O trudnej sztuce wychowania

Abstract

Tutors, teachers, catechists and most of all parents are obliged to take up and carry out wise tuitional activities – a specific mission which involves assuming responsibility for the future of their children. A question arises at this point, however, if the above listed persons are sufficiently prepared for such a mission, and whether they carry it out in a competent and responsible way. Are they sufficiently convinced that to engage in this specific activity their own intuition, models drawn from the past and repeated indiscriminately in new circumstances or an illusory conviction that things will turn out well are not enough? How the tuition process is carried out in many families, how much pathology the activities involve, how far the process strays from the general outlines made by developmental psychology, pedagogics we may learn from press or television reports only in extreme cases. Some families making an excuse of work overload, fatigue, pursuit of higher earnings and having more than one job feel released from this duty devolving it upon school or Church. They fulfil their children’s material needs and think that it is enough. This should not be surprising – in the majority of families not a single book on tuition has been read, no preparatory or pro-family course at school has been taken (except an obligatory course before entering into a marriage). It is also a fact that teachers who begin their work at school have most problems not with educational, didactic activity but with tuition process because they were not sufficiently prepared as the psychological and pedagogical course does not usually exceed 150 hours.