Lifestyle! Interview: Hartmut Von Hentig

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But it's possible that my tool—the schools—might prove in the end to be unworkable. Children are damaged in the public schools, though we can't tell exactly how much . . . I've never seen any significant numbers of children who haven't grown up in the school system, so I have no real measuring stick by which to judge the damage. The world has grown pretty bad and perhaps it's all the schools' fault, I don't know.

Everyone's a bit neurotic from having undergone foolish treatment in the name of education. I can certainly see where I've been damaged by society's preoccupation with production and order and law (though not all of that's wrong). Maybe humanity has been schooled enough already and we should abandon the institution as Illich claims . . . but I'm not ready to do that yet. To abandon schools completely now would both throw away their potential for becoming better—which I believe is great—and open the door to chaos by prematurely divesting us of our most basic institutions. At this point I don't think society could survive the shock . . . and I believe it's important that society continue to function.

I saw a film once— WILD CHILD by Truffaut—about a child found in the wilderness who'd never had any contact at all with human community. It came out so clearly in that movie what a price we have to pay for our civilization . . . yet on the other hand how confined, how dim, how lonely and how fearful life is without it. The film ends with a doctor noting that the child had shed his first tears and was therefore becoming civilized.

"Children are damaged in the public schools, though we can't tell exactly how much . . have no real measuring stick by which to judge the damage."

There's much in society to cause tears and suffering, but wemust face our faults and mistakes in human fashion if we hope to correct them and enjoy the good things that civilization can bring. Humanity is a response to what we've done to ourselves while struggling to live up to our potential . . . animals don't need humanity, they just need instincts and Darwin.

I'm often asked what are my guiding values. I operate on a set of negative ethics that say "no" to things which are becoming outrageously or conspicuously bad and which are hurting people. The trauma of Hitler's National Socialism influence everything I do . . . my overriding concern is to avoid the next 1933 to 1945. I never want to be as impotent as that again or see others—even people with the strongest of minds, character and bodies—impotent, also . . . unable to do anything. I also want to prevent society as a whole from losing its head again as Germany did then. It's not a Hitler we're to fear as much a people who're willing to put a man like that in charge of their nation.

These aren't simple things to avoid. The next Hitler won't have a little black mustache or strut around in a brown uniform. Who can say what kind of man will be able to capture such a following in the future . . . he may look like Billy Graham, who knows? One way of trying to avoid such catastrophes is to set up institutions that people have agreed in advance to honor such as schools or governments. There's no safeguard or guarantee that they'll be honored forever, but their existence gives you a time lag, a margin of safety like the twenty seconds or so one had during World War II after the air raid siren sounded in which to think before the bombs began to explode. This is what institutions and their procedures provide, a time lag due during which to think.

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