INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL (_continued_) _IV. The Higher Industry_
It is in the higher forms of practical coöperative activity and in the
intellectual processes, the interests and social feelings accompanying
them that we should expect to see elaborated and made more ideal the
internationalism that has first been put to work in the service of the
world at a lower level. There is work to do that appeals to profound
motives and feelings. The great engineering projects that await us,
the work of exploring, colonizing and the like in which universal
interest and coöperation are necessary fascinate the mind. These
things satisfy the dramatic instinct, and they may prove to be in the
future an actual substitute for war, as James hoped. The educational
opportunities of this theme, at least, are great. Any nation that
expects to play a great part in the world's politics must expect to do
much in the world's service. These nations must be prepared in every
possible way to contribute greatly to the material improvement of the
earth. To this end technical education, all along the line, must be
kept at a high point of efficiency. Inventive thought in all
mechanical fields will certainly be a large factor in the culture
values of peoples in the future. When we see what four years of war
have accomplished in the way of giving us control over material
forces, we may realize what, with the continuation of a powerful
incentive, might be done in the arts of peace. These great practical
needs have also, as we say, their power of appeal to all the profound
motives of the social life. We must make use of this appeal. All the
power of the strong story of the day's work must be turned upon this
educational problem. All industry, indeed, must be made more dramatic,
as it can be under the inspiration of the larger industrial life which
the idea of internationalism opens up before us.
Industry must be made
more satisfying to the fundamental motives of the individual, while at
the same time it is made more efficient, and more social. The new
generation must be filled with the romance of the world's work. Only
by presenting to young and plastic minds the ideal features of work
shall we be able to harmonize the individual and the social will. Only
so, perhaps, in an industrial age shall we be able to escape from
being destroyed by industrialism. Anything that will introduce art and
imagination into work, anything that will even brighten a little the
dull moods of toil will help both to prepare the way for the wider
world relations we talk about, and to prevent the most destructive
elements and moods of industrialism gaining the upper hand.
_V. The Democratic Spirit_
We must eventually think of internationalism on its educational side
as most fundamentally a question of developing in the world the
_international spirit_. We might quite naturally think of this as the
education of social feeling or of the social instinct.
This is,
however, not the most productive attitude toward the situation, in our
view, simply because when we think of the education of the feelings we
are likely to be satisfied with the principles of an old static
philosophy of life and of the school. Moral and social feelings, we
believe, grow best in a practical medium. We cannot expand social
feeling at will, or produce a democratic spirit by some simple process
of education. When we try to extend social feeling too far we make the
moral life insincere. To try to expand social feeling and moral
interest so as to make it include the foreign, to try to love our
enemies in advance of all æsthetic and practical relations with the
foreign seems futile. Distance must first be eliminated by
imagination. Social and moral codes must be founded upon intimate
relations. External and distant relations among peoples make for
diplomatic forms and a hypocritical morality. These are substitutes
for social feeling. These purely social relations of nations (like
those of individuals) always hide enmity and jealousy.
We cannot
expect, therefore, to create a moral spirit in the relations of
peoples to one another by teaching alone. We cannot hope to change
individualism to altruism merely by exciting feeling.
Our main effort
must be directed toward establishing ethical relations, rather than to
stimulating moral sentiments.
It seems useless to preach universal brotherhood either to the child
who lacks entirely the content of experience to make such sentiments
real, or to the working masses who now lack enthusiasm in _all_ the
social relations. At least to depend upon such teaching to create
international spirit is futile. Love for mankind is too ideal and too
remote, as yet, to arouse deep and sincere impulses and feelings. All
teaching, therefore, whether in the school or elsewhere that is
directed exclusively or especially to the moral aspects of peace,
altruistic behavior and internationalism, seems to-day, to say the
least, peculiarly inadequate. Our spirit in education must be broadly
humanistic, and must indeed lay deep foundations for all moral and
social relations, but in so far as it ends in being cultural and
hortatory it can have no deep and lasting effect.
The teaching of international morality and universal interests, and
the development of a _world-consciousness_ depend fundamentally, we
may suppose, upon experiences which are perhaps not specifically moral
in form at all. It is rather even by the aesthetic experience than the
moral that the social consciousness will best be expanded and made to
encircle the world. If we can make the world seem vividly real to the
child we shall have the intellectual content for the making of moral
feelings. The unmoral nature of international relations and of the
feelings of peoples for one another are due in great part precisely to
the lack of power of imagination and of that concrete knowledge and
experience which would make the foreign seem real. That which is
remote from us and different in appearance seems shadowy and
ghost-like. The _internal meaning_ of that which is thus far away in
space cannot be perceived. Everything that is foreign tends to belong
in our categories merely to the world of objects. Moral feeling
towards objects is manifestly impossible. International law fails to
have moral force because nations are in general aware of one another
only in these external ways. The world of foreign objects must be
changed to a world of persons having history and internal meaning.
When we can interpret and understand international law in terms of
relations within human experience and as affecting individuals, it
will begin perhaps to seem real and hence morally obligatory.
There is another aspect of the work of creating and directing the wider
social consciousness and giving it ethical purpose and form, which is
still more fundamental, and at the same time, to casual thought,
perhaps still more remote from definite moral improvement in the world
and from all the immediately practical problems of internationalism. It
is the mood of our social life which we call the democratic spirit, and
which, made universal, is the substratum of internationalism that most
of all needs to be controlled and educated. At the same time this
democratic spirit is least of all susceptible to definite and routine
discipline, of all the factors of internationalism. This democratic
spirit contains possibilities of the greatest good and of the greatest
evil. Out of it may grow international order, or international anarchy
and internal disruption. How to keep this democratic spirit progressive
and constructive in its temper, broad in sympathy and full of
enthusiasm, how to free it from infection by all the poisons that are
prone to attack the popular consciousness is one of our great problems
of education.
This democratic spirit is the real power behind internationalism. It
is as the mood of the city, the whole spirit of the modern urban life,
that it is most significant. The mood of the city contains on one side
the possibility of an internationalism which is nothing more than a
surrender of all patriotism, and is at heart only a mass interest in
rights and needs. On the other hand all the interests and impulses
that make internationalism necessary and possible seem to have their
origin in the city. The city represents, with all its evil, the higher
life and the line of progress. Progress passes through the city. The
city is the symbol of creativeness and achievement.
Industrialism, the
essential spirit of the city, is the condition, normal and necessary
we must conclude, out of which the necessity of international order
arises. It is a phase of the process by which nations become dependent
upon one another by being specialized and becoming densely populated.
It is also a factor in the cause of wars without and revolutions
within.
The mood of the city is thus in a sense the essence of life, but it is
also the source of disease and death in the national life. It is the
price that is paid for civilization that the city tends to become the
hardened artery of national life. The control of the city moods by
educational forces we may believe is one of the most fundamental of
all the problems of conscious evolution. It is the control at the
fountain-head of the forces out of which internationalism is to be
made that we undertake when we try to educate the life of the city,
with reference to its good and its evil. The too rapid urbanizing of
the life of nations, the production, in the cities, of powers too
great and too rapidly growing to be controlled by the civilizing
forces in a country is the great danger in modern life.
So great
indeed are the dangers in the accelerated growth of industrialism in
all the great countries and the increased specialization in the
industrial life, that something radical must be done, in our view, to
counterbalance this movement, and especially to control and to raise
to higher levels the psychic factors of city life.
Our educational work is serious. We are trying to save democracy from
itself--from being destroyed by forces which accumulate in the cities.
We must keep life from becoming sophisticated before its time. We must
prevent enthusiasm from degenerating into mob spirit, and from
becoming attached to wholly material interests. _There must be found,
in some way, means of causing counter-currents to set in against the
tide that flows so strongly from country to city._
Germany's fate
should teach us the dangers of this city life, and show us how the
forces that gather in the great cities can be turned in the direction
either of fanatical nationalism or toward the lowest of all forms of
internationalism, in which all form of government is thrown down. It
must teach us also how to catch the note of new
"dominants" that are
concealed in the roar of city life, and to make these prevail.
The control of the formation of the city moods, and the direction and
utilization of the great energies contained in them, now require, if
ever anything were demanded of conscious creative effort, _more power
on the part of all our educational factors_. The school appears now to
be at the parting of the ways, we say, when it must either settle down
to its routine and limited occupation of preparing children for life,
or become a far greater power in the world than it has as yet been. We
must decide whether the school is to control, or to be controlled by,
the political and industrial forces of the day. We must see whether
the school is going to reflect the culture and the moods of the
environment, or whether the school shall exert a creative influence
upon its surroundings.
It is plain that nothing less than a radical change in the school can
now greatly alter its position, and release it from its bondage to
politics and from the overwhelming influences of its environment, and
prevent the leveling downward and the stereotyping process that is
taking place in the school, both as regards its intellectual and moral
product and the training and selection of teachers.
Nothing less than
a movement which shall break up some of the deepest and most firmly
rooted habits and conventions of the school and throw the school back,
so to speak, upon more generic and primitive motives than those that
now control it will be sufficient. _The school needs more than
anything else a change of scene_--a change of _venue_, if a legal term
be allowed. The school everywhere, but especially the school of the
city, is surrounded by influences that prejudice it to fixed habits of
thought and keep it true to a type which has long since ceased to be
necessary. The school is causing an in-breeding of the city spirit in
all the great industrial countries.
No single change in any institution, in our view, could strike closer
to the roots of our whole educational problem of the future than the
bodily transfer of the city school far out into the open country. Such
a move seems wholly practicable, economic from every point of view,
even the financial, and it would place the school in a position in
which profound changes in its whole plan and organization could hardly
fail to follow almost automatically. With our present facilities for
transportation, the daily exodus of children from the surroundings in
which are being produced the elements of our civilization that are
hardest to control would be entirely possible. The effects upon the
whole of education, and upon all the future life of countries like our
own could hardly fail to be profound. _The fundamental moods of
childhood would be changed, and everything contained in child life
would be more amenable to control._ Schools would become more variable
and more experimental, and new selective influences would be exerted
upon teachers presumably in the direction of raising the social and
intellectual average of the profession. A much larger field would be
opened up for all those methods of work in education that may be
designated as æsthetic--that is, that contain qualities of freedom,
activity and creativeness.
_VI. Idea of World Organization_
Some form of organization of nations having definite representation,
constitution, and laws, and with a certain degree of centralization
and embodiment in visible institutions and locations will exist, we
may suppose, for all future time in the world. The existence, even in
idea, of such organization presents to us inevitable educational
problems. Instruction in a general way and universally in world
politics, familiarizing all with the meaning of these laws and
political bodies, is but a part, although a necessary part, of the
work. Our democratic principle demands that more and more interest and
participation in all forms of government be acquired by the people,
that peoples and not merely governments shall be the units which are
brought together, that there be more organizations of the people
performing group functions. If the loyalty of nations to one another
is to be secured, as seems necessary, by establishing practical
relations among them, the education of the coming generations in these
relations and organizations and in all practical affairs seems
unavoidable. The people must have a proper appreciation of common
interests as implying common work, and not be encouraged to believe
that rights of representation are their chief concern.
All must know
the power of organization. All must see that the international
structures of our own day, however complete in form, are but a
beginning and basis of function, and that there must be put behind
these forms all the energies of the people, young and old, made
effective through organization for practical efforts.
It is through participation in activities that are international in
scope that, in our opinion, the best education in the idea of
internationalism will be obtained. This is the way to the good will
without which political ideas will be likely to remain nationalistic
in fact whatever political coördinations may exist among nations. It
is as a practical idea that internationalism needs now to be impressed
upon the minds of all. An international organization must be looked
upon as something useful, which will remain only if it performs
functions in which all are interested and in which all can in some way
take part. _It is a sense of living in the world_ rather than of
belonging exclusively to one locality that must be taught. It is the
idea of a world of nations in organic unity rather than a world of
nations attached to one another by political bonds that we need to
convey.
It is active participation in the business of a world that must be
regarded as the necessary basis for education in the idea of
internationalism. World government must be conceived in terms of world
functions. But we must also provide for the most dramatic possible
representation of everything contained in the idea of internationalism
and represented in its laws and forms. The most vivid possible
presentation must be made of everything that is done internationally,
if we wish to keep alive the spirit which now prevails in the world.
We must lose no opportunity to make current history impressive; we
must bring out all its dramatic features in order to fixate once for
all the idea of the organic unity of the race, and its necessary
coördination in tangible forms. International law must be made
intelligible to very young minds, and now that we are to have an
international seat of congresses and courts the utmost must be made
of its existence to give reality to the idea of internationalism.
Those who plan for the future of the international idea will do well
to take into account these pedagogical aspects of it.
_It is quite as
important to make the international idea pedagogically persuasive as
to make it politically sound._ Such an idea must have a place and an
embodiment if it is to seize hold upon the popular mind.
An
international city seems indispensable, and the further the thought of
it can be removed from that of existing countries the more readily
will it aid the young mind in making the abstractions necessary to
conceive the true interests of all nations or all humanity as distinct
from the interests of one nation. In this we are making beginnings to
be realized perhaps in a far distant future. We want no unnatural and
sentimental internationalism, but there is every reason now for
wishing to plant the seed of a higher and more organic life than at
the present time exists in the world.
The question of the possibility of an universal language arises again.
The invention of a new language, if we may judge at all by the past,
is not practicable. But the extension universally of some living
language seems possible. This seems to be demanded in the interest of
the international idea. It is desirable and quite possible to make all
civilized peoples bilingual, for of course we should not expect
anywhere to see a foreign language supplant the native tongue. It is
not alone to facilitate intercourse and give a sense of solidarity
that the possession of an universal language is to be desired. We
think quite as much of the impetus thus given to the production of an
universal literature, in which there will be expressed not only ideas
about the world, but moods which will not be found expressed in
national literatures at all. This literature might be the beginning of
a solidarity in the world which is not now definitely conceivable.
Such an extension of language, however, we should hardly expect to
take place except in the course of development of practical relations
which first stimulate the desire for such common language.
_VII. The Philosophical Attitude_
There is an element in the idea and mood of internationalism which we
can call nothing else but philosophic. The ideality and universality
of internationalism itself are expressions of the philosophic spirit.
Internationalism, we might say, is a philosophic idea, although this
might mean to some that we place it among the unrealizable and Utopian
plans. But this is not the case. The philosophic spirit is, in our
view, the most practical of moods, since it is the creative, liberal,
and progressive attitude and the source of the most profoundly right
judgments even in practical affairs. The philosophic spirit is a
background, we may say, for all the more specific moods, thoughts and
activities that enter into the idea of internationalism.
And yet, real and important as the philosophic spirit is, we cannot
readily discuss it as a definite aspect of education.
The reason is
that it involves the educational foundations themselves.
The spirit,
the method and the content of the school are all involved in it. We
can, however, find some concrete manifestations of this philosophic
attitude. In the first place we might say that it is a religious mood
in education. It is demanded of any school that hopes to play a large
part in the affairs of the world that, in a broad sense, its whole
spirit be _religious_. The school must be deeply touched by the sense
of a spiritual world. The history of the world must be felt to be
real--that is, as an unfoldment of purpose in the world.
The values
and the meaning of everything are to be appreciated and understood,
according to this view, through a process of enrichment of the mind
under the influence of the highest social ideals expressed in the most
persuasive forms. Education thus centers in the work of developing the
power to appreciate values in all experience. Anything, too, that
sustains optimistic moods helps to create the philosophical spirit,
and one function of this philosophic spirit is to forestall the
cynical moods and the narrow and prejudiced ways of thinking which are
among the most dangerous tendencies of the times. The tendency to form
judgments upon insufficient evidence and to act according to narrow
and one-sided principles is incompatible with the philosophic
attitude.
It is of course by no means the actual teaching of philosophy to every
one, or the spreading broadcast of any particular philosophical
principle that one would advocate as a preventive culture or to cure
existing evils. It is rather a mode of living and of thinking
throughout society and in all the educational process that is wanted.
What we need is a better quality of mental product, more capacity to
penetrate into the heart and substance of experience, greater
responsiveness to good influences, greater ability to judge values,
and a more plastic and more freely flowing mental life.
These are of
course large demands and imply faith and an interest in a remote
future. _But a school which is religions through and through in its
attitude toward life and is deeply touched by the influence of art in
all its ways of dealing with the child will go a long way toward
fulfilling the requir