‘Do no harm’ (and, therefore, ‘give the young what they most urgently need, in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves’) would be a very worthy aim for our educational system, and one whose realization is somewhat remote, even though it sounds modest. Instead, ‘higher’ aims are the fashion, aims which are typically romantic and indeed nonsensical, such as ‘the full development of the personality’. It is under the influence of such romantic ideas that individualism is still identified with egoism, as it was by Plato, and altruism with collectivism (i.e. with
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