How Will I Look After A Brazilian

"If you study well, then I'll give you a cake!" Michelstaedter Charles and his criticism of education and school

Michelstaedter Carlo is one of those figures that we regret. We must especially regret his untimely death, to fire the revolver with which he took his own life at the age of 23. A few days after his death, Giovanni Papini wrote that he had committed suicide to "honestly and bravely to the last to accept the consequences of his ideas."
His thesis on rhetoric and persuasion are still filled with great critical insights. E the pages that we feel most alive are those devoted to criticism of schools and education. Travel over those pages, taken from " Persuasion and Rhetoric" (1910) , that was - mind you! - His thesis.

The worst violence on children is exercised so under the guise of affection and civil education. Since with the promise of rewards and the threat of punishment who are capitalizing on their weaknesses and fears that caresses and glues to their weakness, give birth, away from the free life of the body, shaking the forms required in a civil family: which as the enemy their nature are to be precisely to impose by force or with the corruption. [...]

"You'll be a nice guy like you see there to go to school, you will be like a big " . The formed the legend of this brave schoolboy great, and everything belonging to the study, the school acquires a sweet taste: going to school, the scholarship for books and so on. And forms the hierarchy of values \u200b\u200bin relation to the superiority of the class : "If you're good, next year, not write on the blackboard, but notebook," and in ink. " All take advantage of this soul in the provisional dreaming " time when he grows up," to rape her, "jacketed," handcuffed, put it away with the other to fill that particular place, date and breathe the air over a large dusty road of civilization.

Should think carefully - we have said many times - this idea of \u200b\u200b "myth of the school" . Michelstaedter rightly speaks of the "myth" of the good pupil. And 'doing their strength on this myth that you can enclose and rape children, boys.

Gorizia But the young philosopher goes beyond this finding. The dissociation between pleasure and duty is another key aspect of the matter. And this part of the school.

Since the first duties that are imposed, all the effort tends to make it indifferent to what he does, but why do so under the rules with complete objectivity. "On the one hand, the duty of the other pleasure." "If you study well, then I'll give you a sweet - otherwise it will not let you gamble." And the child has to put the data in the hands of those signs of writing, those given news story, then to have the award to her sweet body.

"Did you study - you can now gamble."

And baby s'abitua to consider the study as a work needed to live happy, even if in itself is completely indifferent to her life: the sweet, the game etc.. So we impose certain words, certain places municipalities, certain judgments, all καλλωπίσματα convenience and science, which he will always be meaningless in itself and will always be only all that constant sense: it is necessary to have the cake, to be able to gamble in peace: the sufficiency and calculation.

When the sweet and the game will replace the gain, "the possibility of living" - "career", "made the way ',' professions' - Any study or employment will retain the sense that the first duty was: irrelevant, obscure, but necessary in order to play then, that in order to live to my taste, eat, drink and sleep and proliferate.

indifference and alienation of a whole life in order to start the mechanism that is terrifying school and study. The indoctrination accorded to young minds, with all the social conventions and clichés masquerading as lofty thoughts, we see it in all societies where there is an educational institution.

So we will make it a worthy irresponsible arm of the company: A judge , as may be unmoved by pulling the projections from the figure that the present investigation on the details of its code, without wondering if this is right or not. A master , which takes 4 hours to 80 days, 90 children locked in a large room, requires them to be still, to repeat what he says, to study those given things, praising and studying whether to be governed, if not punishing s'adattino studying and discipline - and of being a man does not realize that violence is having on his fellow man, which will carry the consequences for life, without knowing why it does and why it does so - but according to the program required. A Executioner, who kills a man when you do not think that he, a man kills a fellow, not knowing why the kill. Why did he never see anything else in that office not matter on which there is no question but that gives him the means to live, and is unconscious instrument. [...]

As the child said, " do as my father says that he knows more than you, and you do not need to ask 'why ', obey and not think, when you great understand. " So he comforted the young man to pursue his scientific study without being asked what sense, saying "you cooperate immortal building future harmony of science and will be a little 'thanks to you even if the men when they grow up, will one day. " But I fear that men are so well set out, that they will not be ever the whim to come out of the quiet and serene minors.

The art of mechanical repetition, still and idiot. The art imbecile dell'imbecillissima discipline and obedience.

Antonio Saccoccio