The phenomenon of mood is not often become the subject of philosophical reflection. As a rule, the theme of mood arises in connection with the philosophical idea of the need for the mind to control the sensory-emotional experiences and impulses of a person. It is not by chance that Russian philosopher V. V. Bibikhin highlights that, “they never fight with anything as much as with our mood” [1: 23]. This idea is also true with regard to the practice of education, because the mood is difficult, or more precisely, impossible to control. It is not predictable, almost random. In this situation, it just remains to require the students to get rid of their moods and become the subject of their own actions, while the concern about creating a pedagogical atmosphere has been relegated to the periphery of educational research. O. F. Bollnow has become a philosopher who greatly contributed to the analysis of the phenomenon of mood in the context of education and anthropology. In the following paragraph we outline some of the possibilities of understanding and improving educational practice relevant to the phenomenological philosophy of O. F. Bollnow.
Following M. Heidegger, Bollnow believes that the mood namely “fundamental attunement” is not just a whim, not a quirk, but a "melody”, a “basic tone” that which a human being works itself out. Accordingly, attunement indeed belongs to the being of man. Attunements or, as one also says, “feelings”, are events occurring in a subject. At the same time, one should not think of the attunement as something “purely subjective”. As Heidegger notes in his work “The Fundamental Concepts of metaphysics”, “... if attunement is something that belongs to man, is “in him”, as we say, or if man has an attunement, and if this cannot be clarified with the aid of consciousness and unconsciousness, then we will not come close to this matter at all so long as we take man as something distinguished from material things by the fact that he has consciousness, that he is an animal endowed with reason, a rational animal, or an ego with pure life-experiences that has been tacked on to a body. This conception of man as a living being, a living being that in addition has reason, has led to a complete failure to recognize the essence of attunement” [8: 109]. Thus, in attunement we meet something that transcends the boundaries of human subjectivity. Here it is important to emphasize the transcendental character of attunement. Only being attuned, a person develops his relationship to the world.
However, though Angst and despair associated with Martin Heidegger’s existentialism, Bollnow counters this dread and anxiety with “hope” and “trust”. Despite his deep appreciation of Heidegger’s work, Bollnow resists Heidegger’s idea, according to which fear dominates all other moods. “An attempt in the initial review to streamline the diversity of different moods according to the two poles – bright (das Heitere) and gloomy makes clear that the dark side dominates in existential philosophy. Among the various possible tones here, the fear turned out to be particularly fruitful ...” [3: 47]. Both Heidegger and Kierkegaard rest upon a thematic fear as a positive phenomenon, interpreting it as the “dizziness freedom” as a result of which a person, losing any last support, encounters his or her true individual and finite nature.
Bollnow shares the ideas of existential philosophy about the constitutive role of fear and anguish experiences, that which allows a person to reach his actual authentic existence, breaking him free from the inauthentic, common day-to-day routine. According to the thinker such existential experience is available not only to adults but also to children. Indeed, the child’s life is filled not only with pleasant emotions and moods. He also experiences boredom, fear and despair. Nonetheless, it cannot be assumed that the forms of development of the adult’s existential experience can be fully and unconditionally applied to the child’s one. Meanwile, for a child it is much more difficult to cope with that sort of mood than that for an adult, since the child cannot protect himself from the consequences of such existential experience yet. In this regard the task of an adult is to be ready to help the child, be ready to comfort and become a reliable support in the face of such challenges. One possible solution to this problem, as Bollnow states, would be to consider such crucial and fundamental mood as hope.
Hope is an expectation of the indefinite, but fundamentally possible, positive and life-affirming. It is noteworthy that Bollnow compares the mood of hope with the awakening state of a person being prepared for the transition from a dream state to a mode of active and full of life activity. Such a mood is characterized by ambivalence: life in the present, now and at the same time striving to the future. This understanding of hope, as a mood of anticipation of the realization of one’s existential possibilities, is also relevant in the context of reflection of education. Actually, the whole child is committed to the future, to his perspectives and plans.
This feeling of “morning freshness” or “tomorrowness” is a mood of purposeful readiness, which cannot remain within its own boundaries, overwhelms a person, demanding its immediate realization in some form of activity, bringing a person closer to some ideal image, the “highest form of human being”. At the same time, the peculiar ambiguous nature of this mood should be correctly interpreted. We are not talking about a giddy desire for the future, which in its haste misses the present. Rather, the present is seen as filled with hopes, expectations, and joyful anticipation of the prospects and opportunities. This fundamental atmosphere of the “morning awakening” is of particular importance for pedagogy. As a mood of anticipation of new discoveries are essential preconditions for the possibility of education and training. In this regard, the cultivation and preservation of such an atmosphere is of obvious significance in education. “Wherever these preconditions are missing, wherever listlessness and languor grip the young person, wherever the future lies before the young person like an oppressive wasteland, notes O. F. Bollnow, there he or she cannot develop, there he or she must waste away, and there, education too can find no starting point where it otherwise could make an impact” [6: 25]. Hopelessness, as we know, chokes all free and active life.
So, hope, as we were determined to show, is closely intertwined with joyful feelings and positive emotions, with a “sense of tomorrow”. Children, being filled with the joy of waiting, come to school, but not all children’s expectations can be satisfied, there are also disappointments. After all, a hopeful individual therefore doesn’t have absolute control over his future, but instead possesses an emotional grounding of confidence and openness with which he will confront unforeseen events. Such a perception of the future implies trust, which, along with hope and “morning awakening” or “sense of tomorrow” (morningness), turns out to be a basic constitution of the pedagogical atmosphere. In general, pedagogical atmosphere can be described as a certain emotional and sentimental undertone, a mood that is a necessary part for the raising or educating of children. Atmosphere as Bollnow defines it, is “all those fundamental emotional conditions and sentient human qualities that exist between the educator and the child and which form the basis for every pedagogical relationship” [5: 5]. Bollnow, referring to an article of А. Nitschke «Fear and Trust», points that a trusted and sensible world reveals itself to the child fundamentally only in the trusting relationship with a certain beloved other person and it is: “ in this trusting self-discovery, in love affection for the mother, in a special experience of affection for Thou, the child is revealed to the world as the actual human being. Then he follows, “The mother creates through her caring love for the child a space of trustworthiness, of dependability, of purity (italics by Nitschke). What is found in this place seems to belong, to have sense, to be alive, trusted, close, and approachable… Huge opening power of trust ... Not only people, but also things reveal their essence, their structure, their hidden meaning… From this arises the powers of insight which make possible the child’s approach to the world, to people and to things.” [4: 142 ]. That which is so clearly manifested in the life of the mother and child is also true for the teacher and the student. For example, the Swiss humanist teacher I. G. Pestalozzi pointed out the crucial role of trust in the upbringing, “Above all I wanted and needed to win the trust and attachment of these children. Grant me these and I could expect everything else from them.” [9: 53].
It should be noted that the feeling of trust is closely related to the feeling of security. One of the important evidences of this is the phenomenology of children's perception of space, for the child’s experience of the world takes place precisely in the form of experiencing different kinds of space: at the beginning of one’s own and maternal bodies, beds, rooms, houses, etc. Expanding the developed space, the child becomes acquainted with the borders of his and others, private and public spaces, places of shelter, and, finally, with the so-called hiding place where the “secret” lives. Gradually this protected realm liberates itself from the connection with adults. The child is no longer looking for a safe place (shelter), but rather he should build it himself. This explains the desire of children to arrange their room so that they feel that this is their own territory. Thus, children express the need to make their own room a refuge for themselves – a necessity that adults must be able to understand and maintain. “We should not be too upset”, writes Bollnow, “if this remodeling may lead to some damage (as with hammering in nails) or if it leads to disturbances in the normal order of living, for something is being prepared here which has consequences for the child’s maturation” [6: 18].
In spite the fact that the nature of the process of growing up is such that requires going beyond the borders of customary and familiar places for a child into the world, where there is much less stability, continuity, certainty and predictability nevertheless the feeling of safety and security is the core attribute of a pedagogical atmosphere. The sensitivity of adult, his empathy and willingness to create a shelter for a child is of great importance. So the task of the adult lies in supporting, helping and trusting a child. The teacher’s sincere trust in a child strengthens and expands the opportunities for further child’s development. The supportive feelings of trust and safety are the foremost precondition for child’s concentrating on discovering the world.
So, if the mood determines the human being’s perception and attitude to the world, then it is important to take into account the feelings and moods all those involved the educational process in order to come to grips with foundational significance of the pedagogical atmosphere in education. In addition, under the influence of the ideas of existentialism and philosophy of life Bollnow introduces the idea of discontinuity in education. What is this concept? First of all, the discrete nature of the process of education, pointed out by Bollnow and other researchers, contradicts the classical concept of education (Bildung). In accordance with the latter concept, human educative process is carried out by transmitting cultural heritage from the older generation to the younger one and is interpreted as a continuous, progressive process. However, Bollnow in his existential educational discourse, convincingly shows that human development can be neither continuous nor simply a cumulative process. The essential features of education as the inner unfolding of a person are stop, pauses, leaps, gaps, jumps become the beginning of existential movement. Why?
On the face of it, the human being’s development can be described as a tension or crisis unfolding about the relationship between the real (living being) and the ideal form (the world around), their transformation and mutual transitions from one form to another. The ideal form in this case is culture. Wherein, Bollnow stresses that culture can act as a mechanism that stimulates human development only to the extent that culture will be organic to the life world of this self-determining unfolding being. Applying the image, that which was proposed by O. Mandelshtam, we can view culture as the inviting power, while human for culture acts as probability, desire and expectation. Man is free to accept or reject an invitation, a challenge. Yet he is free to go to a meeting or to remain at his place. The concept of ‘meeting’ in this case comprises a challenge in the difference of potential between man and world around, that which provides opportunities for growth and development. If the person rises to the challenge, responds to it, then the event of development may occur. Event-encounter lets the person to acquire an ideal form (i.e. culture), to harness its potential or transcend its bounds. So it becomes his own subjective real form. The latter one, in turn, can and should be able to produce new forms, which enter ‘the body’ of an ideal form. So, the event-encounter is intertwined with the event of education in the sense of human self-realization. Indeed, it is about the fact that a person, creating a culture, simultaneously reveals himself, so that a person and culture should be understood in their interdependent unity. Therefore, culture created by a man and the man as the creator of this culture are perceived and understood through their complementarity.
In general, reflecting upon the concepts of encounter and culture, Bollnow emphasizes the fundamental importance of these processes for a personal development. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that it is impossible to identify these processes. As Bollnow himself writes, where the encounter begins, there Bildung has lost its claim, and conversely: where Bildung defines the human happening, there encounter in the full sense cannot take place. Often this tension, that which constitutes the nerve of the educational process, escapes the scholars’ attention. In view of the above, we will try to trace what exactly is the educational potential of the encounter as an existential event?
In the philosophical reflections of Bollnow, the concept of encounter has nothing to do with what can be planned and organized in advance. This is not about a pedagogical event as a form of extracurricular activities, for example, meeting athletes, veterans, people of different professions, graduates, etc. In the philosophy of Bollnow, an encounter has a sense of event; it makes changes in a man’s life that disrupt the expected flow of life. It is impossible to prepare for the encounter-event, it is the result of a sudden and unexpected collision of the “I” with the reality that opposes this “I”. For Bollnow, the encounter is a fundamental experience when a man is coming into contact with something that is new, strange and unfamiliar, unexpected and unpredictable and therefore incomprehensible to himself. It is a meeting with the irrational. An encounter is a collision with something else that is outside one’s control, it is every time a challenge that requires the awakening of one's own thought, to make or at least realize the necessity of an “existential gesture” (M. Bakhtin). By no means is encounter necessarily a pleasant experience; it affects the subject profoundly, leading to self-examination or reflection and a change in one’s way of living or being. Certainly, during the time spent in an educational institution, people more than once meet and get acquainted with a variety of writers, artists, scientists and their works, with many outstanding people from the past and present, with works of art, etc. However, the encounter as an empirical event even filled with intellectual content should be distinguished from an existential encounter-event. That is how Bollnow explains the difference, “Encounter in the existential sense is the process m which the human being fatefully confronts something, which compels him to a radical reversal in his life; in this fashion alone can he actualize his authentic self. Encounter in the classical humanistic sense on the other hand, is the enrichening of one's own mental and spiritual world by means of becoming familiar with strange worlds. The fact that these are not merely different aspects of one and the same thing, but rather very different things, can be easily seen when we recognize that each phenomenon can also occur independently of the other” [2: 163]. However, an intellectual encounter by itself is insufficient. In addition, there is some not necessarily conscious ‘so what?’ as hermeneutic anxiety that accompanies the expectation of the existential events of the meeting, which carries a powerful educational potential. To paraphrase H. G. Gadamer, we can say that the event “takes place everywhere, where there is no direct understanding or where it is necessary to take into account the possibility of misunderstandings” [7: 226].
Meanwhile, from an existential point of view, not only encounter-events are important, but also crises as constituting events in which a man touched to the core in such a way that it can lead to the breakthroughs and indeed to authentic existence itself. In general, crises disrupt the natural flow of everyday life. The result of such disruptions is a rethinking of one’s own life. But what role do crisis situations play in educational reality? To demonstrate the pedagogical significance of the crisis Bollnow enumerates the following characteristics common to crisis situations. First, the crisis is a purging process. Through crisis a human being must learn to rid himself of old impurities in this painful process and start afresh. Secondly, the crisis is a decision. The point is that when a man is in a crisis situation he must learn to choose between two or more possibilities that determine the direction of his later life.
Since the crisis is an interruption of the normal and habitual way of life and it is perceived as a painful and disturbing process, it may seem understandable and justifiable to want to get beyond any crisis as quickly as possible. But this is not how Bollnow sees it. The educational potential of the crisis can be revealed if the teacher not to be lead by the easiest and, as it seems, obvious solutions: to hide, to “run away” from difficult situations, to “chatter/talk the talk” the problem. On the contrary, the teacher needs courage and readiness to recognize of a unique pedagogical situation and accept the crisis not as an accidental error, but instead as a condition for the further progression of one’s development. “The pedagogical result arises directly from the confrontation of the crisis. We should not close our eyes or avoid this possibility, but we must help young students cope with the difficulties with the degree of honesty and determination they are capable of. The task of an adult (an educator, a parent) is not to avoid crisis situations, but to recognize its potential pedagogical value, illustrating the student the prospects for orienting himself anew and developing critical attitude. The productivity of crisis moments in education, according to Bollnow, shouldn’t be underestimated. After all, a crisis and other existentials such as Angst and despair, having been positively conceptualized, are seen as an opportunity for man’s renewal, reaching a qualitatively new stage of personal development. Therefore Bollnow seems to be saying that existential emphases on crisis, Angst, and despair can be most effectively understood as things that are of special importance in education.
So, to summarize, the following points should be noted. Basically, looking at modern educational practice, one can say without exaggeration that it represents a combination of what Bollnow called “mechanical” and “organic” approaches to education. Within mechanical approach the nature of education based upon the analogy of craftsmanship. Just as the craftsman creates his work according to a pre-established plan, using the material and tools that are available to him, the teacher performs his work following a certain technique, method and with a specific purpose in mind. Here education is understood as a very deliberate process aimed at the production of the desired “product” according to a defined pattern. The object of directed pedagogical efforts – the student – is averaged, depersonalized. The personality is applied preconceived cliché, patterns, models, standards. The “success” of such education processes would be determined exclusively by the will of the participants, particularly that of the teacher, the “craftsperson” with his pathos of manipulating the student and therefore wholeheartedly focused on technological aspects of education. The ultimate result of such an approach is found today in familiar understandings of education as a process that is to be predictable, controlled, mechanically manipulated and regularly optimized. The ultimate goals of such adjustment and optimization are frequently determined by outside forces, primarily economic imperatives. As for the organic approach, it interprets education as “the art of cultivation and of allowing the students to disclose their true nature”. This approach to education creates a situation, where the teacher’s role is to ensure “the natural process of development”. The teacher’s essential aim is to protect young children and adolescents from harmful influences.
When that is achieved, the process of education is seen as simply taking place of its own accord, just as the organic growth of a plant unfolds on its own. This approach is expressed today in educational and child rearing practices that avoid the constraints of a set curriculum or of predetermined pupil evaluation, and that see the goals of education as fulfilled in giving pupils freedom in independent exploration of the content of the education.
Clearly, taking into account the individual skills and abilities of students, the unique features of their identity is an important and absolutely essential for education. Simultaneously, it is not necessary to deny the active role of the teacher in this process, especially in terms of comprehensive support and fostering, guiding, and often, facilitating and even accelerating the “natural” learning and cognitive development of the student. The significance of Bollnow’s existential understandings of education, in our opinion, is that it lets to define the limits of both approaches and show, in particular, that both the first and second approaches are based on the idea of the fundamental possibility of continuous improvement and further progression of personal development as gradual approaching to the planned result, which is a well-educated person. Meanwhile, Bollnow agrees that human’s development occurs through ‘leaps’, ‘jumps’, ‘gaps’ resulted from absolute freedom that may ultimately develop into a crisis. It is in the very nature of the life of the human being that a crisis exists. “To exist, states Bollnow, means to stand in crisis”. Clearly, it doesn’t mean that crisis can be artificially caused, planned, or induced by the teacher. Rather, the point is that if and when they arise, they need to be recognized as educational challenges of a unique kind, to be handled with the greatest care and awareness. In this sense, educational reality is understood as a fragile and unstable environment, opening up opportunities for human development and improvement. At the same time, paradoxically, these opportunities are opened not only and not so much due to the domination of strictly rational-logical ways of relating to the world, but also due to the pedagogical atmosphere, where the mood of hope, care and trust to the world are the main ones.
Список литературы
REFERENCES
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