If we take a serious and an optimistic view of education as a social
institution, and think of it at all as standing in functional
relationships with the social life as a whole, we must conclude that
internationalism as a new movement and idea, and the school as an
institution in which changes in the social order are reflected (but in
which also changes in the social order are created) are closely
related. Adjustment is a relatively easy matter; it is the conception
of the school as a creative factor that challenges our best efforts.
Let us think of the school as a workshop in which there must be
created the forces by which we must make a desired and an otherwise
unrealizable future come to pass and we have a new and inspiring view
of education. The school perhaps must do even more than educate the
forces; it must help even to create the vision itself by which the
future is to be directed. _The school becomes, so to speak, the
working hypothesis of civilisation._ In it the ideas and the desires
by which nations live must be made to take shape.
The idea of internationalism implies certain changes in the external
relations of nations which, whatever the form internationalism will
take on its political side, are not difficult to perceive. These in
turn imply internal changes. We might readily outline or psychologically analyze what could be called the mood of internationalism, in order to see its relations to education. It
contains a number of factors, more or less related to one another.
_First_, there is a recognition of a world of growing, living
historical entities which we call nations; and this recognition
implies new understanding and an enrichment of knowledge. _Second_,
there is a change in the consciousness of nations, slow but visible,
by which they become more willing to investigate freely and fairly
their own place in history, understand their own desires, functions,
virtues, faults, the value of their culture and civilization. Without
such an attitude all talk of internationalism in any real sense is
idle. _Third_, there is a new and different practical interest. We
begin to conceive our world as a world of complex practical relations,
and this idea of a practical world is likely to become one of the
leading thoughts of the future. _Fourth_, by extending, so to speak,
this idea of a world of practical relations, we idealize a world in
which there is a common interest in great international achievements,--a world devoted more than it is now to coördinated
efforts to accelerate progress, more conscious of the needs of a
distant future, perhaps, or even of an ideal of universal efficiency
as a means of realizing some one world purpose or many good purposes.
This is not now, as it once might have been called, merely an Utopian
dream. In some slight degree it is already being accomplished.
_Fifth_, social and moral feelings are widened in scope, and must be
still further extended; it is in the form of the _democratic spirit_,
that these feelings must find expression. And this democratic spirit
is on one side practical, but it is also something more than the
emergence of the common mind; it is the _aristocratic idea carried out
universally_ that we look forward to, an enthusiasm for all true
values, a mood and activity in which all people participate. _Sixth_,
there is a necessary attitude toward world organization or world
government, according to which we think of world government or world
organization as a means of accomplishing results which fulfill
fundamental desires and purposes of the peoples of the earth; as a
growing structure, something to be added to and improved. _Seventh_,
if so general a tendency and demand may be made clear, there is a
philosophical mood, which must be made a part of the ideal and the
attitude of the future, _if that future is to realize even the
practical hopes of the world_. This philosophical attitude is first of
all a way of living comprehensively and more universally, in the world
both of facts and of ideas. It means a less provincial and a more
widely enriched life for all. It means also an ability to choose the
good not according to preconceptions and narrow principles, but
according to the wisdom contained in the experience and the selective
powers of mankind as a whole. This means a life in which men live, so
to speak, more collectively.
These factors of the idea of internationalism, whatever we may think
of the possibility of their realization, make in their totality an
educational problem: they are specifications, so to speak, laid before
us for the making of a new educational product. If we say that it is
useless to think of such things, we are saying merely that it is
useless to hope to be a factor in conscious evolution, or that the
world as a whole has no purpose and no goal. If we believe education
has any function in the larger work of the world, educational
philosophy must take these things into account, see how they may be
created or sustained, and how they can be made to work together to
help bring to pass the kind of future men are talking so much about.
_I. The Essential World Idea_
Our present situation has plainly made it necessary for us to
understand the world in which we live far better than we have in the
past, and to be willing to make more dispassionate judgments about it.
For better or for worse we have entered upon a new stage of history,
in which heavy responsibilities fall upon all peoples, and upon none
more than upon ourselves. Enlightenment beyond all our present
understanding is a necessity. We have been peculiarly isolated and
separated from the world's affairs; now we are peculiarly involved. We
have, however, one great and unusual advantage. In our case it is
ignorance rather than prejudice that we must overcome in ourselves.
The world feels this and recognizes the unusual place this gives us.
We have no thousand years of continuous strife to distort our
historical perspective. We out to be able to be just interpreters of
the history of the world. Our universities ought to be the greatest
centers of historical learning, and as a people we should feel
ourselves called upon above all other people to know the world.
As a nation we pass out of a local into a broader political field. We
become citizens of a world, but this world is no mere habitation of
individuals who are to be affiliated with one another.
It is a world
of _national wills_. Internationalism is first of all a recognition of
the legitimate desires of nations. But such a recognition of the
legitimate desires of nations cannot be effected merely by spreading
abroad good will. A widespread education in the meaning of history
must first be made the foundation of international justice in the
minds of the people. Current history and future events seen in the
light of all history, of history as the science and story of all human
experience, become our chief intellectual interest to-day. The war has
taught us how little the people in the world know bout the world as a
whole. All history thus far has been _local_ history.
Everywhere there
tends to be the prejudice in some degree that comes from the private
need of using history for political ends. Unless we can now put
history, real history, at the head of our sciences, the war will have
failed of a great result, whatever in particular, in a political way,
it may have accomplished.
With such an understanding of what is to be meant by history we say,
if that seems an adequate way of expressing it, that the teaching of
history becomes one of the fundamental problems of the educational
work of the day. It might be better to say that living in the
historical spirit is demanded as a way of salvation of the world.
However, adding geography and economics to history we have a content
that must somehow be taught in the schools. History, as the most
concrete science of the actual world in which we live, now seems to
have become a new center for the curriculum. Hitherto we have tended
to regard history too lightly, as the _story_ of the world; now there
must be a deeper view of it. We must have an understanding of the
motives and the desires of peoples; history must not only be broader
and more comprehensive but more penetrating and psychological. It is
the purposes of nations, working themselves out in their history, that
we must understand. There must no longer be great unknown places on
the earth. Germany, Russia, Japan must not continue to be mysteries.
National psychology must be made a part of historical interpretation.
This new history must be the means of showing us our world in a more
total view than we have thus far had of it, so that we may better
discern the continuity, if there be one, behind the detached movements
and multiplicity of facts presented by the world's story; for perhaps,
in this way, we should better understand what the future is to
produce, and what, more important still, it ought to be made to
produce.
The need first of all is for a continuation of the interest inspired
by the war--an interest showing itself in the form of an universal
interest in all history, and an intensive investigation of history. We
need now, indeed, the most comprehensive study of the world that has
ever been conceived or dreamed of by man. This is the duty of the
historians. This new history must show us what nations are at heart,
what they desire, what they can do. Such an understanding of nations
is, we say, the real beginning of internationalism. It is a necessary
foundation for it, if internationalism is to be anything more than a
merely practical, prudential or political arrangement among nations.
In the school-room eventually, and indeed beginning now, there is
demanded a readjustment of interest by which history takes a new and
more central place. We must endeavor to give the new generation a
_world-idea_. And upon the nature and clearness of this world-idea
much, in the future, will depend.
Such a demand upon the school opens once more, of course, all the old
problems of the teaching of history. All the dreary questions of the
precise order in which history should be taught--whether backwards or
forwards, local first or the reverse, may be brought up if one chooses
to do so. But after all, these questions are not very fruitful. What
we need most is the historical _spirit_. We want a dramatic
presentation of the world's whole story, by which the true meaning of
history is conveyed. The methods of art must be added to the methods
of fact. A persuasive use of the materials of history must be made.
This means a change finally, perhaps, not only in the methods of
teaching history, but in the whole mood and spirit of the school.
Methods are likely to adapt themselves to necessity.
Certainly the
slow methods of presenting facts, sometimes if not generally employed,
the tedious lingering upon details, seems wholly out of place. We need
a broader outlook in history. Even the young child must have a more
comprehensive world-idea, some sense of the whole of the great world
in which he lives. This is one of the instances, it may be, in which
we must set about breaking up any recapitulatory order, natural to the
child, which suggests an advance from the local to the more general
and wider knowledge. The universal interests of the day so strongly
affect the child, the social consciousness so dominates the individual
consciousness that even the natural law of development must to some
extent yield if necessary. This social consciousness, the interests
and purposes expressed in the child's social environment, present the
experience of the adult world dramatically and intensively, exerting
as we might say, a creative power upon the mind. That indeed is
precisely what the higher teaching, whether in the form of art, or in
the form of vivid experience, conveyed though the practical life does
everywhere in education.
We do not yet know what history, taught thus dramatically and
intimately, under the stimulus of the greatest events of all time
might do for the mind of the child or for all the future of the world.
We have never had the most favorable conditions for the teaching of
universal history. We have been obliged to create interest. History
has been taught externally, from the standpoint of a far-away
observer. Now history may and must be taught more as it is lived. The
world has become more real to every one; this sense of reality of a
world of historical entities must be made to persist. We must not go
back to our unreal and intellectualized history. The spirit of the
nations must be made to live again, so to speak, in the minds of the
coming generation. What each nation stands for, its ethos, its
personality, must be made clear. Powers says that all governments and
all nations are _sincere_. It is the soul of nations, then, their own
realization of themselves that must be made the real object of
history. We must go back of the individual and the event at least, to
the desires that have made history what it is; we must see why events
have taken place, and while sacrificing nothing of our own principles
and standards, understand and feel what the principles and the nature
of these widely differing nations really are. For the actual teaching
of history, it is likely that the story, carried to its highest point
of art, will still be the chief method. But pictorial art must be
heavily drawn upon, and all the resources of symbolic art, as we pass
from the lower to the higher stages in education, or, we had perhaps
better say, as we try more and more to convey moods and the spirit of
nations and epochs and to appeal to the deep motives in the
subconscious life of the individual. Plainly there is much work to do
in the investigation and the teaching of history for every grade and
department of the educational system, from the government and the
higher universities to the teacher of the young child.
It is an age of
history, a day in which all sciences have as one of their tasks to aid
in the understanding of history. In the broader world and the
universal life which the idea and the reality of internationalism has
opened up to us, all must live in some way, if only in imagination.
History is a part of the necessary equipment for that life.
_II. The Reëducation of National Desires_
The second factor in internationalism is also, on its educational
side, related to a knowledge of history. This is the attitude which
peoples must take toward their own purposes and ambitions. We must
begin to speak of the education of national consciousness. This
process of the education of nations must be such as will teach peoples
to surrender certain visions most of them have in regard to a future
which cannot now be realized. The content of the desires of nations
must now be changed. The future of many peoples will depend upon the
extent to which they can remain progressive and enthusiastic without
the stimulus of imperialistic ambitions.
Considering our own situation in America, it seems plain that we have
confronting us a serious educational problem, that of imparting to the
rising generation and of acquiring for ourselves, a better
understanding of the meaning and place of our country in the world,
and a more earnest interest in its functions and its welfare. This
requires something more than a teaching of American history. It is
time for us to take stock of all our material and all our spiritual
possessions. We need perhaps to discover what our ideals really are
and what the ideas and the forces are that have made our history what
it has been; and what in the future we are likely to do and to be, and
ought to do and be. We must question deeply at this time our own soul;
we must look to our institutions, our literature and our art for an
understanding of ourselves.
This more profound knowledge of ourselves must be made the basis of
our especial educational philosophy. Here is the most urgent of all
our educational problems. Education is, or should be, a process by
which national character is constantly being molded. In the school the
nation must learn much that cannot be read in books. It must learn to
believe things that cannot be proved, or perhaps even definitely
formulated as truth. The soul of the nation must be subjected, in a
word, to some kind of _spiritual leadership_.
Constructive
statesmanship must be felt as an influence in the school. The problem
is really nothing less than that of educating and forming national
character. Now that we stand less alone as a nation our character
cannot safely be left so much to chance and to the effects of our
favorable environment and our original stock of virtues.
We cannot
continue to be so naïve and so unconscious of our country as we have
been. What we are and what we must do as a people, we say, ought to be
better understood. We should bring these ideals of ours out of the
mists of partisan thinking and give them more definite shape, and at
the same time translate them into the language of sincere living.
National honor ought to be made a clearer idea. We ought at least to
be sure it contains the idea of honesty. Such prejudices as our
history has encouraged in us must be recognized, and computed in our
personal equation. These prejudices we certainly harbor-
-in regard to
our own particular type of government, our culture and education, our
freedom and our democracy and our security. Every nation appears to
have its own idols, its concealments and its self-deceptions, its
belief in its own supremacy and divine mission, and its innocent
faith in its own mores. To overcome such narrowness and perversion
without introducing worse faults is a difficult problem of education.
In either direction there appear to be real dangers. A nation steeped
in provincial ways, plunged as we are now into the midst of world
politics, has difficulties lying before it compared to which
contributing a decisive military power is small. There are dangers in
standing aloof from other peoples. But if we surrender too readily our
prejudices and homespun ways, and too rapidly absorb influences from
without, we shall be no safer, for carried too far, that would mean to
lose our mission and our vision. There appears to be, moreover, no
safe and easy middle course which we can follow. Our only course seems
to be clearly to understand ourselves, rise above our limitations and
difficulties, turn our faults into virtues, and make ourselves secure
by our own inner worth and power.
Plainly there are difficult problems ahead of the teachers of American
history. They must not inculcate suspicion and fear, but they must not
present our security in a false light. They must not inspire the
war-like spirit and imperialistic ambitions, but they must do nothing
to lessen our seriousness of purpose and enthusiasm for the future.
They must not teach national vanity, but they must not on the other
hand encourage a spirit which is in any way over-critical and cynical
or supercilious. There must be political wisdom on the part of the
people but not a sophisticated state of mind. These teachers must
inspire a wholesome pride, without creating an inflamed sense of honor
such as has caused so many wars. They must make clear the virtue and
the individuality of our own national life, but in doing this they
must not disparage the foreign and give rise to prejudice and
antagonism. How to establish us still more firmly in our own essential
traits and philosophy of life without making us conceited and closed
to good influences from without; how to give us a strong sense of
solidarity without the attendant sense of opposition to everything
outside the group is a part of our educational work which, in a broad
sense, falls to the teacher of history.
The central problem of the education of national consciousness, in our
view, is to make desires more conscious and to subject them to
discipline and the influence of the best ideals of American life.
MacCurdy says that by making instincts conscious we take a great step
in advance. That we should say is true, if we make them conscious in
the right way, and do not try to substitute rational principles for
them. But we need to go further; we must not only understand and
control the impulses of aggression, jealousy, fear and the like that
have played such a sinister part in history, but we must know more
about those complex and subtile things we call moods, which are really
the main forces in modern life. These moods are accumulations and
repositories of interests and desires, and they must be appreciated by
all who as educators, undertake to direct the forces in our national
life. These desires must be made more definitely conscious everywhere,
and be subjected to influence and education. It is not simply
institutions, organizations and factions that must be watched and
controlled, just because these are the more obvious and most easily
affected expressions of tendencies and desires, but all the subtile
feelings or moods which are the raw materials, so to speak, of future
conduct, ideals, and institutions.
Here comes to view, of course, our whole problem of assimilation of
heterogeneous elements. Favored by our geographical position, and by
the fortunate success and the great suggestive power of the ideal of
liberty with which our history began, America has had, as we all
realize, thus far an unusual career. We have been able to assimilate
foreign elements with great rapidity. We may not be so fortunate in
the future. Distances which have severed our new peoples from their
old ties have become strangely shortened by the war. Our problems of
adjustment have become more subtile and complex. The necessity of
succeeding in unifying our population is more urgent.
Therefore our
future development, as a nation, becomes to a greater extent a process
of conscious direction; what we have done naïvely and by sheer force
of our powers of growth, we must do now, it is likely, more
deliberately and efficiently.
We have before us in America the highly important and by no means
easy task of harmonizing, under new conditions, all sorts of forces
and desires by directing them in ways and toward ends which cannot
now be wholly determined. There is both a psychological and a
pedagogical aspect of the situation. Psychology must perform for
American life something very much like a psycho-analysis; we should
expect to see as a result of the war a greatly increased interest, on
the part of the American people, in themselves; self-understanding
and self-interpretation, we should suppose, would be advanced; all
the sciences of human nature we should think would be called upon to
help us to make a new American history and to formulate the purposes
of our national life.
On the pedagogical side we might expect reasonably to see a deepened
sincerity on the part of all who in any way stand in the position of
teachers. We are dependent upon leaders in a democratic country, and
all leaders in whatever place in society would now, one might hope,
feel a heightened sense of duty