Self-education

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Self-education and self-education ( English self-education , French l'éducation de soi-mème ) is an educational, anthropological and ethical approach based on a systematic design of your own personality and a life-long learning in the sense of self-making and a meaningful life is aligned.

Concept and phenomenon

With the individual "self-education" is meant the performance that the individual achieves by obtaining his own version of the different educational requirements and trying to fulfill them. People who have come of age have the right and usually also the will to decide for themselves about their own developmental direction. In addition to self- assertion , self-determination becomes self- education if, in addition to rights, duties are also perceived and the goal of personal development is sought.

From a developmental psychological point of view, according to the understanding of Gerd E. Schäfer and Jean Piaget, self-education describes the self- active development process of humans, in which even children act independently by exploring themselves and their environment.

Self-education is neither tied to institutions nor to curricular courses of study, formal entry requirements or a certain age. It is based on encounter and conversation, on observation and exploration, on listening and reading, but everything from personal insight and motivation , self-directed and with the free decision of the person concerned whether he wants to involve a teacher or not. Even in children's self- education - starting with early childhood education - there is a focus on self-directed exploration. The demands of the situation provide the incentive to look for your own problem solutions. In addition, there is usually the need to provide favorable conditions for self-educational action. This can mean that educators, parents, etc. intervene and provide as little support as possible, but also as much as necessary in order to stimulate and maintain the motivation for self-education in the child and thereby avoid dangers.

Self- education is the personal aspect of human education and thus the heart of all education. However, self-education also plays a major role in a large number of intellectual currents beyond the classical area of ​​education. Alternative names are self-education, self-care ( Michel Foucault ), self-formation or self-creation. Self-education can focus on different aspects of personality and feed on different motives (e.g. religious or moral), as the Austrian monk and writer Michael Leopold Enk von der Burg discovered as early as 1842.

Self-education versus foreign education

The conflict between the image of others and the image of oneself and the resulting struggle between education and self-education is a natural process that has accompanied all education from time immemorial, and which the individual psychologist David Ernst Oppenheim , for example, repeatedly emphasized in his work.

Signs of this will for self-determination emerge in the course of human development in the so-called "defiant phases", which are very different from individual to individual, and which occur at intervals in the adolescent's resistance to the orders of the legal guardians. They worsen after puberty, when one's own growing ideas deviate from those of the parents. Self-image and external image and the corresponding demands of intentional self-education and increasingly rejected external education can differ widely. The discussion about the development of the self-desired image of human beings or those envisaged by the educators can take on blatant forms, especially when choosing a circle of friends or choosing a career, which often leads to a rift. The search for one's own identity is documented not only in observations and interviews with educationalists, but also in the young people's own records, for example in Anne Frank's famous diary .

While self-education at all educational levels has always been in conflict with education by other people, it has always been closely linked to it: As helplessly born beings, humans first need external care and elementary education. However, it grows out of it with age. Self-education is an impulse that arises from the individual's need for self-determination, personal responsibility and self-sufficiency and is closely linked to self-esteem. The obstinacy, which is already expressed in the child during periods of defiance of rebellion, continues in the adolescent in the form of contradictions to unaccepted alien education measures and should in fact be associated with adulthood with a more or less clear goal and value orientation of one's own life. At the latest the adult no longer likes to be “educated” by others and perceives such ambitions as unreasonable and humiliation, since they seem to imply a removal of deficiencies in character, which the individual is apparently unable to rectify himself. It is often perceived as an externally applied corrective that contradicts one's own claims.

Educational justification

In response to the desire for self-activity, self-determination and assumption of responsibility, which is already typical of the child, Maria Montessori coined her motto, which has been handed down in different versions, to the educator: "Help me to do it myself." The school politician and educator Kurt Hahn commissioned his school founding " Education for Responsibility ”along the way.

The now unchallenged valid educational requirement for lifelong learning implies the transition from education by a parent to self-initiated learning and a corresponding self-education. This has become increasingly established with increasing age, parallel to the upbringing of foreigners, and at the latest with the expiry of the legally anchored parental care, school and vocational training and the reaching of maturity, to replace foreign upbringing as far as possible. This stems from the logic of lifelong learning that educators and teachers must work towards as part of their educational mandate.

The educational mandate of all institutions involved in education, which is anchored in the education plans of the federal states, provides for the introduction to a mature, self-responsible member of the community as an essential task. The promotion of self-competence is accordingly a central educational task. It includes personality traits such as “being able to calm yourself down”, “building up frustration tolerance”, “motivating yourself”, “planning in a targeted manner”, “converting plans into action”, “learning to learn” etc.

In order for the individual to develop into an independent personality that is not determined by others, voluntary, active participation and continued action based on one's own convictions is required. This must already take place in parallel and in consideration of the ideas and norms of the legal guardians who exert influence on the adolescent from outside. A personal development requires initiative, willingness to educate and readiness for self-responsibility of the pupil and is connected with an educational risk , as u. a. is emphasized by the educational scientist Hermann Röhrs .

According to the didactic and venture researcher Siegbert A. Warwitz , this risk is to be understood on two sides: On the one hand, the adolescent must dare to gradually break free from any external control in order to be able to become a self-determined personality. On the other hand, the legal guardians must dare to give the growing personality increasingly free to make their own decisions, to accept their own responsibility and to develop their own values. They must understand that certain character traits and the skills that characterize an independent personality, such as diligence , self-discipline , self-motivation , perseverance , fairness or frustration tolerance, cannot be “acquired”, but rather arise from the own will and values ​​of the maturing personality.

Educational policy requirement

The German Conference of Ministers of Education , according to whose specifications the educational plans of the individual federal states are designed, describes the expected lead to self-competence of the adolescents as

“ Willingness and ability, as an individual personality, to clarify, think through and assess the development opportunities, requirements and restrictions in family, work and public life, to develop one's own talents and to formulate and develop life plans. It includes characteristics such as independence, the ability to criticize, self-confidence, reliability, and a sense of responsibility and duty. It also includes, in particular, the development of well thought-out values ​​and the self-determined attachment to values . "

Historical

The idea of ​​self-education and self-education has a long tradition in European cultural history:

Even before the beginning of the 4th century BC A much-quoted inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi , the author of which is considered to be one of the " Seven Wise Men ", gave the Greeks a self- education mandate on their way of life: Gnothi seauton ( Greek  Γνῶθι σεαυτόν gnṓthi seautón , “Know yourself!”). It was understood as a message conveyed by the god Apollo through the Delphic oracle to the people, which has remained valid up to our time and up to education.

Already in the method of "midwifery", ascribed to Socrates by Plato in his dialogues , it becomes clear that those striving for knowledge and education cannot get anything "taught", but must develop their knowledge and education out of themselves in order to accept them can. The teacher who becomes active in the cognitive process of maieutics or maieutics ( μαιευτική maieutikḗ [téchnē] "midwifery") only has the function of a helper and companion, not that of an instructor.

The cultural historian Hieronymus Andreas Mertens explicitly referred self- education to children as early as the end of the 18th century , while most of the authors of this time still focused more on adults than educators of the youth.

Since the 19th century a variety of books, mainly as a popular guide on specific issues of self-education offered assistance appeared: For example, Carl gave Wallen in 1836 published a book, the "decency and morality" for Germany's youth of both sexes to the subject of the Wanted to do self-education. JG Petri pursued the same goal with his “very latest compliment and propriety book” on self-education.

In the 19th century, poets and other prominent personalities also addressed the topic of self- education in their biographies and works, such as Adalbert Stifter , Friedrich Schiller , Jacob Wilhelm Heinse , Heinrich von Kleist , Friedrich Hebbel or the early romanticists Friedrich Schlegel , Novalis and Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck . From 1946 to 1949, Adolf Grimme published the so-called sheets for self- education under the title Thinking People . It was the organ of the adult education movement.

Since the 1920s, the religious philosopher Romano Guardini has repeatedly made self- education the topic of the Catholic youth movement by writing letters to young people about self- education . Authors such as Paulus Sladek and Horst Widmann pursued a similar task.

Just like other representatives of the reform pedagogy of the beginning 20th century, Maria Montessori continued the tradition of seeing the child as the starting point and focus of all educational efforts with the motto of her pedagogy “Help me to do it alone”. In doing so, they emphasized the importance of self-education processes for the development of personality even in the early childhood education. The didactician Siegbert A. Warwitz has worked out the validity and possibility of active participation of the child in his own educational process for a special educational area, the " traffic education ". In his essay You must change your life, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk basically described humans as a being that is to a significant extent responsible for its own development through self-education processes. The educator Ludwig Kerstiens described the child's outgrowth from parental care to self-determination. The author Roland Kipke has developed an anthropology and ethics of self-education under the heading of “self-formation”, in particular in differentiating from pharmacological methods of self-improvement.

See also

literature

  • Hartmut Apfelstedt: Self-education and self-education in German early romanticism. Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Wackenroder, Tieck , Diss., Munich 1958.
  • Doris Bühler-Niederberger: Diversity of Forms in Foreign Education. Between reference and construction . Enke, Stuttgart 1988
  • Ulrich Deinet: Stubbornness and self-determination as occasions for processes of appropriation . In: FORUM for children and youth work 3/2012, 39–42.
  • Michael Leopold Enk von der Burg : On Education and Self-Education , Carl Gerold, Vienna 1842
  • Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz : In search of identity. From education to self-education. Adamas-Verlag, Cologne 1991.
  • Kirsten Fernandez: Education as self-education. On the Critique of Postmodern Concepts of the Formation of the Subject , 2003
  • Wilfried Gabriel: Personal pedagogy in the information society. Vocational training, self-education and self-organization in Rudolf Steiner's pedagogy , 1996
  • Romano Guardini : Letters about self-education , (edited by I. Klimmer): Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 2nd edition, Mainz 2001, ISBN 978-3-7867-8399-2 .
  • Wolfgang Guenther: Play, struggle and work as forms of self-education in Ernst Jünger's early work , 1966; 1968
  • Timo Hoyer : Social history of education. From antiquity to modern times . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-534-17517-8 .
  • Ludwig Kerstiens : Man opens up the world . (= Paths of the Incarnation; Volume 2). Spee-Verlag, Trier 1967
  • Berthold Michael: Self-education in school lessons , 1963
  • Helmut Moysich: Self-education and the excess of the gaze. On the work of Heinrich von Kleist , 1988
  • David Ernst Oppenheim: Self-education and foreign education according to Seneca . In: International Journal for Individual Psychology (IZIP) 8/1930, pp. 62–70.
  • Theodor Rutt: Self-education and self-education in life and in the works of Adalbert Stifter , Diss., Cologne 1939.
  • Gerd E. Schäfer: Educational processes in childhood. Self-education, experience and learning in early childhood , 2005
  • Friedrich Schneider: The theory of self-education. An internationally neglected area of ​​research and teaching , In: International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education Vol. 2, No. 1 (1956), pp. 16–32.
  • Rie Shibuya: Individuality and Selfhood. Schelling's Path to Self-Formation of Personality (1801–1810) , Verlag Schöningh, Paderborn 2005.
  • Paulus Sladek: Paths to Religious Self-Education , 1964
  • Peter Sloterdijk : You have to change your life. About Anthropotechnik , 7th edition, Suhrkamp, ​​2009, ISBN 978-3-518-41995-3 .
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz : Traffic education from the child. Perceiving – playing – thinking – acting , Schneider Verlag, 6th edition, Baltmannsweiler 2009, ISBN 978-3-8340-0563-2 .
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz: When venture shows the way of becoming , In: Ders .: Search for meaning in venture. Life in growing rings . 2nd expanded edition, Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1620-1 , pp. 260-295.
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz: Growing in Risk. From the contribution to your own development. In: thing-word-number. 93, 2008, pp. 25-37.
  • Astrid Weiss: Preparing adolescents for self-education, examined and presented using experiments in physics lessons in class 9 , diss., Jena 1990.

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Ulrich Deinet: Stubbornness and self-determination as occasions for acquisition processes . In: FORUM for children and youth work 3/2012, 39-42
  2. ↑ Gerd E. Schäfer: Educational processes in childhood. Self-education, experience and learning in early childhood , 2005
  3. ↑ Reinhard Aulke: From the demands of the situation to the self-education of the child , 2001
  4. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Traffic education from the child. Perceiving – playing – thinking – acting , Schneider Verlag, 6th edition, Baltmannsweiler 2009
  5. ↑ Michael Leopold Enk von der Burg: On education and self-education , Carl Gerold, Vienna 1842
  6. ^ David Ernst Oppenheim: Self-education and foreign education according to Seneca . In: International Journal for Individual Psychology (IZIP) 8/1930, pp. 62–70
  7. ↑ Ulrich Deinet: Stubbornness and self-determination as occasions for acquisition processes . In: FORUM for children and youth work 3/2012, 39-42
  8. ↑ Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz: In search of identity. From education to self-education , Adamas-Verlag, Cologne 1991
  9. ^ The diary of Anne Frank (June 14, 1942 to August 1, 1944). Original edition, Lambert Schneider Verlag, Heidelberg 1950.
  10. ↑ Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz: In search of identity. From education to self-education , Adamas-Verlag, Cologne 1991
  11. ↑ P. Oswald, G. Schulz-Bennesch (ed.): Maria Montessori, The discovery of the child. Independent education in early childhood , 11th edition, Freiburg i. Br. 1994
  12. ↑ Kurt Hahn: Education for Responsibility . Stuttgart 1958
  13. ↑ Kurt Hahn: Education for Responsibility . Stuttgart 1958
  14. ↑ Astrid Weiss: Preparation of adolescents for self-education, examined and presented using experiments in physics lessons in class 9 , diss., Jena 1990
  15. ↑ Claudia Solzbacher, Miriam Lotze, Meike Sauerhering (eds.): Being able to learn for yourself. Promotion of self-competence in theory and practice , Baltmannsweiler 2014
  16. ↑ Hermann Röhrs (Ed.): Education as a risk and probation . Heidelberg 1966
  17. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Growing in the risk. From the contribution to your own development. In: thing-word-number. 93, 2008, pp. 25-37
  18. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: When venture shows the way of becoming , In: Ders .: Sinnsuche im venture. Life in growing rings . 2nd expanded edition, Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, pp. 260–295
  19. ↑ Handout for the development of framework curricula for the Conference of Ministers of Education for job-related teaching in vocational schools and their coordination with federal training regulations for recognized training professions. September 23, 2011. p. 15 pdf
  20. ^ Hermann Tränkle: Gnothi seauton. In: Würzburger Yearbooks for Classical Studies , New Series, Vol. 11, 1985, pp. 19–31, here: p. 20.
  21. ↑ Hieronymus Andreas Mertens: Lecture by a father to his children. About the art of always living happily . For self- education when entering the big world; 17th education speech, 1788
  22. ^ Carl von Wallen: Handbook of decency and fine custom for self-education for Germany's youth of both sexes , 1836
  23. ↑ JG Petri: Very latest Complimentir- und Anstandsbuch or rules for self-education and his way of life , 1836
  24. ^ Theodor Rutt: Self-education and self-education in life and in the works of Adalbert Stifter , Diss., Cologne 1939
  25. ↑ Horst Widmann: Self-education and self-education with Schiller. A contribution to the doctrine of appearances in self-education , 1954
  26. ^ Anna Carstens: Jacob Wilhelm Heinse under the point of view of self-education , 1923
  27. ↑ Helmut Moysich: The self-education and the excess of the gaze. On the work of Heinrich von Kleist , 1988
  28. ↑ Hans Rudolf Franz: Self-knowledge, self-education and self-education with Friedrich Hebbel, a contribution to the doctrine of the appearance of self-education , 1957
  29. ↑ Hartmut Apfelstedt: Self-education and self-education in the German early romanticism. Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Wackenroder, Tieck , Diss., Munich 1958.
  30. ^ Romano Guardini: Letters on self-education , (edited by I. Klimmer): 2nd edition, Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 2001
  31. ^ Paulus Sladek: Paths to religious self-education , 1964
  32. ↑ Horst Widmann: Self-education and self-education with Schiller. A contribution to the doctrine of appearances in self-education , 1954
  33. ↑ P. Oswald, G. Schulz-Bennesch (ed.): Maria Montessori, The discovery of the child. Independent education in early childhood , 11th edition, Freiburg i. Br. 1994
  34. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Traffic education from the child. Perceiving – playing – thinking – acting , Schneider Verlag, 6th edition, Baltmannsweiler 2009
  35. ↑ Peter Sloterdijk: You have to change your life. About Anthropotechnik , 7th edition, Suhrkamp, ​​2009
  36. ^ Ludwig Kerstiens: Man opens up the world . (= Paths of the Incarnation; Volume 2). Spee-Verlag, Trier 1967
  37. ↑ Roland Kipke: Getting better. An ethical study of self-formation and neuro-enhancement , 2011