This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ...that, as far as positive knowledge of pedagogy is concerned, the bourgeoisie is much superior to the proletariat, from which there follows among other things a corresponding superiority of the bourgeois education. The character of the bourgeois woman, who occupies, like all women, a lower rank in society, has generally suffered still more from her easy mode of life, and her weakness of character is transmitted to her children if she brings them up herself. This condition must be added, for society life, or in other words, the habit of doing nothing at all, is often the cause of mothers'' having their children brought up by some one who has neither natural aptitude nor acquired capacity for this task, but only takes charge of the children for the sake of a place. There are even children who are not suckled by their mothers but by nurses, since the mothers are afraid of diminishing their own charms. This proves once more the weakness of the allegation that the parents are the natural educators of the child; for we see in this case that the social environment can lead to the renunciation of duties that are really natural.1 The moral education of the children of the bourgeoisie is generally superficial, and has especially in view the task of teaching the children to conduct themselves according to the proprieties, much more than that of developing their real moral nature. In the second place this education develops among them a very strong feeling of class, so that they consider the members of the proletariat as inferior beings, born by nature to serve the bourgeoisie, in place of seeing in them only their own fellows, who have become different merely because of fortuitous circumstances. In the third place, our present educational system makes...