Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World

7. You Can Learn Properly Only What Engages Your Feelings

You Can Learn Properly Only What Engages Your Feelings In an affluent country like Norway, we need an educational system that explicitly takes more account of the emotions. We talk about education, a word derived from a Latin verb meaning "to lead forth." I say that we ought also to talk about the opposite, what I might call "inducation," that is, the nurturing of innate values like wonder, creativity, and imagination. There are many subjects that are well adapted to promoting such qualities, but we mustproduce teachers who are allowed to bepersonal and given more freedom in the way they teach. Furthermore, the standards of attainment must be lowered—to learn well is to learn slowly. Teaching is only effective if pupils and students concentrate now and then on something for which they have a burning interest. Norway is a country with a special need for promoting an upbringing and education that benefits emotional maturing. Why? We have great material wealth on account of our natural resources, and we no longer have any great, burning political conflicts. Wehave unusually rich opportunities to askwhat we want to do with our lives. We can follow impulses and cultivate values that most people in the world can only dream about. And in fact we can afford to say to 139 7 schoolchildren and university students, "If there is something that particularly attracts you, you may concentrate on that in particular and cut out much else." Many children think it's fun to hear about dinosaurs. But they also become interested in the fact that these animals lived so long ago—and thereby, perhaps, they become fascinated by the distant past ofhumankind aswell.Ateacher can use the subject of dinosaurs to illustrate the relation between predator and prey generally, and perhaps this may be applied to questions of human society, like the use and abuse of power and violence. For my part, the proposal is intended as an example of how we might introduce at school various subjects that may be assumed to promote maturity. What we need is a kind of education of thefeelings. This education must concentrate on developing the fewbut vital subjects in which children and university students are interested. In Norway we have the opportunity of changing the learning process of people between the ages of about six and twenty. We can change it from being mainly knowledge-oriented to becoming feeling-oriented as well. Burning commitment and the process of maturing ought to be central aims for young people. Mature in One Thing, Immature in Something Else If parents were to be what they were in times past, they would have to take several months of advanced training in changes in society and youth culture today. To be young nowadays is completely different from what it was a few decades ago. The pressure of consumerism on teenagers was relatively unknown then. The market for children's clothes is constantly expanding today. It is a marketing process that is rather important for economic growth. Parents and teachers must become familiar with this, and naturally learn about the priorities of the young. In a word, if parents and teachers really want to know and influence the world inhabited byyouth, they must 140 LIFE'S PHILOSOPHY understand what the younger generation scorns and where itsactive interest lies. This often revolves around matters that are emotionally charged in a fundamentalway. Let us imagine that an inspector appears in a tram, and a teenager called Alexander, who is without a ticket, is in danger of being caught. But his friend Charles quickly gives him his own ticket. He feels that he is better able to take the consequences. Personally, it is a thoroughly mature action. But the very next day, Charles himself becomes a fare dodger. It is socially immature, since he is evading an obvious responsibility. Perhaps he isthe victim of an immature ideal of cunning to be found in societytoday. Immaturity in one thing and maturity in something else may intimately coexist in young people. That they are anchored in the morals of the peer group is perhaps the most important cause of retarded emotional maturity among many young people. It is asking a great deal of parents today that they should help children in the process of emotional maturing. But at the same time, we are justified in demanding it. It is part of the responsibility of putting children...