56. Untimely Aspects of Grammar School Reform

There is now a lot of talk about grammar school reform. If you read the reports about negotiations on this matter, you get a strange impression. There is talk about all sorts of things, but little about the main issue. Whether or not a few more or fewer hours should be set aside for Latin and Greek lessons, whether the German essay should be cultivated in this or that way: there are endless debates about this. And yet these things are the most indifferent in the world. The main deficiency of our grammar school is palpable. It does absolutely nothing to bring its pupils to the point where they are able to grasp modern intellectual life.

Or is it not true that today's graduates are at a loss when faced with the actual basis of our view of the world and life, the modern scientific ideas? What Socrates taught, what Plato taught, what Caesar wrote, is not a living part of our intellectual life. What Darwin revealed, what modern physiology, physics and biology reveal, should become so.

I cannot think of underestimating the educational value of the Greeks and Romans. But I am of the opinion that the past only acquires the right value for the education of our time if it is seen from the perspective of the present. Anyone who does not know the content of our contemporary education can only have a skewed relationship with Socrates and Plato.

All teaching at grammar school should be filled with the spirit of the present. People who are imbued with this spirit should be the only teachers. Let it not be said that it makes no difference whether the teacher of Greek or Latin knows anything about modern science or not. In the spiritual life everything is connected. A modern mind will teach a thousand details differently than one who is rusty in classical philology and knows nothing but his "subject".

It would have unforeseeable consequences for our entire intellectual life if our grammar school pupils were educated according to the scientific world view of our time. Our entire public life would have to take on a different shape. We would be spared numerous discussions about the relationship between religion and science, faith and knowledge, etc. It would no longer be possible to put forward things that have long been dismissed from the standpoint of modern thought.

Do not argue that the views of the scientific worldview are for the most part still hypotheses that still need to be tested. Every doubt about them is justified. I would have to reply: this is true of every view, the old no less than the new. But we do not have the task of handing down convictions to our younger generation. We should teach them to use their own powers of judgment, their own powers of comprehension. They should learn to look at the world with open eyes.

Whether we doubt the truth of what we pass on to young people or not: it doesn't matter. Our beliefs are only for us. We teach them to young people to tell them: this is how we see the world; see how it presents itself to you. We should awaken skills, not pass on convictions.

Youth should not believe in our "truths", but in our personality. Adolescents should realize that we are seekers. And we should show them the ways of seekers. We tell our descendants how we come to terms with things and leave it up to them how they manage to do the same.

We must therefore not withhold from secondary school pupils the content of what we have gained as a replacement for the religious ideas we have overcome. They should not grow up with sentiments that contradict modern thinking.

Many will consider what I have said to be the figment of the imagination of a person who is so taken with the ideas of the scientific world view that he does not even realize how much he is overlooking the opposing feelings of others. That is not the point. Those others emphasize their demands. We want to do the same with ours. No Catholic bishop will shy away from reforming the school in his sense; we also want to express our opinion without consideration about the path that must lead to where we want the world to be. Moderation blunts the weapons.