Chapter 2.
5. Person and education (1)
Rosmini's distinction between the perfection of person and the perfection of human nature (2) is crucial to an understanding of his approach to the philosophy of education. Although nature can and does develop within the context of society, such development is not always accompanied by growth at a personal level. A perfectly competent astrophysicist, carpenter or secretary may be a moral misery to self and others; from a personal point of view, even the skills in use at the level of human nature may be employed evilly and disastrously.
Education is valid for Rosmini, therefore, only if it cultivates the whole person, and imparts instruction in such a way that the elements of human nature are developed in harmony with and subject to the requirements of the person. The aim of education, and its fount of unity, is the perfection of the person, the only source capable of ensuring an organic, global and harmonious development within the human being. At the same time, the human person tends to God as his ultimate end. In this sense, education goes beyond the limitations of the human person by directing the person to God. In other words, no system of education is valid without its being at least implicitly religious. Education is intended to facilitate the growth of harmony in a person, and to aid the referral of the person to the end for which he exists.
The material content of education consists in teaching the means by which the end may be achieved. These means gravitate around three objects: God, the human being, and nature. The first is studied in theology, the second by means of history, philosophy and the humanities, and the third under the general title of natural sciences.
Rosmini examines the second area of education in some detail. For him, history includes literature, the history of philosophy and one's native language as well as the account of previous events in universal, national and regional fields. Considered from this point of view, history enables us to understand something of human effort through the centuries, with its successes and failures. But this in turn depends upon a valid criterion, provided by philosophy, for measuring progress and failure.
The teaching of natural sciences is not explicitly considered by Rosmini in any single work, but he says sufficient in passing to show that mathematics is of primary importance for the appraisal of method, that observation is absolutely necessary to prevent us from attempting - disastrously - to dictate laws to nature rather than receive them from nature, and that every progress in this field is to be welcomed when it goes hand in hand with personal development.
Two considerations must be kept in mind, therefore, if the advantages of true education are to be realised. First, the knowledge taught, although governed by rules in its own field, must be finally subordinated to the end comprised by the person; second, one or more subjects must not dominate to the extent of preventing the harmonious development of all that is needed to attain the end, that is, the growth of the human person.
Consideration of what is taught must be accompanied in the philosophy of education by an examination of the human faculties with which the person who learns grasps what is put before him. The human being is the living material on which the educator has to work. The teacher's effort will produce maximum good when his method succeeds in uniting harmoniously the senses, intellect and will of the students so that together these faculties collaborate in obtaining the perfection of the person who is the subject of education. The teacher uses this supreme principle of method in his work by leading the pupils from the known to the unknown, from the general to the particular, by drawing attention to what is common in the many particulars which we experience. This is in fact the way our instinct for education expresses itself. No one in their senses will say to a child: 'Look at the lovely carnations' before saying: `Look at the lovely flowers'. In other words, and as far as possible, the particular will never be named before the more universal.
Such a method does not entail its rigid application to every pupil. It would be, says Rosmini, 'a sad, unreasonable approach which requires that everyone be educated like all the others'. Often the pupil's distaste for work is indicative of the teacher's lack of skill in this respect rather than incapacity on the part of the students. If those who learn are the living material of education, teachers are the living instruments and as such constitute the only essential elements in adequate education. Method, reforms in education and resources of every kind will be valueless without good teachers. At the same time, educators of 'great charity, sacrifice and ability' are capable of transforming impossible situations: 'Give me good teachers, and even schools poorly constituted and divided will be good' (3).
Teachers therefore must be people of broad sympathies who know how to combine clear exposition with profound instruction, to show coherence between what they teach and how they live, and to offer education serenely and firmly, with constant attention to the heart and will of the pupil, as well as to their understanding: 'the heart should feel, and life should make clear, what the intellect has grasped' (4).
Rosmini, when speaking of teachers, does not direct his attention only to what we may call professional educators. Above all, he refers to parents whose instinct for educating their children will be needed long before formal teaching is required. The life instinct and the sensuous instinct, the awakening of intelligence, and language, all introduce the child into new worlds which can only be supervised by the parents and the immediate family of the child. At each level of development, children will have to receive the kind of education that can be adapted to their rules. It would be wrong to force growth at any of these stages. In particular, children's mysterious and spontaneous turning to a religious dimension in life, and their fundamental leaning to love, must be followed, not impeded, by the provision of an atmosphere in which beauty and goodness can flourish.
But what right have teachers of all kinds to communicate knowledge? For Rosmini, there are certain rights which as inborn to human beings cannot be annulled by any society in which persons find themselves. One of these rights is the freedom to develop faculties which lead to human perfection. Amongst these faculties is that of communicating with neighbours for the sake of transmitting (teaching) and receiving (learning) our various experiences. Respecting freedom to teach means not placing obstacles to this faculty whether it is exercised by the learned, the Church, parents or the State. Moreover, this freedom includes the right proper in the educator to decide how the teaching should take place for the benefit of the pupils. But this aspect of Rosmini's pedagogy will be better understood after a discussion of his views on human rights in general.
Notes
(1). Cf. especially Saggio sull'unità dell'educazione (Essay on the Unity of Education) [1826], Della libertà d'insegnamento (Freedom to Teach) [1854], Del principio supremo del metodo (The Supreme Principle of Method) [1857], all of which may be found in Scritti vari di metodo e di pedagogia, Turin, 1883.
(2). Cf. p. 16.
(3). Logica, no. 1033.
(4). Sull'unità dell'educazione, p. 65.