nd there are many kinds
of societies, a criterion for educational criticism and construction
implies a particular social ideal. The two points selected by which to
measure the worth of a form of social life are the extent in which the
interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the fullness
and freedom with which it interacts with other groups. An undesirable
society, in other words, is one which internally and externally sets up
barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience. A society
which makes provision for participation in its good of all its
members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its
institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated
life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of
education which gives individuals a personal interest in social
relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure
social changes without introducing disorder. Three typical historic
philosophies of education were considered from this point of view.
The Platonic was found to have an ideal formally quite similar to that
stated, but which was compromised in its working out by making a class
rather than an individual the social unit. The so-called individualism
of the eighteenth-century enlightenment was found to involve the notion
of a society as broad as humanity, of whose progress the individual was
to be the organ. But it lacked any agency for securing the development
of its ideal as was evidenced in its falling back upon Nature. The
institutional idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth century supplied
this lack by making the national state the agency, but in so doing
narrowed the conception of the social aim to those who were members of
the same political unit, and reintroduced the idea of the subordination
of the individual to the institution. 1 There is a much neglected strain
in Rousseau tending intellectually in this direction. He opposed the
existing state of affairs on the ground that it formed neither the
citizen nor the man. Under existing conditions, he preferred to try for
the latter rather than for the former. But there are many sayings of his
which point to the formation of the citizen as ideally the higher, and
which indicate that his own endeavor, as embodied in the Emile, was
simply the best makeshift the corruption of the times permitted him to
sketch.

Chapter Eight: Aims in Education

1. The Nature of an Ai