The recent outbreak of anti-Semitic incidents in Germany, with its juvenile chain reaction in many parts of the world, has focused attention on the school, the teacher, and the textbook as the center of hope for improving relations between different ethnic and religious groups. There exists a wide measure of agreement in America and Germany that it is primarily the schools which transmit the heritage of the past to the young, and that the schoolroom is therefore the place where group antagonism can most effectively be rooted out. It is also widely assumed that a more intensive propaganda by religious schools of the injunction to love our neighbors would help to rid society of group hatred and vandalism. But these beliefs are based on an exaggerated estimate of the influence of teachers and preachers in Western society generally, and in particular, of their influence on the minds of the young.

Evidence both of a sociological and a psychological character now exists, in fact, which strongly suggests that the school plays only a minor role in the development of basic social attitudes among children, and that the teacher is almost powerless in this area unless his work is visibly substantiated and backed up by the society in whose midst he operates. Before moving on to a consideration of this evidence, however, it would be a good idea to introduce certain historical considerations: as well as being the key to our understanding of the political sentiments of our contemporaries, history offers us some interesting data bearing on just this question of the effectiveness of schoolteaching in the formation of political hatreds.

After the year 1815, following the Congress of Vienna, schools and universities through-out Europe became subject to close political supervision with the direct purpose of preventing the young from being contaminated by “Bonapartism” and the ideas of the French Revolution. In the France of Louis XVIII and Charles X, education was placed under clerical control, and in the Germany of Metternich’s time, not only were students expelled from universities for the mere utterance of revolutionary views but a rigorous censorship was enforced on all forms of the printed word. Behind these measures lay precisely the same assumptions about the gravity of teaching that are being entertained today in connection with the battle against anti-Semitism. Yet even thirty years of control over the printed and the taught word failed to achieve the desired results: in 1848 France and Germany were swept by the ideas of the French Revolution, and in Paris people wept with emotion as the old slogans and songs of the Empire were revived. How was it that those sentiments and slogans managed to survive?

The story of French revolutionary propaganda is even more astonishing. In 1794 Robespierre launched a nationwide campaign of hate against Britain with the press as his chief weapon. Napoleon continued the campaign, extending it over the whole of French-occupied Europe, until it affected the minds not only of his supporters but also—and this is the first surprise—of his enemies. The second surprise is the long-term effect of all this propaganda. A hundred years after Robespierre began his anti-British campaign, the slogans and ideas he originated came to life anew on German soil. In the dawn of the present century the German Kaiser, together with his military and civic leaders and his publicists, was interpreting the Anglo-German conflict in terms forged a hundred years earlier by a handful of Frenchmen determined to manipulate public opinion in the interest of France. The same anti-British clichés were current in the Germany of Hitler and in the France of Pétain, and they have survived even in the France of de Gaulle. In other areas, too, a similar pattern can be traced. Anti-Semitic ideas have a paritcularly notorious record of longevity;¹ and in America political life is still to some extent shaped by feelings and notions that go back to the Spanish War and the election campaign of 1900, to the Civil War, and, of course, to the War of Independence. What history teaches is that strong animosities generated in a people by a bitter conflict invariably outlive the circumstances that produced them. Each generation takes possession of the language, the attitudes, and the sentiments of the culture into which it is born, and included among these are obsolete political ideas. The question is whether or not schools play an important role in the process of transmission.

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In an effort to shed light on this question a study was begun several years ago at Carmel College, a boarding school (located near Oxford) which has been described by flatterers as the Jewish Eton, and which is indeed a pioneering venture in Jewish education. The student body is composed of about three hundred boys most of whom are Jewish, ranging in age from eight to eighteen; the curriculum is divided between general and Jewish subjects, with the latter approached in a “modern” humanistic spirit. A group of eight-year-olds fresh from their homes (and therefore not yet influenced by the College’s life and teaching) were put through a series of tests to ascertain how much political sentiment they had already absorbed, so that this could later be checked against their ideas and feelings after they had lived in the College and received formal instruction in history.

These children, like all English children, play cowboys and Indians—except that they may call it British and Germans, which is a way of reliving the hours of peril through which their elders once passed long before those dramatic chapters of their history have been intelligibly presented to them in a formal lesson. When they were asked what they knew about Hitler, no clear answer could be elicited but all reacted violently to the name. Some boys made faces of disgust and others raised their hands as if to ward off an evil. In 1957 boys born in 1949 were unable to attach a clear identification to other great political names of the past such as Roosevelt, Weizmann, Stalin, and Churchill, but were quite ready to assert that all had been good people except Stalin. Their views of national groups were equally definite, though they had no personal experience of these groups or factual information about them. Each year from 1955 through 1958 the majority of new boys entering the College at the age of eight or nine consistently expressed a strong dislike of Arabs, Germans, and Russians in that order. Their friendly feelings were also fairly uniform (the Jews, the British, and the Americans enlisted their strongest sympathies). There was not the slightest doubt that these social attitudes were firmly fixed, reflecting past as well as present political conflicts, before formal lessons in history or related subjects had begun.

Further tests in the two lowest grades at Carmel College revealed the presence of strong anti-social feelings in all the boys—verbal and physical cruelty, aggressiveness, a deep desire to hurt, destroy, and kill. When boys of eight were asked what they would do if they became “the most powerful man in the world,” their answers generally uncovered a paramount interest in food and sweets, but the boy who wanted to burn the school, shoot the principal, imprison or hang his fellow creatures, “kill some and imprison others” was by no means a rare specimen. How did the atmosphere and the educational effort of the College affect political sentiment and social attitudes?

Since Carmel College is a boarding school, its impact on students is concentrated and intense and the influence of the home is diminished (during term the boys have contact with their homes only through letters and one or two short visits). One-half of the faculty is Jewish and great care is taken to discourage group hatred of any kind; in their Jewish studies, moreover, the boys are introduced to the religious rather than the political aspect of Jewish existence. The same master has been teaching history for the last ten years and, being himself a member of a joint Christian-Jewish study group on textbooks, he has been particularly active in promoting interracial and international good will. The history master also teaches German, as does an internationally-minded English lady, and both of them have testified that they have had very little success in affecting the political prejudices of their pupils.

During the period of the study (between 1955 and 1958) numerous efforts were made to spread an atmosphere of international understanding. United Nations Days were prominently kept and United Nations material was constantly displayed in the library. In order to counter political bias, geography lessons in the seventh and eighth grades stressed both the Middle East (with particular attention to the problems of the Arabs) and Central Europe (with particular attention to postwar conditions in the two German states). The eighth grade also studied the Soviet Union, its governmental structure and the organization and basic theory of the Communist party. Pictorial material was utilized and Russian music and songs were very popular with the boys. Despite all this, however, strong feelings of aversion remained quite pronounced; in a class of fourteen-year-olds a collective expression of aversion could be triggered off by the mere mention of such charged words as “the Arabs,” “Jesus,” or “Communist.”

In order to extend the picture of the effect of teaching on the political sentiments of the boys, and to accumulate more statistical data on the whole College, tests were also given to the higher grades at the end of the summer terms of 1955 through 1957. The over-all result of these tests, which embraced all the grades up to and including the tenth, indicated that 40 per cent and more of the boys had hostile feelings toward five groups: 82 per cent toward Arabs; 70 per cent toward Germans; 52 per cent toward Russians; 47 per cent toward Japanese; and 37 per cent toward Catholics. There were only slight variations in this picture from year to year. Two other groups comparatively high in the list of dislikes were the Austrians and the Japanese. Broken down into age groups, the figures of summer 1956 were as follows.

Thus for the three groups heading the list of social enemies percentages were fairly uniform throughout the College. Indeed the record of the children shows no basic change in the amount or direction of social hatred from the untutored boys at the beginning of their school career to the boys who had undergone ten years of the College’s influence.

An important factor in the shaping of attitudes was found to be the national press. But while the boys followed the press eagerly, and found in it sufficient material to give body to their political sentiments, they were reading selectively. The press hardly initiated their social dislike, only helped to sustain them.

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The Carmel College test shows that such factors as home background and current political conflicts are far more important in determining basic feelings of friendship or hostility toward social groups than the teaching of the school, even a school whose program is consciously dedicated to promoting tolerance. A control check of a class of seventeen-year-old Israelis in a Haifa school—carried out in 1955 prior to the Sinai campaign—showed a striking similarity in the order of political aversion. The young Israelis registered their sentiments in the following way: 70 per cent felt hostile toward the Egyptians; 70 per cent toward the Germans; 51 per cent toward Arabs in general; 44 per cent toward Christian clergymen; 30 per cent toward Russians; 26 per cent toward Catholics. The difference between British-born and Israeliborn young Jews, despite all the variations in both their educational and geographical milieu, is remarkably small.

The presence or absence of Christians among the students of Carmel College made no difference in the attitude of the boys. Moreover the College is very much concerned to avoid anything that might either hurt the personal feelings of a Christian or be construed as hostile to the Christian faith. There was not the slightest evidence for the presence of any anti-Christian factor whatever in the Carmel environment. Nevertheless, the boys did express anti-Christian sentiment. There was no substantiation for the possible suspicion that something in the teaching process itself was to blame for this. The only thing that seemed to explain the presence of such a sentiment was the notion that the growth of group consciousness itself produced negative social attitudes toward close rival groups of a similar nature.

To check this theory an indirect experiment in the workings of group consciousness was set up in summer 1955. The experiment was carried out with a group of nine-year-olds in the following way: two neighboring dormitories were each told a bedtime story once a week. One of the dormitories was told ordinary stories, while the other heard stories expressly designed to promote a special feeling of solidarity among the boys. Group consciousness was created by using such devices as secret codes and the choice of a password and a secret sign of recognition. One of the stories centered around a valiant gang of boys who carried out their exploits under a special name; the storyteller would conclude each episode by asking, “Have you already chosen a name for yourselves?” A week later he was informed by nineteen enthusiastic youngsters that they had agreed to be called “The Nineteen Cannibals.” They were encouraged to choose a leader and a lieutenant. As their group consciousness developed, so did aggressiveness toward the other dormitory—which reached its climax in plans for a night raid (this was prevented). The storyteller had always been very careful never to suggest anything of the kind. This experiment would seem to prove, then, that hostility and aggressiveness can simply be by-products of positive group formation.

The first fundamental change in the quality of social attitude showed up in the two top grades, where boys between sixteen and eighteen are prepared for their university careers, and where they are encouraged to develop a large measure of independent critical judgment. It was found that these boys no longer reacted spontaneously to social distance tests, and the inference seems warranted that a causal connection exists between the awakening of the intellect after the age of sixteen, the growing insight into the make-up of one’s own mind, and a slackening off in the intensity of political hatred and prejudice. The intelligent boy of the twelfth grade in England regards expressions like “the Reds” or “the dirty Arabs” as vulgar and unworthy of an intelligent outlook. He is capable of responding to a questionnaire on his social dislikes with an air of superiority, stating that he no longer bears grudges against any special group of people. Although this pronouncement may or may not reflect his true state of mind, it does express an attitude that rules out the usual tests in his case.

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The investigation described was extended to Germany in autumn 1957. At that time the political climate in Germany was radically different from the situation in England. Both the government and the press had been making a great effort to create an atmosphere of sympathy toward the Jews and the State of Israel; and the schools had been encouraged to give this effort their active support. On the other hand, German animosity against the nations of Eastern Europe had reached a pitch which far surpassed the British. With the cooperation of an elementary school at Wiesbaden some German children were given the same sort of test of their group antipathies as had been administered at Carmel College. Seventy-one per cent of the children said they hated the Russians; 46 per cent the French; 39 per cent the Jews; 31 per cent the Irish; 29 per cent the English. At the same time they listed as their favorite national groups the Germans, Austrians, Swiss, and Americans, in that order. Fifty-four per cent stated they liked the Americans, 46 per cent expressed a liking for the Dutch, 42 per cent for the Italians, while 30 per cent declared their sympathy for the British and 18 per cent for the Jews in classes where there were no Jewish children.

The tests of German children confirm many of the findings about the British Jewish children. Their group animosities were marked, consistent, and related both to present and past conflicts. Even conflicts of the 19th century were still being reflected: 12 per cent of these Rhine-land children declared they hated the Prussians. The widespread antipathy against the French, too, can only be explained with reference to past conflicts. (The marked unpopularity of the Irish, I must confess, seems quite inexplicable.) There was also a noticeable difference in the rate of political aversion between children of refugees from the East and children of local residents. Conversations with the school principal and the faculty made it clear that while they were not inclined to combat hatred of Russia, they did make an effort to work for better relations with and understanding of Germany’s Western neighbors and that they also cooperated with the press and the government in combating anti-Semitism. But their teaching effort—as with the effort at Carmel College—had failed to reduce anti-French and anti-Jewish feeling to any substantial degree.

To eliminate the factor of past conflicts in determining present social attitudes, the investigation was transferred to the neutral and calm soil of Switzerland where a control test of another one-hundred children was conducted.

In the secluded Alps village of Lauterbrunnen the boys and girls of the elementary school expressed their political sympathies and dislikes as follows: 100 per cent of them hated the Russians; 51 per cent the Jews; 45 per cent the Catholics; 45 per cent the Germans. The national and religious groups they favored most were: British, 90 per cent; Americans, 87 per cent; Protestants, 81 per cent; Italians, 72 per cent; French, 66 per cent; Austrians, 51 per cent; Dutch, 51 per cent.

Results of a test of urban children in a school at Zurich reflected the same general pattern—the only difference being a somewhat lower intensity in the animosities expressed toward other religious groups. The Swiss figures testify to the enormous impact the cold war has had on the minds of children. They also show the high degree of religious alignment in the Swiss countryside. In the Catholic Rhineland only 12 per cent of the children had recorded their dislike of Protestants, whereas in a Protestant canton the anti-Catholic reaction was much greater—and the high incidence of anti-Jewish sentiment in a village where no Jew was resident, quite unexpected. There was again no evidence to indicate direct responsibility on the part either of the village teacher or his books. The only possible conclusion is that the rejection of other religious groups had been indirectly promoted by assertive teaching and religious instruction. Another possible factor here may have to do with history. In the 1840’s Switzerland was rent by a civil war which split the Federation into rival groups along religious lines. A secessionist Catholic league of cantons was defeated by the Protestant majority. It is likely that these shadows of the past still loom large in the Swiss sentimental heritage.

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The evidence of history, and the evidence of these tests and experiments carried on in Britain, Israel, Germany, and Switzerland—limited in number though they were—both confirm the idea that in the development of a child political sentiment precedes factual knowledge. Nothing we know about the past, nothing we have learned about the group attitudes of school children, points to the school as either the source of such attitudes or as an effective counterweight to them. Two things do seem to have enormous influence on the mind of the child of school age: the political conflicts of the past, and those of the present in which the child’s own group has been or is strongly involved. His sense of these conflicts comes to the child from outside the school. They come from his own home of course, and also from media of communication—press, television, radio—in which current political crises are reported, often dramatized, and through which the utterances of political leaders are broadcast. Political leaders attempting to impress themselves upon the public frequently use highly emotive and provocative language, as does the press; and this language often serves to direct aggressive feelings against some group or other. Not the teacher, but the parent, the statesman, the newswriter, and the commentator hold the key to the control room of a child’s political sentiments. And it is group loyalty itself—surely a universal human feeling—that is often responsible for an irrational, unhealthy social animosity.

The problem of group hatreds is not one of how to loosen the hold of strong in-group feeling—that is impossible—but rather how to keep group loyalty and group antagonism within reasonable and safe bounds in a dangerous world. Friction and conflict of interests will always exist between groups as they will always exist between individuals, but they should not be allowed to lead to collective crimes. It is more honest—and indeed the only possible remedy on an individual level—to tell a young person that political hatred exists in all of us and is a natural result of our own history, but that it is one thing to harbor an intense feeling of hatred and quite another to translate that feeling into anti-social acts.

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¹ For a detailed historical account, see my “The Idea and Slogan of ‘Perfidious Albion,’” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XIV, 1953; and “Anti-Western and Anti-Jewish Tradition in German Historical Thought,” Leo Baeck Yearbook IV, 1959.