed to a blind, expression of authority. The conscious authority is justified by the end result, which will be obvious to the child, namely to remove the inclination to hurt others, even a lowly fly."
"De-barbarisation is the ultimate aim for negative upbringing and sceptical maturity. To achieve this end result, the upbringing must include measures against any tendency to insensitivity towards other living creatures. The goal is to make children loath and be ashamed of blind use of violence," says Per Jepsen.
About Per Jepsen Per Jepsen holds an MA and is writing his PhD at the University of Copenhagen. He researches into the utopia of maturity in relation to the history of ideas with a special focus on modern critical theory. He has currently published an article on education and civil disobedience in a Danish anthology published by the DPU. More about Per Jepsen