Page:Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky - Self-Education of the Workers.djvu/4

 of schools and Sunday schools, the ever-increasing number of scientific and literary Socialist clubs. The attention paid to child welfare and the education of the young in connection with the organisation of proletarian elementary schools will lead to the transformation of working-class family life. The woman must cease to be enslaved by the proletarian kitchen and the proletarian nursery; the latter, we must admit, is at present practically non-existent. I merely refer to the most important of the series of questions with which the Socialist proletariat has begun to grapple both theoretically and practically.

Before the war but few Social Democrats had realised the truth, conclusively proved by Spencer, that even the best mental training has little influence on the will unless it be accompanied by the development of the finer human feelings. The ethical and aesthetic education of the workers’ children in the spirit of Socialist ideology is a supreme necessity.

Rosa Luxemburg is more than right when she says: "We shall hardly make any progress without a clear understanding of the work of proletarian self-education." Comparatively little has been done in this direction, which may be termed the sphere of enlightenment, and in which the creative power of the proletariat must very clearly manifest itself. Even before the war the need for this enlightening self-education was very strongly felt; and work had been started in that direction. But the war so clearly showed the workers the shortcomings of this most important aspect of their culture that, notwithstanding the wholesale waste and destruction in Europe during the past four years, we may expect to see in the near future a great revival of working-class energy in this direction.