The self-willed child - Basic needs and education in post-mythic times •
Authors: Skiera Ehrenhard 
Published: June 2022

From the beginning of its existence, the child is articulating an unconditional claim to life. Even in the post-mythic era, or rather in the myth-critical world of the modern age, education is confronted with the difficult task of responding to this claim - but now without the possibility of being able to legitimise its interventions and actions by appealing to an unquestionably absolute authority. First of all, this means questioning the coercion that is primordially inscribed in education.

May parents, may teachers, may educators force the compliance of the self-willed child? All guardians of a supposedly true and unconditional social order will answer the question with “yes”. For even since antiquity, human beings have been granted free will, but this - according to the great Church teacher Augustine in the 5th century - is “not always good”. For this reason, education was, and to some extent still is, a project to replace the “bad” self-will with a will that was as fully “good” as possible, or an attempt to at least neutralise or tame the bad parts of the will. In the case of success, so the anxious hope of education, the child can protect itself as well as the community into which it is born from “evil” and from sinful misfortune.

Since the rebellious discourse of the dignity of man, one cannot avoid including the child, even the wayward one, in the circle of dignity. As in politics, so also in education, dealing with resistance and “deviants” shows the real meaning of values such as freedom, justice, codecision, public spirit and the protection of life. The question is how the values are anthropologically justified, normatively interpreted and practically concretised. In more recent times, i.e. in the modern age that is far removed from God and critical of myths, this poses a particular challenge. Now, the legitimisation of education in general, as well as its moments of coercion in particular, can no longer be justified with a “Higher Will” as it was centuries ago. Coercion inevitably emanates from the authoritative counterpart of the child, from the holder of the “educational power” - as a spontaneous action of responsible adults as well as in the form of a longer-term and planned effort on the part of socially legitimised authorities.

This study attempts to provide food for thought from historical, conceptual-systematic, various theoretical and practical perspectives regarding the “eternal” question of the inherently contradictory relationship between child and educator or between individual and community/society. In the post-mythic era, according to the thesis, there is a need for a constant dialogue effort based on agreement in the sense of an authentic culture of responsive communication. According to its intention, it establishes a creative space of claim and response in which every human being has a right to a voice and a hearing. In this endeavour, the child to be educated must be included as a relevant co-creator of his or her educational process, if he or she is not to be made a mere object of foreign ambitions and demands. For the possibility of an education that respects human dignity and is resolutely oriented towards universal values is ultimately dependent on the free consent of the child and the later adult.