The Connection Between the Nazis’ Rise to Power and the Prussian Education Model
Introduction
Germany 's Prussian Education Model and their Prussian total war-state ideology was the catalyst that allowed the Nazis to come to power and persuade so many people into following their orders. The Model historically was a method used by feudal lords in Prussia to indoctrinate serfs in order to ensure their ineptness and fiety, to avoid the costly expense of using violent coercive force. (Meshchaninov). The Model is not necessarily a doctrine nor a curriculum per se, it is the model framework for standardizing obedience, a factory model, with any curriculum being applicable. This is the model that was in place in Germany before the Nazis came to power, …show more content…
The Nazi power structure may have been pulverized, but the conditions that it came about from linger on. The Prussian Education Model did not die in Nazi Germany, quite the contrary, it was exported from Germany a little over one hundred years before the Nazis were taken down. The model was “later transplanted by Horace Mann, the father of American public schooling, to the United States in 1843 (Cubberley, 1920),” (Meshchaninov). The Prussian Education model still resides here today, “rechristened as the American public school system,” (Meshchaninov). The result of this can almost be seen in everyday society, hidden under the surface to those who don’t look for it. A prime example of the effects of the model is Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority. It was his attempt to explain why the German people followed the Nazis. In Stanley Milgram’s experiment, he recruited a diverse group of people to become “teachers”. The teacher’s responsibility was to ask the “learner, who was an actor, questions. If the learner responded incorrectly, the teacher would administer a “shock”, which was fake (but the teacher did not know that). Each time the teacher administered the shock, he would turn up to the voltage. If at any time the teacher would refuse to administer a shock, the third participant in the experiment, the “doctor” (the authority figure), would urge the teacher to continue, without threatening or using force in any way, (Milgram 's Experiment on Obedience). The results of Milgram’s experiment were absolutely outrageously horrifying. Americans, not Nazis, were involved in this experiment in which “sixty-five percent (65%) of the teachers were willing to progress to the maximum voltage level,” (Milgram 's Experiment on Obedience). The results were completely off from what he had expected. He expected the results of the experiment to be that most teachers would refuse to shock the learner,
Introduction
Germany 's Prussian Education Model and their Prussian total war-state ideology was the catalyst that allowed the Nazis to come to power and persuade so many people into following their orders. The Model historically was a method used by feudal lords in Prussia to indoctrinate serfs in order to ensure their ineptness and fiety, to avoid the costly expense of using violent coercive force. (Meshchaninov). The Model is not necessarily a doctrine nor a curriculum per se, it is the model framework for standardizing obedience, a factory model, with any curriculum being applicable. This is the model that was in place in Germany before the Nazis came to power, …show more content…
The Nazi power structure may have been pulverized, but the conditions that it came about from linger on. The Prussian Education Model did not die in Nazi Germany, quite the contrary, it was exported from Germany a little over one hundred years before the Nazis were taken down. The model was “later transplanted by Horace Mann, the father of American public schooling, to the United States in 1843 (Cubberley, 1920),” (Meshchaninov). The Prussian Education model still resides here today, “rechristened as the American public school system,” (Meshchaninov). The result of this can almost be seen in everyday society, hidden under the surface to those who don’t look for it. A prime example of the effects of the model is Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority. It was his attempt to explain why the German people followed the Nazis. In Stanley Milgram’s experiment, he recruited a diverse group of people to become “teachers”. The teacher’s responsibility was to ask the “learner, who was an actor, questions. If the learner responded incorrectly, the teacher would administer a “shock”, which was fake (but the teacher did not know that). Each time the teacher administered the shock, he would turn up to the voltage. If at any time the teacher would refuse to administer a shock, the third participant in the experiment, the “doctor” (the authority figure), would urge the teacher to continue, without threatening or using force in any way, (Milgram 's Experiment on Obedience). The results of Milgram’s experiment were absolutely outrageously horrifying. Americans, not Nazis, were involved in this experiment in which “sixty-five percent (65%) of the teachers were willing to progress to the maximum voltage level,” (Milgram 's Experiment on Obedience). The results were completely off from what he had expected. He expected the results of the experiment to be that most teachers would refuse to shock the learner,