horizon.
For thru all this struggle we have learned that the first business of
the public school is to teach the child to live in the world in which he
finds himself, to understand his share in it and to perform it because,
after all, unless people learn to adapt themselves to other individuals
and communities, disorder and chaos follow. In it all we have come to
see that education is the best instrument for regenerating society.
Not individual development, then, the selfish view of Rousseau, not even
the harmonious development of all the faculties, the one-sided, somewhat
restricted, or undeveloped, view of Pestalozzi and others of his
followers, surely not individual efficiency for personal gain, the
selfish view of crass materialism, but social efficiency is the
present-day motive in education. And the definition of education takes
on a different color. Not merely the development of inner life but in
conjunction with that or in addition to it, _the development in the
individual of the power of adjustment to an ever changing social
environment_. And likewise the school becomes more than a place in which
the child can discover himself. Aye, it is the instrument that democracy
has fashioned for realizing its broad and humanitarian ideal. Democracy
is ever striving for closer and more harmonious relation between its
members, a greater degree of social justice, and the school is its
efficient means.
These two tendencies, the psychological and the sociological,--only two
since the narrow individualistic was never accepted and is now being
rapidly eliminated--these two are not antagonistic nor mutually
exclusive. The difference is largely in point of view or emphasis. One
may say that they are but the two sides of the same shield but the fact
remains that there _are_ two sides. There is a difference and the change
came as suggested. And the change has modified conditions on the firing
line. Ever since Mr. Spencer asked his suggestive question, "what
knowledge is of most worth," the question of educational values has been
raised and the curriculum has come under close scrutiny. The result has
been a modification. The purely linguistic and literary, that which does
not function directly for preparation in life and society, is slowly
giving way to that which deals with the facts and forces of nature and
of social institutions.
Thus far I have tried to make plain the great educational campaign in
which we are engaged, a
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