The Adventure (Sex)Pedition: Revisiting Kurt Hahn’s Educational Aims

Author: Franklin Vernon

The article can be found here.

This article was a challenging read, because it introduces some aspects of Kurt Hahn that seem at odds with the philosophy and ideals he brought to outdoor and adventure education. It is like learning a beloved relative is not the person you thought you knew.

The author himself recognises this and makes some effort to contextualise and not sensationalise (if this is at all possible in an academic paper?) what some might consider to be salacious or unsavoury information.

I had served in Outward Bound Singapore for eight years, from 1998-2006 and I can’t count the number of times I have shared with my participants the myth or legend of Kurt Hahn and his legacy. It may be fair to say that, amongst Outward Bound practitioners in Singapore and around the world, his persona borders on sainthood. As the author says:

Hahn’s ingenuity, compassion, honor, strength of will and determination to bring forth these same qualities in others are recounted and passed around as educational and personal inspiration… the circumscribed narratives of Hahn that are shared among the OAE programs of the United States are at best partial and even possibly not historical (see also Machtan, 2013; Mann, 1990; Seaman, 2018; Worsley, 1985); they function, understandably, to orient members to the values of the organization and then to provide an ideal, generalized other for members to construe the appropriateness of their own thoughts and behaviors.

However,

The truth is, first and foremost, a story of a tragic typicality, rooted in elite cultural affirmation and promotion and fear of loss of power, masquerading as “character” education (Freeman, 2011).

The author claims that, in pre-war Germany, Kurt Hahn sought political influence to achieve his educational aims:

The extent of Hahn’s interest in gaining political influence among the German ruling class is often downplayed (e.g. James, 2000), but it was this desire that not only shaped, but guided his involvement in both the war and, later, his schools (Mann, 1990).

The author also described Hahn’s desire to influence the educational landscape as more pragmatic rather than idealistic:

…he expected “rule by an elite [was inevitable and] wasn’t necessarily the mark of dictatorship. . . there would always be a ruling elite under any circumstances” (Worsley, 1985, p. 191). Thus, his intent was not to be part of a specific political movement, but instead to identify the current and future ruling elite, and provide – or create the appearance of providing – moral guidance among them.

The author admits that there is a lack of ‘complete’ record or evidence in scholarly studies related to Hahn:

(Educational historian Thomas] James’ description of their (Hahn’s and Max von Baden’s) relationship hints at recognitions of Hahn’s influence but perhaps without access to complexifying evidence, hence resorting to wavering phrases that only guess at Hahn’s role.

The author then goes on to drop quite a bombshell:

It is not a misstatement to say Hahn understood adventure to be his intervention in a pedagogy of controlling sexuality. ..Adventure must be prescribed “on the threshold of puberty” (Hahn, 1949, p. 5), so that this vitality “grows to be the ‘guardian angel’ of the years of adolescence, while the undiscovered and unprotected boy rarely maintains his vitality unbroken and undiluted from eleven to fifteen” (Hahn, 1934, p. 12), as “he is left all too frequently at the mercy of impulses that well up during puberty and which impatiently and insidiously struggle for satisfaction” (Hahn, 1949, p. 5).

In other words, Hahn desired to use adventure as a way for young people to sidestep adolescence and move on towards being active contributing members to society.

At Salem, Hahn believed “the great majority of. . . boys and girls escaped the maladies of puberty” (Hahn, 1948, p. 5), which he believed society was faulty for accepting as an unavoidable stage of life; he “regard[ed] it as [his] mission in life to expose this dogma as the great fallacy” (Hahn, 1948, p. 7) and showcase to the world that puberty or adolescence was optional and avoidable. Or, as Darling put it, Hahn was a “right-wing progressive” (Darling, 1981, p. 23) who oddly “saw rescue as [the] one activity which could stave off adolescent interest in sex”.

Pages 9-11 of the article describe Hahn’s recognition of his own latent (or suppressed) homosexuality and his realisation that, if young boys could be sufficiently distracted from their emerging adolescent sexual identities and urges, they might then ‘skip’ this step and move on to become human beings who would be of value to society. Adventure was “form of therapy” – an intervention “he had first used on himself”. Hahn believed that young boys would experience

…an irretrievable onset of homosexuality or homosexual attractions within them. This was also why his school at Salem was an early adopter of coeducation; female students were there to function as curricula for the boys (he took a similar approach with lower-class students’ involvement in Scotland at Gordonstoun), and any young male students caught engaging in activities that could be interpreted as too intimate among one another, such as sharing a bicycle, walking with arms slung over one another’s shoulders, or lying too close during the afternoon readings, would be shamed with taunts…

The author tells us that Hahn “feared a latent homosexuality existed in all young boys” and that

Hahn appeared to fear puberty would awaken homosexual attractions in young boys, as it had in himself, and that this would preclude them from being able to offer something of value to the society…Adventure-as-pedagogical intervention was borne of a cornerstone fear that homosexuality was ruinous of one’s ability to gain a position of power and contribute to society…

Nevertheless, the author stresses that Hahn was a product of his time:

Interpreting across time and culture, Hahn’s educational aims for adventure appear tragic and repressive, and were at best sad, but for him, logical responses to the societal structures of the time and his experiences with them.

Certainly, to some Outward Bound practitioners, this article might seem blasphemous and question the purpose in writing such an article. However, I choose to believe that it is in the spirit of open-mindedness and constructive questioning that we best serve Kurt Hahn’s legacy, one that I think is no danger of imminent denunciation or collapse.

Indeed, to maintain an overly romanticised version of Kurt Hahn’s history, and attributing semi-allegorical traits to him may prove self-limiting:

…to return to a previous point, raising a complicated and perhaps undesirable historicized narrative of Hahn may appear discomfiting because it, as Ogden (2018) points out, disrupts the social bonds and identity building that come from a common, collaborative story, no matter – in fact, built without serious consideration to—the ‘truth.’ Common stories of Hahn, though truth-adjacent, provided outdoor educators with a historicized sense of progressive lineage.

If we as Outward Bound practitioners profess to be fervent ‘believers’ in the – dare I say – ‘cult’ of Kurt Hahn, then we have the responsibility to be open to views or facts that are seemingly out of phase with the knowledge we can comfortably handle. At the very least, let us use this new or other knowledge to inform and guide us as we continue To Serve, To Strive and Not To Yield.

POSTSCRIPT

It Is an interesting coincidence that I decided to read Franklin Vernon’s article about Kurt Hahn at a time when the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement in the USA is causing Americans to question their cultural heritage, particularly the time of the Confederacy and the slave trade. As these questions reverberated around the world, one other historical figure fell under similar scrutiny in the UK:

Statue of Scouts founder to be removed. Who is Robert Baden-Powell and why is he controversial?
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/11/uk/robert-baden-powell-statue-scli-intl-gbr/index.html

Here is the response from the Chief Scout (Bear Grylls!) of the UK’s Scout Association:
https://www.scouts.org.uk/news/2020/june/a-statement-from-chief-scout-bear-grylls/