The Genius of Kurt Hahn
The Genius of Kurt Hahn
Last Friday evening, Di and I attended a function hosted by Outward Bound Hong Kong as guests of our catering company, Sodexho. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, adopting the theme of “Grease” (the movie, not the food, I am pleased to report!). The evening was a great opportunity to network with many like-minded, service-focussed people in Hong Kong.
Outward Bound shares a common ancestry with the United World Colleges as an organisation founded on the inspiration of the great educationalist, Kurt Hahn (1886-1974). The experience of Friday evening therefore led me to reflect on the great contribution of Kurt Hahn to young people’s formation and the diverse ways in which his thinking, and perhaps his genius, has changed the lives of so many people all around the world.
Kurt Hahn was a German Jew who fled Germany after Hitler came to power, and subsequently settled in the United Kingdom. His life seems to have been spent thinking of cutting-edge visionary educational projects that would inspire others, and his list of major educational projects includes:
•Schule Schloss Salem (1920) http://www.salemcollege.de
•Gordonstoun (1934) http://www.gordonstoun.org.uk/index.aspx?pageID=1
•Outward Bound (1941) http://www.outwardboundhk.org/index.php
•Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme (1956) http://www.theaward.org
•United World Colleges (1962) http://www.uwc.org
•Round Square Schools (1967) http://www.roundsquare.org
•International Baccalaureate (1968) http://www.ibo.org
Despite all that he achieved and all the new directions he set in place that have helped countless young people over many decades, Hahn never considered himself to be particularly novel or innovative. Although not many others would agree with him, he believed that his ideas were not very original, but were simply were drawn from many other great thinkers. It was the “living” of ideas, of experiencing and implementing them for yourself, that was so important to him. He once told this story to make the point:
An American friend once asked me, “What are you proudest of in your beautiful schools?” I answered, “I am proudest of the fact that there is nothing original in them; it is stolen from everywhere, from the Boy Scouts, the British Public Schools, from Plato, from Goethe.” Then the American said, “But oughtn’t you aim at being original?” I answered, “In medicine, as in education, you must harvest the wisdom of a thousand years. If you ever come across a surgeon who wants to take out your appendix in the most original manner possible, I strongly advise you to go to another surgeon.”
Some of Kurt Hahn’s quotes have almost assumed the role of mantras in the organizations that he helped to start, even though he actually left very few writings. Some of my favourite Hahn quotes include the following:
I regard it as the foremost task of education to ensure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self-denial, and above all, compassion.
I hear, I forget........ I see, I remember........... I do, I understand.
As our society has become information rich, it has become action poor. It has become poor in the necessity and possibility for struggle against the environment. As affluence has increased, the young person's environment has become impoverished for responsible and productive action, or any action that tests and develops him.
Without self-discovery, a person may still have self-confidence, but it is a self-confidence built on ignorance and it melts in the face of heavy burdens. Self discovery is the end product of a great challenge mastered, when the mind commands the body to do the seemingly impossible, when courage and strength are summoned to extraordinary limits for the sake of something outside the self – a principle, an onerous task, another human life.
There are three ways of trying to win the young. There is persuasion. There is compulsion and there is attraction. You can preach at them; that is a hook without a worm. You can say “you must volunteer”. That is the devil. And you can tell them, “you are needed’; that hardly ever fails.
Plus est en vous. (“There is more in you than you think.”)
Your disability is your opportunity.
As a very systematic thinker (at least, when he was not ordering taxis or pouring coffee!), Hahn identified what he called the ‘Six Declines of Modern Youth’ and the ‘Four Antidotes to the Declines of Modern Youth’. These were:
The Six Declines of Modern Youth:
1.Decline of Fitness due to modern methods of locomotion (moving about);
2.Decline of Initiative and Enterprise due to the widespread disease of ‘spectatoritis’;
3.Decline of Memory and Imagination due to the confused restlessness of modern life;
4.Decline of Skill and Care due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship;
5.Decline of Self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of stimulants and tranquillisers;
And worst of all:
6.Decline of Compassion due to the unseemly haste with which modern life is conducted, or as William Temple called it, “spiritual death”.
The Four Antidotes to the Declines of Modern Youth:
1.Fitness Training (to compete with one’s self in physical fitness; in so doing, train the discipline and determination of the mind through the body);
2.Expeditions (via sea or land to engage in long, challenging endurance tasks);
3.Projects (involving crafts and manual skills); and
4.Rescue Service (e.g., surf lifesaving, fire fighting, first aid)
It is interesting to speculate on how Kurt Hahn would identify the needs of young people in today’s global environment. I suspect that his views on the ‘declines’ would endure, as would his ‘antidotes’. The fact that the balance of emphases in most United World Colleges has shifted to some extent away from active outdoor pursuits towards greater creativity and service-focussed projects would probably be challenged by Kurt Hahn if he were alive today, not that he would be against these things, but rather, he would worry that fitness was not being sufficiently emphasised. To illustrate his views on fitness, Hahn vehemently challenged the claims of some students that they had the right to smoke tobacco and consume alcohol during the early days when Atlantic College (the first United World College) was first established - this was, after all, symptomatic of Hahn’s 5th decline of modern youth as listed above! Hahn argued that if others were making financial and other sacrifices to provide educational opportunities and scholarships for young people, the students had a clear responsibility to show gratitude by being as fit and healthy as possible to provide a solid long-term return on that investment!
At the risk of reducing Kurt Hahn’s educational philosophy to a collection of formulae, I do also admire some of the thinking that underpins his “Seven Laws of Salem”, which he introduced in 1930 when he was Head of that school (which he also founded) in Germany. His “Seven Laws” were:
1.Give students opportunities for self-discovery and spiritual awareness.
2.See to it that students experience both success and defeat.
3.Ensure that students have opportunities to forget themselves in the pursuit of a common cause (i.e. to put the needs of others before their own).
4.Provide periods of stillness and silence.
5.Train the imagination, the ability to participate and plan.
6.Take sports and outdoor pursuits seriously, but only as part of the whole experience.
7.Free students from wealthy backgrounds from the paralysing influence of wealth and privilege.
As I said, Kurt Hahn’s philosophy cannot be reduced to a formula. However, as his thoughts have inspired the establishment of a multitude of cutting-edge educational opportunities for young people, including the United World Colleges of which my students and I are a part, I think we would do well to focus more deeply on our Hahnian origins from time to time.
So thank you Sodexho and Outward Bound for giving me the opportunity to allow my thoughts to wander along this road of reflection! As the American athlete Greg Anderson (b.1964) once said, “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it”. I am sure that Kurt Hahn would agree.
Sunday, 13 May 2007