On the ‘Psychologization’ of Education
The psychologization of education, in the private as well as in the public sector, as for instance at school, has led to a widespread non-education of children and young people. Education was replaced by observing, interpreting and excusing children’s inappropriate behavior; educational acting was replaced by explaining, discussing and overtexting.
“Pedagogy does not provide us with new ideas. At all times, the genius of famous educators has consisted in depicting a choice of ideas, maxims and experiences from the treasure of truths of the past. They could be considered as answers to the urgent problems of a time”, Bernhard Bueb writes in the epilogue to his book “Lob der Disziplin” (In Praise of Discipline), in which he gives answers to the urgent questions of our time. He sees his answers as a search for a “way to the right measure” and to describe it he makes use of the image of a sailor, “who bends to the right, if the boat bends to the left, in order to redress the balance”.
Therefore, pedagogy is not a matter of absolute truth and clinging to principles, but about doing the right thing at the right time. For Bueb, one of the urgent questions of our time is what he calls the “disastrous psychologization of education, which he deals with in his book.
Parents and educators adjust their behavior to the children and not vice versa. Instead of educating them and preparing them for the requirements of life, they eagerly tried to meet any desire and to remove all difficulties. Instead of showing them, in cooperation with school, how to develop positive and useful solutions for the different requirements, parents explained to the teachers, how they should handle their special child, in order to avoid tantrum. The schools adjusted themselves to the desires of their “customers”. Both were convinced to be the better parents and the better teachers, all too often trained and encouraged by false or misapprehended psychological theories.
“Psychologization of education was experienced as a humanization of education”
Bernhard Bueb writes:
“In post-war Germany a process began, which I call the disastrous psychologization of education. (…) Parents and teachers tend to send an odd child to psychological treatment instead of examining whether the child did not become disoriented by too much freedom, care, anxiety and indulgence by its parents. Psychological knowledge was gained from the consequences of authoritarian education in the first half of the last century. Today, psychology should care about the psychological consequences of non-education. Of course, children fall ill psychologically and require psychotherapeutic treatment. Parents, teachers or educators must decide, however, whether consultation is necessary. The maxim should be that therapy is to start only if all other educational measures are exhausted (…)."
"We must face the problem that we have wanted to absorb the consequences of non-education with the help of psychology during the last decades. The great moment for psychology had come, when educators had shifted the balance between discipline and love to the latter. The psychologization of pedagogy was experienced as the humanization of education. A lack of effort, aggressivity and concentration deficits were explained by psychological models developed in different psychological schools. These deficits did no longer have to be interpreted morally. The fidget was ‘neutralized’ as attention deficit syndrome; refusal to work was made acceptable by calling it high gift (misjudged by teachers), the inclination to annoy others by low self-esteem and lack of love in early childhood.
We should take children and young people more serious as moral subjects and should not explain their behavior by means of psychological theories, too quickly and thus provide them with an excuse.
We must offer help, however, so that they can resist the consumption pressure. How often did we explain the consumption of hashish psychologically in Salem [the boarding school which Bueb managed for 30 years, A/N], in the seventies and eighties; we had endless discussions, asked psychologists for help and realized that nothing changed. The introduction of testing urine samples with consistent dismissal following a positive result contradicted the psychologist mentality; it had, however, a liberating effect on the young people. We treated the youngsters as adults; we put the decision into their hands. If they decided to go on with drugs, they were threatened by dismissal. The effect of the measure was striking. 99 per cent of the young people decided against drug consumption, because they were afraid of the drastic consequences. We should not withhold this help from young people. The procedure does not differ from the alcohol or speed traffic checks conducted by the police.
The findings of psychology can facilitate education and they have frequently done so. Psychology provided the teachers with the tools that enabled them to understand the behavior of children and young people, to interpret reasons and misbehavior better and react with differentiated measures instead of mere punishment.
Psychology was beneficial as long as it was used in a masterful way by parents, teachers and educators as an additional help in interpreting the children’s behavior. However, it became a problem and produced doubtful consequences, where it was made the norm-setting authority because teachers let their decisions be guided by psychological interpretations and not by their own knowledge, their intuition and their moral concepts as educators. Psychological diagnosis and the ensuing therapy superseded time- proven educational practice.”
(From Bernhard Bueb, Lob der Disziplin, pp. 71, Translation Current Concerns)
“Me. Everything. At once”
Values and virtues, which constitute the heart of pedagogy, were banished from education. There was no more differentiating between right and wrong, morally valuable and immoral behavior, because that put too much burden on the “tender child’s soul”. Diligence, discipline, obedience and perseverance were scorned. The tiniest demands at school or in the parental household were rated as obligations and excessive demands and the alleged “pressure to achieve” was made responsible for all sorts of things. An “extended understanding of addiction” made our society an “addicted society” and the children wrote on walls, “Let me have my drugs as I let you have your work.” Those people, who were still living according to their traditional values, were ashamed and kept silent, in order not to be denounced as the diehards who had not yet arrived in modern times.
Seen against this background, it is not amazing that we encounter children and young people, who have internalized neither values nor virtues. They are altogether self-centered and did not develop any conscience. They find it funny to pester others or, as it was the case with the young people in Munich, to very seriously injure others without feeling shame and regret later.
“In the last years”, Bernhard Bueb writes, “a type of negligence has spread, which expresses itself in a particularly unbearable, self-centered and demanding attitude. (…) These children constantly expect emotional and material attention, and they have not learned to do without.
They live according to the formula ‹Me. Everything. At once› (…). They grow up in well-ordered circumstances, they are not lacking the love of their parents; but they do not know any limits or demands, they do not experience the positive effects of discipline and clear guidance.” (pp. 64)
Bernhard Bueb demands a return to a pedagogy, which strengthens the child morally and does not explain and excuse the child’s weaknesses.
Training instead of diagnostic dossiers
With pragmatists such as parents, teachers and educators, this demand falls on sympathetic ears. Not so with the strategists of educational policy. They constantly molest the teachers with new reforms and try to force non-educational concepts upon them, which evidently constitute an essential part of today’s misery. They are ideological concepts made up of the clichés of antipedagogy, sociology and social psychology, which have become enriched with economic elements of the organizational development during the last few years. Their dogmas read as follows: Abolishment of teacher-centered instruction. Individualization – each pupil is to learn according to his preferences and at his own pace. Learning by self-discovery – the teacher is to organize learning situations merely as a coach and moderator. Those who still teach and instruct an entire class are considered to be “inflexible” and “old-fashioned”.
They are under pressure.
Organizational development and quality control are used to implement the ideologies, which are to “promote social change” and “strengthen the autonomous efforts of the individual” but do not serve the child’s development.
Although many committed teachers are trying hard to provide their children with a realistic orientation and stability, more and more pupils, particularly the low-achieving ones, get into trouble in this terrible reform chaos. Many lack the solid structure of fundamental skills usually learned at the kindergarten, because they were kept from them.
Instead of training the children, diagnostic dossiers are drawn up as early as in nursery school and in the first year of primary school, in which the children’s deficits are written down and interpreted psychologically. Thus in the early nursery school age and in the first school years completely healthy children, who are perhaps somewhat livelier or quieter than others, are made cases for the invalidity insurance, which must then take over expensive therapy fees. Innumerable children are supplied with Ritalin (Methylphenidate). It is well-known, however, that some erroneous attitudes are increased by special attention, for example in children, who are already at the center of attention at home. In addition, the continuing health checks give the child a feeling of being abnormal, an impression many of them suffer from as adults.
I was recently concerned with a pupil, who had already been taught in a psychiatric institution during year 6. Every morning, he was taken to the hospital school 40 km away by a school bus, which picked up various children in the region. His psychiatrist and the teacher reported on his extraordinarily high intelligence quotient with admiration. Now the “highly talented” pupil, a completely normal and healthy child, sat there and was unable to learn, because he would have ruined his image in doing so. Instead of studying, he had resorted to lead his care-takers up the garden path with a sophisticated repertoire of strange behaviors.
“School must become a place for education again”
Certainly, educational therapeutic pedagogy and social work can be appropriate and helpful in certain situations, but we may not go as far as to let it take over the educational guidance of the school. We cannot allow parent-teacher discussions to turn into psychological interpretations of the children’s deficits instead of dealing with the children’s progress at school. Neither may we allow school social workers to invite pupils, who do not get along with the teacher; and as consequence have pupils rise in the middle of a lesson in order to speak with their social worker instead of facing the teacher’s tasks. Rebellious pupils have already learned to explain their bad behavior psychologically without even thinking about changing it, teachers report.
School must again become a place for education, in which the teacher may resume his place as a specialist for learning and educating. School is not a playground for doubtful psychosocial experiments. If children and young people are to be educated to be “independent and reliable citizens, to become people who are able to live within a community, people who are mature in spirit and mind”, as the preamble of the education act in the canton of Aargau demands, we will need teachers, who the children can chafe at and grow.
In Switzerland, the authorities responsible for public schools are the municipalities and the cantons and thus the citizens and taxpayers. The educational mandate is embodied both in the canton constitutions and in the education acts.
The Cantonal Parliament of the Canton Aargau,
supported by the §§ 28-35 and 38bis of the cantonal constitution,
with the intention to provide the canton Aargau with schools,
in which youth is educated in reverence to God and in respect for their fellows and the environment,
to independent and reliable citizens, to people who are able to live within a community, to people who are mature in spirit and mind,
in schools where the young people can unfold their creative potentials and
where they are made familiar with the world of knowledge and work,
decides (…)
Translation: Current Concerns
http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=1046