Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Abstract

ion, but it leads nobody to think that one fly equals one elephant. The rules of formal logic are abstractions of the same kind, they are like the grammar of normal thought; but they still need to be studied, since they are not something innate, but have to be acquired through work and reflection. The new curriculum presupposes that formal logic is something you already possess when you think, but does not explain how it is to be acquired, so that in practice it is assumed to be innate. Formal logic is like grammar: it is assimilated in a “ living” w ay even if the actual learning process has been necessarily schematic and abstract. For the learner is not a passive and mechanical recipient, a gramophone record— even i f the liturgical conformity of examinations sometimes makes him appear so. The relation between these educational forms and the child’s psychology is always active and creative, just as the relation of the worker to his tools is active and creative. A calibre is likewise a complex of abstractions, but without calibration it is not possible to produce real objects— real objects which are social relations, and which implicitly embody ideas. The child who sweats at Barbara, Baraliptor^6 is certainly per forming a tiring task, and it is important that he does only what is absolutely necessary and no more. But it is also true that it will always be an effort to learn physical self-discipline and self-control; the pupil has, in effect, to undergo a psycho-physical training. M any people have to be persuaded that studying too is a job, and a very tiring one, with its own particular apprenticeship— involving muscles and nerves as well as intellect. It is a process of adaptation, a habit acquired with effort, tedium and even suffering. Wider participation in secondary education brings with it a tendency to ease off the discipline of studies, and to ask for “ relaxations” . Many even think that the difficulties of learning are artificial, since they are accustomed to think only of manual work as sweat and toil. The question is a complex one. Undoubtedly the child of a tradi tionally intellectual family acquires this psycho-physical adaptation more easily. Before he ever enters the class-room he has numerous advantages over his comrades, and is already in possession of atti tudes learnt from his family environment: he concentrates more easily, since he is used to “ sitting still” , etc. Similarly, the son of a city worker suffers less when he goes to work in a factory than does a peasant’s child or a young peasant already formed by country life. (Even diet has its importance, etc.) This is why many people think 16 Barbara, Baralipton, were mnemonic words used to memorise syllogisms in classical logic.