The Educational Principles of The New Germany

 
Source: Frauen-Warte – Women’s Guard, Issue 22, 1936, page 692
 
What Schools and Parents Need to Know About the Goals of National Socialist
Education?
 
German Folk! German parents! The new Germany created by our Folk’s
Chancellor Adolf Hitler places special demands on the German youth. The German
youth are a foundation of the rebuilding of the German Folk and the German
Fatherland. The Folk and Fatherland place their hands on the shoulders of the youth
and determine what educational and cultural values and goals are necessary for this
youth to meet the needs of Folk and Fatherland. This requires a truly national and social
education for the German youth, and everyone involved in education has to serve these
educational and cultural goals with their full energy, parents and teachers above all!
 
All those involved in education must have a clear and unified idea of the
educational tasks before them. The four iron pillars of the national school and
educational system are:
race,
military training,
leadership, and
religion!
 
1. Race
  
National Socialist education is an education in the thinking of the German Folk, in
understanding German traditions, in awakening the pure, uncorrupted and honest
people’s consciousness, their sense of belonging to the Folk. Only a pure member of the
German race can have such an understanding of his Folk, crowning it with the
willingness to sacrifice all for the Folk. He must know that without his Folk he is a
miserable nothing, and that it is better if he himself die than that his Folk and
Fatherland perish! He who thinks that National Socialist education has as its goal a kind
of hyperpatriotism has not understood it. Something entirely different is intended.
Something should be awakened in the soul of young Germans that will fill their hearts
and whole being until their souls can no longer restrain the overflowing, until a
powerful and jubilant Hail Germany springs from their lips! That call itself is not the
first or most significant goal: rather it is its foundation in the soul, a foundation that
jubilantly, freely, confidently, cheerfully, and passionately expresses itself. It is the holy
sense of Folk and Fatherland! Awakening this in the German youth requires that they
have a clear understanding of the value of Folk and Fatherland. They must realise that
the German Folk has a right to independence and freedom, honour and power. They
must learn that it has a right to its own fate among the Folks of the Earth, and it must
gain with the other Folk the place in the sun that belongs to it. It must do this not
through force, rather because the German Folk is a noble nation that has created values
for the entire world that no other Folk was capable of. We want to awaken in the
German youth this free, righteous and noble national pride so that at the thought of
Germany’s past, present, and future, their hearts will pound and their eyes will gleam.
That is the first foundation of National Socialist education.
 
2. Military Training
 
It is clear that the German youth must be resolved to defend their Fatherland with
their lives. Despite all the nonsense about promises and disarmament, Germany is
surrounded by weapons. The German youth must learn military virtues. Their bodies
must be steeled, made hard and strong, so that the youth may become capable soldiers
who are healthy, strong, trained, energetic and able to bear hardships. Gymnastics,
games, sports, hiking, swimming, and military exercises must all be learned by the
youth. Our youth should not sit in stuffy rooms and develop crooked backs and weak
eyes. Alongside the basic and truly important education of the mind, they should
develop healthy bodies by being outdoors. The idea of the healthy and strong German
should not be mere empty talk. Parents can help here. They will train our youth in
simplicity and cleanliness. They will train them, even when they are older, not to waste
their spare time by dubious or even harmful activities such as card playing, drinking
alcohol, and bad music; rather to prepare their bodies for their future tasks.
 
3. Leadership
 
 A youth being trained for such important national duties must accept the idea of
following The Leader absolutely and without question, without unhealthy carping
criticism, without selfishness or opposition. They must learn to obey so that, having
themselves learned to obey, they believe in and trust their own leadership and can grow
to be leaders themselves. Only he who has learned to obey can lead. Germany no longer
believes that the masses can lead themselves by majority rule! The masses themselves
are nothing! We need not a Folk ruled by majority votes, but a Folk with the will to
leadership. The German youth must learn that and act accordingly! Thus, the German
youth belongs in organisations where they will learn the nature of leadership in its most
noble form, where they can learn to obey and – if they are called to it – also learn to
lead. They will not bend to an empty mass will expressed through useless votes, rather
they will look with enthusiasm to the nation’s strong and noble Leader. They must
learn that once again. We parents want to exhibit such authority to our youth by
strengthening family authority and establishing in our homes a healthy and natural
obedience on the part of our children. This will not suppress the youth, rather provide
them the controlled freedom and authority they need to develop their abilities.
 
4. Religion
 
Life comes from God and returns to God. All life and all races follow God’s
ordinances. No Folk and no race can ignore them. We want the German youth to again
recognise the religious nature of life. They must realise that God wants the individual as
well as the whole Folk, and that they lose contact with life when they lose contact with
God! God and nation are the two foundations of the life of the individual and the
community. We want no shallow and superficial piety, rather a deep faith that God
guides the world, that he controls it, and a consciousness of the relationship between
God and each individual, and between God and the life of the Folk and Fatherland. The
National Socialist State will promote such a deeply religious educational system. We
want parents to support and strengthen this by honesty and by good example.
 
Race, military training, leadership, religion! These are the four unshakeable
foundations of the new German National Socialist education!