Viktor Frankl: Why education is failing

In this 1965 dialogue with Dr. Houston Smith, Viktor Frankl touches upon the problems of the educational system in America, mainly its' incapacity to accept students as individual beings in search for meaning.

[@learningdaily.1914]

“Man is subject to conditions, but man is always free to take a stand.” Simple, but phenomenal.

[@paulwheeler6609]

I work in education but am also a writer. I fought for over two years with middle school administration to adopt the idea of reading a poem over the intercom during morning announcements. I was finally able to do this while an interim principal was in charge. We read one poem on both Monday and Friday mornings for the final two months of the school year. Within three weeks I had students approaching me in the hallways telling me how much they were enjoying the morning poems. I had one boy who literally hugged me. The human animal recognizes the importance of art without prior knowledge. It is innate. And it is completely at odds with the mechanistic approach that Mr. Frankl is talking about. Why did it take two years for educational administration to figure that out? Because they are operating under the same mechanistic assumptions as the rest of society. And it is killing us.

[@stevendhanjal3679]

Thank you for sharing that Paul. Those kids will always remember that experience.

[@ReasonNotFightFlight]

Your comment on the "innate" knowledge of beauty/art made me think of that scene in the film Andrei Rublev when the peasant girl cries over the paint splatters from the artist without his regular focus and energy. Through her Rublev realizes that his icons have meaning--inherently.

[@dikkie2913]

​@@ReasonNotFightFlightdude I have to rewatch this film, thank you

[@AbdallahBotan]

You deserve a metal for those two years struggle to achieve it. It derserved a movie to be made of your story. Well done.

[@zeehas6005]

If you identify as a human animal that is fine, but don't go around using the words "the human animal" as if it is a part of reality

[@Flumazenil]

This is a true interview. Where the interviewer actually listens to his guest and responds accordingly.

[@dariusus9870]

Piers Morgan would totally disagree, after you said inter...

[@julijanacvejic517]

If he could come today and see how things quickly further developed downhill in decades to come, he would be deply greved, this marvelous man, God bless him!

[@albertocastilho9298]

Man is not what others make of him. Man is what he makes out of what others make of him.

[@gibsonraymonda]

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

[@jimpavlidis5915]

Who's quote is that?

[@gibsonraymonda]

@@jimpavlidis5915 , Sartre

[@caminodifuso]

@@jimpavlidis5915 I think it's from Sartre :)

[@apetreialex6236]

I think it's the 5th video in a row I watch before I see "Noetic Films" enough times to subscribe. Thank you for uploading Frankl. It's a good time to revisit him for myself.

[@juliekemp419]

I laud the video in this CVOd virus time. Ever relevant is Viktor Frankl as is the work of Dr Houston Smith. I was in my last year of high school in Melbourne, Australia and soon came to learn of both fine men. Thank you.

[@korgond]

Have you read the 'man's search for meaning' ?

[@Kyoto99952]

I just don't understand why people have to randomly bring up the topic of covid virus everywhere they go, in the supermarket or online. They HAVE to talk about it. It's an obsession!

[@kerryaggen6346]

@@Kyoto99952 It's been a major trauma for most people, and across the entire world... How is it that you "don't understand" that people MUST talk about their traumas, to some degree...??? Or, perhaps, you "don't understand" that because you're a bot???

[@makaylahollywood3677]

I lived in Europe and USA...it was clear the difference is lifestyle, values and meaning..like night & day.

[@dwightk.schruteiii8454]

Can you elaborate; im curious.

[@michimarz]

Yes, Viktor's explanation was not very convincing here.

[@kirbyculp3449]

I read this somewhere, and apologize for not remembering the source... 'The first World War destroyed Europe's belief in God. The second World War destroyed Europe's belief in beliefs (or believing)'. That is to say that the European ambition now is to live in a comfortable hedonism.

[@davisworth5114]

@@kirbyculp3449 They learned the wrong lesson, God didn't start those wars, self-righteous, arrogant, evil men did. We need God more than ever. We need to wait and watch for the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and to individuate with Jesus as our moral model.

[@zacky7572]

@davisworth5114 Uhhh…does God know the future? Did God create everything? Then God DID start those wars, objectively, by setting in motion a chain of events that HE KNEW would eventually lead to it. Either the war was part of God’s plan, or nothing is. Besides, what book glamorizes war more than the Bible? God gave specific commandments to commit infanticide and genocide to the Children of Israel. He revels in war. He is not a God of peace, as evidenced by the fact that peace has never truly existed. So either he is a God of War, or he can’t possibly be God, since his creations always devolve into war. So if he goal was to create peaceful creatures, his act of creation is a failure, making him much less impressive.

[@rudyjaxton3519]

In other words, “the medium is the message.” Follow the artists, not the con-artists.

[@nhmooytis7058]

And this was 1965, college kids were late Silent Gen/early Boomers. They still got a good education as did I, who graduated college in 1977. Imagine how many Millenials find life meaningless.

[@jamesgreenldn]

I'm a millennial who was saved by nihilism by a good therapist who also introduced me to Frankl's 'Man's search for Meaning'. I think we need his teachings more than ever now!

[@connoroleary591]

@@jamesgreenldn well done James and good luck and joy on your journey.

[@nhmooytis7058]

Wolfgang H Hannibal Lecter?

[@thekingmansplainer6813]

I'm sure it's the same amount, the only difference is that: A) They've found different ways to cope. B) It's getting worse because no 1 is addressing the issue

[@nhmooytis7058]

@@jamesgreenldn excellent book! Read it in my early 20s!

[@magiccarpetmusic2449]

Frankl's insights into the deep levels of humanity and beingness are extraordinarily powerful and important. This man fully walked the walk, and talked the talk.

[@alawton4427]

This man is a genius genius ❤️❤️❤️

[@rbfclaboratoryandstudio]

What need has humanity of meaning when consumerism is there to completely fill its time.

[@danherrick5785]

Its amazing how the west has filled this void this way. The need/want to spend is infinite!

[@sveletemelody]

Thereby in being consumers only, humans are no longer human.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

We're taught something worse: that taking a stand is futile, and ultimately ridiculous. Life is a Skinner Box with lucre as the reward. Those who collect it are winners, those who don't are losers.

[@Dan-zz4jb]

Yup... And many economic models are built accordingly... How loud does a neighbor have to scream to be heard on the other side of a wall of the skinner box? Like you said, we're taught to deafen our ears anyway...

[@coerfjoe1]

If Victor Frankl submitted to the interest people place him in, he would not have time for his practice. He suffered in his camps, but his published works need no further explanation. Those who want to buy a video of him should read his published works and learn from them.

[@DavidByers1eye]

Thank You . . .

[@kendrahwhyte9960]

What an example!

[@Mariathereaia]

Bravo Viktor Frankl ❤

[@bradc304]

Fascinating dialogue. Is this Huston Smith, the famous religion scholar interviewing Dr. Frankl.? It looks like him.

[@hajerahumar2750]

Can i get the full interview to watch some where?

[@TarzanHedgepeth]

“Say ‘Daddy!’ to me! SAY ‘DADDY!’ TO ME!”

[@alexjann5802]

the story with the parrot is shocking...

[@zohayazdani00]

Sorry, how did the story end? It wasn't clear. Also, @ 5:20 he's talking about 2 models, I got the Machine model but not the 2nd one...? Thanks so much.

[@korgond]

Could you please add english subtitle? Frankl's pronaunce is not very clear

[@WissenIstMacht6l]

In essence he is saying teach people that they always have a choice and are able to make a good choice, a choice that can be considered morally and ethically valuable because then chances are that people will at least try to do the right thing. When you teach them that they are "victims" of their circumstances or of their conditioning/ bad education, they will not even make an effort to do good in life. There is research today by christian scientists which confirms his opinion. E.G. Neuroplasticity. Blessings from Germany.

[@WissenIstMacht6l]

Bad upbringing I should have said.

[@korgond]

@@WissenIstMacht6l thank you very much. Frankl is a genius. I've the book 'mans search for meaning' which is insightful.

[@allistairneil8968]

Neither is your speling🤣😅😂

[@krisscanlon4051]

​@allistairneil8968 how is that helpful? Is this a trolling...how sad to see such a thing on such a remarkable video. I feel sad for you...

[@rerite2]

That must've been one badass parrot.

[@herolais781]

What parrot said at the last part?

[@boooringlearning]

wow

[@Shiro642]

Hey where do u find these videos???

[@lt8833]

Same question, this is brilliant!

[@boykotgooglification]

In Germany and Austria I believe, and it used to be free in the past. Sorry, not anymore since capitalism is trickling in slowly.

[@EtherealBeauty89]

Couldn't this be analysed from another perspective? One of the social and historical values, so different in the two cultures? USA, being a relatively new country - full of opportunities and success (the American Dream), where anybody could make something out of themselves. This would create some signficiant pressure on the younger generations to know what to do and what to become, whereas in more traditional and older countries with a much more stable group identity (society). Maybe the students from the USA were earlier confronted with the question (or were more aware of the question): What is it that you are willing to become? Since USA was still a country in the making, the pressure of finding something to provide your country with value was more acute than in other countries?

[@ai_serf]

full of what opportunities? and for whom? murdering people and selling things? also I hope you were not black or gay or a woman. but sure, opportunities for capitalists.

[@zacky7572]

Anyone who grew up in America knows that the “American Dream” is nothing more than propaganda for the white, middle-class, heteronormative citizens, and even then it applies mostly to males. I say this as a straight, white, American male. I mean, try telling a black American that he can make something of himself during this time period. It’s obviously just nationalistic bullshit. I would say that war is more likely the cause. We fought WWII abroad, while they had to fight it at home, so their hopes were crushed more than ours. Either way, it doesn’t actually matter. He is postulating, not examining. His “experiment” was just a little mind exercise, not a legit experiment. Besides, polling college students is an extremely limited sample pool. His sample size is way too small to make any meaningful conclusions about society at large.

[@user-uu5og2fs5b]

There is not much to learn if you put money on stake then yes but I’m feed up there is not much to learn in fair way

[@improvingman6866]

Isn’t this still the case?

[@dragomirtsonev319]

nope, I think it is only getting worse...

[@improvingman6866]

Dragomir Tsonev I think I agree, I had a very distinct opinion of my own in primary school. Somehow it faded away. Maybe also my own fault.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

We are now taught that taking a stand is futile and ridiculous. The point is to get paid.

[@PaulBaird]

The statistics on the sense of meaninglessness in his students might be somewhat connected with the psychological aspects of the Cold War in Europe, and the growing involvement of the USA in Vietnam. I would be wary of drawing the sorts of broad claims that Frankl is doing, and in the way that he is doing it. It might be useful to look as social trend surveys of the time instead.

[@jimporter4799]

Did you do any further research in the end Paul?

[@thouhgts.]

The time and structure during school have been long, systematic, and fixed enough to impact a youngster's existential self-awareness and perception. Wars are way shorter, and narrower.

[@PaulBaird]

@@thouhgts. WW2 ended 1945, the Korean War was only 3 years but Vietnam was 14 years and the Cold War, with it’s imminent threat of total annihilation, didn’t end until the 4 plus 2 talks in 1990. That’s leaving aside the Arab Israeli proxy wars, and the Troubles.

[@l.w.paradis2108]

It was not a scientific study, and Frankl obviously knows the difference, but it is just such conversations that generate the best testable hypotheses.

[@Mohit-gg2vd]

No paul. I believe what Frankyl is saying applies in the present times more than ever. This meaning less is what that is driving world crazy with materialism and rampant destruction of environment. As if buying more will make you satisfied or fill your soul.

[@fellsmoke]

Education is based on and in things like property values...it is not a serious endeavor...failure is built into it Duh!

[@johnllewlyndavies222]

I don't drink and go to meetings - and read The Big Book and Frankl.

[@ChannelMath]

meaning not meeting, book not bock

[@sonnyobrien]

Dude literally got students to raise their hands if they felt existential dread and then extrapolated a statistic to make a generalised explanation of their sociological conditioning.

[@zacky7572]

Yeah, he was using the term “experiment” in a pretty disingenuous way. That was no formal experiment (which is what many might assume is what he meant, as he is an academic), it was just little exercise that provided some anecdotal evidence. The older I get, the less I respect his opinions.

[@pianosonata5029]

@@zacky7572I never thought I would see the day where an older person would turn dumber and dumber, but here we are. The older you get, the less you respect his opinions? Dr. Frankl was for a period of his life in a very dreadful experiment called the Holocaust. His word is synonymous with authority in the field of psychology. He got to see first hand how people would react to challenges that none of us, today, could ever imagine. Who are you to try to degrade him like that? Are you a psychologist with some type of expertise on behavioral therapy? I would trust the word of a real man that went through hell some man that has been sitting doing nothing for most of his life. Such a little man speaking nonsense about a man that will be remember through the ages. I'm going to call you an idiot, I think your comment was. But I am going to say that you're a man with no purpose in life, exhibiting the emptiness of his heart.

[@katelambros2454]

3️⃣3️⃣3️⃣🌀✨🪽💜🦋🌈🕊️✨🪽🔢🧿💙✨🪽🌀1111🪬🌕💙🌀🦋🕊️🐚🌀💜✨🪽

[@rustymason3860]

Just look at who is in charge, and all the puzzle pieces magically fall into place.

[@Bilbus7]

Who is in charge?

[@sandtx4913]

Yep. Wonder what Victor would say now while we're slowly being manipulated into automated state. Would he recognize the patterns?

[@HomeAtLast501]

American culture is dominated by the view that man is comprised simply and solely of a conflicting pool of id, ego, and superego energies? No, no, no --- I think it was Austrian Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud who posited that view.

[@olivermackie2009]

Yes, you are right. But Freud's thought has become the 'instinctual knowledge' of the vast majority, in the West. The adoption of leading thinkers' thoughts by the common culture really does seem to take a century or so (though that may change in the digital age, I guess.)

[@HomeAtLast501]

@@olivermackie2009 Your response is irrelevant to my point. He is drawing a distinction between Austrian culture, and American culture --- both nations within the Western culture. And the very characteristic he is identifying as being the cause of malaise in America was BIRTHED by Austrian culture. Anyone who is semi-educated in Freud's concepts of psychological structure and motivation knows that the idea of id, ego, and superego permeate and form a bedrock of contemporary Western culture. But it is absurd to project that onto America, and blindly ignore that he himself helped spawn it from Austrian culture. I don't care whether he took a survey of students in that Austrian school. Perhaps Austrian students at the time of the survey were so steeped in that thinking that they were barely conscious of the degree any thoughts or feelings they might have that resembled what he was asking. It could just be that their baseline of existential malaise was naturally high.

[@olivermackie2009]

@@HomeAtLast501 Fair enough. Not that its relevant to my previous reply, but I think his main point was more about viewing humans in both reductionist and mechanistic terms than about Freud, anyway. This 'Newtonian' view might possibly be more limited to the Anglo-American sphere than that of continental Europe. I would also add (and this is relevant to my previous point) that it may be that, in the same way one could argue that the Puritan/non-confirmist element in Anglo-American culture allowed it to take Foucault's ideas to far greater extremes and render them far more widespread than in his native France, it might have been the same with Freudian concepts.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@@olivermackie2009 The reductionistic and mechanistic view of humans WAS FREUD'S VIEW. Frankl says in this very video that he believes the problem in America is that young Americans are taught that the human being is reduced to nothing but the battleground for the conflicting claims of the id, ego, and superego. That is Freud. Freud was a neurologist, and he originally believed that he could find brain structures that correlated directly to the id, ego, and superego. He eventually gave up the search for a neurological correlate for those structures, and simply abstracted them from the neurology. But the notion that we are driven by this raw energy, the id, and that the ego and superego help to mediate the expression of that energy in a way that navigates the strictures of culture is IMPLICITLY reductionistic. Our very reductionistic view that he is critcizing comes from his homeland. Further, Frankl doesn't explain HOW this view that he is ascribing to American culture only is contrasted with the view of the Austrians/Germans/Swiss who were in his class. Not in this video clip, at least.

[@olivermackie2009]

@@HomeAtLast501 Thank you for the exchange.

[@Mike_Lennox]

Viktor's inner void, emptiness , incapacity to respond to meaning, and existential vacuum are caused by his learned fear of identifying his "caregivers" behavior as his most viceral fear and cause of his defensive behaviors. Viktor learned as a developing boy to fear focusing conscious attention on the behavior of his parents that caused his identity/shadow. Viktor's unwillingness, to focus conscious attention on his actual experience, has his mind emotionally committed to going in vicious circles. The vicious circles of thoughts, feelings, and intellectualizations are caused by his identity's relentless commitment to distract, hijack, and misidentify the cause of his disturbing feelings, unconscious interpretations, and inner conflicts.

[@davisworth5114]

Yes, he certainly seems a real mess.........................................................

[@ChannelMath]

seriously?

[@lilygolightly178]

I'm surprised someone as thoughtful, analytical, and well written as you would follow controlled opposition pseudo intellectual like Jordan Peterson. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from your comment, it deeply resonated with me and I would like to learn more from you about how you come to this conclusion. Any book recommendations are also welcome. Thanks again.

[@Mike_Lennox]

@@lilygolightly178 Jordan is an overt example of a person severely trapped in trauma and the earliest stages of human development that persistently articulates his own extreme and obvious defense mechanisms, ideologies and unconscious emotional themes as the weaknesses of others. I recommend the book "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality" by Ken Wilber and the audio recording "Heart of the Matter" by Werner Erhard.

[@LeopardKing-im4bm]

Ketamine Coaco Puffs 🥣or God ✝, those are your choices. 🤷🏽‍♂

[@williamshakemilk2192]

half bald jordan peterson

[@DSAK55]

peterson wouldn't survive Auschwitz

[@susanshort9328]

How or why? Why is because the powers that be don’t want your kids educated

[@charlrichardengelbrecht5269]

Why?

[@ChannelMath]

this comment made my day, lol

[@charlrichardengelbrecht5269]

How old is this? How relevant is this now? At least date your postings.

[@noeticfilms]

we did

[@MasterPandaBearChannel]

Read the description, bullocks