Humanism: Ideology and Reality Conflict

Abstract

Meilė Lukšienė’s perception of school is filed with values of humanism, national and civic culture, and the imperative of a harmonious combination of high level of education, critical mind and free will. However, the insightful researcher foresaw and claimed that “it is rare that there should be no gap between an idea and its realization” and she warned at the same time that “… another wave is rolling, levelling all the people and disturbing the revival of their dignity; it is the power of money, the power of commercialism, growing constantly stronger. It manipulates the lowest human instincts and urges (the entire industry of excessive entertainment and sex!), earning from them. Can it bypass schools and educational institutions of all levels?”
 The article presents a research, which aims at revealing the reasons of bullying at school in terms of social attitude, as a conflict between humanistic ideas and the reality. A Lithuanian media website www.delfi.lt, where various articles on topics relevant to Lithuania are published, was chosen for the research. 4 articles on bullying were selected for the research and commentaries on them were analysed. The study sample was formed by selecting commentaries according to the following criteria: the commentary had to be logical, ethical, unoffending and informative for the purpose of the study. A total of 186 commentaries on bullying were analysed in terms of their textual meaning.
 The research results showed that humanistic ideas are confronted in school reality with the behavior manifesting through bullying that destroys a person’s dignity and psychological balance. It was established that the reasons of bullying lie within leisure, home, and school environment. They are provoked by the following:
 TV programs full of examples of bullying and violence as well as the low level of culture of the social actors speaking in the public space;
 Undesirable behavioral models of the parents, observed by the children at home (slander, violence against family members, physical punishment of children);
 Scarce parental care and consideration of the children caused by the lack of upbringing skills of time;
 Limited pedagogical ethics in the behavior of teachers, the supply of informal education activities at school insufficiently meeting the children’s needs.
 It was already in 1997 when Meilė Lukšienė suggested an insightful way out: “<…> together with the entire society to analyse the channels and forms of human deformation soberly and responsibly, and look for ways to stop the deformation with joint effort.”