Chapter 15
Chapter.The Emotional Education of the ProletarianChild
The proletarian child is born intohis class–moreprecisely, intothe nextgeneration of his
class.[...]This situation, likelife itself, takespossession of him from the first moment–in-
deed,while he is still in thewomb. Contact with it iswhollyaimed at sharpeninghis con-
sciousness, fromanearlyage,inthe school of poverty and suffering.WalterBenjamin,“ACommunist Pedagogy”Children are the future; this simple fact (or banal truth) has been especiallyrel-
evant to social movements that express an unwavering belief in the betterment
of all human beings.At no time werethe dreams brighter and the expectations
higher that duringwhat EllenKey, the Swedishreform pedagogue, called“the
century of the child.”¹Around 1900,youth–in the sense ofgeneration, attitude,
program, and metaphor–emergedasadriving forcebehind turn-of-the-century
art and literature (e.g.,Jugendstil) and inspired bold dreams of social transfor-
mationinthe context of the life reform movement and, later,the expressionist
movement.The popularWandervogel groups offer but one example of theavail-
ability ofyouth discourse to competing political ideologies and culturalsensibil-
ities.From Montessorikindergartens toWaldorf schools, educators set outto pre-
pare theyoungfor the challenges of life under conditions of modernity.²Reform
pedagogues,too, aligned their educational theories withabroader critique of na-
tionalism and militarismand treated theraising of the nextgeneration as an in-
tegral part of the largerfight for equality, freedom, and democracy.All these var-
iousmovementsand initiatives, including the socialist and communist groups
discussed in this chapter,celebrated theyoung as the embodiment of the future
and, by implication,abetter society.
The reference is toKey’smost influentialwork,Barnets århundrade(1900,The Centuryofthe
Child). On the trope ofyouth in modern German culture, see ThomasKoebner,Rolf-PeterJanz,
andFrankTrommler,eds.,“Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit.”Der MythosJugend(Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1985).
On the connection between literature and emotional education, seeUteFrevert et al., eds.,
Learning How toFeel: Children’sLiteratureand Emotional Socialization, 1870– 1970 (Oxford: Ox-
fordUniversity Press,2014). The anthology includes chapters on individual emotions such as
fear,compassion, shame, boredom, and so forth, withJanPlamper’sdiscussion of bravery in
aRussian children’snovelabout the civil war (191–208) of particular relevanceto this discus-
sion.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110550863-019