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yo, i'm reading "Address to the German Nation" by Fichte and it's creepy as fuck but it's filling in a confusion i had on how the actually earnest "love of learning" progressive edu types in 19th-20th century intermingled with the more authoritarian scientific management types
their team up is both groups take coercion, force-fullness, punishment, stern-looks as OUT, no more of that Fichte goes on about how you can't coerce a pupil into being good. but then goes onto basically be like "which i why we need to BRAINWASH THE DEPTHS OF HIS SOUL"
"brainwash" is my term not his, but i don't think its an exaggeration some screenshots. first "education needs to replace the will of the pupil" https://t.co/7aOjo5Htuv
"fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will" https://t.co/NrQcou37L3
btw the significance of this all is Fichte gave it soon after Napoleon whooped prussia in 1806, and it's him sounding the horn to Overhaul Prussian Everything, and he specifically is sounding for edu overhaul, which became the system that many other countries copied in parts
pupils will act in interest of german nation not because they've been bullied into it, but because Love Has Been Injected Into Their Hearts https://t.co/xZouWgRxI3
this paragraph really clicked. though i expect a lot of the prog edu people weren't actually that invested in good things for kids, i can totally imagine the ones who were only getting snippets of ficht stuff and being like "he gets it! the love of learning! an ally!" https://t.co/hNckgQ6KH4
very much this https://t.co/HV650kDfj2
more examples: B. F Skinner's utopian novel "walden two" (Frazier voices skinner's views, Castle is a straightman) "science has shown conclusively that punishment doesn't work, instead we'll use positive reinforcement to control people in ways they don't even feel controlled" https://t.co/hKRbtaIba5
dubbing this pattern "anti-coercion dark enlightenment" having a conviction that punishment/coercion ultimately don't work (which i think is true, and radical!), and also wanting to control people and program their souls
also, it seems like as soon as the pedal hits the metal, punishment & coercion is immediately admitted back in because their efforts to program the soul don't align with real people and gets rejected and force is needed to maintain appearances/stability