INDUSTRY
..
has always operated. From the age often onward a sharp wedge is drivenbetween the German boy who canafford a higher- school education andthe boy who cannot.
I call it a caste system rather thanone of class, because class always in-volves an element of flexibility, buthere the walls between the classes re-main rigid. A large percentage ofthose who have been admitted intohigher schools drop out before theyhave finished their course, and have togo back to the common public schools.But there is no movement in the otherdirection.
This means that under the tradi-tional system almost every child istrained to take the station in life for
which his family's economic and socialposition destines him. It means thatfew children have a chance of beingtrained for higher stations than thoseof their fathers. It means social arro-gance on the one hand, and social sub-mission on the other. It means anundermining of a child's belief in hisinnate capacities, and a fatalistic ac-ceptance of his social role. And itmeans that ninety per cent of the popu-lation is cut off from a general educa-tion that has any meaning, and cutoff, therefore, from the influence of thehumanist tradition. It means thetraining not the education of a vastmajority of people, who become citi-zens in name only, because they haveno access to the tools of independentthought and political judgment that
EDUCATION
enable human beings to govern theiraffairs democratically.
It is scarcely surprising, then, thatpublic- opinion polls recently taken byMilitary Government in our zoneshowed widespread political ignorance.A large percentage of Germans haveno faith in any of the political parties.Forty per cent, when questioned aboutthe Bonn Constitution, answered thatthey were not interested in its future.Only fifty- seven per cent knew theleading party in their state legislature.Forty per cent had no expectations,one way or another, about the work ofthe Landtag . Now an increasing ma-jority thinks the Nazis had the rightideas but blundered in achieving them.
Probably even more serious than the
undemocratic structure of the schoolsare the surviving archaisms of theare the surviving archaisms of theautocratic father, the teacher who actsas the little Kaiser of his classroom,the employer who is Führer in hisfactory. The idea of accepting with-out question the word of an infallibleauthority is at least as serious a threatto democracy as the fact that only asmall percentage of the population isin line for adequate education. Thesystem is vicious and self- perpetuating,in that the traditional German schoolis as likely to make authoritarians ofworkers' sons as of the sons of the socialélite.
All of this eats away not only thespirit of individualism, but also thesocial cement which ties people to-
gether with the bonds of common in-terest rather than those of authority.Some have laughed at Americans forbeing" joiners," but I wish that Ger man
women had something like theLeague of Women Voters. Such or-ganizations cannot grow unless there issoil for them to grow in. In Germany ,there is no such soil.
How then do I explain what I sawand heard at the Munich YouthForum? First, remember that I was lis-tening to the élite of advanced schoolsand the universities. If the ninety percent of West German children whoare, according to my computations.still cut off from liberal educationcould have at least the chance to makea choice, the number of young peoplelike those I saw at Munich would bemuch greater, and they would furnishthe peaceful dynamism which Ger many now lacks. One of the best Ger mans I know, Eugen Kogon , the editor of the Frankfurter Hefte, ventured theestimate for me that five per cent ofthe Western German youth in theage group I saw were politically dan-gerous, fifteen per cent more or lessliberal, and the remaining eighty percent( four young Germans out offive) politically unconscious, apatheticabout public affairs, engrossed only intheir immediate sensual and materiallife. I would risk increasing the fiveper cent, even the Nazi fanatics amongthem, if half of the eighty per centcould be educated for democracy.
One of the most impressive Ger mans I met was a man whom I shallcall only Karl, the chauffeur of a friendof mine in Military Government. Karlhad been through the caste systemof the schools, and had somehow comethrough it without the usual dullnessand lethargy. He talked with piercinginsight and a wide knowledge aboutevery issue in German and interna-tional affairs. I asked him how hehad come by his broad outlook." I aman educated man," Karl answered withan ironic smile." I was in one concen-tration camp after another during thewhole Hitler régime. And it was in theconcentration camps that you met thebest people. It was from them that Igot my education."
I hope that the young generation ofGerman workers, who will be the Karlsof the future, will not have to get theireducation that way. But I have myfingers crossed.--MAX LERNER
The Reporter, October 11, 1949
35