译者:
Joshua @LeZhi (hillfree@126.com)
I.FUNDAMENTALS OF A SPIRITUAL-EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE .(从灵性层面的教育实践基础)
1.6 WHAT CONSTITUTES MORAL EDUCATION?
1.6 什么构成了道德教育?
Allow me, in what follows, to deal with some phenomena of child development that seem to me to be receiving much too superficial attention from current academic psychology and educational science. I propose, in so doing, that we agree to continue accepting the hypothesis of children’s guardian angels on a working basis, in order to become at home with a way of thinking which assumes their involvement to be a fundamental fact.
在下文中,请允许我,就儿童发展中的一些现象来阐述。对我而言,关于这个主题的研究似乎受到了当代心理学和教育科学的很多肤浅的关注。我提议,我们仍然将孩子的守护天使假设作为工作的基础,以便来逐渐熟悉利用这种方式来思考:即天使参与其中是一个基本的事实。
Let us explore the characteristics of a guardian angel as it watches over a child and is active within it.
我们来继续探索守护天使的特性,看看他是如何看护孩子并活跃其内在的。
It is a being that has taken on the task of helping a child, in the course of his or her personality development, to grow ever stronger in forming ideals and becoming idealistically motivated, providing the impulses needed to overcome the conflict between individual striving and social responsibility. It is the angel’s activity in a child’s growing-up that leads the child to begin concerning himself with a humane and charitable approach to his fellows and to feel the first stirring of caring and a selfless readiness to help; this cannot be ascribed solely to the effects of our authoritarian moralizing, as psychoanalysts would have us believe.
守护天使是这样一种存在,它承担了帮助孩子的使命,在孩子的个性发展中,在孩子形成理想并为之奋斗的过程中逐渐成长强大,为孩子提供力量去克服在个体发展与社会责任之间的冲突和障碍。在孩子的成长过程中,天使会引导孩子关心自己的同伴,采取友善和慈爱的态度,并第一次感受到关心和无私帮助的意愿;它不应该像心理分析家所说的那样,被简单理解为是权威道德教化的效果。
Both backgrounds play a part, of course; children do learn the social virtues from observing the behavior of the adults they copy. But how do they come to feel for those virtues? Just to hear themselves praised? Those who think so are habitual materialists in their thinking rather than realists taught by experience.
当然,两个方面都起了作用。孩子确实会通过观察和模仿成人的行为来学习社会美德。但是他们到底是如何来感受这些品德的呢?只是通过被表扬吗?如此认为的人大多是通过思考来学习的物质主义者,而非通过经验来学习现实主义者。
Rudolf Steiner had good cause to assert consistently and firmly that preaching and insisting on morality was not only useless, but actually harmful when considered as a means of developing a dependable morality for later life. Morality fostered through preaching breeds opportunism; it hinders the development of an autonomous morality that rises to the height of creating autonomous ideals.
鲁道夫·斯坦纳一向坚定的认为单纯的道德说教不仅无用,而且对于孩子将来发展坚实的道德感反而是有害的。道德说教滋生了机会主义,它会阻碍自主道德发展到自主理想状态(道德自由?)
An educational method based on teaching children that more can be gained then lost by sacrifice puts the capacity for altruism, inborn in human nature and pressing for expression, in a depressingly false light. If, for example, we let a child sense that she can profit from magnanimous giving or an uncomplaining nature, that certain benefits accrue from putting others’ needs and demands before her own, we supply her with anything but good motivation. The virtue of consideration for others is dragged down to the level of a school report and correspondingly rewarded or punished. This handling can be equated with pressure for moral accomplishment. Rather than furthering social sensitivity, it encourages a species of slyly calculated diplomacy totally devoid of social caring.
那种教育孩子说:给予或牺牲后可以得到更多的教育方法,为利他主义提供了发展空间,与生俱来的人性本质和紧迫的表达,使之在令人沮丧的假光之中。如果,打个比方,我们让孩子感觉到:可以通过慷慨的、无怨无悔的付出可以从中受益,这确实可以达到让孩子把别人的需求置于自己之前的目的,但我们除了教给孩子一个好动机之外,什么也没有教给孩子。这样,为他人考虑的美德就堕落到那种奖勤罚懒的学校报告层面了。因为这种方式等同于逼着人去做好事。它并不会有利于更进一步的社会公德(体谅他人)发展,只是鼓励了与社会关怀无关的狡猾的算计和精致的利己。
We see, therefore, that an education that moralizes is a contradiction in terms. The development of interpersonal social values and attitudes in childhood is, by definition, a mere conforming to adult expectation and overlooks an absolutely decisive fact: there is nothing of a moral nature in mere conformity on the social level; it can at best be termed pseudo morality.
由此,我们可以看到,道德说教的教育效果完全是背道而驰的。这种在儿童时期就去试图培养社会美德或态度,其实只是迎合了成人的期望罢了。因为它忽视了一个不容争辩的事实:在社会层面上根本不存在合乎道德的本性,充其量只能说是“伪道德”。
Of course, one might raise the objection, “well then so be it”; there is only pseudo morality.
当然,会有人站起来反对,“行了,就这样吧。”这只是伪道德。
There is no use letting oneself in for endless discussion; it is a waste of time. Let us stick instead with observations of living reality and ask what moves a child that is not subjected to “moral education” by precept to develop imitative feeling for social values that are real rather than demanded.
在这里我们不再浪费时间,徒费口舌去争论个没完没了。让我们还是立足于观察生活的事实来问问:如果一个孩子不接受“道德说教”的陈词滥调,什么东西会促使他去发展和培养他对社会美德真实的,而非被要求的感受。
Living examples are decisive here! But even that would be ineffective if children did not possess an inherent capacity to appreciate the conduct witnessed and, with joy, make it their own way of behaving, totally uninfluenced by any expectation of benefits that would be forthcoming to them.
答案是:那些鲜活的事例!但假如孩子不能发自内在带着喜悦去赞赏他所看到的行为,并无欲无求的,用自己的方式去行动,即使鲜活的事例也会徒劳无效。
This is an example of having an inner affinity for what is good in the world, and it is not a taught lesson. It depends on education whether this basic and, as-yet-undefined tendency to love the good, finds proper outlets, even though education is not its source. Education can only spell its ruin.
这是一个与世上美好事物建立内在关系的例子,它并不是一节被教授的课程。它取决于教育的基础和方向是否是爱的善念,并找到合适的出口。纵使如此,教育也并非其源泉。说教只能使之毁灭。
Just notice the shining eyes of children listening to a telling of the legend of Good Roland, or of St. Nicholas, or to stories in which “the good person” rises to heroic stature. Observe the pride and delight with which elementary school pupils react to accounts of “good deeds” done by their parents. Parental misdeeds call forth no such reactions. And do not make the mistake of thinking that the inner rejoicing experienced by children listening to tales of admirable human beings that cause their eyes to lighten up can be accounted for by any moral teaching they have received. We understand less than nothing if we persist in explaining soul phenomena as the outcome of such simplistic motivation.
只需要去看看当讲述圣人故事或传说(罗兰骑士、圣尼古拉、或好人成为英雄)时,孩子一双双善良的眼睛,只要去感受感受小学生在提起父母做的好事时的自豪和快乐。要知道那些父母的差劲言行可不会引发这样的反应。千万别搞错了,孩子眼神闪亮的聆听圣人故事时所经验的内在喜悦根本不能通过道德说教来达到。如果我们坚持把这种灵魂现象看作是简单化动机的表现,那就得不到任何真正的理解。