What Schools and Parents Need
to Know About the Goals of National-Socialist Education
The source: “Die
Erziehungsgrundsätze des neuen Deutschlands,” Frauen-Warte, #22
(1936/37), pp. 692-693.
German
people, German parents! The new Germany created by our people’s chancellor
Adolf Hitler places special demands on the German youth. The German youth are a
foundation of the rebuilding of the German people and the German fatherland.
The people and the fatherland place their hands on the shoulders of the youth
and determine what educational and cultural values and goals are necessary for
this youth to meet the needs of people and fatherland. This requires a truly
national and social education for the German youth, and all involved in
education has to serve these educational and cultural goals with their full energy.
Parents and teachers above all!
All those involved in
education must have a clear and unified idea of the educational tasks before
them. The four iron pillars of the national school and educational system are:
race, military training, leadership, and religion!
Race
National Socialist education
is an education in the thinking of the German people, in understanding German
traditions, in awakening the pure, uncorrupted, and honest people’s
consciousness, their sense of belonging to the people. Only a pure member of the
German race can have such an understanding of his people, crowning it with the
willingness to sacrifice all for the people. He must know that without his
people he is a miserable nothing, and that it is better if he himself die than
that his people and fatherland perish! He who thinks that National Socialist
education has as its goal a kind of hyperpatriotism has not understood it.
Something entirely different is intended. Something should be awakened in the
soul of young Germans that will fill their hearts and whole being until their
souls can no longer restrain the overflowing, until a powerful and jubilant
“Hail Germany” springs from their lips! That call itself is not the first or
most significant goal: but rather it is its foundation in the soul, a foundation
that jubilantly, freely, confidently, cheerfully and passionately expresses
itself. It is the holy sense of people and fatherland! Awakening this in the
German youth requires that they have a clear understanding of the value of
people and fatherland. They must realize that the German people has a right to
independence and freedom, honor and power. They must learn that it has a right
to its own fate among the peoples of the earth, and it must gain with the other
peoples the place in the sun that belongs to it. It must do this not through
force, but rather because the German people is a noble nation that has created
values for the entire world that no other people was capable of. We want to
awaken in the German youth this free, just, and noble national pride so that at
the thought of Germany’s past, present, and future their hearts will pound and
their eyes will gleam. That is the first foundation of National Socialist
education.
Military Training
It is clear that the German
youth must be resolved to defend their fatherland with their lives. Despite all
the nonsense about promises and disarmament, Germany is surrounded by weapons.
The German youth must learn military virtues. Their bodies must be steeled,
made hard and strong, so that the youth may become capable soldiers who are
healthy, strong, trained, energetic, and able to bear hardships. Gymnastics,
games, sports, hiking, swimming, and military exercises must all be learned by
the youth. Our youth should not sit in stuffy rooms and develop crooked backs
and weak eyes. Alongside the basic and truly important education of the mind,
they should develop healthy bodies by being outdoors. The idea of the healthy
and strong German should not be mere empty talk. Parents can help here. They
will train our youth in simplicity and cleanliness. They will train them, even
when they are older, not to waste their spare time by dubious or even harmful
activities such as card playing, drinking alcohol, and bad music, but rather to
prepare their bodies for their future tasks.
Leadership
A youth being trained for such
important national duties must accept the idea of following the Führer
absolutely and without question, without unhealthy carping criticism, without
selfishness or opposition. They must learn to obey so that they, having
themselves learned to obey, can believe in and trust their own leadership and
can grow to be leaders themselves. Only he who has learned to obey can lead.
Germany no longer believes that the masses can lead themselves by majority
rule! The masses themselves are nothing! We do need not a people ruled by
majority votes, but a people with the will to leadership. The German youth must
learn that and act accordingly! Thus the German youth belong in organizations
where they will learn the nature of leadership in its most noble form, where
they can learn to obey and — if they are called to it — also learn to lead.
They will not bend to an empty mass will expressed through useless votes, but
rather look with enthusiasm to the nation’s strong and noble Führer. They must
learn that once again. We parents want to exhibit such authority to our youth
by strengthening family authority and establishing in our homes a healthy and
natural obedience on the part of our children. This will not suppress the youth,
but rather provide them the controlled freedom and authority they need to
develop their abilities.
Religion
Life comes from God and
returns to God. All life and all races follow God’s ordinances. No people and
no race can ignore them. We want the German youth to again recognize the
religious nature of life. They must realize that God wants the individual as well
as the whole people, and that they lose contact with life when they lose
contact with God! God and nation are the two foundations of the life of the
individual and the community. We want no shallow and superficial piety, but
rather a deep faith that God guides the world, that he controls it, and a
consciousness of the relationship between God and each individual, and between
God and the live of the people and the fatherland. The National Socialist state
will promote such a deeply religious educational system. We want parents to
support and strengthen this by honesty and by good example.
Race,
military training, leadership, religion! These are the four unshakable
foundations of the new German National Socialist education!
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