by Alfred Adler
Whether they know it or not, all who propose some school reform are seeking a way to increase the degree of cooperation in social life.
This is the purpose, for example, behind the demand for character education; and, if we understood it in this light, it would clearly be the right demand. On the whole, however, the aims and technique of education are not yet thoroughly understood. We must find teachers who can train children not only to earn money but to work in ways beneficial to mankind. They must feel the importance of this task and they must be trained to fulfill it. Character-education is still on its trial.
We must exclude from consideration the courts — so far there has been no serious and organized attempt at character-education there.
Even in the schools, however, the results are not very satisfactory. Children come to school who have been failures in family life; and their mistakes are not diminished, in spite of all the lectures and exhortations they get. There is nothing left, therefore, but to train the teachers to understand and help the development of children in the school.
This has been a great part of my own work; and I believe that many of the schools in Vienna are ahead of all others. Elsewhere there are psychiatrists to see the children and give advice about them; but, unless the teacher agrees and understands how to carry out the advice, where is the advantage? The psychiatrist sees the child once or twice a week perhaps even once a day —but he does not really know the influences from the environment, from the family, from outside the family, from the school itself. He writes a note that the child should be better nourished or should have thyroid treatment. Perhaps he gives the teacher hints for the personal treatment of the child. The teacher, however, does not know the purpose of the prescription and is not experienced in avoiding mistakes. He can do nothing unless he himself understands the character of the child. We need the most intimate cooperation between the psychiatrist and the teacher. The teacher must know everything the psychiatrist knows, so that after discussing the child's problem he can proceed on his own, without further help. If any unexpected problem turns up, he should understand what to do, just as the psychiatrist would if he were present. The most practical method seems to be the Advisory Council, such as we have established in Vienna. This method I shall describe towards the end of the chapter. When the child first goes to school, he is facing a new test in social life; and this test will reveal any mistakes in his development.
Now he must cooperate in a wider field than before, and, if he has been pampered at home, he will perhaps be unwilling to leave his sheltered life and join in with the other children. In this way we can see in his very first day at school the limits of social feeling in a pampered child. He will perhaps cry and wish to be taken home. He will not be interested in school tasks and in his teacher. He will not listen to what is said, because he is thinking of himself all the time. It is easy to see that if he continues self-interested he will remain backward at school. Often parents tell us of a problem child that he gives no trouble at home; that problems only arise when he is at school. We can suspect that the child feels himself in an especially favorable situation in the family. No tests are set him there, the mistakes in his development are not manifest. At school, however, he is no longer pampered and he feels the situation as a defeat.
One child, from his first day at school, did nothing but laugh at every remark of the teacher. He showed no interest in any of the school work and it was thought that he must be feeble-minded. When I saw him, I said to him, “Everybody wonders why you are always laughing at school." He replied, “School is a joke made up by the parents. They send children to school to fool them." He had been very much teased at home and he was convinced that every new situation was a new joke against him. I was able to show him that he overemphasized the necessity for preserving his dignity; that not everybody was engaged in making a fool of him. In consequence, he could interest himself in his school work and make good progress.
It is the task of schoolteachers to notice the difficulties of the children and to correct the mistakes of the parents. They find some of the children prepared for this wider social life; they have already been trained in their families to interest themselves in other people. Some are not prepared; and wherever an individual is not prepared for a problem, he hesitates or withdraws. Every child who is backward but not definitely feeble-minded is hesitating before the problem of adjustment to social life; and the teacher is in the best position to help him to meet what is a new situation for him.
But how is he to help him? He must do exactly what a mother should do — connect the child with himself and interest him. It is on the interest of the child that his whole future adjustment depends. He can never be interested by severity or punishment. If a child comes to school and finds it difficult to make a bridge with his teachers and fellow children, the worst thing to do is to criticize him and scold him. This method would show only too clearly that he was right to dislike school. I must confess that if I myself were a child who was always scolded and reproached at school, I should distract my interest as far as possible from my teachers. I should look about for ways of getting into a new situation and avoiding school altogether. It is mainly the children to whom school is thus made an artificially unpleasant environment who play truant, are bad pupils and give the appearance of being stupid and difficult to handle. They are not really stupid; often they display great ingenuity in making up excuses for not attending school or in forging letters from their parents. Outside the school, however, they find other children who have played truant before them. From these companions they gain far more appreciation than they get at school. The circle in which they feel themselves interested and where they have the testimony of being worthwhile is not the school class but the gang. We can see, in this situation, how children who are not taken into the class as part of the whole are provoked to train themselves towards a criminal career.
If a teacher is to attract the interest of a child, he will understand what the child's interests have been previously and convince him that he can make a success in this interest and in others. When a child feels confident on one point it is easier to stimulate him in other points also. From the first, therefore, we should find out how the child looks at the world and which sense organ has occupied most of his attention and been trained to the highest degree. Some children are most interested in seeing, some in listening, some in moving. Children of a visual type will be easier to interest in subjects in which they have to use their eyes, in geography or drawing. If the teacher gives lectures, they will not listen; they are not so much accustomed to auditory attention. If such children have no opportunity to learn through the eyes, they will be backward.
It will perhaps be taken for granted that they have no abilities or talents; and the blame will be put on heredity. If anyone is to blame, it is rather the teachers and parents who have not found the right method of interesting the children. I am not proposing that the education of children should be specialized; but an interest which is highly developed should be used to encourage the children in other interests also. In our own time there are some schools where subjects are taught to the children in a way which can appeal to all the senses. Exercises in modeling or drawing, for example, are combined with the lessons. This is a tendency to be encouraged and developed further. The best way to teach subjects is in coherence with the rest of life, so that the children can see the purpose of the instruction and the practical value of what they are learning. A question is often raised whether it is better to teach children subjects or teach them to think for themselves. It seems to me that too severe an antithesis is made in this question. Both methods can be combined.
It is a great advantage, for example, to teach a child mathematics in connection with the building of houses, and let him find out how much wood is needed, how many people will live there, and so forth. Some subjects can easily be taught together, and we often find experts in linking one part of life to another. A teacher, for example, can take a walk wi
th the children and find out what they are most interested in. He can teach them at the same time to understand plants and plant structure, the evolution and use of the plant, the influences of climate, the physical features of the country, the history of mankind and indeed almost every aspect of life. We must presuppose, of course, that such a teacher is really interested in the children he teaches; but there is no hope for educating children where we cannot make this presupposition.
Under our present system we generally find that when children first come to school they are more prepared for competition than for cooperation; and the training in competition continues throughout their schooldays. This is a disaster for the child; and it is hardly less of a disaster if he goes ahead and strains to beat the other children than if he falls behind and gives up the struggle. In both cases he will be interested primarily in himself. It will not be his aim to contribute and help, but to secure what he can for himself. As the family should be a unit, with each member an equal part of the whole, so, too, should the class. When they are trained in this way, children are really interested in one another, and enjoy cooperation. I have seen many "difficult" children whose attitude was entirely changed through the interest and cooperation of their fellow children. One child in especial I may mention. He came from a home where he felt that everyone was hostile to him and he expected that everyone would be hostile to him at school. His work at school had been bad, and when his parents heard of it, they punished him at home. This situation is only too often met with: a child gets a bad report at school and is scolded for it there; he takes it home and is punished again. One such experience is discouraging enough; to double the punishment is terrible. It is no wonder that the child remained backward and a disturbing influence in the class. At last he found a teacher who understood the circumstances and explained to the other children how this boy believed that everyone was his enemy. He enlisted their help in convincing him that they were his friends; and the whole conduct and Progress of the boy improved beyond belief.
Sometimes people doubt whether children can really be trained to understand one another and help in this way; but it is my experience that children often understand better than their elders. A mother once brought her two children, a girl of two years and a boy of three, into my room. The little girl climbed up on a table and her mother was scared to death. She was so anxious that she could not make a movement, but she cried out, “Come down! Come down!” The little girl paid no attention to her. The boy of three years said, “Stay there!” and the girl immediately climbed down. He understood her better than her mother and knew what to do.
One frequent suggestion for increasing the unity and cooperation of a class is to make the children self-governing; but in such attempts I think that we must go carefully, under the guidance of a teacher, and assuring ourselves that the children are rightly prepared. Otherwise we shall find that the children are not very serious about their self-government: they look on it as a kind of game. In consequence they are much stricter and severer than a teacher would be; or they use their meetings to gain a personal advantage, to air quarrels, to score off one another, or to achieve a position of superiority. In the beginning, therefore, it is necessary that the teacher should watch and advise.
We cannot avoid tests of one kind or another if we are to find out a child's present standard of mental development, character and social behavior. Sometimes, indeed, a test such as the Intelligence Tests can be the salvation of a child. A boy has bad school reports, for example, and the teacher wishes to put him in a lower class. He is given an Intelligence Test and it is discovered that he could really be promoted. It ought to be realized, however, that we can never predict the limits of a child's future growth. The Intelligence Quotient should be used only to acquaint us with a child's difficulties, so that we may find a method to overcome them. In so far as my own experience goes, an Intelligence Quotient, when it does not reveal actual feeble-mindedness, can always be changed if we discover the right method. I have found that where children are allowed to play with Intelligence Tests, become familiar with them, find out the trick and increase their experience of these test examinations, their Intelligence Quotient improves. The Intelligence Quotient should not be regarded as fixing a limit, set by fate or by heredity, to the child's future achievements.
Nor should the child himself or the child's parents be acquainted with his Intelligence Quotient. They do not know the purpose of the tests and they think that they represent a final judgment. The greatest difficulty in education is provided, not by the limitations of the child, but by what he thinks are his limitations. If a child knows that his Intelligence Quotient is low, he may become hopeless and believe that success is beyond him. In education we should be occupied in increasing the courage and interest of a child and in removing the limits which, through his interpretation of life, he has set to his own powers. Much the same is true of school reports. If a teacher gives a child a bad report, he believes that he is stimulating him to struggle harder.
If the child has had a severe upbringing at home, however, he will be afraid to take his report back with him. He may stay away from home or alter the report. Sometimes children have even committed suicide in such circumstances. Teachers should consider, therefore, what may happen later on. They are not responsible for the home life of the child and its effects on him; but they must take it into consideration. If the parents are ambitious, there are probably scenes and reproaches when he comes home with a bad report. If the teacher had been a little milder and more benevolent, the child might have been encouraged to go ahead and succeed. When a child always has a bad school report and _ everyone else thinks he is the worst pupil in the class, he comes to believe it himself and to believe that it is unalterable. Even the worst pupil can improve, however; and there are sufficient examples, among the most famous men, to show that a child who is backward at school may recover his courage and interest and go forward to great achievements.
It is very interesting to see that children themselves, without any help from reports, have generally a quite good judgment of one another's present abilities. They know who is best in arithmetic, spelling, drawing and athletics, and could classify themselves very well. The mistake they most often make is to conceive that they could never do better. They see others ahead of them and believe that they could never catch up. If a child is very firmly fixed in this opinion he will transfer it to the circumstances of his later life. Even in adult life he will calculate his position relative to others and think that he must always remain behind at this point.
The great majority of children at school occupy more or less the same position in all the classes through which they go. They are always among the first, in the middle or at the bottom. We should not look on this fact as if it showed that they were more or less gifted by birth. It shows the limits which they have set for themselves, the degree of their optimism and the field of their activity. It is by no means unknown that a child who has been at the bottom of his class should change and begin to make surprising progress. Children should understand the mistake involved in this self-limitation; and both teachers and children should get rid of the superstition that the progress of a child of normal intelligence can be related to his heredity.
Of all mistakes made in education, the belief in hereditary limits to development is the worst. It gives teachers and parents an opportunity to explain away their errors and diminish their efforts. They can be freed from the responsibility of their influence over the children. Every attempt to avoid responsibility should be opposed. If an educator really attributed the whole development of character and intelligence to heredity, I do not see how he could possibly hope to accomplish anything in his Profession. If, on the other hand, he sees that his own attitude and exertions influence the children, he cannot find an escape from responsibility in views of inheritance.
I am not referring here to physical heredity. The inheritance of organ deficiencies is beyond all question. The importance of such inhe
rited deficiencies on the development of the mind is understood, I believe, only in Individual Psychology. The child experiences in his mind the degree of functioning of his organs; and he limits his development in accordance with his judgment of his disability. It is not the deficiency itself which affects the mind, but the child's attitude to his deficiency, and his consequent training. If a child suffers, therefore, from any organic disability, it is especially necessary that he should be given no reason to conclude that he is limited in intelligence or character. We have seen in a previous chapter that the same organic deficiency may be taken as a stimulus for greater effort and success or as an obstacle which is bound to hinder development.
At first, when I advanced this conclusion, many people accused me of being unscientific and of putting forward private beliefs of my own that were in conflict with the facts. It was from my experiences, however, that I had formulated my conclusion, and the evidence in its favor has been steadily accumulating. Now many other psychiatrists and psychologists have come round to the same point of view, and the belief in inherited components of character may be called a superstition. It is a superstition which has existed for many thousands of years. Wherever men have wished to avoid responsibility and have taken a fatalistic view of human conduct, the theory that character traits were inherited was almost bound to show itself. In its simplest form it is the belief that a child at birth is already good or bad. In this form it can easily be shown to be nonsense; and only a very strong desire to escape responsibility could allow it to persist. "Good" and "bad”, like other expressions of character, have meaning only in a social context; they are the result of training in a social environment, among our fellow men, and they imply a judgment, “conducive to the welfare of others”, or " opposed to the welfare of others." Before a child is born, he has no social environment in this sense. At birth he has potentialities to develop in either direction.