December 11
On this date in 1849, author and social critic
Ellen Karolina Sofia Key
was born in Sweden. The daughter of the Countess S. Posse and a father
who lost his fortune, Key turned to teaching in Stockholm to support
herself for two decades. Meanwhile, she also taught at the Workers'
Institute. Key wrote 30 books, seven of which were translated into
English. Her best known include
Love and Marriage (1911, reprinted with critical and biographical notes by
Havelock Ellis, 1931),
The Century of the Child (1900) and
The Woman Movement
(1912). Although Key's progressive views on state child support
influenced Scandinavian social legislation, she was not so progressive
on women's issues and opposed mothers entering the workforce. Described
by freethought historian Joseph McCabe as "a Monist," Key believed "the
myths of the Bible" should not be weighted in instruction of children
any more than the "Scandinavian story of creation or the Greek legends
of the gods"
(The Century of the Child).
D. 1926.
“. . . the most demoralising factor in education is Christian
religious instruction. . . . even a more living, a more actual
instruction in Christianity injures the child.
But the most
dangerous of all educational mistakes in influencing humanity, is due to
the fact, that children are now taught the Old Testament account of the
world as absolute truth, although it wholly contradicts their physical
and historical instruction. . . .
But the demoralising feature in
Christianity as an ideal is, that it is presented as absolute, while
man as a social being is obliged to transgress it every day. Besides he
is taught in his religious instruction, that as a fallen being he cannot
in any case attain the ideal, although the only possibility of his
living righteously in temporal things, and happily in the world to come,
depends on his capacity for realising it.”
—Ellen Key, The Century of the Child (1900, English version, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 9th printing, 1909)
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