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BOGOTÁ — Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential of Western philosophers, was born 300 years ago on April 22. He was a leading proponent of the ideas of the 18th century enlightenment, proposing the “categorical imperative” of ethical conduct based on objectivity and reason, not religious injunctions.
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His ideas on teaching are to be found in three of his books: On Pedagogy, including his lecture notes from the University of Königsberg and published weeks before his death in 1804, the last chapter of Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) and What is Enlightenment? (1784). Kant was (together with Hegel) one of the few philosophers who taught for a living.
Kant would not like us today
He was reputedly so punctual that neighbors adjusted their watches on seeing him leave home for a walk at 3:30 p.m. Yet he was so moved reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile or On Education that he interrupted the afternoon walk for several days. The neighbors can only have imagined he was ill.
Judging by the titles he chose for his books, it is unlikely his virtues included modesty: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788). Kant’s central thesis is that education’s role is to help youngsters attain maturity, which means an ability to think freely and judge morally. He thus tackles the most important question in teaching: why teach what we are teaching?
Today, he would be a critic of socio-cultural polarization as it conveys little reflection and far too much zeal. He would also reject indoctrination wherein a teacher makes students think as he or she does, violating the learner’s freedom. He would assuredly deride the language used today in politics, public life and online as in most cases this violates the categorical ethical imperative that entails respecting others, whatever their views or rationale.
A good philosopher will not “teach'” philosophy but the art of thinking.
Thinking independently requires courage, good teachers and systematic effort, which is why most individuals will happily repeat what their teachers, parents or political leaders say or the books they like to read. This creates a comfort zone that avoids the effort and risk of making judgments or stating ideas. It also means somebody else thinking and deciding on your behalf.
To think then is to exercise freedom and win autonomy, and a good philosopher will not “teach'” philosophy but the art of thinking. The ultimate goal of education, for Kant, was to aid pupils win their freedom and their moral and cognitive autonomy, both individually and collectively. This emphasis on the ethical and collective distances him from the “proto-romantic” Rousseau, who inclined toward spontaneity and individualism.
In contrast with animals who quickly learn what they will do in life and guide themselves with instincts, Kant says “man is the only creature that must be educated” into a being “able to perfect himself,” and who has a “pragmatic predisposition toward becoming civilized through culture.”
Stanislas Dehaene, a French scientist, picks up on this by describing us as members of Homo docens, the self-teaching species. This means that governments are obliged to assure everybody a good education, which isn’t the case. In Kant’s terms, people are only what education makes of them, which makes our two most complex and vital tasks in life “the art of governing and the art of educating.”
How to become an adult
How then could we become adults through education? Kant sees three conditions for this: discipline, care and upbringing.
Discipline should be instilled at the youngest age as it becomes impossible to impose later on, and there Kant differs substantially from Rousseau. As if he had foreseen the norm of permissive families in our age, he wrote that if the child is “left to his own free will in youth and given no resistance, he will surely remain a little wild throughout his life.”
We can see this with the modern youngsters today used to having their way, as their parents saw fit to pander to their whims and egocentrism. As they were never taught about it, they know nothing of either empathy or collaboration.
Kant analyses the tension between coercion and freedom. In his terms, “I must accustom my pupil to accept his freedom to be restrained, while guiding him so he can make good use of his freedom.” Coercion has no sense here if freedom is not the objective, yet that goal will not be attained without obedience in a young child.
Kant remains a great teacher for us today, and his ideas, as valid as ever.
Plato said it before: There are two pernicious excesses to be avoided when educating youth: excessive severity and excessive indulgence. The balance between is difficult to attain but is essential to a good education. Children will become fearful and submissive if parents and teachers are oppressive, and indolent and capricious if perpetually cushioned with permissiveness.
Care is the second condition, akin to the constant attention given to an infant to assure its survival. Without the right care, children and adolescents may resort to force in their relations, though too much attention may be stifling.
As for the third condition, upbringing, Kant sees it as a guarantee of civilized living. It is the positive part of education that humanizes and turns a child into a fully-fledged human being, and that, as he stated in 1798, means “moral self-determination.” The individual requires culture and moral criteria to live with others, which means teaching children with foresight into a “possible and better future state” in terms of human perfectibility.
The current state of affairs
Kant was well aware none of this was to be found in the schools of his time, whence his proposal of experimental schools to test his ideas before using them in public education. Today, we would call them teaching innovations. The teacher Inés Aguerrondo used to favor experimentation as pushing the “limits of what is possible” by interrupting the educational routine.
There are many, many people over the age of 18 in Colombia and Latin America, who have yet to become adults or mature in the Kantian sense, as they are incapable of judging independently. And Kant would surely think the same of Americans in the United States, if he were here today and informed of the candidate Donald Trump’s reelection chances. What would he think of education in Argentina, where people recently voted for the angry, vociferous Javier Milei?
Kant remains a great teacher for us today, and his ideas, as valid as ever. Our authorities should work to ensure children will grow to become the best adults they can be, in moral and intellectual terms, and fill the gaping gaps between this ideal and reality.
Our teachers are far from perfect when it comes to training and rigor, while youngsters tend to reject the risks of thinking freely. In Colombia, the state has given negligeable support to experimental schools. With this state of affairs, we can be sure people will remain immature, and their democracies, wild and primitive.
