Psychology at School

An open lesson and the question it left

In March 2023, I took part in the Scientists to Schools initiative and gave an open lesson to eighth- and ninth-grade students in Saint Petersburg. We discussed psychology as a science, a profession, and a way to look more attentively at ourselves and the world around us.

Afterward, a longstanding question became clear to me: how can we educate a free and responsible person without turning our own scale of “higher values” into the compulsory measure of a student?

There is no simple answer. Non-imposition can protect freedom, but an indifferent adult leaves an adolescent without support. Rules can ensure safety, while total control teaches only obedience or concealment. The issue is therefore not whether to educate, but how to do so ethically.

Do no harm as an educational boundary

In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper is critical of imposing romantic ideals of a student's “complete development.” My reading of his educational minimum is this: first avoid harm and give young people what helps them become more independent and able to choose.

That does not require teachers to conceal their values or treat every action as equivalent. They can explain why dignity, honesty, knowledge, and care for others matter while allowing critical questions and refusing to use authority as proof.

Do no harm at school is not a literal medical protocol. It asks adults to notice humiliation, coercion, stigma, and dependence. It also requires action: stop violence, report a safety threat, and help a student reach support.

The analogy with psychotherapy—and its limit

In The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow describes a good psychotherapist as someone who does not impose a personal will but helps a patient discern their feelings, wishes, and idea of what is good for them.

This is a useful analogy for teachers: ask, listen, help name experience, and support autonomy. School is not therapy, however, and a teacher should not diagnose a student or act as a clinician. Their duties include instruction, fair rules, classroom safety, and referral to appropriate help when needed.

Freedom needs a frame

Adolescents need room for experiments, unusual interests, disagreement, and mistakes. Rebellion does not become good automatically, though. Risk can expand experience or cause irreversible harm. One person's freedom ends where violence, exploitation, or a threat to another life—or their own—begins.

A mature educational frame combines:

• the right to ask difficult questions and disagree;
• clear rules of safety and respect;
• proportionate consequences known in advance;
• a chance to repair an error instead of receiving a permanent label;
• access to an adult who will listen and help.

In Of the Education of Children, Michel de Montaigne proposes teaching a young person not helplessness before temptation, but the ability to choose the good consciously. Responsibility comes not from lacking possibilities but from understanding consequences and restraining oneself without an external bridle.

A right to uncertainty

Mistakes are part of learning, but not every mistake must become trauma. An adult's task is not to draw a perfect route for an adolescent; it is to make exploration safe enough that curiosity need not be paid for with destruction.

School can teach students to move through uncertainty: test a hypothesis, admit an error, ask for help, revise a decision, and answer for its effects on others.

Inner freedom then ceases to be a slogan. It becomes a practice: I can choose because I can reflect; I can disagree because I recognize another person's dignity; I can take a risk because I understand boundaries and consequences.