I posted about a "new"pedagogical discussion some days ago in Hungarian (19th December). Now, I thought to mention it in English as well since the view of Michael Winterhoff, a German child-psychologist, seems to have several correlating ideas with CE. It is not a suprise. CE remained to be in its pedagogical framework as it was years and years before. Oppositely, modern education has changed enormuosly in the last twenty-thirty years. Winterhoff recognises the downsides of the modern approach and efforts to highlight the values of the "traditional', or lets say earlier pedagogical methods both at home or school.
Here I copied a little text of him just raise your attention to this subject.
"Children used to be seen as children and intuitively led and guided by adults as such. For at least 15 years now they have been treated as partners and reared with the help of discussion and explanations. But you can't learn tennis, either, by having it explained and demonstrated to you. It isn't only parents and grandparents that are making major mistakes today, but professionals, too. This starts as far back as kindergarten and continues on into school, where teachers are receding more and more into the background and assuming the role of mentor and, more recently, coach. Primary school pupils are supposed to teach themselves reading, writing and arithmetic; grade one is taught by grade two. The fact is, however, that from a developmental psychology perspective, small children go to school to gain their mothers' approval and do many things they don't feel like doing for their teachers' sake.
To make matters worse, many parents compensate for the growing loss of orientation and recognition they feel today according to the following motto: even if nobody out there loves me, my child at least should do so. This unconscious compensation for a need cements the reversal of power that is the subject of infants' phantasies until they realize, from age three onwards, that grownups are bigger and stronger than they are. However, the worst part of it is that the general uncertainty and anxiety about the future of our society causes parents to merge with their children's minds in a kind of symbiosis. All of these relational disorders are linked to false reactions that make emotional development impossible. We end up with an entire generation of under-three-year-olds: egocentric, unable to cope with life, lacking in independence, unemployable or unfit for vocational training. This problem, by the way, is a worldwide phenomenon, seen in all of the wealthy countries and not only in Germany.
So this is not a consequence of the anti-authoritarian-education ideal fostered by the post-68ers in Germany?
No, absolutely not. And it is not a question of any kind of pedagogical discussion either. The tragic part of it is that the problems these children have can no longer be solved even through increased strictness. The child is not overburdened because it is treated as a separate person but because it is treated like a small adult. "
