Socratic oath
The oath of Socrates (also Socratic oath ) is an oath for teachers that the pedagogue Hartmut von Hentig drafted as an educational counterpart to the ancient oath of Hippocrates , which doctors previously had to take when they were licensed to practice medicine.
His text reads:
"As a teacher and educator, I am committed to
- to respect the peculiarities of every child and to defend them against everyone;
- to take responsibility for his physical and mental integrity;
- to pay attention to his movement, to listen to him, to take it seriously;
- to seek his consent to everything I do to him as I would to an adult;
- the law of its development, as far as it is recognizable, to be interpreted for the good and to enable the child to accept this law;
- to challenge and promote its assets;
- to protect his weaknesses, to help him overcome fear and guilt, malice and lies, doubt and mistrust, selfishness and selfishness wherever it is needed;
- not to break one's will - not even where it seems nonsensical; rather, to help him take his will into the rule of his reason;
- to teach the mature use of the understanding and the art of communication and understanding;
- to make it ready to take responsibility in and for the community;
- to let it into the world as it is without submitting it to the world as it is;
- to let it experience what and how the intended good life is;
- to give him a vision of the better world and confidence that it is achievable;
- to teach truthfulness, not truth, for 'that is with God alone'.
I commit myself
- To set an example for myself as best I can, how one can cope with the difficulties, the challenges and opportunities of our world and with one's own always limited gifts, with one's own always given guilt;
- To ensure, to the best of my ability, that the coming generation will find a world in which it is worth living and in which the burdens and difficulties inherited do not overwhelm their ideas, hopes and strengths;
- to publicly justify my convictions and actions, to expose myself to criticism - especially from those affected and experts - to scrupulously examine my judgments;
- But then to oppose all people and circumstances - the pressure of public opinion, the interests of the association, the civil servant status, the service regulations, if they hinder my resolutions expressed here. "
literature
- Hartmut von Hentig : Rethinking the school. An exercise in pedagogical reason (= Beltz Taschenbuch. Vol. 119 Essay ). Extended new edition. Beltz, Weinheim et al. 2003, ISBN 3-407-22119-3 , pp. 258f.
- Online: The Socratic Oath on the homepage of the Laborschule Bielefeld.