A Doctor Remakes Education
By Alfred Adler, M.D.
For thirty years I have been training teachers to look at their work with the eyes of a physician and to graft onto their work the physician's technique. As I look back, I see most clearly of all, the place of vantage the physician occupies as a teacher. He is outside the friction and difficulties of both home and school. He brings to both not only his special knowledge but also the careful, patient scientific attitude and method, which are even more important in dealing with human behavior than with the behavior of laboratory test tubes or microscope slides. The work my assistants and I have done in some public schools of Vienna has proved what collaboration between teachers and psychiatrically trained physicians can achieve.
Perhaps no country had more discouraging schools than Austria under the old regime. Public schools are always the reflection of the government that establishes and maintains them. Enlightened private schools can only modify this governmental influence to a degree, but in the Austrian Empire most of the non-public schools were established by religious groups and were in their way as rigid as the state supported institutions.
When I was a little boy our Austrian school expressed perfectly the government's ideal of citizenry unquestioningly obedient to bureaucratic officialdom. I had to sit quiet, my hands folded on the table. I was not allowed to move. My duty was to obey orders, and to be meticulously respectful toward the teacher and toward the government he represented. I had had a free childhood at home. In this I differed from many of my schoolmates and so perhaps I felt repression the more acutely. I know now as I knew when I was a boy, that I was not a "bad" child. I was never a liar, I did not steal, I went to school regularly in spite of my intense dislike for it, I worked conscientiously, and I was an average student. Yet I always had the worst report in the class because of my mark in "morals." I could not fit myself to the approved mold; I could not create the impression of servile obedience which was the school's ideal—and so I was "bad."
The public schools of Austria were established in 1866, after the disastrous war between Germany and Austria. Austria was convinced that it was the Prussian schoolmaster who won that war. The Austrian schoolmaster was, accordingly, to rear up in our country a generation with Prussian ideals and "efficiency."
The government's only good influence on education was in the direction of improved vocational courses. Even this was not wholly a matter of governmental policy. Industrial groups demanded better technical training to keep pace with Austria's growing factory enterprise, and the school's first break with the rigidly academic tradition was due to the power of industry rather than to the foresight of the state. Compulsory education in Austria between the ages of six and fourteen also resulted from labor-liberal-socialist pressure, which forced the measure as a relief for employed minors.
But in spite of the efforts of labor and liberals, the school system remained fundamentally the expression of the government's ideal; obedient children, to be made into obedient officials and an obedient army. I have seldom met an Austrian of my generation in whose heart the grade school had not stirred hatred and rebellion.
When I became a physician, I realized what this meant in terms of human life, what the influence of such a warped, repressed childhood was on intelligence, courage, self-confidence, independence. It seemed to me that only the physician's skill and outlook would transform these school-prisons into a scheme of real education. In 1898 I wrote my first article developing my idea of the relation between medicine in the larger sense and the school. I had just begun an intensive study of psychology and psychotherapy, in which progress was then being made in France as well as in Vienna.
A little later I received a teaching appointment in the extension division of the University (Volksheim). Gradually I gathered a large body of students who worked with me on problems of human behavior. In connection with this class I carried on a little clinic, in which I invited the schools to participate, and though there was almost no response at first, I kept urging teachers to come to me with retarded children or children who had emotional difficulties, and talk over their cases with me. I had reached certain conclusions in my private practice to which I wished to give wider application.
I had learned that it is not true that a child's intelligence is constant throughout life. Characteristics of both child and adult can be modified. I also discovered that though most of the mistakes which later appear in the child as behavior problems are made in the home, it is almost impossible to see these faults against the background out of which they arise. In a new environment, such as the school, the mistakes of the home become clear. For instance, a child may have innumerable fears, but at home he is so thoroughly "taken care of" that none of them comes to the surface. Let me give an example:
If I lock the doors of the room where I am sitting, and if there are two friendly watch dogs to guard those doors and a couple of police officers right at hand, I can walk around and say quite calmly that I have no physical fear. I am not trembling, my heartbeat is regular—I have no symptom of terror. My statement is true. In this locked and guarded room I am in a sheltered situation where I can play quite splendidly the part of a man of courage. But if I am alone on a deserted street at night, or if I see a little child in sudden peril—under circumstances calling, not for an appearance of courage but for a courageous impulse and act, the genuineness of this courage of mine will appear. And so it is with the child. If he is away from home, if the sense of sheltering protection is decreased, it becomes possible to see him as he really is.
Thirty years ago I had begun to realize this, and so I invited the teachers to come and work with me, that we might learn together how to give children the vital educational experiences that would counteract home failures.
In the beginning there was no general interest in such ideas. Once in a while teachers came to me, or children with teachers or even an occasional parent. But it was only a small beginning and a very unsatisfactory one. To help the children by this plan meant singling out every father and mother in the land and teaching them to make their individual homes fit the needs of their particular children. Through the school I could reach hundreds of children at once. Out of the discouraging futility of my first tiny clinic was born the plan to teach the teachers, to give them an understanding of character through psychology and to give them also the use of the psychologist's simple, sensible tools for helping to adjust the child and his environment.
Then came the War, postponing all my plans. During the War the old Austrian government crashed down and thereafter Vienna became a very free place. The city's new socialistic government insisted that, since the Austrian ideal had changed, the Austrian schools as an expression of the national ideal must also change. A teacher, Mr. Gloeckel, formulated a school plan based on the belief that freedom and self-confidence should be the aims of education under the new order. Through such public school experience, he argued, children would develop a social sense and the capacity for group leadership. His plan was accepted and so, from the purely educational approach, he opened the door which made my work possible.
The Director of Schools in the new Vienna, Mr. Gloeckel, was interested in what I was trying to do. There was a surprising degree of interest among the teachers. I discovered that in the old days many of them had stayed from my clinic and classes because they were afraid the government officials did not approve my ideas. In the two years since the War, I have been able to establish twenty-two mental hygiene clinics for public school children. The twenty-two clinical directors are all my pupils, physicians trained as psychologists and educators. Our clinical service is similar to that in hospitals and dispensaries, where the medical student learns by doing. In recent years, many physicians have come to us from other countries to work with us. Each clinic is held once a week for two hours, usually with only two or three children at each session. It is work which must not be hurried, and we cannot afford a large staff and equipment. All the clinics are voluntarily supported. In the beginning this was an advantage because it made us independent of governmental influence, but now our work is established it is almost time for the public to take it over and enlarge it.
Simultaneously with the establishment of the clinics the seriously retarded children, the feeble-minded, the stuttering, and those with imperfect sense organs were taken out of the regular classes and grouped by themselves, under a plan worked out by the board of education. Thus in the public school we were dealing only with the physically and mentally "normal" child. Such behavior problems as arose among them were due, not to a defect in the child, but to defects in his method of life.
The teachers formed an organization in which they analyzed the cases of children they wished to bring to my attention or place under the care of my clinical assistants.
At first I was under the impression that I must learn how to talk to teachers, parents and to children. I was afraid neither the teacher nor the parent could be trusted to find the right words or the right approach, and so I talked separately with each child, with his teacher and with his parents. But presently I found that treating the child as part of his group was often very effective. It made the children realize that "no man liveth unto himself alone," and that the mistakes of every individual affect many lives and are of public concern. The boys and girls could be brought to see themselves as social beings, not as isolated units, but as essential parts of the social whole. Often I talked with the child as though I did not know in what way he had failed, because I had gone into the details with the teacher and the parents.
In other cases, I find it necessary to put his problem clearly before the child himself, not to humiliate him but to make him understand why he is lazy or cowardly or behind in his work, as a shop teacher might show a boy how to repair a machine by pointing out the maladjustment that keeps it from working properly.
I often find children "spoiled" for school life because the mother has done too much for them. She has made them believe that they can shirk and dawdle and bluff their way out of real work everywhere as they do at home. Frequently I ask a boy, "How long would it take a clever chap to change his habits, to learn to work alone, without stealing the time of his teacher and his schoolmates?" He is almost sure to answer, "One day." Then I stimulate him by pretending incredulity: "Oh, no," I say, "that is impossible. Why, it would take me at least fourteen days to change my work habits. Surely, no mere boy could do it in one day!" "I bet I could if I wanted to," he boasts. "I'll prove it, too." Then I propose that he come to me in a fortnight and tell me whether or not he has made good his boast. Now he has a goal. It is only a little step, perhaps, but it is a definite objective toward which to direct his effort.
Again, I often make use of classrooom work to help a child find a way out of his difficulties, or sometimes to give the teacher a clearer insight into the lives of his pupils. Sometimes I set a whole class the task of writing on "How Can I Be Useful?" This turns their minds from destructive or meaningless channels toward constructive activity. If a child has stolen, I usually assign his class the theme, "Why Is Stealing Useless?" It is much more helpful to see theft as a stupid waste of time than as an infringement of an arbitrary code.
When there is a child who is blocked by fear, the whole class may be asked to write on "What I Am Afraid Of—and Why?" This gives the teacher a chance to talk about the origins of fear and its effects. In these compositions the children often make clear their whole behavior pattern, conditioned by fears many of which they have carried over from babyhood, and so give the teacher and parents fresh insight that enables them to help the children free themselves from these emotional shackles. "What I Want to Become in the Future" makes the child look at his own life, and helps the teacher see the pupil as he sees himself.
If I become puzzled to know what lies behind a child's behavior I sometimes propose that each member of the class set down "The First Thing I Remember." These first memories have often exerted startling influences; sometimes, as we find in dealing with adults, one can explain the entire course of a man's life from that man's first memory.
I remember Josef, whose teacher brought him to me saying, "Here is a hopelessly spoiled child." Josef was not only a persistent truant, but had been frequently detected in theft. We suggested that Josef write me a story about "My First Memory." He had been sent for a newspaper by his father. Instead of buying the paper he ran away to his uncle's house and begged for some cakes which he took home to his mother. His mother shared the sweets with him, calling him her "dear, thoughtful darling." From this clue we worked out the pattern: we saw how he had turned from his father to his mother, how his mother encouraged him in this, and how all his mistakes were based on this failure in home management. This was, indeed, the situation, and once we understood it we could help the boy.
Occasionally I discuss his mistakes with a child if I can do it without humiliating him. I always try to be very careful in such a case and to move slowly, watching the effect of everything I say. Sometimes the teacher and I are equally surprised by the results. There was one child who had not spoken to his teacher for two years. The teacher made an elaborate explanation, adding, "Joachim will never talk to you—there is no way to reach him." Yet the boy voluntarily came and spoke to me, and was plainly glad to. It was obvious, after a brief conversation, that the lad felt repressed at home and even more so at school. The teacher was impatient with him and created an atmosphere in which he could not grow naturally. The more I talked with Joachim, the more certain I became that the teacher was guilty of even more serious mismanagement than I had at first suspected. "Have you whipped this child?" I asked. "You know that is not allowed." But it would do no good to make trouble for the teacher. The only hope for Joachim was to make the teacher realize that there was an easier way to deal with the boy. "This child's confidence must be won," I suggested. "We must bring him to a [¿truer?] attitude toward the school and toward himself. We can never do this as long as he is terrified and repressed. We must not only not beat him—we must be actively kind and sympathetic toward him." When the boy realized that things were not to be as they had been, he voluntarily broke his brooding silence. But that was only the beginning. After a long and delicate process, Joachim developed courage and self-confidence, and was helped into normal contacts with other children. The last is always the most important phase of any behavior situation. The mistakes of problem children, of criminals, of neurotic children and neurotic adults, are invariably the results of social maladjustment. Such people, finding no place for themselves in the world of reality, make for themselves a world of their own.
Berta, for instance, tells me that when she is going to sleep she sees plumed knights and ladies in trailing velvet, the cold, proud face of Elizabeth of England, the warm beauty of the Trojan Helen—numberless faces and figures out of the long ago. Suffering from depression and other nervous symptoms, she looks for relief in another age because nothing in her world interests her. This is the real reason why our problem children become criminals, neurotics, suicides. This lack of social feeling is linked with lack of courage. If I do not feel at home in the world I am not brave; I am living in an enemy country, too beset with fears to develop courage.
I have never known a child who could not understand his difficulties when they were set before him. If I find a child who fails to follow me as I trace the roots of his mistakes, I can always be sure that I have blundered either in interpreting his situation or in describing it to him. Every normal child is capable of fathoming the springs of his own action and reaching a true understanding of his own life.
To begin with I carried this clinical work almost alone. Gradually I have trained a corps of assistants who can do it fully as well as I. When I commenced my work I found that a good many teachers were under the impression that only schoolmasters know how to educate. At the same time, they were unwilling, and, though they did not realize it, unprepared to be real educators; that is, to further the development of the whole child. Their only interest was in teaching curricular subjects, maintaining discipline and making out reports. Indeed, many teachers actively resented my offer to show them a new and better way to go about their work. Even those who were mildly interested often complained that they had so much to do, with thirty or forty pupils under their care, that they could not give individual attention to each child. Little by little they began to realize that what I taught them, far from being an added burden, greatly lightened their load. Looking at a boy or girl with the eyes of a trained psychologist they were able to see the real child in a quarter of an hour, to find a key to the child's family life, and to appraise the part of home environment in determining character.
Then, here in one school, there in another, a teacher began to put into practice what I had taught him, the results excited the interest of other teachers in the same school. Difficulties they could not meet, we could, because we understood the children. Sometimes teachers who came to our clinics to criticize our methods remained to listen and to learn. My attitude toward teachers visiting the clinics, whatever their point of view, was always one of friendliness. I talked about school matters with them and tried to point out that the behavior difficulties that made their work so hard all had another side; they were seldom the fault of the school or of inheritance but mistakes made in building up the style of life. Then I tried to make clear to them that, for this very reason, the school was the only place where these children, freed for a little time from the home influences, could be studied and helped.
Gloeckel's efforts in the school reform gave more and more opportunities to unite parents and teachers in the work of education. He understood what I was trying to do and some of his assistants were former pupils of mine or recognized my efforts. An organization of parents and teachers was formed, before which both home and school problems could be discussed.
In Vienna, as in all great cities, there are districts where almost every child is a problem child. But even in some Viennese school districts which were once honeycombed with gangs and where all sorts of juvenile delinquency—truancy, lying, stealing, sexual abnormality—constantly occurred, everything began to change. All the former difficulties, which were due to faulty attitudes toward children both at home and at school, have disappeared. The effect of our work was so striking that the teachers went to the Board of Education without my knowledge and asked for my appointment as a teacher in the Pedagogical Institute of Vienna, in which teachers for the city schools are trained. The Board of Education agreed and for three years I have lectured to the teachers-in-training on problem children. There have come into my classes more than six hundred public school teachers, a great part of the present teaching staff in the schools of Vienna.
I believe we can solve the problem of criminality only through such work as is done in these clinics. The roots of criminality are always in the first childhood. Looking at a four or five-year-old child, no one can truly say, "This child is going to become a criminal." But it may be said, "Here are tendencies developing which will make this child a criminal in certain situations, if they are not checked." The problem is to avert this development and so minimize the possibility that the child will in adult life commit crime or develop neurosis. Both theory and experience convince me that a child's school life will accentuate bad tendencies only if the child has lost faith in his future. My goal has been to make the school strengthen the child's belief in himself and in life.
I have talked with many delinquent children and with many criminals. I invariably find that people deviate from the useful way of life because they have lost their courage. It is possible to make children see that the great criminals—murderers, highwaymen, robbers—are in reality cowards. So, in the same sense, are those who commit suicide. The only way the child can get this point of view is through the schools. No psychologist, no physician, no clinic can reach every child individually. But the school is the center where all children may be trained in right attitudes. Perhaps in spite of the wise teacher's best efforts the abnormal and feeble-minded may persist in crime. But these are diseased personalities. They must be treated separately, for their own sakes as well as for the safety of society. Normal children trained in our ways laugh at the idea of an intelligent person committing crime, or even taking part in gang activities! They know the meaning of the other way, of the high road of usefulness. Our work has results as far flung as human life itself.
I am thinking of a boy whose life I touched through one of our clinics. He was known as the worst pupil in his school. At thirteen, besides being a truant and a thief, he was called a "corrupt influence" among his schoolmates. No child could have made a worse beginning at the business of living. His mistakes were appalling. But his new teacher, who was a pupil of mine, became very suspicious of the genuineness of his depravity. One day he asked this sinner, "Fritz, what do you do with the things you steal?" "I give them to the other boys," said Fritz. "And why do you do that?" "To make them like me. They won't play with me because I am so dumb, and because I'm such a bad lot." The boy had been trying to bribe his way into popularity, to buy companionship. Now when the teacher, who consulted me about the case, told me that the boy was starved for warmth and appreciation, I wondered whether there was not something behind this desire for approbation. "Fritz," I said to him, "were you always this sort of a boy?" "No," he replied quickly, "the first three years I was in school I was a good boy. But not after that, not after we got Mr. H—— (a former teacher). He always had it in for me." Here was the problem with Fritz: he could be "good" only in an atmosphere of approval. The first three years of school life he had had a kind and gentle teacher and he had been a good boy. But he could only live conditionally in our world. Lacking an environment of warmth and love and appreciation, he became a "problem" to himself and to society. The same factor conditioned his truancy. We discovered that when he ran off in the night he gathered firewood and put it outside the kitchen door for his mother. They were poor people, and firewood was always needed. He was trying by this means too to make his mother think of him and love him. It was the school's business to get the boy back on the right road. That was quite simple, when we understood what lay behind his boyish crimes. If we wanted a normal boy instead of a truant and a thief, we must give him friends, and surround him with affection and approval. It is always easy to get children's cooperation in such an undertaking. The teacher suggested that one or two schoolmates invite Fritz to study his lessons with them. That was the first step. The teacher realized that it was not a matter of a week or two and gave the boy time. He devised special assignments for him and warmly praised every sign of progress. The parents were made to understand the situation. The mother became more openly interested in her son, the father stopped scolding and punishing. Eventually, this boy became one of the best students in the public schools of Vienna.
With some children we find that the release of the creative impulse is all they need to set them in a useful way of life. The impulse to make and to do is deep in [¿all?] of us. In many cases, the expression of that impulse works miracles. We found, for instance that every child can become a painter, can learn the meaning and value of line and space and color as a mode of expression, even though they are not greatly talented. Cizek believes that every child has within him an artist, and the results that Cizek gets from his classes, in the work the children accomplish and in their development through their work, show that under a wise teacher this holds great educational truth. I have known adults who learned to model in clay, to make beautiful things and to strengthen their personalities through [¿that?] work. This is worth while, even though they do not become Michelangelos. There is a teacher in Germany who has paralleled Cizek's art work in music. All this experiment and experience we use in the schools, to help our children gain freedom through creative expression.
My idea, when I undertook my work, was that the knowledge and technique of the psychologist and the physician would both simplify and enrich the vast, creative process we call education. For myself, my ambition was to become superfluous. Progress has been swifter than I dared hope. Remembering the old days, what I see and hear in the schools now is like a miracle. If I visit a clinic which has been at work for two or three years, the teacher describes and interprets the cases under consideration so completely that I can only listen instead of leading—there is nothing left for me to say. The teacher needs me only to explain our work to his associates who are not so far along.
In schools with which I have been connected for some years, the teachers tell me that there are no more difficulties with problem pupils, that they make out no bad reports, that the drudgery and humiliation of "repeating" a class is now unheard of.
A little while ago I could not have spoken in this way. The teachers would not have understood me if I had told them, "You are responsible." My statement would not have been true, from their point of view, because to them my words would have conveyed another meaning from the one in my own mind. Thus I would have been a liar with the truth—so very often a man can lie by telling the truth, because his words have one meaning for him, another for those to whom he speaks. Austrian teachers used to feel themselves underpaid and looked down upon in the community. There was a restless, peevish dissatisfaction among them. But now I was surprised when some of these teachers went before the Board of Education recently to ask that the report card system be abolished. In the old days, report cards were one of the chief resources of the teachers who used them as goads to force and threaten the children to greater effort.
Now the teachers insist that it is the teacher's job to make his pupils happy in the school environment, to see that they progress naturally and joyously in their studies. If a pupil is so maladjusted that he is falling behind in his work, it is because the teacher deserves a bad report and has not yet found the right method for him.
The school men themselves have not only admitted their responsibility—they rejoice in it. There is a new spirit among these teachers. Their new vision of the dignity and worth of their profession colors their lives, gives meaning to all their days.
From this point the way is clear. Twenty-two clinics have been established. The number of my students increases every year, and so does the interest in our work. I hope in a year or two that we shall have a hundred clinics, and then I am sure the Board of Education will take over this private enterprise. The teachers themselves are making such progress in comprehension and deft application of our methods that many of them do not have to use the clinics any more. They themselves can handle the problems of their pupils as they arise.
The time is at hand when the education of problem children will be the most important phase of teacher training. If I began with the significance of the physician in public life and the difference between his and the untrained point of view, I hope it is equally clear that what I have been striving to do was to close this gap and give to teachers the experience and the understanding hitherto united only in the mind of the physician. This, I believe, is the forward step that we have made in Vienna. Nor is it confined to this one city. Similar clinics, started by my friends and pupils, are now to be found in Berlin, Munich, Frankfort—in practically every German city of importance. I have also visited clinics in The Hague modeled on our plan.
I know that when my work began our Viennese children were misunderstood, mismanaged, beaten, both at home and at school. Now not only are they much less generally and less cruelly punished, but the whole spirit of the people toward youth is changed. Parents and teachers unite in giving the children the environment and the understanding which make for independence, and courage and self-confidence. These children learn to be happily at home in the world in which they live, because grown-ups have come to see the connection between mismanagement of children and the suffering and defeat of men and women.
Fuente: The Survey Graphic (Nueva York) 58, n.º 11, 1 de septiembre de 1927, págs. 490-495. Transcripción a partir del ejemplar digitalizado en archive.org (págs. 8-13 del PDF), hecha sobre la imagen de las páginas con ayuda de su OCR. El escaneo corta, por el pliegue de la encuadernación, el comienzo o el final de muchas líneas en las columnas próximas al lomo; las letras perdidas se han restituido por el sentido y la paginación, y solo las dudosas van entre corchetes con interrogación. Según el recuadro de la redacción de la pág. 495, el texto fue tomado taquigráficamente de una conversación de Adler con la redacción de The Survey y vertido y compuesto en inglés por un miembro de ella. Se respetan «had stayed from my clinic», «In the two years since the War», «classrooom» y la falta de coma en «for instance that». Los comentarios p. n del código marcan el comienzo de cada página impresa.