Rivail and education: “Punishment irritates and imposes. It doesn’t educate for reason.”
Allan Kardec, before this pseudonym, already produced texts on education. It is clear that their thoughts changed and expanded after the advent of Spiritism, but, like Hypolite Leon Denizard Rivail, many of them already showed an enviable lucidity of reasoning.
We talk a lot about heteronomy and autonomy, and we greatly highlight how religious doctrines, adulterated by clergy, and also materialist doctrine, exert a pernicious influence on the propagation of heteronomous thought. However, let's face it, when it comes to doctrines, they are actually more present in the post-childhood phase, when the individual has more developed reason.
There is, however, a type of [bad] education that affects the individual from his first steps and throughout his childhood, habituating him to heteronomous habits: that commonly reproduced, thoughtlessly, by the family and school, still today based on the punishment of errors through punishment – in the most diverse ways – and in the formation of a culture of dispute and the “way”, that is, of bending the rules to win, since this has become the only objective.
We will reproduce, very succinctly, a part of Rivail's text, presented in the Proposed Plan for the Improvement of Public Education (Click here to download), which expresses very well some considerations in this regard.
“There are habits of three different natures: they are physical, intellectual or moral. The first are those that most particularly modify our animal constitution; the second consist in the more or less perfect possession of a science. Thus, for example, someone who is very familiar with a language speaks it without effort and without thinking; he who has perfect knowledge of mathematics, makes his calculations without difficulty: this is what can be called having the habit of a science; and by the way, it is the acquisition of the habit, which is neglected, in the common method; It is generally limited to a very elusive theory, which barely touches the mind. Finally, moral habits are those that lead us, despite ourselves, to do something good or bad.
The source of these latter habits lies, we said, in impressions long resented or perceived in childhood.. It is thus understood how important it is to carefully avoid anything that could make the child experience dangerous impressions; but I don't just regard as bad impressions, the example of vice, bad advice or inappropriate conversations; no one doubts the disastrous effects of such models and there is no mother of a family who does not put all her care into avoiding them; but there are a great number of others, minutiae in appearance, and which do not fail to exercise an influence often more pernicious than the ugly spectacle of vice, which one can even sometimes take advantage of to make one conceive its horror; I want above all to speak of those that the child receives directly in his relationships with the people around him, who, without giving him either bad examples or bad advice, nevertheless give birth to very serious vices, like the parents, due to their weakness or teachers because of a rigidity that is misunderstood, or when little care is taken to adapt their behavior to the child's character when, for example, they yield to their importunities, when their faults are tolerated under vain pretexts, when they submit to their whims, when he is allowed to perceive that he is a victim of his tricks, when the motive that makes him act is not known, and that in this way he takes defects or germs of vices for qualities, which often happens to parents; when the subtle circumstances that can modify this or that action of the child are not taken into account, when, above all, nuances of character are not taken into account, he is made to experience impressions that are often the source of very serious vices. A smile, when you had to be serious; a weakness when it would be necessary to be firm; severity when sweetness would be needed; a word without thinking, a nothing, in short, are sometimes enough to produce an indelible impression and to make a vice germinate.
What will happen then when these impressions are felt from the cradle, and often throughout childhood? In this aspect, the punishment system is one of the most important parts to consider in education; for they are commonly the source of most defects and vices. Often too harsh or inflicted with partiality and in a bad mood, they irritate children rather than convince them.. How many tricks, how many means of diversion, how many frauds do they employ to avoid them! This is how the seeds of bad faith and hypocrisy are thrown into them and this is often the only result that is obtained.. The angry and unpersuaded child submits only to force; nothing proves to him that she did wrong; she only knows that she did not act according to the master's will; and this will he regards, not as just and reasonable, but as a caprice and a tyranny; it believes itself to be always subject to the will.
How is she commonly made to feel physical superiority rather than moral superiority, she waits impatiently to have enough strength herself to escape this; hence this hostile spirit that reigns between the masters and their students. There is no mutual trust between them, no attachment; on the contrary, there is a continual exchange of tricks; whoever is smart enough to surprise the other wins, and it is already known who wins most often. These are two parties that, when not at open war, are continually distrusting each other. How is it possible to have a good education in such a state of affairs?
RIVAIL, HLD Proposed Plan for the Improvement of Public Education. Paris, 1828.
We see how important it is to rescue this educational base, guided by morality. We add the importance of understanding the morals brought by thinkers such as Paul Janet (Click here to download one of his works). If you liked this article and see its importance, do more: share it with whoever you can!