gat

to my father again. And sometimes even to me in my middle teens. I remember references to
Hegel from those times, too.
Hegel was philosopher in residence at the University of Berlin during the years when Prussia was
committing itself to forced schooling. It’s not farfetched to regard Hegel as the most influential
thinker in modern history. Virtually everyone who made political footprints in the past two
centuries, school people included, was Hegelian, or anti-Hegelian. Even today many
knowledgeable people have no idea how important Hegel is to the deliberations of important men
as they debate our common future.
Hegel was important wherever strict social control was an issue. Ambitious states couldn’t let a
single child escape, said Hegel. Hegel believed nothing happened by accident; he thought history
was headed somewhere and that its direction could be controlled. "Men as gods" was Hegel’s
theme before it was H.G. Wells’. Hegel believed when battle cannon roared, it was God talking to
himself, working out his own nature dialectically. It’s a formidable concept. No wonder it
appealed to men who didn’t labor, like Mr. Morgan or Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Carnegie yet who
still disdained easeful luxury. It engaged a printer’s attention, and a little boy’s, too.
When I began to teach, I took the lessons of Monongahela and my two families to heart. The
harder I struggled to understand myself, the better luck I had with other people’s kids. A person
has to know where his dead are buried and what his duty is before you can trust him. Whatever I
had to teach children is locked up in the words you just read, as is the genesis of my critique of
forced schooling.
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