510
PARTISAN
REVII
cess, whose task is always to cherish and protect something....
I
child against the world, the world against the child, the new agaial
the old, the old against the new. Even the comprehensive
resp«at.
bility for the world that is thereby assumed implies, of couJSe,
I
conservative attitude. But this, it seems to me, holds good only for
tilt
realm of education, or rather for the relations between grownupl
and children, and not for the realm of politics, where we act
aDlCIII
and with adults and equals. In politics this conservative attitude–
which accepts the world as it is, striving only to preserve the
staIII
quo--can only lead to destruction, because the world, in
grn\'!
Dl
in detail, is irrevocably delivered up to the ruin of time unless
hUlllll
beings are determined to intervene, to alter, to create what
is
new.
Hamlet's words, "The time is out of joint. 0 cursed spite that
evil
I was born to set it right," are more or less true for every new genera–
tion, although since the beginning of our century they have perhap
acquired a more persuasive validity than before.
Basically we are always educating for a world that is or
is
be–
coming out of joint, for this is the basic human situation, in whida
the world is created by mortal hands to serve mortals for a
lirnital
time as home. Because the world is made by mortals it wears out;
aDd
because it continuously changes its inhabitants it runs the risk
Ii
becoming as mortal as they. To preserve the world against the
m«–
tality of its creators and inhabitants it must be constantly set
right
anew. The problem is simply to educate in such a way that a setting–
right remains actually possible, even though it can, of course, never
be assured. Our hope always hangs on the new which every genera–
tion brings; but precisely because we can base our hope only on
this,
we destroy everything if we so try to control the new that we,
the
old, can dictate how it will look. Exactly for the sake of what
is
new
and revolutionary in every child, education must be conservative;
it
must preserve this newness and introduce it as a new thing into _
old world, which, however revolutionary its actions may be, is always,
from the standpoint of the next generation, superannuated
and
dill:
to destruction.
IV
Now the real difficulty in modern education lies in the fact
that
despite all the fashionable talk about a new conservatism, even
that
