Education, like all other institutions, has been charged, we know,
with having contributed its share to the causes of the war. The
Prussian school system, we have been told, was mainly a school of war;
all the emotions and ideas necessary to produce morbid nationalism,
distorted views of history, and a belief in and a love of war were
there fostered and deliberately cultivated. There is, of course, some
truth in this; it is a truth that is deceiving, however, if we regard
it as at all indicating the true relation between education and
practical affairs. If the school was a factor in the late war, such a
creative effect of education appears to be rare in history. In general
it is the negative effect of the school that is most conspicuous. It
is what the school has not done to prevent war, what it has failed to
do in not bringing nations out of their perverted nationalism into a
life of more practical relationship with one another that really best
characterizes the school.
It is difficult or impossible for us now, of course, to perceive what
the war has done--in what way, all in all, the future will be
different from the past. It is very easy and natural to look at
everything dramatically now, see revolution everywhere and believe
that all institutions are now to be radically changed.
Or, going to
the other extreme, we may become cynical, and say that, human nature
being unchangeable, we shall soon settle down into the old routine and
we shall see presently that nothing revolutionizing has transpired.
Some will say, and indeed are saying that education must now be
entirely remodeled; some will think that education had best go on as
before--that nothing has happened certainly to require any new
philosophy of the school, or any profound change in its form. We see
these two tendencies in many phases of our present situation: in
politics, in education, and in the business world.
It is impossible, we may repeat, to make wholly safe judgments now
about the future, but still something must in the meantime be done. We
must either stand still or go forward--or backward; we must act either
with a theory or without one. The school is involved in this
necessity. There is a new content of history that we cannot ignore,
but must in some way _teach_. We must say something about the war;
current events can hardly be kept out of the school, and to understand
current events there must be a wider content of history than we have
had in the past. There are new, or at least disturbed, conditions in
the industrial and in all the social life, and these conditions cannot
fail to have some effect upon the school. The school must adjust
itself to them, and it must surely take into account new needs that
have arisen. Patriotism may need to be taught now, or taught in a
different manner. There is a problem of war and peace, the question of
what ideals of national life we are to convey.
Internationalism
demands some recognition on the part of the school. It seems probable,
therefore, and even necessary that a new interest in the function of
education will be felt and must be aroused. Must we not indeed now
examine once more all the foundations upon which our ideas about
education rest? Certainly there will never be a more favorable time,
or more reasons for such a task.
It is the impending internationalism, or the idea of internationalism
now so vividly put before us all, that most incites new thought about
education, and about all the means of controlling the ideas and
feelings of the people. We hear much about _re_construction and
_re_adjustment, and these terms obviously imply the old ways and the
old institutions. But internationalism is something new, having many
possibilities; it means new relations among peoples; it opens up new
practical fields and new phases of sociology and economics. It is
because of this new phase of the social life and social consciousness
of man, we might suppose, that education is most likely to be affected
in its foundations, so that no mere readjustment will be enough. A new
politics and a new science of nations appear, and we cannot fail to
see that there is at the present time something decidedly lacking in
education; that there is a larger life perhaps for which our present
ways of educating children would not sufficiently prepare, and that to
prepare for this larger life something more would be needed than an
added subject in the curriculum. This is because internationalism is
not simply more of something we have already; it is a turn in the
road, and a turn which, it can hardly be denied, will finally affect
all institutions. If internationalism has come to stay, it will need,
and it must have, powerful support from all educational forces. It
will need something more than support; education must produce creative
habits of mind, which shall make and nourish new relations in the
world, and it must make people intelligent, so that they can
understand what the new and larger relations mean and what must be
accomplished by them.
A casual observation of the educational situation might indicate that
education is limited in two ways, so far as being a means of meeting
our present needs is concerned. _It is lacking in power_; it treats
children and youths still in a fragmentary way, and the process of
learning is somewhat detached from the totality of living. There is a
lack of richness of content, and a lack of responsiveness in the
school to the stirring life outside the school. If we may say that
history now turns a new page, and that society stands at a change of
tide, education is also in a peculiar and interesting position. The
school may, from now on, if our view of it be at all just, be expected
to do one of two things: it may settle down to a relatively successful
work, in a limited sphere of usefulness, training children well,
especially fitting them to enter into our present social order; or, on
the other hand, the school may now become a much greater power, and
may seize hold upon fundamental things in life and society under the
stimulus of new conditions--find a way to a deeper philosophy, a more
consistent theory, attain a more exalted mood and higher purpose, and
become a far more potent factor in civilization.
That education will remain unaffected in profound ways by the war, is
difficult to believe. One may very readily, as we say, see these
impending changes in too dramatic a way, and begin to talk about
profound upheavals and ideals that certainly will never be realized (and
we ought to guard against this easy idealizing, which leaves human
nature out of the reckoning); still we cannot but feel that in some way
a new dimension has been added to the social life as a result of the
war, and that education, in dealing with this greater society, must
itself be raised to a higher power. If we think, educationally speaking,
in terms of a world at all, rather than in terms of individuals, or
communities, families and nations, we are quickly impressed by the sense
of living in a new order of educational problems, and possessing, it may
be, a new variety of self-consciousness. Nations in this new view are
thought of as parts of a world, as having many external relations,
whereas formerly almost all education has had reference at the most to
the internal life of nations. Patriotism has been the expression of its
most distant horizon.
If we believe that anything new is about to be realized in education,
it might seem natural to begin to think about changes from the
standpoint and in the terms of the old chapters and topics. We might
ask what this or that subject of the curriculum means or must produce
that it did not mean and did not produce before; or we might consider
the old and the new requirements in the education of the feelings, the
will, the intellect; or we might take any other of the educational
categories as a basis for a discussion of the philosophy of the
school. These programs, however, do not seem to be very inspiring.
Would it not be better now to try to distinguish the main fields of
life and the main interests in regard to which new questions and new
needs have arisen, and see what changes in our educational thought are
really demanded by them? On such a plan, internationalism itself would
first demand attention, and indeed most of all. In a sense all
questions about education must now be considered with reference to
internationalism in some way. Then there are the problems already
raised during the war and widely discussed, about the teaching of
patriotism. Patriotism becomes a new educational problem, a chapter in
our theory of education, in which we become conscious of ourselves in
a new way, and are aware of our larger field and changed conditions.
There are questions, too, about the teaching of the lessons of the
war, what we shall think about war in general as a good or an evil,
how we shall conceive peace and its values. Changes are taking place
in government, and in our ideas of government, and governments are
being put to new tests. Political education can hardly fail to be now
one of our most serious concerns. Democracy appears to be our great
word; the control and education of the democratic forces and the
democratic spirit becomes an urgent need. Industry acquires new
meanings; we must take up again all the theory of industrial
education, for we have seen of late that industry contains
possibilities of evil we did not before understand.
Social problems
arise in changed forms. The new world-idea or world-consciousness
becomes an educational problem of the social life. Class difference
can never again be ignored as it has been in the past in the schools.
Moral, religious and æsthetic education seems to have a different
place in the school, just to the extent that all life has become more
serious on account of the war. These demands made upon the deepest
elements of the psychic life suggest the need once more of a new
philosophy of education, or, at the least, a greatly increased
recognition and application of the philosophy we already have.
Before the war there was a sense of security and the feeling that our
education was adequate to meet all demands. We were proud of our
educational system. Our democratic ideals, people said, were safe in
the hands of the public school. Industrial education was meeting
fairly well the needs of the industrial life. There were no very
pressing class problems. The troubles of capital and labor, although
always threatening, seemed to demand no educational interference. The
religious problem was temporarily not acute. Aesthetic forms had been
attended to in the curriculum sufficiently to meet the demands of the
day. Hygiene and physical education and individual attention seemed to
be making rapid advances. All of these had been influenced by the
scientific methods of treating educational questions. On the whole we
seemed to have a good school. But now the question must be asked
whether this school of yesterday will be adequate to meet the needs of
to-morrow; whether new conditions do not call for new thought, new
philosophy, new schools. These things of course cannot be had for the
asking. We cannot give orders to genius to produce them for us. But a
generation that does not hope for them, we might suspect of not having
realized what the war has cost. For so great a price paid have we not
a right to expect much in return, especially if we are willing to
regard the war as a lesson rather than as a debt to us, and bend all
our energies to make it count for a better civilization?
We may already see in a general way what the effect of the war is to be
upon the mind of the educator. The journals begin to be filled with
plans for the participation of the school in the work of reconstruction. There are many suggestions for the improvement of the
school. Industrial education, the classics, history, military
education, social education are all being discussed.
Evidently many
minds are at work. Some of them, indeed many of them, are apparently
most concerned about what changes we shall make at once in the day's
work of the school. Many wish to know what we are going to do now with
Latin, or history, and how we can improve the method of teaching in
this or that particular. But there are some deeper notes. Thinkers are
asking elementary questions about the whole of human nature. They wish
to know what the original nature of man is, and what the limits of our
control over human nature are. Such books as Hocking's
"Human Nature
and its Re-making" and Russell's "Principles of Social Reconstruction,"
which grapple with the basic problems of human life, are signs of the
times. No one can yet predict what the final result of the increased
intellectual ardor that has come out of the war will be, but it seems
certain that that striving of the mind which has made the literature of
the war so remarkable a page in the history of the human spirit will
continue, and in the field of education as elsewhere in the practical
life there will be new vitality and earnestness.