Forgotten Connections

On culture and upbringing

Klaus Mollenhauer, Norm Friesen, Norm Friesen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134685608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Klaus Mollenhauer's Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing is internationally regarded as one of the most important German contributions to educational and curriculum theory in the 20th century. Appearing here in English for the first time, the book draws on Mollenhauer's concern for social justice and his profound awareness of the pedagogical tension between the inheritance of the past and the promise of the future. The book focuses on the idea of Bildung, in which philosophy and education come together to see upbringing and maturation as being much more about holistic experience than skill development.

This translation includes a detailed introduction from Norm Friesen, the book's translator and editor. This introduction contextualizes the original publication and discusses its application to education today. Although Mollenhauer's work focused on content and culture, particularly from a German perspective, this book draws on philosophy and sociology to offer internationally relevant responses to the challenge of communicating cultural values and understandings to new generations.

Forgotten Connections will be of value to students, researchers and practitioners working in the fields of education and culture, curriculum studies, and in educational and social foundations.

1 Introduction

What are we talking about when we talk of upbringing?

Dearest Father,

You asked me recently why I told you I was afraid of you. As usual, I didn't know what to say, partly because I'm afraid of you and partly because the grounds and constituents of this fear are far too numerous to keep track of while talking. And if I now try to give you an answer in writing, it will still be very incomplete, because even when I write, the fear and its effects hold me back – and because the magnitude of the matter goes far beyond the scope of my memory and understanding.

(Adaped from Kafka, 1953, p. 7)¹

This is the beginning of Kafka's famous Letter to his Father which his father actually never read. Kafka wrote it when he was 36, well into adulthood, and when most of his writing was already behind him. The Letter is one of the most astonishing educational documents in our culture and ranks with works such as Augustine's Confessions, Montaigne's Essays, the paintings of Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Pestalozzi's account of his failed experiment in upbringing in Stans (Switzerland), Karl Philipp Moritz's autobiographical novel, Anton Makarenko's poem about the Gorky colony, van Gogh's self-portraits and Elias Canetti's childhood memoir.²

In many instances, these are not success stories. They neither advance the view that any one concept is the only and true path to successful upbringing, nor do they encourage others to follow blindly in their footsteps; indeed, they don't even worship success as the be-all and end-all. These works do not use fashionable buzzwords or offer simple solutions. All the same, they express themselves in a comprehensible and compelling fashion. But about what, exactly?

Take Kafka for example. The first three sentences of his Letter draw us into a terrifyingly rapid vortex of thoughts and images. The motion, as well as the obstacles that the motion must overcome, are palpable. As one reads the passage, one soon realizes that this letter will be anything but a straightforward reckoning with his father. Instead, Kafka will be passing judgment on his upbringing and there will be no question of describing how it might have been better, which is completely beside the point, “because the magnitude of the matter goes far beyond the scope of my memory and understanding.” What do we do when faced with such a situation?

Kafka's solution is to engage in an imaginary conversation with his father, who was clearly the most important and problematic element of the atmosphere in which he was brought up. In this dialogue, Kafka spares neither his father nor himself, and persists in the face of the emotional obstacles (“the fear and its effects”) that stand in the way of such an undertaking. Kafka is by no means the only author to have addressed this problem. All of the autobiographies written over the past five centuries bear testimony to the fact that, apart from being grateful to our parents for the upbringing they gave us, we also have reason to find fault with what they did to us. Each individual's Bildung is at once a process of broadening and enrichment as well as a narrowing and impoverishment – a question of what might have been. Adults are more than mere midwives to the development of a child's mind and spirit: they also act as all-powerful censors of the adult that the child ultimately becomes.

In this sense, education's purpose is to further the cause of memory. By memory I mean collective memory – our common cultural heritage whose core themes education attempts to tease out: its principles, viewpoints and norms around which memory can orient itself. This also means that for each individual, the events that make up his or her upbringing and Bildung are patterned – and their endurance tested – according to these core themes. In other words, education should focus on cultural and biographical memory, and should seek lasting principles in this memory that develop the child's potential. Finally it should also find a precise and suitable language for these tasks. The peculiar educational urgency of Kafka's Letter has to do with the following facts:

● It unavoidably puts the task of recollection into words;

● It draws the reader's attention to the reflexive movement provoked by the act of remembering and to the underpinnings of upbringing as an activity; and,

● It immediately launches into a number of stories.

All those who attempt to speak of upbringing and Bildung face the same set of challenges:

1 The basic problem cannot be avoided. Everyone has a father and a mother.³ We all suffered through a time with at least one of these two mentors, and with others, all of whom – if we were lucky – wanted what was best for us. There's no avoiding this. We can't simply get rid of upbringing: all we can hope for, when we become parents or educators, is that we'll do a better job. But: Do we actually know what “better” looks like? By “know” I do not mean to have a vague idea, opinion or supposition; nor do I mean a new educational book or report, nor a custom, convention, trend, ideology or utopia. I mean: certain, reliable knowledge. Kafka speaks of “the magnitude of the matter.” That refers to the infuriating conglomeration of narratives and history, of deliberate and involuntary acts, of economics, politics, and good intentions, of giving and at other times fending off the child's requests for tender loving care, of positive experiences and severe loss of approval and corruption of love and indifference, and of being understood and misunderstood. This “magnitude of the matter” exceeds the scope of knowledge and certainty, the scope of both memory and understanding. The mind not only boggles at the task of formulating rational concepts in regard to this “matter,” but also does not have sufficient power of recall – for memory can bring to light only parts of one's upbringing. “Fear and its effects” stand in the way of accurate recall. When it comes to rearing children, we are all inherently biased. Reflecting on raising children basically involves either justifying one's own behavior or attempting to blame others – and in most cases it entails both. The labels are affixed in accordance with the position of the person being labeled. Guilt tends to be assigned to bad parents, authoritarian teachers, “repressive” relationships and even progressive educators. All the while, the person doing the labeling must find their own habits and way of life, their own manner of dealing with children, and with the choices they've made: constituents that are “far too numerous to keep track of while talking.”

2 Kafka wrote his Letter nonetheless. He undertakes a task that had at first seemed impossible. The sixty pages of the letter constitute an extremely strenuous effort to scavenge for every possible memory that might still be recoverable. The imaginary scenario of addressing his father helped Kafka to uncover ever new shards of memories to support his view that he was still suffering from this relationship. This process would ensure that this grievance is not just a hollow accusation or a simple justification for previous events, but is instead an inquiry into the whys and wherefores of past events. This inquiry is in fact the central question that theories of education and upbringing ought to address: What can we justify when we, like Kafka, openly and frankly evaluate our own memories?

3 How are we to speak about such things? Since all of our experiences occur solely through the medium of language, which is also our only means of conveying this experience, everything depends on the quality of what we say. But what does “quality” mean when it comes to upbringing? Can language ever measure up to the “magnitude of the matter”? Can spoken and written discourse even begin to keep track of the “countless details”?

I don't have a reliable answer to any of these questions. I don't know if it is possible to avoid using the abstract labels that are so widespread in sociological research and theory without the risk of sacrificing accuracy and validity; nor do I know if I can convey experience without falling into romantic sentimentality. I therefore attempt this difficult task by providing and interpreting a range of documents and texts from various periods of European history that are significant for education and child rearing. To speak of education and upbringing is a profoundly historical endeavor. When we talk about these things, we always talk about something historical in a historical mode. Even the most a-historical statement about education has a history; at a minimum, it is the history of a generation, and the history of times to come. This may sound trivial, but it has consequences.

Kafka's Letter could not have been written at any other time. The detailed description of childhood scenarios and the intensity of the child's sufferings it expresses reflect an attitude toward childhood that was unknown in Europe before the middle of the eighteenth century. The Letter also reflects an attitude toward child rearing that Kafka actually carries to an absurd extreme: the father is at once the giver of life and the one who robs the son of his life, of his ability to “breathe freely.” “No part” of the way he was raised by his father, Kafka says, “belongs to my future.” By implication, in his description of upbringing as imprisonment, Kafka outlines a kind of “counter-concept” of upbringing. However, this outline is empty. It has no content.

In a similar vein, Austrian author Thomas Bernhard speaks at the beginning of his autobiographical short story, “A n Indication of the Cause” of the violence he experienced as a child in two different settings.

The adolescent boy, who had been condemned to spend his formative years in the city against his will but by the choice of those responsible for his education, had been mentally and sentimentally predisposed in its favor, only to find himself a prisoner: on the one hand, a prisoner in the endless show trial staged to vindicate its world-wide fame – itself nothing more than a squalid device for making money and yet more money out of the exploitation of beauty – and on the other, a prisoner of the poverty and helplessness which afflicted his childhood and youth and became for him an impregnable fortress of anxiety and terror. Of Salzburg and the existence it afforded him at the time, he has – to put it neither too crudely nor too lightly – nothing but dismal memories or memories of experiences which darkened his youthful development and cast a fatal blight over his whole subsequent existence. In the face of lies, slander, and hypocrisy, he has to tell himself as he writes down this account, intended as an indication of what he experienced, that this city has shaped his whole nature, determined his whole way of thinking, and always exercised a malign and injurious influence on his mind and temperament – above all in those two decades of despair in which he was drilled and hectored into maturity, being constantly punished, directly or indirectly, for crimes and offences of which he was not guilty – decades in which any sensitivity or sensibility he possessed was ruthlessly trodden under foot and not the least effort was made to foster his creative ability.

(Bernhard, 2010, pp. 77–78)

Twentieth-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre takes a similar view. He was more fortunate, however: he hardly had a father.

There is no such thing as a good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity! Had my father lived, he would have lain on me at full length and would have crushed me. As luck had it, he died young. Amidst Aeneas and his fellows who carry their Anchises on their backs,⁴ I move from shore to shore, alone and hating those invisible begetters who bestraddle their sons all their life long. I left behind me a young man who did not have time to be my father and who could now be my son. Was it a good thing or a bad? I don't know. But I readily subscribe to the verdict of an eminent psychoanalyst: I have no Superego.

(Sartre, 1981, p. 1)

Things can be different: children don't have to grow up this way. This has been clear ever since the publication of Karl Philipp Moritz's 1786 autobiographical novel Anton Reiser. It has also become apparent that experiences like Moritz's are not an exception, but rather a part of our way of life. And this makes it possible to write the kinds of childhood descriptions we have just encountered from Kafka, Bernhard and Sartre. The historically remarkable feature about these texts is not that we have all had experiences like the ones they describe – this is not likely to be the case. What is remarkable and new is that an educational aporia, a pathlessness intrinsic to upbringing – one that we can accept as our own – appears in these descriptions. But how do we deal with this aporia, a key component of our historical situation?

Today, as grown-ups, we could label this pathlessness as “sentimental,” we can imitate the “no future”⁵ attitude of the younger generation. We could look for an escape out in the country or even within the city. We could regard such accounts and recollections as the aberrations of a few, not to be taken seriously. We could warn against generalizing from such texts and instead focus on the unique details of any situation of upbringing. We could even go further. We could see such talk not only as an aberration but also as a threat, as an oversensitivity to experience that is unfortunately quite popular and to be seen as a counter-example for a proper upbringing marked by discipline, industriousness and obedience. We could adopt an attitude of “let nature take its course” toward raising children, c...