Translated
from Bulgarian
Vladimir Djambov ©
Saint Boris (Razumov)
Metr. of Nevrokop
THE CRISIS IN OUR SCHOOL
A brochure published in 1928 by the
then Archim. Boris of Nevrokop [PhD in Philosophy, future Metropolitan - 1935,
now St.], called
'THE CONSCIENCE OF THE
BULGARIAN CHURCH'.
For his life, activity and the attitude of the Bulgarian Church towards
Metropolitan Boris, see also:
http://borisnevrokopski.blogspot.com/2015/01/blog-post_50.html
– in Bulgarian
Blog dedicated to Metropolitan
Boris of Nevrokop – in Bulgarian
The last public execution in Europe took place in Sofia, 3 Bulgarians were hanged:
namely the perpetrators of the coup-d-etat [аt the Tsar] in the "St. King" cathedral,
[1925, 213 people killed, 400 – wounded]
Marko Friedman, Petar Zadgorski and Georgi Koev.
Archimandrite Boris
[St. Boris. Metr. of Nevrokop]
(Reprinted without changes from the edition of the Holy Synod of the BOC, 1928)
CONTENTS
I. A crisis in the soul of our people.
II. Disabilities in our school.
III. Who creates and maintains the negative spirit
in our school.
IV. Terrible manifestations among our youth.
V. Acknowledgments and concerns of the Ministry
of Education.
VI. The causes of evil.
VII. What is education?
VIII. Educational work in cultural countries.
IX. What does moral teaching without religious teaching
and ethics without religion lead to?
X. Admonition.
XI. A new spirit is needed for our school.
XII. The counteraction of the dark forces.
XIII. Science and religion.
XIV. General care.
I. A Crisis
in the Soul of our People.
Our people are going through hard times.
He is subjected to great trials and faces even greater dangers. Its social order
is undermined, its state security threatened, its national feeling dulled, its human
conscience lulled. An agonizing crisis is felt in all areas of his life. However,
the most serious, almost fatal, is the crisis in the soul of the Bulgarian people.
During all the time of its existence, our people have suffered many heavy blows
and suffered terribly. Yet it has almost always remained sound and unscathed, and
has preserved itself as a nation for centuries. He was able to overcome trials and
overcome dangers only because his spirit was strong, vigorous, firm and invincible.
Now, however, the soul of our people is sick and weak. Deluded sons of this nation
raised up parricidal hand and wounded his soul. Criminal hands have poured a deadly
poison into that soul, which now corrodes and decays. And as soon as a nation corrodes
and decays internally, its demise becomes almost inevitable.
The greatest enemies of our nation, its own offspring,
have encroached on the most precious treasure and the greatest power it possessed:
they have encroached on its faith—that divine creative power which raises man and
the human spirit to God and makes him firm and invincible, godlike and exalted.
First they shook his faith in God, and then inevitably his faith in himself was
also shaken. They do it cut off from God
and from everything divine in life and in the world. They cut him off from goodness,
justice, humanity, love, truth, virtue, holiness, and generally from everything
sublime and bright in this life. At first they suppressed his religious feeling,
dulled his conscience, and created in his soul an indifference to the greatest religious
and moral values. The distinction between good and evil, truth and falsehood, love
and hate, justice and injustice, virtue and vice, honor and dishonor, is obliterated.
Some conceited and semi-intelligent people in our country wished to stand beyond
good and evil and tried to reevaluate values. In fact, there was a complete devaluation
of values, because indifference is impossible
for the human soul. It cannot be a permanent condition of hers. It is only a transition
to another mood. After Indifference, after the indifferent attitude towards the
greatest religious and moral values of the human spirit, a preference for evil
over good, lies over truth, malice over love, injustice over righteousness, vice
over virtue inevitably occurs. For we can be either with good or with evil, or with
truth or with falsehood, or with love or with malice, or with righteousness or with
injustice, or with virtue or with vice. We cannot be both, or neither, at the same
time. There is no middle ground that we can walk. This is an inexorable law in the
religious and moral life of man.
We, as a people, also went down this path of destruction. However, the process of
decay and decline did not stop there. He walked uncontrollably to its natural end. There was a complete reversal
in understandings and judgments. People appeared among us who began to regard good
as evil and evil as good, truth as a lie and a lie as truth, justice as injustice
and injustice as justice, virtue as vice and vice as virtue, honor as dishonor and
dishonor as honor! This is the greatest fall that man can reach, a fall where there
is almost nothing human left in him.
As soon as a man is cut off from God and from all that is sublime and bright, he
falls from the heights headlong down into the abyss of destruction and death and
perishes, if he does not wake up and return back to the original source of life,
to God. The process of the fall is unified. First of all, a person, as soon as he
renounces God, gets up lukewarm, indifferent,
then indifferent, then soulless, and most inhuman. And as soon as man disappears
from man, the beast wakes up in his place. The loss of faith, that mysterious power
that connects us to God and to everything sublime and bright, inevitably entails
the loss of humanity, the loss of the human and divine image in man. disbelief inevitably
leads to brutalization. It is an inexorable natural law in the moral world, as all
natural laws in the material world are inexorable.
When, after the monstrous atrocity in the Cathedral of St. Sunday, various secret
documents of some exposed conspiratorial organizations were seized, a bidet and
a district one were found, in which, among other things, the following orders were
given:
"When you meet our adversaries,
destroy them without mercy and without mercy! Be cruel and merciless and put aside
humanity, humanity and other such savagery !" So, cruelty and inhumanity
are directly recommended and commanded, and humanity and humanity are declared savagery!
Indeed, a more terrible fall for man is impossible! Never before has our people
come to such an unprecedented fall. There is no such monstrous manifestation in
the life of any other nation. It is unknown and unheard of until now to openly preach
cruelty, inhumanity and atrocity almost as a goal of life! It is a celebration of
demonism, a celebration of that dark power that wants to destroy everything human
and divine in man and reign in him the demon!
This terrible catastrophe in the soul of
our nation, far more terrible than all the catastrophes in its external life and
external destinies, did not come all at once. It is not a consequence of the heavy
blows and sufferings we have endured in recent times. It has been prepared for a
long time, developed as a long natural process and occurred gradually. The tests
only helped to develop more quickly and reveal more clearly the process of internal
decay in our country. Suffering in itself does not decay or destroy. On the contrary:
they clarify, ennoble and elevate the healthy human spirit, increasing its vitality
and creative energy. And other nations suffered blows, perhaps much more severe
than ours, but they remained cheerful and
unbroken because they have a healthy creative spirit imbued with indomitable
religious and moral forces. Only we, the Bulgarians, lost our mental balance under
the blows and hung over the abyss, because our spirit is eaten by the worm of doubt
and disbelief, of enmity and bitterness, because we, as a people, have almost remained
without faith and without God , without hope and support, without spiritual forces
and moral values.
II . Disabilities in our School.
The religious and moral, and along with it, the national catastrophe of the
Bulgarian people was prepared by many countries and many factors. However, the most,
in this respect, will be done through our school and our wrong education, through
our disastrous school and education policy. No honest and conscientious person can
deny this. Until some time ago no one dared to point out directly the defects in
our school and our academic work, because it was considered perfect and inviolable,
and most of all by those who insidiously destroyed it by introducing into it a spirit
of negation and decay. Now, however, the shortcomings of our school are being talked
about and should be talked about openly. The first minister of education after the
political change in our country, without demagoguery and
the self- aggrandizement of some of his
predecessors, has the valor, after the infernal attack in the Cathedral "St.
Sunday", to declare in his famous speech in the House openly and boldly that
"for thirty years now, and in the school, a terrible poison has been poured
incessantly !" A crime will be to close our eyes to this sad truth. We
must all face it openly and courageously. First of all, of course, the responsible
factors must be stopped. There are undoubtedly great infirmities in our schools,
as many handicapped youths come out of them .There are certainly many sores in our
schools, as many wounded consciences come out of them. A lot of poison must be spilled in our schools,
as many poisoned souls come out of them. There is necessarily a lot of darkness
in our schools, since many darkened minds come out of them.
A severe internal crisis, which was prepared several decades ago, is eating
away at our school and our educational work. Recently, this crisis has ripened and
opened like a living wound, full of poisons and infections. Too often the soul of
our youth is poisoned in the school, and outside it, in the wild struggles of life,
the soul of our people is poisoned. Poisoning the soul of the Bulgarian youth
and the Bulgarian people is the biggest and most terrible crime that has ever been
committed on Bulgarian soil! One a crime that cannot be expiated by anything,
and will lie as an eternal curse on the name and conscience of those who committed
it and perhaps still continue to commit it!
The first major drawback of our school is that it only teaches, not educates.
It pays exclusive attention to the mind and completely ignores the soul. It
gives only knowledge and cultivates almost no virtues. It develops only the faculties
of the mind and atrophies the powers of the soul. It only sharpens the cold reason
and suppresses the warm feeling of life. It only takes the student's head, fills
it with dry and dead knowledge, creates in it usually a chaos of truths and delusions,
and most often, instead of enlightening the mind, it covers it with darkness. Not
infrequently it uses the student's head to pour through it like a through co-star in his soul. Thus our school, by paying
attention only to one faculty of human nature,
the mind, mutilates the child internally and leads the youth to internal degeneracy.
In this way it disrupts the integrity and harmony of human nature and destroys its
essence. In this way it often creates mental freaks and moral monsters. In this
way, our school also destroys the basic principle and destroys the ultimate goal
of all education and all upbringing: creating a complete and harmonious, noble and
complete personality. This one-sided intellectualization
of our school is due to the grievous delusion
that the mental faculties are the most important thing, that the mind is everything
in man. Mind, however, is only one of the faculties of human nature. He is not the
essence of man. The greatness and essence of man lies elsewhere: it lies in the
divine beauty of his humanity and in the majesty of his godlike and immortal spirit.
Even the greatest criminals can have a mind and mental knowledge . A lawyer and
jurist he can know very well what is
right and what the laws define - and yet commit the greatest injustices and iniquities.
A chemist may know the properties of the various elements very well, and may have
great knowledge in general, and yet use some of them to poison man. A physicist
can be a man of science and study the operation of the various forces of nature
with certainty - and yet use some of them to wreak terrible havoc. The greatest
crimes often require a great mind and considerable knowledge. What mind, what intelligence
and what knowledge is needed, for example, to rob a bank, despite all modern means
of protection and security? Mind, education and knowledge were also those who prepared
and carried out the complex infernal plan to blow up the cathedral "St. Nedelya",
not only to kill hundreds of innocent people, but also to bury our tortured fatherland
under its ruins! Mind alone does not protect against evil, crime and depravity.
The demon has the strongest mind and intellect, the greatest intelligence and cunning.
And yet he inspires horror and disgust! And yet he is the embodiment of the greatest
evil! The mind is a great gift of human nature, but it is neither the essential
nor the most important thing in it.
Our school not only deals exclusively with
the mind and ignores the child's soul, but it does something much more terrible:
it denies the soul altogether! This is the second fatal handicap in our school.
Our school is completely alien to the greatest - the eternal in man: his soul. It
despises that divine essence in man. It recognizes only matter, only flesh , and
denies the soul. It seeks to obliterate the essential difference between man and
animal, and seeks to impress upon our youth that their forefathers were human-like
animals and that they are of animal
origin. With such suggestions, it is clear what world view these young people will
be able to form and what conclusions they will draw about themselves and their lives.
Since in essence and origin they are very close to animals, there is no reason for
them to stay far from them in life.
Our school, which outwardly develops properly and grows normally, as a healthy soulless
animal grows, inwardly, in its essence, is soulless and dead. It is without a positive
creative spirit, without idealism and enthusiasm, without high virtues and noble
impulses, without distant ideals and lofty goals. Our school is materialistic.
Our school, however, denies not only the human soul: it also denies the eternal,
absolute Spirit, of Whom the human soul is but a breath. Our school denies God.
In our school they openly speak in all kinds
of ways against God and against everything divine in man and nature. But even if
this does not happen, if God is not talked about in the school, - if God is expelled
from it, then: it is without God, then: it is godless. If God is not established
in the school, then He is denied. As soon as we stop talking in the school about
God and the soul, by our very silence we preach impiety and soullessness. There
can be no indifferent treatment. Actually, indifferentism is already a negation. In the soul and conscience
of man there cannot be a completely indifferent state: man will either affirm or
deny. And in our school, God is not only not affirmed, but also openly denied. And
as soon as God is denied, everything divine and great in man and life is denied
and destroyed, man and life in its essence are denied and destroyed. Our school
is atheistic.
As soon as atheism and materialism penetrated our school, they started wreaking
havoc in all directions. They are dark forces
that destroy everything positive and valuable, everything sublime and bright. Atheism
is a demonic phenomenon, and materialism is a manifestation of the animal nature
in man. Both the one and the other, brought to their final consistency, mean the
end of all humanity and all culture. Atheism denies God and all that is divine in
life and man, and materialism denies man and all that is sublime in him. Atheism
means victory and celebration of the demonic principle, and materialism - victory
and celebration of the animal principle in man and life. Atheism wants to demonize
man, and materialism seeks to turn him into an animal. Both the one and the other,
which have the same essence, pursue the same ultimate goal: the destruction of the
human image in man, the destruction of man in man! And in our school, where materialism
and atheism spread freely, these destructive forces pursue the same ultimate goal
and produce the same destructive results. Our school, which denied God and the soul,
inevitably had to deny man, who is inconceivable without the soul and the divine
principle in it. It does not know or recognize man. In the child it sees and recognizes
only the student and is not interested in the person in him. For our school, the
greatest goal of all education, all upbringing, all culture and all existence is
incomprehensible: the perfect man. Our school will be dehumanized.
Materialism and atheism, from which almost
all the evils in our school have arisen, manifest themselves and do their destructive
work among society in certain forms. The form of materialism is socialism, of atheism
- anarcho-communism. The roots of socialism lie in materialism, and the roots of
anarcho-communism in atheism. The last basis of socialism is materialism, its only
goal - materiality. The only source of anarcho-communism is atheism, its ultimate
goal - demonism. Socialism and anarcho-communism, between which there is no essential
difference, as there is no essential difference between materialism and atheism,
deny in reality what they only seem to affirm. Socialism denies sociality and destroys
society, anarcho-communism denies humanity and destroys the individual. Socialism
is a completely anti-social movement, anarcho-communism a completely anti-human
phenomenon. Materialism and atheism and their offspring: socialism and anarcho-communism,
which in our school grew to monstrous proportions and assumed the form of formidable
monsters, destroyed in the soul of our youth almost all lofty ideas and all great
values. They destroyed the religious-moral idea or the idea of God, they also
destroyed the social-human and national-state idea. Having introduced into our school
the spirit of negation and decay, they also drove out the national spirit and tried
to replace that spirit with the spirit of internationalism and patriotism. At one
time, our school had reached the point where only the Bulgarian language reminded
us that it was Bulgarian. Materialism and atheism and their offspring: socialism
and anarcho-communism, which in our school grew to monstrous proportions and assumed
the form of formidable monsters, destroyed in the soul of our youth almost all lofty
ideas and all great values. They destroyed the religious-moral idea or the idea
of God, they also destroyed the social-human and national-state idea. Having introduced
into our school the spirit of negation and decay, they also drove out the national
spirit and tried to replace that spirit with the spirit of internationalism and
patriotism. At one time, our school had reached the point where only the Bulgarian
language reminded us that it was Bulgarian. Materialism and atheism and their offspring:
socialism and anarcho-communism, which in our school grew to monstrous proportions
and assumed the form of formidable monsters, destroyed in the soul of our youth
almost all lofty ideas and all great values. They destroyed the religious-moral
idea or the idea of God, they also destroyed the social-human and national-state
idea. Having introduced into our school the spirit of negation and decay, they also
drove out the national spirit and tried to replace that spirit with the spirit of
internationalism and patriotism. At one time, our school had reached the point where
only the Bulgarian language reminded us that it was Bulgarian. destroyed in the
soul of our youth almost all lofty ideas and all great values. They destroyed the
religious-moral idea or the idea of God, they also destroyed the social-human
and national-state idea. Having introduced into our school the spirit of negation
and decay, they also drove out the national spirit and tried to replace that spirit
with the spirit of internationalism and patriotism. At one time, our school had
reached the point where only the Bulgarian language reminded us that it was Bulgarian.
destroyed in the soul of our youth almost all lofty ideas and all great values.
They destroyed the religious-moral idea or the idea of God, they also destroyed
the social-human and national-state idea. Having introduced into our school the
spirit of negation and decay, they also drove out the national spirit and tried
to replace that spirit with the spirit of internationalism and patriotism. At one
time, our school had reached the point where only the Bulgarian language reminded
us that it was Bulgarian. they banished the national spirit from there and tried
to replace that spirit with the spirit of internationalism and patriotism. At one
time, our school had reached the point where only the Bulgarian language reminded
us that it was Bulgarian. they banished the national spirit from there and tried
to replace that spirit with the spirit of internationalism and patriotism. At one
time, our school had reached the point where only the Bulgarian language reminded
us that it was Bulgarian. Our school had become foreign.
It will not be possible to forget those
shameful cases from the recent shameful past, when Bulgarian students whistled the
Bulgarian national flag in the street, which should be a shrine for every Bulgarian,
they grieved the Bulgarian People's Army, which is the hope and support for the
Bulgarian people and the Bulgarian state. But these unscrupulous Bulgarian students
were not to blame: that was what their socialist and anarcho-communist teachers
had taught them.
How real Bulgarians and real fathers feel
about these terrible handicaps in our school can be seen from a letter that a father
sent to a metropolitan newspaper. This is what this patriotic, conscious Bulgarian
and caring father writes:
"I sent my children to a German school
not out of love for language and culture, but out of fear that they might become
communists. I want my children to remain good Bulgarians. For me, it is the Bulgarian school that gave
the special strength to our socialism and communism, even if there are no social conditions for these
studies in our country... I am writing all this to you not to defend foreign schools,
but to express the pain of parents who, fearing that their children will de-Bulgarianize in Bulgarian schools, send them to the foreigners, asking them to make
them good Bulgarians."
"Once I was impatient and scolded
a group of students from the commercial high school who were buying communist newspapers,
magazines and brochures. And to my amazement one of the students (son of P. Ya.,
former mayor of Plovdiv, chairman of the District Post Committee etc.) answered
me: "Our director (now retired)
told us to read these publications,
because whoever passed through this left-wing
school rose!..."
We point out the great infirmities in
our school with sorrow in our souls and out of great concern for the future of our
youth and our people. We should all know these handicaps and make sincere efforts
to remove them as soon as possible. We must know how we reached these disastrous
results, who committed the great crime with the Bulgarian school and what measures
should be taken against the evil.
III. Who Creates and Maintains
the Negative Spirit in our School.
Everything that reminded us of God and
the soul was expelled from our school. First of all, the religious and moral education
must be discarded, that noble creative activity must be abolished, through which
the ideal aspirations in the young soul are nurtured, the lofty urges are awakened
in the young heart, and pure light is poured into the young mind. Religious education
in our country is left only in primary schools and reduced to a minimum - one hour
a week, so that some teachers can make fun of it and even use it as a means for
anti-religious purposes. For department IV, for example, in Religion, a total of
7 lessons are planned for the entire academic year. But even these 7 lessons are
not always taken. Often times, religious education lessons are either completely
abandoned or replaced by lessons on other subjects. And sometimes there are teachers,
who laugh and sneer at religious truths when they teach the Creed. However, this
is a mockery and a joke on the child's soul. It is a crime against the person in
the child.
Almost all the more important subjects
in our educational institutions, especially in secondary schools, where there is
no religious instruction and no religious education, are taught materialistically.
In most of our schools, materialism and atheism are openly preached, especially
when teaching natural history, biology, psychology, ethics, etc. The teachers of
these subjects too often depart from the program, present various assumptions, conjectures
and hypotheses as scientific truths, instill in their students their personal beliefs
and misconceptions, etc. But not only teachers of these subjects teach their own
personal beliefs and understandings. And in the textbooks themselves, approved by
the Ministry of Education, completely unscientific hypotheses are presented, which
are learned by students as pure science. This happens most often with natural history
textbooks, in which purely materialistic views and completely one-sided tendencies
are almost always promoted. Of course, all of this is done under the guise of "pure"
science. And for some of our teachers and textbooks, science is only materialism,
which is abhorred by all the great representatives of true science and all truly
enlightened and cultured people. That materialism, which in the field of science
and culture means the lowest fall of the human spirit, and in the field of education
and moral life - the greatest humiliation of man and the almost complete destruction
of the human personality, that materialism, which abroad has long been thrown out
everywhere and buried like the stinking corpse of a dead monster, be brought home
and smashed into the sacred fence of the school, where he decomposed and for whole
decades spewed stench and stench,
A particularly strange and sad impression
is made by the fact that in our schools even those disciplines that deal with the
human soul are taught materialistically and soullessly. So e.g. psychology, the
science of the soul, is so taught that almost always the aim is to arrive at conclusions
by which the existence of the soul can be denied. This is how psychology is taught
even in front of the Ministry of Education - in the capital, where there are teachers
who triumphantly began and ended their lesson with such words: "there is no
more God, no more soul, no more secret: the secret of life has already been discovered
!" And what it is like in the countryside, we can easily imagine, for example,
just from the following fact: when a skilled and high-ranking person spoke in the
hall of a provincial high school on religious problems, several students jumped
up, who declared rudely that they, men of science, recognized no God, and wildly
resented that God was allowed to be spoken of in the temple of science, their high
school. "Our God is the cage!" - they shouted loudly in their self-forgetfulness
and blindness. There must have been some zealous teachers in that high school who
led their students to this insanity.
The teaching of ethics in our schools
is no better. The ethics textbooks themselves, which are written in a negative spirit,
show how this subject is taught. In one of them it is said, for example, that moral
norms were not binding on people, that moral laws could be compared to the laws
of grammar and therefore no one could necessarily be forced to comply with them,
that the moral rules of ethics were as mandatory as the requirements for correct
spelling. In another textbook it is said that Christian morality could compete with
Buddhist morality, which therefore stands higher than the former, that Stoic and
Christian morality (which are placed on an equal footing with a clear preference
for the former) had no scientific basis, created a pessimistic attitude towards
everything earthly and killed the will to cultural activity here on earth! Indeed,
if this ignorance, which is humiliating to a truly enlightened and conscientious
person, can remain at the expense of the authors of the mentioned textbooks, how
will one explain the fact that the Ministry of Education has approved such textbooks
in which moral anarchism is preached, a negative spirit is spread and shameful ignorance
is exported, morality textbooks that actually teach immorality? That's what it says
in ethics textbooks. And what can be said during the lesson, outside the textbook,
it is not difficult to imagine. In any case, one thing is certain that the ethics
of our schools are taught in a completely indifferent and anarchistic way: all ethical
systems are the same and indifferent, so we can choose which one we want. Moral
laws have no binding force, so we can follow them or not - according to our desire.
An ethical discipline (science) that preaches moral indifference, teaches moral
anarchism and does not recognize any immutable and universally binding moral norms
and any moral creative force - neither soul, nor conscience, nor God, is completely
immoral. Such is the ethics taught in our schools. Such an anarchist morality, completely
devoid of moral foundations and moral principles, is taught to our children in school!
neither conscience nor God, is completely immoral. Such is the ethics taught in
our schools. Such an anarchist morality, completely devoid of moral foundations
and moral principles, is taught to our children in school! neither conscience nor
God, is completely immoral. Such is the ethics taught in our schools. Such an anarchist
morality, completely devoid of moral foundations and moral principles, is taught
to our children in school!
The spirit of negation pervades not only
individual subjects, but also the entire school system, and thus also a large part
of our teaching. Unfortunately, many teachers became harbingers of materialism,
atheism and social anarchism, both in the school among the youth, so also among
the masses of the people. To the credit of our teaching, it must be said that there
were teachers who did not succumb to these destructive currents. But they were few,
and were swept away by the general wave of unbelief and impiety, and disappeared
in it without being able to resist. With sadness, we will recall only a few cases,
in order to see to what blindness and fall some teachers came to in the past and
in what criminal and impure hands the Bulgarian school and the education of the
Bulgarian youth was entrusted.
In 1904, the teacher from the village
of Chelopech, Vrachansko, ZPT, pointed out in an essay that the Law of God as a
subject of study was not only superfluous, but also harmful, because the founder
of the moral law, Jesus Christ, was an immoral person, because He supported slavery.
In 1903, at a school conference in Pleven, terrible and vile words against religion
and God were spoken, with the tacit approval of the inspector present. In December
1904, in the Razgrad Chitalishte, Bulgarian national teachers committed such an
insane and humiliating deed, which foreshadowed that we were heading towards
doom and that events will occur, the crown of which was the raising of the Sofia
Cathedral into the air: gathered for a feast, after a conference, the teachers were
having fun, and two teachers appeared in the cheerful meeting, dressed in priestly
clothing, and in front of the teachers and citizens present, they performed sacrilege
and mocked the faith, the Lord Jesus Christ and the holy Apostles. They said that
Christ had snorted, mockingly sang the song of the cherubim, some undressed, others
put on the sacred vestments and did to their heart's content everything that came
to their mind, most insulting and blasphemous to the faith. In 1905, another teacher
arranged an entertainment in which he had two students speak a dialogue in which
Jesus Christ was punished for stealing onions. In 1910, when a teacher was teaching
the children to sing in a choir, the head teacher tried to stop him, "I
don't want the students to say Amen, Lord have mercy and other similar nonsense".
In 1910, 17 icons in the Ascension Church in Shumen were desecrated with impurities.
From the investigations made, it was established that this was done by student teachers.
From the investigations into this unheard-of sacrilege, it had also been established
that moral corruption spread most freely in the pedagogic school itself, whose director
never missed an opportunity to preach that man had no soul, that immortality and
afterlife were fantasies and inventions, - that everything was matter and everything
began and ended with the functions, movements and life of matter. At an exemplary
lecture in the Shumen pedagogical school, the subject was discussed that Christ
is not God, that man descended from apes, etc. One host of a lesson on the Law of
God allowed it to be said that Jesus Christ was "arrested in the precinct"
and etc. blasphemous things.
There were teachers who not only orally,
but also in writing - through the press - spread their sacrilegious thoughts and
destructive ideas and spread infection and corruption among the youth and the people.
Here is an example from the past. When the Bulgarian people celebrated the 25th
anniversary of their Exarchate, the teacher V. T. wrote and published the brochure:
"Christianity before the court of socialism", in which he calls Jesus
Christ "the painter" and says that the "tombstone" was already
sung song of Christianity". In this unworthy way, this Bulgarian teacher commemorated
the 25th anniversary of the greatest religious and national institute of the Bulgarian
people, that institute which embodied in itself the greatest ideals of the Bulgarian
tribe! And despite all this, this teacher is not only not sensible and placed there,
where all destroyers and blasphemers belong, but on the contrary, he was promoted
and appointed as an inspector - as a distinction and reward for his insanity and
blasphemy, for his mockery and nonsense over the cherished religious and national
feelings of the Bulgarian people! Let everyone draw his own conclusion from this
fact, what kind of spirit were imbued in the past by some actors in the field of
public education and what kind of spirit they instilled in the Bulgarian youth and
the Bulgarian people!
Many more such facts could be presented,
which did not happen in absolutely any other country in the world. However, there
are enough of those mentioned to see what sacrilegious deeds some of our teachers
have done and in what spirit of negation and decay they have educated our young
generation in the last 30 years, which is now manifested through riots, riots, violence,
murders, suicides and destruction of all values.
It is extremely sad that a negative spirit
has been created and maintained in our schools and among our learning youth too
often even by those who have been entrusted with the noble task of building up our
educational work and have had the sacred duty to work in the school and minister
to the young soul. Many arbitrariness and lawlessness, much criminal demagoguery
and partisanship have been committed with our school case. Our educational work
was chosen by many, to whom it was entrusted for arrangement and arrangement, as
a means of manifesting liberalism and progressiveness, of free-thinking and free-spiritedness.
Many who worked in the field of education and from high places directed our educational
work, openly flaunted their free-thinking and unbelief, hurried to overtake with
their innovation even the most cultured countries,
IV. Terrible Manifestations among our Youth.
Deluded people turned our school and the
soul of our youth into an arena where they rushed and raced all the negative currents
in modern cultural and social life. Materialism, socialism, atheism, anarcho-communism
and other negative phenomena first crept into the school and from there penetrated
among the people. Angry people brought these destructive contagions to us from abroad,
with which they poisoned the soul of our youth and our people and shook the foundations
of our existence. Our school became a platform where unbelief, impiety, soullessness
and unpatriotism were openly preached. These dark forces have wrought terrible havoc
in the soul of our learning youth. All tender feelings and experiences, all lofty
impulses and aspirations, were destroyed in many young souls. Something more, wild
passions and destructive instincts were awakened in the souls of many youths at
the school. The results of these devastating actions were ugly. There are monstrous
manifestations among our learning youth. There is no crime that has not been committed
by students either inside the school itself or outside it. Lies, frauds, dishonours,
thefts, forgeries, drunkenness, violence, riots, suicides, debauchery, sacrileges,
conspiracies, etc., all these acts are committed in our country by young people
even at school! If statistics were to be made of the crimes committed by students
in or out of school, an unbearably bleak picture would emerge. Where in the world
do as many murders and suicides happen among the studying youth as they do in our
country? A large part of our learning youth destroys and destroys itself, kills
and kills itself, it poisons and poisons itself! Hasn't it become a common thing
in our country for a student to kill his teacher, to kill another student, often
not only to kill, but also to commit suicide? It is enough to recall only the most
recent sad cases of this kind to make us shudder with horror.
Last year, a male and female student committed
suicide on the Gornoban road. The mercenary and criminal part of our press described
this murder and suicide so attractively and glorified the suicides as heroes so
much that several murders and suicides between male and female students followed.
Not long ago, a student slaughtered a female student in the middle of the capital
on "Karnigradska" street and then killed himself. Soon after, a twelve-year-old
student from the "Graf Ignatiev" junior high school stabbed his twelve-year-old
friend with a knife in the school yard in front of all the students. On February
3 of this year, two classmates had an argument at a wedding in Trun. One of them
pulled out a revolver, severely wounded his comrade with several bullets and knocked
him to the ground covered in blood. On October 22 of this year, a high school student
from the 5th grade, who wanted to get good grades without studying, killed his teacher
in Lom and then killed himself. A year ago, when the high school students in a provincial
town were doing hard labor, a student picked up a shovel, smashed his teacher's
head and threw him dead on the ground just because he was reprimanded for something.
So, our students carry knives, razors and revolvers and are ready to slaughter or
shoot a teacher, a friend or a student. If they forgot to arm themselves, they use
the first object they can get their hands on to smash their teacher's head in. smashed
his teacher's head and threw him dead on the ground just because he was reprimanded
for something. So, our students carry knives, razors and revolvers and are ready
to slaughter or shoot a teacher, a friend or a student. If they forgot to arm themselves,
they use the first object they can get their hands on to smash their teacher's head
in. smashed his teacher's head and threw him dead on the ground just because he
was reprimanded for something. So, our students carry knives, razors and revolvers
and are ready to slaughter or shoot a teacher, a friend or a student. If they forgot
to arm themselves, they use the first object they can get their hands on to smash
their teacher's head in.
What about the threats, violence and beatings
inflicted by students on teachers? There is no serious and conscientious teacher
who was tougher and more demanding of his students and remained unthreatened and
terrorized by them.
There are also cases where students have
extorted - through threats and terror - money from various individuals. From this
kind of violence to the formal banditry that flourishes in our country, there is
only one step. It is known that a student from the state university was a member
and hider of the band of robbers who in broad daylight elected the permanent commission
in Sofia and committed a series of robberies and murders elsewhere.
Riots and riots in our secondary schools
are well known. Recently, we all know the most dangerous phenomenon in this direction
- that phenomenon which aims not only at the disruption of the school and academic
work, but also at the destruction of the social order and the destruction of the
fatherland: the conspiratorial organizations and terrorist nuts organized by male
and female students in the schools themselves.
The conspiratorial activity in our schools
among our students continues even now. Some time ago, the congress of a Bolshevik
organization in our country took place in the capital, disguised under a holy, benevolent
name. This congress was greeted by representatives of a "group of students"
from a professional educational institution in Sofia. What this "group"
is and what its action means in this case - everyone can understand. Such student
"groups" certainly exist in many other schools. Some time ago, in a regional
provincial town, an Orthodox Christian society was founded by high school students.
However, a secret anarcho-communist society was founded in the high school. By order
of his masters, the members of this society fully entered the newly founded Christian
society with the aim of disrupting it and making any organized Christian-educational
activity among the students impossible. And they succeeded. And they will succeed,
mainly because in many places the school authorities not only do not give any assistance
in organizing the school youth in Christian educational societies, but also stubbornly
- sometimes openly, sometimes covertly - hinder all such attempts. A negative spirit
has permeated some associations, which initially by statute and form set themselves
good goals, such as, for example, the case of some temperance societies. It is also
known that the general union of student temperance societies was soon very cleverly
completely Bolshevized, and therefore the Ministry of Education was forced to dissolve
it.
Many young people from higher education
institutions in our country are imbued with the spirit of negation and decay. The
so-called academic societies at the various faculties of the state university are
completely Bolshevized. The students of these societies conduct intensive Bolshevik
propaganda, issue newspapers and appeals with extremely provocative content, organize
meetings and demonstrations, as was the case on the Botha holiday this year, etc.
On the occasion of the Botha holiday, these students issued an appeal, which, among
other things, says (we keep the spelling of the call):
"Botev belongs only to the working
oppressed people; to the proletarian class; to the working youth, he was born, lived
and died for them. And the class of the rising proletariat; the huge mass
of the oppressed poor peasantry, and who have the only moral right to honor the
memory of the great revolutionary - Botev.
... Botev does not belong to the fascist
reaction and dictatorship - he is an enemy of the exploiters and oppressors. And
those who slaughtered the people, as no Turk has slaughtered them, those who destroyed
a whole galaxy of Botevians, have no right to desecrate his memory. On Boteva's
day, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie must be exposed; she must be unmasked!"
The
appeal ends with the following threats:
"Colleagues... to struggle! Everyone
under the banner of the proletariat!... Down with the fascist dictatorship! Complete
and unconditional amnesty! Down with the exclusive ZZD! Down with the hands of the
popular student body, down with the reactionary education policy. Death to fascism!
Long live the liberating work of the proletariat and all working people! Long live
the Bulgarian People's Federation! Long live the great defender of all the enslaved
and oppressed, the brave fighter against the imperialist robbers - the USSR! War
of imperial war! To the struggle for bread, freedom, light! To the struggle for
the celebration of power of the working people! - by a group of popular students."
This is how this call for students from
the Bulgarian State University ends! Given these facts, let everyone think and draw
the necessary conclusions for themselves.
There is no need to talk about theft and
forgery in our schools: they are numerous and varied. There is hardly any high school
in our country where vulgar thefts and professional forgeries have not been committed,
where students have not stolen, e.g. school stamps and that they have not forged
school documents.
Relationships and intercourse between
male and female secondary school students are too often quite free and unrestrained.
Who has not seen in broad daylight on the street male students behaving boldly towards
female students, and female students towards male students - neat and defiant? Until
some time ago - before the Ministry of Education forbade male and female students
from wandering the streets until late at night, the nightly exploits and wanderings
of male and female students were not a rare thing. It is unlikely that any person
with a moral sense has remained unhorrified and undisgusted by that disgusting case
that was published in the press a year and a half ago, namely: how thirteen schoolboys
raped a schoolgirl in Yuchbunar! These days, a doctor brought out another ugly and
shameful fact: during a surprise search at the home of a pimp, the police found
seven high school girls who went there, to fornicate! Are there fathers and mothers,
are there school and public authorities who could remain calm in the face of such
unheard-of falls of Bulgarian virgins? Is there a Bulgarian with a moral sense and
conscience, who could not feel shame for the Bulgarian girl, for the Bulgarian schoolgirl,
for the Bulgarian school, for the Bulgarian name! And how many and what are the
unknown cases of this kind! for the Bulgarian school, for the Bulgarian name! And
how many and what are the unknown cases of this kind! for the Bulgarian school,
for the Bulgarian name! And how many and what are the unknown cases of this kind!
In general, the behavior and demeanor
of our students is not always decent and dignified. Their sense of respect and self-respect
is very weak. They respect almost nobody and nothing. On the contrary: they too
often attack and insult peaceful and innocent people without reason. Oftentimes
you will see peaceful and respectable citizens who, as soon as they see a group
of students standing or walking down the street, run to the other end or turn down
another street because they can be rude and offended and because they don't want
to listen to rude and often obscene conversations , innuendo and teasing.
Totally negative, and sometimes downright
sacrilegious, is the attitude of our learning youth toward sacred things and institutions,
such as temples, before which mankind has always felt not only reverence but reverence.
as we mentioned elsewhere, a few years ago, students from the pedagogical school
in a provincial town smeared the icons in the church with dirt! This act, possible
not for human births, but only for human births, in terms of abomination and abomination,
in terms of insanity and demonicity, is not far from the demonic evil deed of those
monsters who threw the cathedral "St. Nedelya" into the air! That our
learning youth are capable of such sacrilegious and demonic acts is shown by the
following fact, which should terrify us. After the infernal atrocity in St. Sophia
Cathedral, that unprecedented atrocity, which covered our country with shame and
disgusted the whole world, a poll was conducted in a Sofia high school, from which
it turned out that a fifth of the high school students were not only not horrified
and disgusted by this unparalleled in its horror and abomination crime, but they
fully approved of it and were delighted with it! After such a terrifying fact, the
tragic question arises in itself: what is the point of the existence of a school
and a study that can prepare such monsters?
V. Acknowledgments and Concerns of the
Ministry of Education.
For every enlightened and conscientious person, for every patriotic and conscious
Bulgarian who thinks about the future of his family and his homeland, it is clear
that our school has been producing mostly negative results for several decades . The little knowledge which it flings haphazardly
into the student's head cannot atone and repair the immeasurable devastation which
it causes in the soul of our youth. Now, when much knowledge which our school imparts
is quite doubtful in its value and importance, it is quite certain that it destroys
in the souls of many youths all the great moral, religious, and human values, with
which nothing else could even to compare.
The sad results in our school and our
educational work are seen and recognized by almost everyone. They do not want to
recognize only those who have placed our educational work on false foundations,
destroyed our school in its essence, led our youth on perilous paths and pushed
our people to the abyss. However, the most important thing in this case is that
the disastrous results in our school are recognized by the first educational institute
in our country: the Ministry of Education itself recognizes them. This is significant,
because it is the first time in our country that the Ministry of Education has recognized
the shortcomings and negative results of an educational work that it regulates and
for which it bears the first and last responsibility. Until recently, everyone who
worked in the field of our school education, from the minister to the last teacher
in the last village, they considered themselves righteous and infallible, our educational
work perfect and our school inviolable. They did not allow anything bad to be said
about the school and the academic work. Some of them did this out of arrogance,
blindness and self-forgetfulness, and others maliciously, so that in silence and
darkness they could calmly do their destructive work in the school. Now the Ministry
of Education not only recognizes the unfortunate results in our school and the destructive
manifestations among our school youth, but also feels them as a heavy concern and
a heavy responsibility for itself. It also makes efforts to stop or at least limit
the evil which, unfortunately, continues to spread unabated because almost no effective
and decisive measures are taken against it. And such measures are not taken, for
the ministry does not grasp evil in all its depth, nor embrace it in all its breadth.
It has not yet touched the true causes of this immeasurable evil and has not yet
grasped it in its essence. In order to see the acknowledgments and understandings
of the Ministry of Education on a fateful matter, we will quote here its circular
dated April 4 of this year (under N 8947), which was signed by the Minister, the
Chief Secretary and the Head of Secondary Education. The signatures of the three
first persons in the ministry show what importance is attached to this district.
It reads: (under N 8947), which is signed by the minister, the chief secretary and
the head of secondary education. The signatures of the three first persons in the
ministry show what importance is attached to this district. It reads: (under N 8947),
which is signed by the minister, the chief secretary and the head of secondary education.
The signatures of the three first persons in the ministry show what importance is
attached to this district. It reads:
"During the last few months, the
ministry has noticed that student behavior
of a rather serious nature has significantly increased in our secondary schools.
The teacher councils and the ministry
have recently been forced to punish male and female students for theft inside and outside the school ; for drunkenness and murder, for falsifying
certificates and documents, for immoral acts, for beating teachers, for erasing
absences from diaries, for daring copying in class work, etc., etc. And the teachers know that the this large number
of significant and serious student offenses which have already reached the ministry
is matched by another even larger number
of student offenses in each school, which teacher councils deal with alone.
That is why the ministry cannot but draw the attention of the principals and teachers
to this fact. What are you doing?
does he owe Indeed, we all know the full complexity of those forces and causes
of an individual, mental, hereditary, familial, and societal nature that intertwine
with each other and influence the behavior and actions of students. But we are all
also convinced that the will and efforts of the teachers who work in a school are
of no small importance for a proper and normal life in a school. The entire school
system in our country is built on the belief that despite many side factors, the
teacher can correct, purify, strengthen, regenerate and guide his students by instilling
and instilling in them certain guiding principles, certain understandings and certain
ideals. Proceeding from this belief, the Ministry has the right to think, therefore,
that teachers also have a share of responsibility
for the misdeeds of students in a school. who work there, and are therefore
bound to take all measures and do everything in their power to reduce the said offenses
to their normal situation. The sick time we have been experiencing for the last
ten years is not over. The handicaps it left throughout our lives and at school
have not gone away. Every living actor in our country still has to be alert and
give work much more diligently than that which is given in normal times. Our secondary
school teacher in connection with district N 25732 of 15.X.1925 and N 4435 of 27.II.1926
only, one can say, formulated and marked the efforts and great tasks that lie ahead
for him to develop and allowed for a number of years so that our people's life could be put on the right
track again.
"Therefore, recalling the activity
recommended with the mentioned districts, the ministry calls on the principals and
the teachers to further strengthen their vigilance and supervision over the students
in and outside the school, in order to reduce to at least those manifestations which
are the cause of the present district Another symptom which also indicates that vigilance and control over the students has
weakened is the fact that some student organizations have recently escaped the influence of the school and set
themselves under the influence of extracurricular currents and factors that bring
only mischief and destruction in our
country.
In view of all the above, you are begging,
Mr. Principal, at a special meeting of the teachers' council to take stock of the
state of your school in this regard and to consider the matter of in-school and
out-of-school control over the students in your entrusted school. You will report
the decisions of the teachers' council to the Ministry by May 1 of this year."
In this district, the Ministry of Education
only points out some of the many sad manifestations among our school youth and acknowledges
the sad results in our school. It asks: what is the reason for this fact? However,
he does not give any definite answer, but only says that there was a whole complex
of forces and causes that influenced the behavior and actions of the students. The
Ministry of Education does not try to reveal what these dark forces and causes are,
which act as a destructive element in the school and among the youth. Thus it makes
the first fatal mistake. As long as the true causes of the evil are not found and
pointed out in advance, all efforts to eliminate it are in vain. Because these reasons
remain unknown, it cannot to have a clear idea of the sure measures to
be taken against the evil, nor can a
lasting systematic activity be undertaken to combat it. The Ministry of Education
expresses the belief that "the teacher can correct, purify, strengthen, regenerate
and guide his students by instilling and instilling in them certain guiding principles,
certain understandings and certain ideals". Indeed, perhaps the greatest something
that takes place in the soul of man is purification,
rebirth. This is required by the Ministry for our youth from secondary schools.
But by what means will this mysterious, deep inner process be carried out? Is it
enough for this great purpose that teachers merely inculcate in their pupils known
(?) guiding principles, known (?) understandings, and known (?) ideals, as the Ministry
puts it? It does not say what those guiding principles, those understandings, and
those ideals should be. And that is the most important thing, that is the essential
thing. or maybe they can be indifferent - just be some, so what are they anyway?
However, this means preaching indifference and anarchy. This means preaching a definite,
a known beginning: the beginning of indifference, of anarchy and of decay. Our school
is destroyed, the youth poisoned through certain understandings. However, these
beginnings and these understandings were fatal.
The Ministry of Education says that "part
of the responsibility for the misdeeds of students in a school also lies with the
teachers" because they did not do what they could and were obliged to do: they
did not influence the students with certain guidelines and understandings . Indeed,
great is the responsibility of those teachers who were unscrupulous in the performance
of their duty and failed to do what this duty commanded them. However, the responsibility
of a large number of teachers is incomparably heavier, not only because they did
not do what they should have done, but most of all because they did what they should
not have done in any way: because they have deliberately destroyed all moral, religious,
human, social and national values in the soul of our school youth. This destructive
activity of many actors in the field of our educational work should be known and
recognized and decisive measures should be taken against it. There are many weaknesses
in our school that remain undetected and against which almost nothing is done. It
should be noted with satisfaction that for some time now the Ministry of Education
has been making great efforts to clean up our school and wean our youth away from
the pernicious paths that unscrupulous people have led them down. But all his efforts
will be in vain if he does not discover the true causes of the evil, find the most
expedient means of combating it, and bring to work the best and purest forces. For
everything that happens in the field of our education, everyone who works in this
field is responsible - according to their position. However, the greatest responsibility
for everything falls again on the Ministry of Education and its leaders. If, in
these fateful times for the Bulgarian youth and the Bulgarian people, they do not
fulfill their duty with a clear conscience and a clear mind, they will commit a
grave crime that will have the most disastrous consequences for our people.
VI. The Causes of Evil.
The monstrous manifestations and atrocities that are committed among our learning
youth and do not happen in any other country in the world, even if it is the most
uncivilized, the most barbaric, should not only shock and terrify us, but also make
us search for the true causes of evil, and make sincere and firm efforts to eradicate
it. These exceedingly sad appalling phenomena occur chiefly, if not exclusively,
among our learning youth. So, something bad happened and is happening in the school
with this young man. And indeed, something terrible happened to our youth, mostly
in the school, and then outside of it. We must not deceive ourselves and look for
the causes of evil anywhere else but in the school, as are done by those who are
most to blame for the downfall of our school and our learning youth. Indeed, time
and conditions have brought many evils and disasters, but they are not the real
cause of the great evil that is spreading in our school. There are sad manifestations
and destructive tendencies among our learning youth not only yesterday and today,
not only in the days of trials and tribulations. Even before the wars, in the calm
and happy time, students committed all the madness and crimes of which the criminal
man is capable. Nor can we consider the general spirit of the times as an essential
cause of evil. If this spirit was really the only cause of evil among our school
youth, it must have caused the same evil elsewhere. However, in no other country
in the world does it happen among the learning youth what is happening in our country.
But, even if we assume that the negative spirit of the times represents a great
danger for the youth, then the school, where the child spends the greatest part
of his life, should have given sure protection to the younger generations. It had
to oppose the negative spirit from the outside with another positive creative spirit
from within, as it is in the truly enlightened countries, which have not only a
mental but also a deep religious-moral culture. Unfortunately, however, our school
did just the opposite: it not only did not oppose the negative currents and destructive
currents, but to a large extent only prepared the spirit of negation and decay,
planted it in the youth and spread it among the people. but also a deep religious
and moral culture. Unfortunately, however, our school did just the opposite: it
not only did not oppose the negative currents and destructive currents, but to a
large extent only prepared the spirit of negation and decay, planted it in the youth
and spread it among the people. but also a deep religious and moral culture. Unfortunately,
however, our school did just the opposite: it not only did not oppose the negative
currents and destructive currents, but to a large extent only prepared the spirit
of negation and decay, planted it in the youth and spread it among the people.
Nor should we think that the evils come
from some minor defects of our school and our scholastic work. It is universally
acknowledged that our youth are unfit for life. And many try to look for the cause
of this evil in the fact that in our schools, especially in general education, there
were no practical subjects and that the youth did not receive practical training
for life in them. However, this is not true. Too often, not only those young people
who graduate from general education institutions, but also those who attend vocational
schools, where all the time they are preparing only for life, are unfit for a meaningful,
virtuous and fruitful life. While in other countries a young man, as soon as he
completes his education, is already fully fit for life and a useful member of society,
in our country the greatest care is for both family and society, and for the state
he represents a young man, not while he is in school, but after he leaves it. It
is not only a concern, but too often a great danger. It is enough that such a young
man is not, for example, seated at the state table, for him to manifest himself
in all his destructive element. But even then, when he is tamed in this way, the
dark forces in him do not sleep.
The evil that brings doom for our school
youth, for the younger generations and for the future of the Bulgarian people is
hidden somewhere else. The evil is in the
evil, negative spirit that
pervades our school, our school system, and many workers in the field of our school
and educational work. The evil is in the lack of education, or rather: in the completely perverted education and the
completely negative spirit which is maintained in our schools through materialism
and atheism, and which has made many students into vulgar materialists, sullen atheists,
fatherless socialists and embittered anarchists. communists. That's where the
evil is. It's scary. It has taken deep roots and bears abundant fruit full of poison.
It must be eradicated by honest, persistent and persistent efforts, not
toconceals, as some do knowingly or
unknowingly. Only external minor and formal changes in school programs and school
regulations will bring almost nothing good to the school and the youth. Our educational
work is in desperate need of radical changes.
Many negative things in it must be uprooted. First of all, the evil, negative
spirit must be torn out of our school and another - a positive creative spirit must
be planted in its place, which will be able to revive and save the Bulgarian school
and the Bulgarian youth. Only through a true, spiritual education and through a
new lofty spirit will it be possible to create a new youth and a new generation,
which in turn will be able to secure the future of the Bulgarian people and prepare
a happier destinies for them.
VII. What is Education?
Our school must be recreated and our youth to re-educate. Our school
does not exist as an educational institute. It gives only knowledge and almost no
education. This is not only a mistake, but a real crime with the school and the
youth in it. To think that an institute such as the school, where a young man in
our country spends at least 7, usually 12, and sometimes 16 years, can only teach,
but not educate, can only deal with the mind and to ignore the soul altogether,
is a grave, fatal delusion. This delusion is fatal. Its consequences are ugly. Therefore,
it should be repaired as soon as possible. Those delusions in our educational work
that bring poison to the Bulgarian youth and destruction to the Bulgarian people
must be stopped. It must at least stop the ignoring of man and the contempt of the
human soul, stop that crime, which stands like a stain of Cain on the forehead of
our school and of many who work in it. Our school must become an educational factor
and thus respond to its high mission. And it will become such a factor only when
it looks for and sees in the child, above all, the most valuable: man, and in man - the greatest: the soul, and in the soul - the most exalted: God!
The school must first of all educate.
But what is education?
Education, in the broadest sense of the
word, is growing, nurturing high virtues in a person. The pure virtues are the most
tender, the most charming flowers that bloom in the human soul. They are not born and raised anywhere
else. They wither and die on the stony soil of dry reason. They must also be carefully
guarded from the frost of a cold mind. Virtues are the most perfect beauty of the
human soul and the greatest charm of the human personality.
Education means: nutrition, feeding the
soul with those elements that support its life. Not only our material nature - the
body, but also our spiritual essence - the soul, needs food. The food of the body
is material, and the food of the soul is spiritual. As nature is, so are the elements
that sustain its life. What elements sustain the life of the soul? What does she
eat and live on? The human soul feeds on the purest and most sublime things: goodness,
truth, love, righteousness, purity, holiness. When our soul feels and fully experiences
these great spiritual powers and values, it rises and reaches the most perfect good,
the most perfect truth, the most perfect love, the most perfect righteousness, the
most perfect purity, the most perfect holiness, enough to God. The soul can
live only with God and in God. As soon as it is separated from God, the soul perishes,
because outside of Him there is nothing that could sustain its life, because outside
of God there is no good, no truth, no love, no justice, no purity, no holiness.
And as soon as the soul perishes, so does man as a man, even if he has the greatest
mind.
Education means: awakening the conscience
in a person. So, the awakening and constant vigilance of that mysterious power in
the human soul that distinguishes the good. from evil and makes us capable of feeling
the good as joy and rapture, and the evil as pain and disgust, which unhypocritically
approves and rebukes, inexorably judges and judges, which regulates the inner life
of the soul, watch unceasingly as a faithful watchman over her and keep her
from destruction. Conscience is a sense and norm of the inner life of the soul,
as the physical sense is of the life of the body. Just as through the physical feeling
we know whether the body is healthy or sick, so also through the conscience we feel
what is the state of our soul: does the good live in it - it is calm and cheerful,
because it grows and rises; if evil penetrates into it - it suffers and torments,
because it collapses and perishes. Only through conscience do we know that good
is the light force that sustains the life of the soul, and evil is the dark force
that destroys its life. Without conscience, without that voice of God in the human
soul - a voice that reminds and warns, calls and suggests, no moral life is possible.
Without it man would perish as man.
Education means: correct direction and
firm strengthening of the will in the good. Once a person feels the good in himself,
he must constantly and unwaveringly create it in life. There should be no hesitation in man between good and evil.
He must always choose and create only the good, and avoid and conquer the evil.
Only then, when a person is finally established in goodness, does he become clarified
and complete as a moral character. Only then is he a positive creative person.
Education means: awakening the eternal
thirst and the higher aspirations of the human soul. The soul is the breath
of God. It is breathed into man by God. Her homeland is the sky. Locked in the body
of the earth, she suffers and longs for heaven. An incessant thirst torments her
for the source of life - God. It strives incessantly upwards, towards the highest
limits of all that is sublime and bright - where God reigns. This is the purpose
of her existence. Her life also consists in the eternal thirst for God. Her greatness
also lies in her upward striving.
Nurturing means: a complete penetration
of the human heart by all-encompassing, divine love. From a love that knows no measure
and bounds, that wants to embrace the whole earth and reach heaven, to penetrate
everything in heaven and earth, to embrace everyone: both near and far, both own
and foreign, both friends and enemies , both known and unknown. Of a love that loves
even when it is hated, that blesses even when it is cursed, that does good even
when it is mistreated. From a love that wants to turn the human heart into an altar
to God, who is absolute love.
Education means: full development of the
positive creative forces of the human spirit and comprehensive improvement of the
human personality. Man should be not a destroyer, but a creator in the likeness
of the almighty Creator. One must constantly improve oneself and strive for the
eternal ideal of absolute perfection - God. Man was created in God's image and likeness,
therefore he must more and more reveal God's image in himself and resemble God.
One must deify oneself without deifying oneself. Education must, through skilful
external influence and deep inner experience, renew and elevate man, and make him
godlike.
This is the essence and these are the
goals of education. It is above all a deep inner process that permeates the entire
human personality. This is the process of inner renewal and elevation, of inner
upliftment and spiritual flourishing. This process is extremely religious because
it affects the life of the soul. And all the pure experiences of the human soul
are religious. The soul itself is absolutely religious in its essence. Where there
is a living soul, there is definitely religion. And only where there are religious
experiences, there is a soul that still lives. And true education in its essence
can only be religious. Educational activity is only that which aims to exert a religious
influence and awaken religious experiences in the person. Out of religion, out of
deep experience of moral values,
Christian religious education is the most
perfect. In Christianity, moral and spiritual values are not abstract things,
but a living reality. In Christianity, the ideal of education and human perfection
is embodied in the God-man Jesus Christ, who is truly God and a perfect man. Jesus
Christ is the very truth and love, the very justice and goodness, purity
and holiness itself. In Him we feel immediately and vividly the most perfect truth,
the most perfect love, the most perfect justice, the most perfect holiness. Only
arrogance and blindness, dislike and bitterness can deny this. Only that arrogance
which refuses to admit anything above itself and sets itself above everything can
deny this, which can lead a man to idolatry or self-deification. If a person does
not want to recognize the supreme being above himself - God, and does not want to
bow before His majesty, he will inevitably bow before himself or before other people.
He will make idols of himself and other people to worship. Whoever does not want
to worship the living God will worship dead idols. It is inevitable for man. The
individual, however perfect he may be, cannot be an ideal for men. The ideal must
stand high in the heights and point to eternity. An ideal for man can only be God
in the God-man Jesus Christ.
Christian education is also the most correct
and the most rational, because it takes human nature as it was created by God with
all its gifts and inclinations, ignores nothing in it, and does not seek to take
away anything inherent in it, nor to gave her something foreign. Christian education
follows the most correct path and pursues the most perfect goal: it simultaneously
eradicates from man all that is negative and evil and affirms in him all that is
positive and good, and thus strives to bring human nature to the fullest perfection
that is possible on earth.
VIII. Educational Work in Cultural Countries.
Such education should be created in our school. In order to achieve this goal,
our school and our educational work must be placed on other foundations. IN they
need to be radically changed in many respects. In order for this to happen, we must
leave the pernicious paths we have walked so far and go on the right path followed
by truly cultured peoples, those peoples who have a healthy spiritual, religious-moral,
intellectual and material (not materialistic) !) culture. How do these nations build
their educational and educational work? Above all, the persons who deal with this
work are chosen people, people with love and vocation, with an alert mind and a
positive creative spirit. They are completely imbued with the consciousness that
the first and most important object of their activity is the person and the human
soul in the young person, and the greatest goal of this activity is the awakening
in the young soul of noble feelings and experiences, pure thoughts and wishes, lofty
impulses and aspirations. This noble activity begins from the moment when the child's
consciousness becomes sufficiently clear and he crosses the school threshold for
the first time, and continues until his inner life is developed and shaped, and
he leaves school as a mature person. The ultimate goal of this teaching-educational
activity is religious-moral, because all pure feelings and experiences, all lofty
impulses and desires of the human soul are deeply religious in their essence. That
is why education and upbringing in enlightened countries is set for all the pure
feelings and experiences, all the lofty urges and desires of the human soul, are
profoundly religious in their essence. That is why education and upbringing in enlightened
countries is set for all the pure feelings and experiences, all the lofty urges
and desires of the human soul, are profoundly religious in their essence. That is
why education and upbringing in enlightened countries is set religious and moral
education, which starts from the first
day of primary school and lasts until the last day of secondary school. In these
countries, religious and moral education is available not only in primary schools,
but also in all types of secondary educational institutions without exception: in
pedagogical schools, in vocational schools, in craft schools, etc. Because every
young man, whatever school he attends, whatever education he receives, must first
of all ennoble and educate himself - he must awaken in himself pure impulses and
cultivate perfect virtues, clarify himself as a character, strengthen himself once
and for all in the good and in general to raise oneself as a complete person and a
perfect person. Because every person, whatever field he takes up in life, whatever
position he occupies in it, must first of all be a real person. And the true,
perfect man can be created only through the creative power of true religion and
its eternal values. This is felt and realized by all advanced peoples who strive
to permeate with the creative power of religion all areas of their lives and all
their social and cultural institutions, most and above all the school. Therefore,
when these nations arrange programs for their schools, they put religious instruction
first, devote sufficient time to it, and then order other subjects. This is the
case, e.g., in Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland (Canton of Bern),
the Scandinavian countries, the Anglo-Saxon states, and other truly cultured and
flourishing countries, where religious
instruction has been introduced into
the primary schools usually withfour,
and in secondary schools usually two hours a week in all classes. This is
also the case in our neighboring Christian countries, where, until some time ago,
religion was taught in secondary schools for one hour a week. However, the study hours for this subject have
recently been increased there as well. An unfortunate exception in this regard is
Bulgaria, where there is no mention of religious and moral education in secondary
schools. In this respect we stand next to Bolshevik Russia. In this situation, it
is not difficult to understand why we stand next to this unfortunate country in
many other respects as well. It is not difficult to understand why we are standing
closest to the abyss into which the once
great Russian state has fallen.
Indeed, are we, who have thrown religion
out of secondary schools altogether, more advanced than the aforementioned cultural
states, which have largely preserved this subject of study? Are we more liberal
in the field of education than, for example, Belgium, where religion is taught in secondary schools for 16 hours a week? Do we have more science and
culture than Germany, for example,
where religion is studied: in Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden with 18, in Prussia
- with 19, in Saxony - with 20 hours a week in all secondary educational institutions?
The greatest conceit and self-forgetfulness could not say that we are the most advanced
people, and the mentioned countries, which have behind them centuries of existence
and centuries of experience, are backward!
Where we have remained and how far flourishing
countries, such as Sweden and England, for example, have reached culturally and
economically, is known to all of us. However, not all of us know to what moral height
and to what inner nobility their peoples have risen. While in our country crime
is spreading and no power and force can be found to restrain the criminals, in these
countries crimes are disappearing and the police are becoming redundant. While in
our country the courts will not be able to finish their innumerable and endless
cases even after the end of the world, in these countries the courts are empty and
almost no criminals occupy the judges. While in our country no prisons can accommodate
the criminals who could populate an entire city, in these countries the prisons
are empty and sold at auction! There are many other things in these happy lands,
which cause real astonishment in us, because we are so used to evil and its various
manifestations that it seems strange to us when they are missing somewhere. The
great culture and general prosperity of Switzerland, as well as the extraordinary
nobility of soul and great virtues of its people, led one of our journalists, who
some time ago visited that flourishing country, to have the following conversation
with the Swedish Minister of Education:
"We are delighted, Mr. Minister,
with everything we see in your country. Your people are well-educated, highly cultured,
highly moral, immeasurably noble and extremely honorable. Your youth is honest and
ideal, your intelligentsia religious and patriotic. Prosperity and happiness reigns
in your country as in no other country. Please tell me the secret of your high culture
and extraordinary progress. Reveal to me the secret of your prosperity and happiness
. "
"Culture and progress, dear sir - answered the Swedish minister, - we owe to God, to our sincere and strong faith
in Him. We owe our prosperity to religious
and moral education , to religious
teachings in our junior, middle and high schools. We owe our happiness and all
our virtues to that great Book
(the minister reverently pointed to the Bible that was on his desk), a Book that you will find everywhere in our country - even
in the hut of the last poor man. In this holy and divine book, the contents of which
we not only study, but also apply in life, is the secret of our progress and spiritual
greatness."
In that great Book, in its divine spirit
lies the power and greatness also of England, where the Bible is the most widespread
book. And in this mighty country there is no home without a Bible, there is no person
who does not read this book and is not penetrated by its spirit. The positive, creative
spirit of the Bible pervades all areas of life in England. The greatest sons of
this great country not only do not shy away from studying the Bible, but often go
forth as humble preachers to proclaim its divine truths. Thus, for example, Macdonald,
Lloyd George and other eminent persons, who by profession and social position stand
far from the church, do not hesitate to stand reverently in the temple and preach
as the most humble servants of the
Word of God. A Puritan, like Lloyd George, who tolerates no adornment, causes
in his study to always stand before his eyes only one ornament, only one sacred
symbol: the holy Cross!
Here is what the French writer René Pio
says about the great English statesman Lord Asquid of Oxford, who passed away some
time ago:
"A few months before his death, this
man who had become a Lord of the Garter read the psalms aloud in the little church
of Sutton-Courtney, adjoining his summer house. Nothing ever disturbed his thoughtful
faith, not even sorrows, which beset him too often, even the injustices which accompanied
his life. When his eldest son Seymond, his father's successor at the bar, fell slain
at Amiens in September, 1916, the day after this shocking news he made a speech
in the House of Commons and by the way he said: "We have given, we give, we
are ready to give our dearest, all that we can give, without limit or regret, but
it must be the price with which the world will redeem and keep for in the future
the guarantee of patronage over the weak, the superiority of right over might,the
free development, in equality and according to their own genius, of all states,
great and small, which constitute the family of the civilized world".
The extraordinary nobility of soul and
inner greatness revealed by these words is clear to everyone. And all this Lord
Asquid owed to his faith, which made him read humbly and reverently as a simple
reader and in the last church psalms and prayers even when he was the first minister
of the first world power - Great Britain.
On May 2 this year, the British Bible
Society celebrated its 124th anniversary. Po. on this occasion there was a large
meeting in London, at which the present English Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin,
was the first to speak. By the way he said:
"The coming of the kingdom of
God may still be too far, but this company works for him with great faith. I wish
him success and declare that if I, too, were not excited by the coming of the kingdom
of God on earth, I would not have hope, I wouldn't be able to work and I would hand
over my position right now to the one who wants it . "
This speech of Baldwin made a very strong
impression on those present, and all
were filled with great satisfaction that their first minister was a man of such
deep faith in God and His word.
Thus, in the truly enlightened countries,
ministers, statesmen, public figures, scientists, intelligentsia, youth, people
and all are enlightened by the light of the greatest book: the Bible, are warmed
by the warmth of the most exalted teaching: the teaching of Christ, are educated
in the most - the pure virtues: the virtues of the Christian religion, they worship
before the greatest sign: the sign of the cross, they live and work with the greatest
vital and creative power: faith in God. To this power flourishing countries owe
their prosperity, great nations their greatness. They try to awaken and strengthen
this power in the child already at school through religious and moral education
and religious training.
IX. What do Moral Education without Creed and
Ethics without Religion Lead to?
The curricula of our schools are usually copied from abroad. However, we do
not take everything from foreign curricula . As soon as these programs are transferred
to our country, the most valuable thing is thrown out of them: religious education
and moral education. It is so because we perceive from abroad what is usually negative
and because in our country the curricula were arranged and the educational work
was built, especially until the political change, by people with a limited view,
negative perceptions and destructive tendencies.
Apart from the anti-religious spirit of
some actors in the field of our education, as an infectious example to throw religion
out of our schools served, probably France, where this subject was also thrown out
of the schools earlier. Perhaps France, where religious teaching is replaced by
irreligious (godless) moral education, serves even now as an example to some who,
being aware of the need to re-educate our youth, believe that this can only be done
through moral education, without religion and without God, that is without an inner
religious experience, without a higher ideal and higher aspirations. However, this
is a great and fatal fallacy.
First of all, it should be known that
in France religion was thrown out of schools mainly for political reasons. The imperialist
ambitions of the Catholic Church to usurp power and rights in purely secular areas
forced the state power in France to wage a decisive struggle against the Church,
a struggle which led first to the expulsion of the creed from the schools, and then
to the severing of the ties between church and state. country. The situation in
our country is completely different. Throughout its existence, the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church has had only one goal: to serve its people devotedly and selflessly and to
constantly watch over their destinies. There is no church that has brought such
great merit to its people and is so closely connected with the life and destiny
of the people as the Bulgarian Church. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church protected the
Bulgarian people through the dark past and awakened them to a new life. And now
the Bulgarian Church has one desire and one goal: a brighter future for the Bulgarian
people.
It will not be superfluous to know also
the results of moral education without religious education, of ethics without religion.
What these results are can be seen from the research that the pedagogue - catechist
Ludwig Heilmeier has done on this matter for French schools. "As early as 1831,"
he says, "religious instruction was thrown out of the French school. Crime,
which began to rise from that time, was carefully watched. The number of criminals
rose from 130,000 to 280,000, without any particular economic crisis or other cause.
, such as the present war had brought about. It is remarkable that the number of
criminals fell by 14,000 annually after the re-introduction of religious instruction
by the law of Fallou in 1856. In 1882 religious instruction was again thrown out
of most schools in France. From 1886 Mr. there is a new increase in crime. The number
of juvenile delinquents especially increased, rising from 23,000 to 27,000 in three
years (1886-1889). with the innovations that were made in the Enlightenment",
And the famous judge in Paris, Bouget, declared in 1907 in the "Figaro":
"The question of crimes among our youth is a matter of life and death for our
nation. France perished in these unbridled generations. An upbringing without religion
is undoubtedly the main factor in this wildness." The number of young criminals
caught and punished after superstition was expelled from the French school was:
in 1841 - 13,500, in 1901 - 34,000, in 1919 - 40333. From 1880 to 1905, there was
an average of 36 juvenile murderers per year. And from 1906 to 1908, in just two
years, they grew to 76 per year! In one year, 17,000 crimes committed by children
were found in France, among them: 69 murders, 3 parricides, 33 infanticides, 153
rapes, 4,213 serious bodily injuries and 11,852 other minor crimes. At the same
time, suicides among children, who previously, before the religion was thrown out
of the schools, were completely unknown, are constantly increasing. In 1875 there
were 5267 suicides in France, 1895 - 9328! In twenty years almost twice as much.
Also, immorality has been growing among French youth since religious instruction
and religio-moral education were removed from French schools. From 1881 to 1891
in Paris, 40,000 boys and 13,000 girls under the age of 16 were arrested for immoral
acts. These are only the ones found and arrested. And how many were the unseen and
undiscovered?
X. Admonition.
We have seen in our afflicted country great manifestations of that state when
man disappears in man and the beast awakens in his stead. It is inexpressibly sad
that a large part of our learning youth, who should have been not brutish and inhuman,
but educated and noble, exalted and angel-like, is brought to this terrible state.
With our youth, an unprecedented crime was committed in the school, which will not
be able to be redeemed with anything. It will lie as an eternal curse on the conscience
of those who led the Bulgarian youth down perilous paths. It will affect many actors
in the field of our educational work, starting with ministers and ending with teachers
in the last huts. In their infatuations and delusions, in their conceit and blindness,
these actors would not listen to the urgent warnings, which came from competent
and concerned parties. It was enough, however, for a little time to pass before
they and all saw that these warnings were perfectly justified and true. The dangerous
innovations and arbitrary changes that were being made in our educational work,
the wrong education of our youth and the negative spirit that was created in our
school brought heavy consequences that fell on our heads like dizzying blows. But
in the midst of the great trials and tribulations that befell our country mainly
due to our fault, there is a small consolation that among all enlightened and conscious
Bulgarians and patriotic circles there is a reminder and the hope for better destinies
is awakened. A reminder also occurs in those circles and factors that deal with
our educational work and work in our school. Nevertheless, that there are still
no decisive measures for the reconstruction of our school and the re-education of
our youth, the general concern for the education of the youth and the preparation
of future generations, the commendable and firm efforts of the Ministry of Education
and other school factors to place our educational and educational work at stronger
foundations and to lead the youth on a safer path, is a solid beginning that must
be turned into a conscious and systematic activity. It must be happily acknowledged
that the most important step in this regard is the decision of the Higher Education
Council to introduce "religious and moral education" as a separate subject
in all secondary educational institutions in our country. If this decision is implemented
in all its breadth and depth, it will form an epoch in our educational work. With
it, the re-education and renewal of our youth will begin and be carried out. It
will make the youth spiritual, conscious, ideational, elated and creatively enthusiastic.
Unfortunately, this vital truth is not understood by everyone in our country, for
a number of reasons, but most of all, perhaps, due to the extraordinary ignorance
that exists in our country regarding religious matters. But even if one does not
know well all the problems of religion, it is enough to consider in good faith only
the following very ordinary considerations, in order to understand the extraordinary
importance of religious and moral training for the education of youth. because of
the extraordinary ignorance which exists in our country in matters of religion.
But even if one does not know well all the problems of religion, it is enough to
consider in good faith only the following very ordinary considerations, in order
to understand the extraordinary importance of religious and moral training for the
education of youth. because of the extraordinary ignorance which exists in our country
in matters of religion. But even if one does not know well all the problems of religion,
it is enough to consider in good faith only the following very ordinary considerations,
in order to understand the extraordinary importance of religious and moral training
for the education of youth.
In school, our children are required to
read, analyze and study the writings of many great and sometimes some downright
mediocre writers. Children themselves - both at school and at home, overtly or covertly
- read the most sensational, pornographic and negative literature. They usually
find this kind of literature on their own, but too often they are directed to it
at school. No one will deny the great benefit of reading the great works of genius
poets and thinkers. However, truly great works are so few that they are lost among
the vast literary piles, like pearls buried in garbage. On the other hand, even
the greatest works of literature almost always carry within themselves not only
the greatness, but also the weaknesses and imperfections of the human spirit, and
that is why along with the good things they often have quite a few weak and negative
sides. However, there is one book in which everything is greatness and power, beauty
and perfection, divinity and holiness. A book with which all the greatest works
of the human spirit taken together could not even compare in importance and dignity.
This is the book with the greatest, most joyful news about the person and work of
the God-man Jesus Christ. If we find it necessary for our children to read books
of merit and demerit, is it not necessary and worthy that they read and study first
of all that divine book in which everything is exalted and bright, and which bears
the sacred name of the Gospel? How would our youth be renewed and elevated, if she
could, under the skillful guidance of trained and exalted persons, absorb the contents
and penetrate the meaning of that one book, if she could feel its unearthly beauty
and be penetrated by its divine spirit! Our students, who read and absorb almost
anything they can get their hands on, good and bad, clean and unclean, have not
only read nothing of the Gospel, but often times know nothing even of its existence.
The gospel is also unknown to their teachers. If a survey were to be conducted to
see how many teachers and people in general in the field of public education in
our country have read the Gospel, and how many have not, the result would be shameful
for a cultural country and humiliating for a profession , what is the teacher's.
And if a person does not know the Gospel and is not imbued with its sublime creative
spirit, he can very easily proclaim as his gospel books with a negative spirit and
destructive ideas. This happens most often in our country. The semi-educated and
the semi-intelligent usually go that way. The gospel of these half-men is usually
either Karl Marx's Capital, Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, or Buchner's
Force and Matter. If they manage to fully perceive the negative spirit of these
books, then half of the human will disappear from them and they will become inhuman.
All, even the greatest opponents of religion,
recognize the greatness of the Christian teaching on morality. Humanity knows nothing
more perfect, more sublime and brighter than this teaching. It stands as a unique,
exceptional phenomenon in the midst of the chaos of human delusions and in the midst
of the desert of human follies. There is nothing that can even remotely compare
to it. The moral teachings of Jesus Christ could be characterized very briefly with
the words: completely human and absolutely divine. It aims to
constantly elevate and endlessly improve man. It wants to humanize and enliven man.
To ignore such a divine teaching, which can make man not only human, but also god-like,
not to give the youth the opportunity to learn this unique teaching, or else to
study it in schools, as in our country, for example, an anarchist an ethics that
destroys man is a real folly and a real crime. This crime can only be committed
because of ignorance and ignorance, because of prejudice and delusion, because of
narrow-mindedness and blindness, because of hatred and bitterness. Unfortunately,
these dark forces are also at work in the field of popular education, where the
light should shine only of true science, which illuminates the human mind, and the
heat of perfect religion, which warms the human heart, should shine. Our learning
youth would be entirely different if she had the opportunity to be completely imbued
with the spirit of Christ, and to perceive within herself so vividly the great principles
of His moral teaching that they become her soul and her flesh. Then our youth would
be pure, idealistic, sublime, divine.
In our schools, children receive a large
ballast of diverse, often contradictory and false knowledge, which usually confuses
the mind and creates real chaos in it. No living relationship unites these fragmentary
and incomplete knowledges into a complete, harmonious whole. They do not rest on
a solid unified foundation and do not rise into a slender edifice in which a positive
creative spirit could dwell. They usually represent piles of rubble that bury the
soul and before which the mind stands helpless. These knowledges are material and
materialistic, lifeless and dead, unpenetrated by any healthy spirit that could
give them life. Our youth does not receive any answer to the eternal questions of
the human spirit, those questions that have been troubling man since he was created,
which are troubling the youth as early as the school bench. Questions about beginning
and end, about purpose and meaning, about the basis and essence of everything that
exists, about life and death, about heaven and earth, about God and man, etc., do
not find any clarification in our schools. On the contrary, with its faulty educational
system and with its negative spirit, our school obscures these questions even more
and often creates a real darkness in the mind and soul of our youth. It answers
all these questions in the negative, or rather it denies the questions themselves.
It denies spirit, it denies man, it denies eternity, it denies God. With its negation,
our school disturbs the inner peace of our youth, disturbs its mental equilibrium
and creates in it mental nihilism and moral anarchism. Thus, it remains without
clarification and support and too often goes towards self-destruction and destruction.
The great questions and tasks stand open before our youth, like dark abysses into
which they often descend without light and disappear into them. And what security
and support our youth would have in themselves and in life, if they had the power
of Christ's spirit and the light of His teaching! With that power she would be bright
and radiant. In Christian teaching she would find the most perfect answers to the
greatest questions. Nothing else could so enlighten the human mind and so satisfy
the human spirit as this Christian teaching can do. Only Christianity can give man
a perfect and sublime worldview that can clarify and make sense of our lives. And
what security and support our youth would have in themselves and in life, if they
had the power of Christ's spirit and the light of His teaching! With that power
she would be bright and radiant. In Christian teaching she would find the most perfect
answers to the greatest questions. Nothing else could so enlighten the human mind
and so satisfy the human spirit as this Christian teaching can do. Only Christianity
can give man a perfect and sublime worldview that can clarify and make sense of
our lives. And what security and support our youth would have in themselves and
in life, if they had the power of Christ's spirit and the light of His teaching!
With that power she would be bright and radiant. In Christian teaching she would
find the most perfect answers to the greatest questions. Nothing else could so enlighten
the human mind and so satisfy the human spirit as this Christian teaching can do.
Only Christianity can give man a perfect and sublime worldview that can clarify
and make sense of our lives. as Christian teaching can do this. Only Christianity
can give man a perfect and sublime worldview that can clarify and make sense of
our lives. as Christian teaching can do this. Only Christianity can give man a perfect
and sublime worldview that can clarify and make sense of our lives.
In our schools, children diligently study
the history of the kingdoms and peoples of the earth. Indeed, it is curious and
sometimes instructive. But what examples do they see in human history from recent
and distant centuries? Isn't it a history filled primarily with injustices and lawlessness,
with violence and oppression, with robberies and devastation, with vandalism and
destruction, with bloody wars and cruel self-destruction? Such is usually the history
of earthly kingdoms. If our children use so much time and effort to study this dark
history, shouldn't they spend a little time and energy on the bright history of
the kingdom of God on earth? Do they not deserve to be introduced to the kingdom
of goodness, truth, righteousness, love, holiness? The history of Christianity from
the first centuries, e.g. is filled with majestic images and sublime examples of
self-denial and self-sacrifice for goodness, truth, and justice. The faith of the
first Christians raised them to extraordinary heights, and their love for God and
man inspired them to unheard of feats. Does not our youth deserve to stand before
these bright images, crowned with the halo of martyrdom and holiness, to stand before
them and be inspired by their feat? There are many instructive things in the history
of our native Church. The most important moments in the life of the Bulgarian tribe
were created by the Bulgarian Church. The greatest personalities of our history
and the most worthy sons of the Bulgarian people belong to our native Church. The
Bulgarian Church preserved the national and religious consciousness of the Bulgarian
people for long dark centuries and then revived this people for a new life. If it
were not for the Bulgarian Church, perhaps now there would be no Bulgarian reading
and writing, Bulgarian language and Bulgarian culture, Bulgarian people and Bulgarian
state. These are deeds and merits of immeasurable importance. Deeds and merits that
no other institute and no other organization in our country have performed for the
Bulgarian people. Doesn't our youth, who studies and perceives the foreign even
when it is negative, deserve to know the great and good things in the past of their
people and their native Church and to be inspired by it for devoted and self-denying
service to their kind and homeland . which no other institute and no other organization
in our country have ever done for the Bulgarian people. Doesn't our youth, who studies
and perceives the foreign even when it is negative, deserve to know the great and
good things in the past of their people and their native Church and to be inspired
by it for devoted and self-denying service to their kind and homeland . which no
other institute and no other organization in our country have ever done for the
Bulgarian people. Doesn't our youth, who studies and perceives the foreign even
when it is negative, deserve to know the great and good things in the past of their
people and their native Church and to be inspired by it for devoted and self-denying
service to their kind and homeland .
XI. A New Spirit is Needed for our School.
Every man of sense and conscience will admit that no other benefits can be compared
with those great values which religious and moral education can impart to youth.
No subject of study can have the same importance for the education of the youth
that religious and moral education could have. It is inexplicable what considerations
and purposes could have induced those who arranged the present curriculum for our
secondary schools to place in it so many other subjects, and to throw out religious
instruction? Are not all these subjects, starting with gymnastics and drawing, which
are studied for two hours each, and ending with foreign languages, which are studied
for three, four, even five hours a week, more important than religious- moral education,
more important than that subject, a more perfect person? Are the many and
varied subjects in our curriculum so important that two, three, and five hours a
week can be devoted to them, but not one hour to religious instruction? Is it so
important for the youth in general, especially for the youth of an agricultural
country with a rural population that spends the greater part of its life in physical
labor, that the hours of religious instruction be reduced in the curriculum in order
to increase the hours of drawing? and gymnastics, as it happened in our country
in junior high schools with the program from 1922? Is physical education more important
than religious and moral education, so our schools can have two hours a week for
the former, and not one hour for the latter? Indeed, it is necessary to have a healthy
body. But above all it is necessary to have a healthy spirit. And a healthy spirit
is created only through true religious and moral education and perfect religious
training. Only this upbringing and this training will be able to fully clarify the
student's mind, to complete the process of his knowledge and to unite by living
connection his knowledge into a harmonious, complete and bright worldview, imbued
with an invincible faith in goodness, a worldview without which no meaningful and
fruitful life is possible. Only it will be able with the greatest certainty to awaken
higher aspirations in the soul and noble urges in the heart of the young man, and
to strengthen his will in the good. Therefore, a complete and bright worldview,
imbued with an invincible faith in goodness, a worldview without which no meaningful
and fruitful life is possible. Only it will be able with the greatest certainty
to awaken higher aspirations in the soul and noble urges in the heart of the young
man, and to strengthen his will in the good. Therefore, a complete and bright worldview,
imbued with an invincible faith in goodness, a worldview without which no meaningful
and fruitful life is possible. Only it will be able with the greatest certainty
to awaken higher aspirations in the soul and noble urges in the heart of the young
man, and to strengthen his will in the good. Therefore,religious and moral education
should be the basis of all education
and upbringing. Among the many subjects with many hours of study, it should
occupy a first and central place in the school curriculum.
This is the essential, decisive change
that must be made in our educational work. In connection with it, it is necessary
to carry out a series of other changes, which should form a complete system. However,
the first and last goal of all changes and all efforts in the field of our educational
work must be: to create a new, positive
creative spirit that will be able to
recreate our school and re-educate our youth. That spirit can only be the spirit
of true religion, only the spirit of the God-man Jesus Christ.
XII. The Counteraction of the Dark Forces.
There is no doubt that the spirit of the antichrist will rise against this spirit
of Christ. Against this positive creative spirit will rise the spirit of negation
and destruction, the spirit of vulgar
materialism, of demonic atheism, of fatherless socialism and inhuman
anarcho-communism will rise.The spirit
of materialism which predisposes to vulgarity and ossification, the spirit of atheism
which logically leads to demonism, the spirit of socialism which destroys society
and destroys the fatherland, the spirit of anarcho-communism which kills man and
awakens the beast in him, this dark spirit of evil has, unfortunately, gripped many
of us and opposes all that is good in all areas of our lives. There is no doubt
that he will also oppose all efforts and measures to renew our school and to re-educate
our youth. He will resist - and already resists! - and of religious education and
religio-moral education, because he feels that through this education and this education
he himself will be uprooted from the school. it's very sad that this evil spirit
permeates some workers in the field of public education and the printing press of
teachers' unions. Now, when all enlightened and patriot-loving Bulgarians are aware
that our youth, who were led by misguided and unscrupulous people down perilous
paths, must be re-educated and return to the right path, and that the surest means
of achieving this great goal is religious and moral education , only some printed
teaching bodies oppose this rescue initiative. There is no doubt that these printed
organs express the doubts of the Bulgarian teachers, and the demands of famous persons
and organizations, which actually have nothing to do with the teaching, with the
school and with the educational work in our country. Those persons who are either
not teachers at all, or have only formal connections with teaching so far as to
use it, not only do they pursue goals that are completely foreign to teaching, but
they also contributed too much with their deeds and actions to humiliate the teaching
title in our country and to lose faith in the Bulgarian teacher. In order to see
what kind of spirit pervades some printed teachers' bodies and their editors and
what goals they pursue, we will quote the following note from the village of "Zora"
(St. Zagora) on the occasion of an article printed recently in the body of the teachers'
union in ''Consciousness'':
"In the organ of the Teachers' Union
in "Consciousness" (issue 22) in the article under the heading "Should
we pray or fight?" it is said: "The teaching is on one side and the
power on the other and that the war between the two must to be led”.
"We can never forget the covenant
of the fallen fighters. We can not
change them ". villages and towns, trying to establish
Soviet power in Bulgaria as well.
In the same article, all ruling parties
are attacked. They say: "Almost all the ruling parties have sought to kill
the fighting spirit of the teachers. They are the ones who have worsened the situation
in order to win. Can we pray to our enemies?
Only through struggle must we impose ourselves on power."
These teachers forget that there is a
wide field of work for them in the school and society. There they can show only
educational activity, but not communism
and partisan rage. Let them know that any power or party on the right will not
allow them to destroy the foundations
of the state and corrupt the youth.
If there is no consciousness in the editors
of "Consciousness", it is the duty of the teachers to do what is necessary,
so that in the future their body is not exposed to similar anarcho-communist articles, which can damage the educational work and society.
Here we will also recall the infamous
appeal issued on January 2, 1921 by some socialist teachers, which, among other
things, states:
"We raise the saving slogan for the
unification of the national teachers with the fraternal communist teachers' organization
in Bulgaria, which unification should be carried out over the unfurled flag of the revolution, over the flag of the Communist International."
It is evident that in these words is revealed
that evil, demonic spirit which later really unfurled the banner of the revolution,
kindled the civil war, turned brother against brother, and shed innocent brotherly
blood.
To the honor of our teaching, however,
we must say that the vast majority of it has nothing to do with this dark spirit
of enmity and bitterness, of denial and destruction. It is aware of its high mission
and wants to fulfill its sacred duty worthily. It opposes the dark forces that destroy
everything sublime and bright in life and push societies and nations to destruction
and fights for the celebration of the good in man and in all areas of life. Of course,
it works above all for improvement in the field of public education, where both
duty and everything dictates it to create only the good. It readily welcomes and
implements in good faith all useful and creative initiatives in this area. There
is no doubt that it seriously and consciously refers to the most important, almost
fateful question in the field of our educational work: the question of religious
education in our schools and the religious and moral education of our youth. All
our patriot-loving, conscious and enlightened teachers, who bear the heavy cross
of their noble ministry with dignity, recognize the great educational role of religious
and moral education and therefore wish to introduce it as a subject in all our schools.
In this sense, many of them have already spoken and at many teachers' conferences
decisions have been made in favor of the creed. recognize the great educational
role of religious and moral education and therefore wish to introduce it as a subject
in all our schools. In this sense, many of them have already spoken and at many
teachers' conferences decisions have been made in favor of the creed. recognize
the great educational role of religious and moral education and therefore wish to
introduce it as a subject in all our schools. In this sense, many of them have already
spoken and at many teachers' conferences decisions have been made in favor of the
creed.
XIII. Science and Religion.
Absolutely nothing serious and well-founded can be said against religious-moral
education. No man of sense and conscience can be against him. The arguments advanced
by some against it are taken either from materialism, or from atheism, or from socialism,
or from anarcho-communism, or rather from all these impure sources at the same time,
for in reality they are the same thing , because in reality the same poison flows
from them. Nowhere else: neither in human nature, nor in science, nor in life, can
one find any argument against religious instruction and religio-moral education.
Of course, those who are against such education and upbringing pretend to speak
in the name of science, in the name of freedom of belief, conscience, etc. However,
their arguments have nothing to do with science either. neither with freedom nor
with conscience. True science, perfect freedom, and clear conscience require religion
and religious education as a necessity. Only ignorance, arbitrariness and a bad
conscience can be against them. For no person with a normal and enlightened mind,
with a healthy and enlightened feeling, the legends of the past that science and
religion were mutually exclusive, that science would replace religion, etc., have
no meaning. These legends, which once worked, and perhaps even now operate, like
hypnosis over the half-educated and the ignorant, have long since been dispelled
by science itself and its greatest exponents. arbitrariness and bad conscience.
For no person with a normal and enlightened mind, with a healthy and enlightened
feeling, the legends of the past that science and religion were mutually exclusive,
that science would replace religion, etc., have no meaning. These legends, which
once worked, and perhaps even now operate, like hypnosis over the half-educated
and the ignorant, have long since been dispelled by science itself and its greatest
exponents. arbitrariness and bad conscience. For no person with a normal and enlightened
mind, with a healthy and enlightened feeling, the legends of the past that science
and religion were mutually exclusive, that science would replace religion, etc.,
have no meaning. These legends, which once worked, and perhaps even now operate,
like hypnosis over the half-educated and the ignorant, have long since been dispelled
by science itself and its greatest exponents. True science and perfect religion are not only not mutually exclusive, not only
complementary, but they are in their essence
inseparably connected with each other, as light and heat are related. Science
and religion are inseparable in their essence, although each has its own field.
In the depths of the human spirit, they merge into a higher synthesis and form the
most perfect form of the inner life of man. As without heat and light no life on
earth is possible, no full perfect life is possible for the human spirit without
the light of science and without the warmth of religion. Science always needs the
warmth of religion, and religion the light of science. Science without religious
warmth is lifeless and dead, and religion without scientific light is obscure and
dark. The dazzling successes of science and technology blind some and make them
think that science and technology are everything and that they will be able to replace
even religion. This is one of the biggest fallacies, to which man indulges in his
self-indulgence and his self-forgetfulness. Man can exist as man without anything
else, but not without religion, which is the essence of human nature and an absolute
necessity of the human spirit. As heat is the basis of life in the material world,
so religion is the basis of life in spiritual peace. Man can exist without science
and technology, but without religion and morality - no. Every normal person with
a proper inner life is religious. A disorder or absence of an inner religious life
is a sign of abnormality and degeneracy. Never before has mankind needed religion
so much as now, in the age of a soulless and dead civilization that wants to turn
even man into a machine. Man can exist as man without anything else, but not without
religion, which is the essence of human nature and an absolute necessity of the
human spirit. As heat is the basis of life in the material world, so religion is
the basis of life in spiritual peace. Man can exist without science and technology,
but without religion and morality - no. Every normal person with a proper inner
life is religious. A disorder or absence of an inner religious life is a sign of
abnormality and degeneracy. Never before has mankind needed religion so much as
now, in the age of a soulless and dead civilization that wants to turn even man
into a machine. Man can exist as man without anything else, but not without religion,
which is the essence of human nature and an absolute necessity of the human spirit.
As heat is the basis of life in the material world, so religion is the basis of
life in spiritual peace. Man can exist without science and technology, but without
religion and morality - no. Every normal person with a proper inner life is religious.
A disorder or absence of an inner religious life is a sign of abnormality and degeneracy.
Never before has mankind needed religion so much as now, in the age of a soulless
and dead civilization that wants to turn even man into a machine. so also religion
is the basis of life in spiritual peace. Man can exist without science and technology,
but without religion and morality - no. Every normal person with a proper inner
life is religious. A disorder or absence of an inner religious life is a sign of
abnormality and degeneracy. Never before has mankind needed religion so much as
now, in the age of a soulless and dead civilization that wants to turn even man
into a machine. so also religion is the basis of life in spiritual peace. Man can
exist without science and technology, but without religion and morality - no. Every
normal person with a proper inner life is religious. A disorder or absence of an
inner religious life is a sign of abnormality and degeneracy. Never before has mankind
needed religion so much as now, in the age of a soulless and dead civilization that
wants to turn even man into a machine.
XIV. General Care.
Since the issue of religious and moral education has recently been raised again
by St. Synod, the opponents of this initiative accuse our Church of wanting to introduce
"clericalism" into our schools. This can only be claimed by those who
do not know the spirit and past of the Bulgarian Church. Justice demands that it
be recognized that our native Church has always had only one desire and only one
goal: to serve her people devotedly and self- denyingly . She never wanted anything
for herself, but everything for her flock and her people. And now she wants only
one thing: to instill a positive creative spirit in all areas of our lives and work
for the good of our people. She wants to create such a spirit in our school. And
as the surest means for this purpose, she points only to religious and moral education.
Anyone who knows our recent past knows
that our school is the brainchild of our native Church. She created him and nurtured
him in her bosom during the hard days of the dark past. It grew under her roof and
with her care. After the Bulgarian people, at the call of their native Church, woke
up from the sleep of slavery and lived a new free life, the Church handed over the
Bulgarian school to the care of the newly created Bulgarian state, allocating a
large part of its insignificant properties for it. Soon, however, deluded people
completely tore our school from the Church and faith and led it down perilous paths.
More than that: they turned the child against the mother. The Church watched with
great sorrow these terrible delusions and gave frequent warnings. And now she warns
with great concern and insists that all measures be taken, school and the re-education
of the Bulgarian youth. Our Church has both the duty and the right to do
this. Now the Bulgarian school and the Bulgarian youth are a serious concern for
all of us. We all have a duty to think and care for them. Bulgarian parents who
send their children to it should think about the Bulgarian school. The Bulgarian
family should think about the Bulgarian school, which expects from it the strengthening
and strengthening of its natural foundations
of their sacred bonds. The Bulgarian Church should
also think about the Bulgarian school, which wishes to maintain the greatest life
force of our people - faith, and to increase the greatest achievements of man -
religious and moral values, through it. The Bulgarian people should also think about
the Bulgarian school, which expects from it worthy sons, fit and ready for selfless
service to their family and homeland. The Bulgarian school should also think about
the Bulgarian school a state which, through
him, will have to prepare for itself faithful servants and devoted defenders. The
Bulgarian people are Christian, and therefore no one has the right to give them
a heathen school. The Bulgarian people have supported themselves, lived and preserved
themselves for centuries only through faith in God and themselves, and therefore
no one can with impunity teach their children unbelief and impiety, and in this
way prepare their destruction. The Bulgarian school must be renewed and saved in
order to renew and save the Bulgarian youth. And to save the Bulgarian youth, this
means to secure and save the future of the Bulgarian people. This should be done
sooner. This great work must be undertaken immediately and carried out with the
joint efforts of all those who care for the Bulgarian youth and tremble over the
destinies of the Bulgarian tribe.
Archimandrite Boris
1928
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