October 26

This week I'd like for you to share what jumped out to you from the readings. Anchoring your responses in specific passages or sections from the selections for the week, what raised questions, gave you pause, or got you excited?

Nicholas Matteo Kendra

Can’t be an atheist here

“Their souls are reassembled through the shock and danger and are in readiness to receive the inspiration. We need Christian Activists to transmit it. We need them in every short term school which the Outward Bound Trust hopes to call into being.” 

“the rhetorical influence of Christianity on the early development of the American Outward Bound schools, where it was – as in Britain – yoked to an ideal of “service” that drew heavily on the work of Kurt Hahn himself. This was vitally important in the Cold War context, where “spiritual struggle” was set against godless communism (Seaman, 2020).”

“ Hahn’s vision of the possibilities of outdoor education was more muscular and more Christian than that of most of those who worked in it.”

It is clear that Hahn gave ample space to religion in the development of his various schools and “islands of healing.” Conversely, muscular christianity is not given much development within the text, only to say that it describes the sense that one’s character can be improved through girding, purifying, and maybe “preventative cures” and experiences.  I would like to have a clearer window into Hahn’s religious thinking if only to better understand the primordial wellspring of modern wilderness and outdoor programming.  It is striking that the Seven laws of Salem seem to capture much of the OBH experience. I’m left wondering what features of our current practice may be based in or have ties to Hahn’s somewhat hidden philosophy, occluded in part by his personality and reputation.  

Sexpedition

“It is clear from Hahn’s own writing he felt deep concern about, and attempted to wrest control from, young boys’ adolescent sexuality; and, unfortunately, any attempt at grasping Hahn’s beliefs is made more difficult by the way it is also interpretable as an example of a heightened approach to a romanticist pedagogy of sexuality...” (Vernon, 2020)

“Hahn desired for young boys to avoid puberty entirely and, somehow, thus be made asexual (Hahn, 1948; Mann, 1990)”

“Adventure was to be a form of therapy – but a form of preemptive conversion therapy, rooting out latent homosexuality among young boys and preventing its development; Hahn believed he could be successful at this precisely because it was the therapeutic intervention he had first used on himself”

“he suspected and feared everywhere that which he had suppressed in himself” (Mann, 1990, p. 90) (exactly how dialectics and incommensurable worlds emerge in ideology, politics, and psychoanalysis) 

“Hahn viewed adventure as his site and setting for a repressive pedagogy that positioned homosexuality and societal value as disconfirming eventualities”

How consistent were the readings from this week and Hahn's essays from 10/19? How did this week's readings confirm or challenge your impressions of Hahn's essays? Draw links back to Hahn's essays if you can.

Note to the group - I don’t have many ideas about last week’s readings relative to this week’s readings. It seems clear that Hahn elided or omitted much of the psychology and value-judgement that drove his pedagogical thought from last week’s primary materials, and that this week’s biographical and historical perspective is not as forgiving. I did not get a sense from last week’s readings that Hahn was interested in giving an up-close perspective on the underpinnings of his thinking, although he was willing to expound on various other points (the ills of the modern age, the intrinsics of the young and youth). Obviously, it cannot be discounted how precarious Kahn’s position as a public person was given his (likely) sexuality and politics. However, it may be that he could have discussed religion, if not sexuality, without sustaining any major reputational cost. If the assessment of Kahn as a skilled maneuverer more intent on influence than rigor are true, the somewhat veiled nature of his early treatises on education are understandable in that context. 

What ideas are worth discussing in small groups and as a class?

I felt my initial impression that hahn was more bent on accruing influence, exercising his personal demons, and foisting his politics and values onto society was validated this week. I don’t doubt that Hahn earnestly wanted the best for society, but I wonder if he ended up doing more harm than good or if his outsized influence on the world of education was proportionate to the merit of his ideas. I don’t dispute that the institutions which evolved from his work have done excellent work, but I do wonder if the problematic tenants of their founder could possibly have avoided reproduction in their structures. I myself have witnessed a puritanical approach to sexuality within an outward bound course. So given the perspective we have gained on Kurt Hahn, the question I pose to the class is, “What do we do with this knowledge?”

-MB

What raised questions:

Of course The adventure (sex)pedition raised many new questions for me. It also added an acute level of detail to the history that I thought I knew. While in undergraduate school, I remember learning such bland overviews of founders of movements - bland descriptions of Piaget and Erickson - but I knew nothing of the humans themselves. This past semester, I began reading the life stories of many of these founders and what I discovered was that almost every single one of them had significant loss and difficulties throughout their lives. Many of them lost their mothers at a young age or grew up without family members. Those who led school movements (Pestalozzi, for example) often only worked in schools for a short amount of time or led schools that failed. Piaget, one of the founders of the Child Development Movement, only studied his two own children. Learning these stories and understanding the happenings within the sociohistorical times significantly changed my perceptions and assumptions about the stories we hold true in our undergraduate education and psychology courses. While I could say I have now had a similar experience with Hahn, really, rather than dissuading me from my previous beliefs about him, I have rather become more defensive in my stance.

The discussions around Hahn attempting to exert influence don't change my view on the importance I give to Hahn's philosophy. In my mind, if one really wants to change what isn't right in the world, of course you would start with the children of the worlds' leaders. I think what stands out most to me remains his belief that not only don't change my view on how important his "Seventh Law: Free the sons of the wealthy and powerful from the enervating sense of privilege. Let them share the experience of an enthralling school life with the sons and daughters of those who have to struggle for their existence. No school can build up a tradition of self-discipline and vigorous but joyous endeavor unless at least 30 percent of the children come from homes where life is not only simple but hard." For those with privilege and opportunity, I wouldn't expect them to not take advantage of those gifted opportunities and the fact that Hahn developed this mindset instead of an anger or vengeance to me is the definition of thoughtfulness, compassion, and hope for mankind. It makes even more sense to me following the Holocaust and the genocide of a people driven by the belief of supremacy and power by others.

While there was a new layer added regarding Hahn's and others' sexuality, this only informs me of the discrimination suffered in those times by those with sexual preferences that were not preferred by society and religious doctrines. It seems very likely that he had a relationship with Max von Baden, and 1) I could care less that he may have been gay and 2) I feel sad that a relationship like this had to be hidden due to societal pressures. I don't see any difference between Hahn writing speeches for Max von Baden and attempting to support him in getting power/using the platform to share personal ideas and any other couple except there is a layer of discrimination due to their sexual preferences.

One more thought on sexuality - I believe that while tribal masculinity has always had its place in society, it has been the relentless and entitled demand for power that has led to war and suffering in so many places. Thus, if Hahn's intentions regarding attempting "to wrest control from, young boys’ adolescent sexuality" was connected to decreasing these actions in boys and increasing their ability to work together and practice empathy and compassion - I think it is even more appropriate.

Other questions: Is "good samaritan" (Freeman, 2020) a Christian phrase? I need way more information about what the "Christian Renaissance movement" entailed. Was it possible that he incorporated "Christian faith" into the schools where he worked because they were founded in Great Britain, where that was the more popular religion? Were there any public institutions during that time that weren't religious? If not, wasn't that more a feature of the sociohistorical period rather than a statement about Hahn? What I am reading into more is the fact that unlike the Atlantic Foundation, the Outward Bound Trust didn't have any clerical representatives, and the fact that religious leaders supported Outward Bound implies the importance of having religious figures' approval during that time period in order to be successful. From my other readings into the foundations of experiential education, the movement away from religion to science and belief in our own sensory experiences (rather than blind faith in religion and prayer) were so significant, they spurred entire movements in themselves. Thus, yet again, I do not see the religious overtones of Outward Bound as problematic but rather representative of historical reality.

What gave me pause:

The one thing that gave me pause was after watching The Crown and seeing that Prince Charles called Gordonstoun hell and refusing to send his own sons there.

However, when I do a very informed Google search, I find:

The New Yorker reports that the royal family has long had doubts about Prince Charles’s suitability as heir to the throne. “He was a source of puzzlement and some disappointment to his parents,” the publication explains. His mother thought him a “slow developer.” His father “thought him weedy, effete, and spoiled.”At boarding school and university, and later in the Royal Navy, “he was pushed through demanding institutions for which he was neither temperamentally nor intellectually suited, and where rules and standards had to be discreetly adjusted to accommodate him.”

Even biographers of the prince don’t seem to like him. The New Yorker reports that Sally Bedell Smith, for instance, wrote a book that “would like to be a nuanced adjudication of the Prince’s ‘paradoxes.'” But the biography “ends up becoming a chronicle of peevishness and petulance”:

The man we encounter here is a ninny, a whinger, a tantrum-throwing dilettante, “hopelessly thin-skinned. . . naïve and resentful.” He is a preening snob, “keenly sensitive to violations of protocol,” intolerant of “opinions contrary to his own,” and horribly misled about the extent of his own talents. 

And so finding out this information about how others viewed Charles does inform my opinion about Gordonstoun coming only from Charles. In fact, it makes me feel even more strongly that there should be institutions in place that help those in power (such as the royal youth who attended Gordonstoun) be humanized by understanding the reality of everyday people. 

What got me excited:

That analysis and discussions can happen - that this class allows a safe space where we can read and learn others' opinions and share our own.

Week's readings:

Van Oord, L. (2010). Kurt Hahn's moral equivalent of war. Oxford Review of Education, 36(3), 253-265.

Bueb, B. (2008). Kurt Hahn the politician. Outward Bound International Journal, 20-25. 

Freeman, M. (2020). “You can’t be an atheist here”: Christianity and Outward Bound in Britain, c.1941-1965. History of Education Review, 49(1), 67-84. https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-04-2019-0011

Vernon, F. (2020). The adventure (sex)pedition: Revisiting Kurt Hahn’s educational aims. History of Education Review, 49(1), 101-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-08-2019-0031

Guest: Frank Vernon