THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM (_continued_) Patriotism we thought to be, in the third place, devotion to the
_group_. Here the problem of the teaching of patriotism becomes
specifically a question of social education. The question arises as to
precisely what the objects of the devotion we call loyalty to the
group are, and what factors in group-consciousness need most to be
emphasized or educated as patriotism. Is it race or manners or the
pure fact of propinquity or herd contact or all together that are the
objects of social desire and the feeling of solidarity?
_Race_ has been emphasized as the prime interest in group loyalty, but
there seems to be doubt about this. At least there are difficulties in
isolating anything we can call love of race. We can never separate
race from propinquity, for example, or from mores, or from the bonds
due to common possession of causes. Race loyalty appears to be a
primitive feeling. When races were pure, groups small and possession
common, all the elements of loyalty to group were present at once and
coextensive. As civilization progressed the bond of pure race
lessened. All races have now become mixed, we are told, and kinship in
a group has ceased to be a fact. Nicolai maintains that race
patriotism has grown out of family instinct, as something quite
separate from herd instinct, but it seems likely that common
interests, organization under necessity, or the social attraction
resulting from any common cause must have been stronger than any
consciousness of kinship, or any herd instinct as such--
which may
indeed not have existed at all.
It is this more conscious bond of function and propinquity at least that
must be taken into account in the education of patriotism--certainly
American patriotism. We in America can hardly emphasize race patriotism,
without producing internal disruption. It is common function that is
the distinguishing mark of the individuals of a group, rather than
common origin. Common function, especially subsumption under one
ordered government, particularly if the purpose be that of securing
common protection, can plainly overcome all loyalty to race. Common
religion antagonizes race consciousness, and we see therefore within
nations races splitting up along lines of religious difference. We see
within races also greater antagonism and greater lack of common
interest between classes than between the same classes as found in
different races. Aristocrats everywhere, for example, appear to have
greater mutual sympathy and sense of nearness than do the upper and
lower classes of the same race.
One of our own urgent educational problems is that of overcoming race
differences and of utilizing racial bonds for practical ends. We try
to put loyalty to group first, and we assume that race patriotism can
be supreme only among those who have no country worth being loyal to.
Loyalty to race, however, has a pedagogical use. We see it being
employed to extend social feeling beyond the point to which
propinquity and common cause can carry it. It was used, we know, in
the propaganda and educational campaign by which German statesmen and
historians hoped to develop a wider German consciousness. The racial
object in this case is apparently purely fictitious. We see the same
concept being used now to create or expand social feeling throughout
the Anglo-Saxon race. What we mean mainly by Anglo-Saxon race is
really English speaking peoples, having common or similar mores and
ideals. It is, of course, by emphasizing and participating in common
functions that loyalty either to an Anglo-Saxon union or to the total
group in our own nation will be developed. Our own type of
patriotism, in which there can be little or no racial loyalty as such,
must be built upon more ideal and abstract conceptions than that of
race. It is loyalty to group having a common idea, we say, which must
be the basis of American group loyalty. This we must regard as higher
than any race patriotism. All nations are now, as Boutroux remarks, to
a greater or less extent _psychological races_. The factors that have
produced them are the factors that have caused men to become
functioning units.
This gives us a clew at least to a practical principle for the
education of social loyalty. We must secure participation on the part
of the individual in every function that belongs to each group to
which the individual himself is attached. Thus all degrees and kinds
of loyalty may be made to exist in the same mind without conflict or
confusion, precisely because the loyalty desired is loyalty to people
as groups or organizations having causes, not to collections of
individuals as such.
The teaching of loyalty to any cause appears to be a lesson in
patriotism. So far as teaching of patriotism is centered directly upon
the production of loyalty to the whole group which constitutes the
nation, the first object must be to create a sense of reality of the
group in the mind of the individual. We may expect to do this in part
by the teaching of geography and history in an adequate way, but we
must also instill such patriotism by inducing individuals to
participate in nation-wide organizations, which are capable of
realizing dramatic effects. The experiences of the war have taught us
to see this. It is organization or coöperation for practical ends,
under conditions in which deep feeling is aroused, that most quickly
and effectually creates the sense of solidarity in great groups of
individuals. We must study the psychological side of this matter, and
see how the power and momentum that are so readily gained in time of
need can be better controlled for all the routine purposes of
education and the practical daily life. The organization of national
activities by means of voluntary associations will be likely to be one
of the main educational methods of the future. If we are far-seeing we
shall try to utilize the powers of organization, coöperation and
communication to overcome many antagonisms now existing in society.
War temporarily suspends class distinctions and many other forms of
social dualism. The reaction after the war may be in the direction of
increasing all the former antagonisms. To attain a strong morale and
unity in times less dramatic than those of war is an educational
problem, in a wide sense, but it is also a problem of the practical
organization of all the social life.
All nation-wide affiliations of children which in any way
cross-section classes or antagonistic interests of any kind tend to
create materials out of which patriotic sentiment is made. The school
itself has tended to produce social unity, but it has also tended to
level downward, and also to mediate associations which do not touch
upon the activities and interests and differences of society. Our
schools are democratic by default of social interest in them, so to
speak. We need organizations that shall level upward and to a greater
extent involve the home. Then we shall see how democratic and how
unified our social life really is. These organizations must be both
democratic and practical. They must engage the interests of all
classes. We know little as yet about the potential power, both for
practical accomplishment and for the building of a higher type of
loyalty and patriotism, there may be in wide organization. Here we can
best combine the initiative and spirit that usually come from the
upper classes with the great powers of achieving aggregate results
inherent in the people as a whole. If we are to have a nation which
shall be a unit, the people as a whole must have practical interests
that require daily exertion and attention. They must be not merely
united in spirit as a people, but united in common tasks that are
definite and real. Devotion to the functions of the people is loyalty
to the nation. This we should say is but an elaboration of the old
colonial spirit of coöperation, when merely living in a community
meant a certain daily service to all the community. We must continue
to do now more consciously and with more technique, so to speak, what
was once done more spontaneously and in a more primitive way. It is
thus that the idea of neighbor might extend throughout the country as
a whole. All the materials are at hand for an unlimited development of
the practical life. _The sense of solidarity and the comradeship and
helpfulness that grow naturally in a small community, where conditions
are hard and dangers imminent, we must still maintain in a great
nation by organization._ This is at heart an educational problem. It
is a work of national character building. It is training in
patriotism.
In this, as in all other phases of education now, we must consider how
the great energies hidden in the æsthetic experiences can be put to
use. The æsthetic, especially in its dramatic form, is a power to be
reckoned with. Interest, organization, moral obligation do not control
or release all the energies contained in the social life. We need the
high moods of dramatic situations to reach the most fundamental
motives. The teacher must not only present ideas; he must generate
power. And this is true of all efforts to employ for any end the
interests of the people, old or young. The social life, if it is to be
effective, must constantly be brought under the influence of dramatic
stimuli. Dillon, a political writer, earnestly pleads for an extension
and deepening of the sympathies of children, and says that patriotic
sentiment must be engrafted upon the sensitive soul of the child. No
one could refuse to admit this. The question, however, is of ways and
means. In our view it is mainly through play, or better, art, that the
soul of the child is thus made sensitive. A dramatic social life must
be the main condition upon which we depend for thus extending and
deepening the sympathies of the child.
Among these dramatic social effects we seek, the use of national
holidays, all methods of symbolizing events, causes, or functions
which are nationally significant are of course not to be ignored, but
after all it is through practical activity made social and raised to
dramatic expression or feeling, either by its own inherent idea and
suggestive power, or by the addition of æsthetic elements, that
loyalty to the greater group and its functions will best be educated.
It is precisely the lack of these dramatic elements and these mass
effects in the social life that now leaves the social sense in its
national aspects weak, and allows the various dividing lines
throughout society to make even the most necessary activities to a
greater or less degree ineffectual.
The educational problem itself is plain. Unity of public interests,
which can apparently now be obtained only under threat to national
existence, must be maintained, not artificially, but voluntarily. We
want the morale of war and the social solidarity of war in the times
and activities of peace--in those activities that represent service to
country and also those which consist of the service _of_
country in
the performance of its broader functions as a member of a family or
society of nations.
A fourth factor in patriotism we recognize as loyalty to government,
to state, or to leader. The place of such loyalty in a truly
democratic country as contrasted with an autocratically governed
country seems plain. It is not only sovereignty but statesmanship as
well that must reside in the people. The people must not only have the
power but the wisdom to rule. Even the ideals of the country must come
out of the common life, or there at least be abundantly nourished. The
German writers protest that the purely native ideals of the people do
not represent the meaning and purpose of the State. The natural
feelings of the people lack purpose and definiteness.
The State is
something very different from the sum of the people and the
representation of their will. The native sense of solidarity is not
at all like the organization that comes through the State. But this
abstract conception of the State as a being different from the people
is precisely, in the view of such writers as Dickinson, the cause of
wars. Upon this point Dickinson sees now a wide parting of the ways.
We must have either one kind of world or the other. We must continue
our warlike habits, and make the God-state the object of our religion,
or abandon all this for a thorough-going democracy. It is the special
interest that is assumed to inhere in the God-state that is the menace
to peace everywhere. The abstract theory of State inspires far-seeing
policies, democracy lives more by its natural instincts and feelings.
The theory of necessary expansion, the right to grow and to intrude,
is a natural deduction from the conception of the God-state; loyalty
to the State demands ever increasing lands and population in order to
have more military power.
The democracy, of course, can harbor no such conception of State.
Loyalty, in the democracy, must be to state and to statesmen rather as
leaders of the people. The first and most necessary factor in
patriotism as loyalty to authority is that authority _must_ represent
interests of country and people and must for that reason deserve
loyalty. Educationally, the problem is quite the reverse of the
educational problem of the autocracy. The people are not to be trained
in obedience and subservience to the state, but we have mainly to
create in the minds of all people the capacity to recognize true
leaders. It is not loyalty to authority as such, we say, that is
wanted, but loyalty to leader _who has no power at all except the
power of the good and its forceful presentation_. A democracy is a
society in which the aristocrats rule by persuasion, although we must
think of this aristocracy as an aristocracy of intellect and morality
rather than of birth and wealth. The ideal, we suppose, toward which
our definition of democracy leads is a state in which authority as
represented in the institutions of government, and leadership
represented in natural superiority coincide. It is a State in which
the good and the great shall govern. But in general, parliaments
cannot now be the sources of moral and intellectual leadership of the
people. They are subjected to too many conflicting interests. The time
may come, we say, when authority and superiority will coincide, when
laws will be made and executed by those who ought to do these things
rather than by those who merely have the power to gain opportunity to
do so. At any time and place we _may_, of course, behold great
leadership combined with great authority. A true democracy is a state
in which such coincidence will be inevitable.
The minds of men are now full of these themes. They ask how nations
may become unified without injustice and autocracy.
Trotter says that
national unity is what is wanted most of all things now in England.
England must become conscious of itself, he says, and infuse into
public affairs a spirit that will carry leaders far beyond their own
personal interests. England has survived until now in spite of a
strong handicap of discord. He speaks of the imperfect morale of
England, shown in the war, which arose from the preceding social
discord, and shows that the only perfect morale is that which is based
upon social unity in the nation. All this is true also of ourselves.
We also have our problem of creating loyalty to government and a
national unity upon which a perfect morale both for peace and for war
may be assured, by inspiring an ideal of honor, honesty, and
efficiency in all public service, and also by arousing an intense
interest in public service and deep appreciation of what public
service and leadership mean, on the part of all the people. This is
plainly not merely a work of _cleaning politics_. It is a work of
public education. The attitude of a people toward authority and
leadership is something more than a _susceptibility_ to leadership and
influence. There is a desire for the experience of ecstatic social
moods, the craving to be active and to be led. We make a great mistake
if we think all that democracy means is an instinct of individual
independence, a desire to take part in the government as an
individual. It is also a social craving that is involved. The presence
of the great leader, even in times of peace, stimulates social
feeling, and raises it to a productive level. This social feeling, we
say, is not a mere reaction. It is the expression of a desire and
readiness on the part of the people to participate in social
activities, and to attach themselves to worthy leaders, or to those
now who appeal to the most dominant selective faculties.
It is precisely at this point that the educational problem comes into
view. We are likely to think of the public education required in a
democracy as too exclusively political education, education that will
enable the individual to assert himself--to know, to criticize, to
vote, to take an active part in politics. This spirit is especially
prominent in English life. It is all very good in itself and
necessary. But we need to educate ourselves also so that _we may have
a capacity to be led, in the right direction_. To increase
sensitiveness to leadership, but also to make that sensitiveness
selective of true values, is one of the great educational problems of
a democracy.
It seems to be a part of the work of education to create popular
heroes, to do upon a higher level what the public press does in its
own way, but mainly partisanly and too often from wholly unworthy
motives--make reputations. We must do more in the teaching of history
and biography than to glorify the lives of dead heroes.
We need to be
quite as much concerned about coming heroes. We must excite the
imagination of the young and prejudice the public mind through
educational channels, in favor of sincere and true leaders. The
opportunity of the story teller is large, in this work, and we need
also to develop to a very high degree of excellence the educational
newspaper. One of our great needs in education in this country is a
daily newspaper for all schools--one that shall be both informing and
influential, appealing by every art to the selective faculties,
governed absolutely by ethical, or at least not by political and
partisan motives. The power of such a press might be very great
indeed. As an unifying influence and a ready means of communication,
and an instrument of use in the organization of all children, the
function of this press would be a highly important one.
All means of creating political ideals from within, of forging the
links between leader and people in the plastic minds of children and
youths, will be an education in one of the fundamental elements of
patriotism. Such an education would be very different, however, from
the state planned and authorized education that has been carried on
under autocratic regimes. The difference is one of spirit and result,
rather than of method. In one case the State becomes a kind of
Nirvana, in the thought of which personality and individuality are
negated. Patriotism produced in the minds of the young under the
influence of a democratic spirit tends to become a creative force
rather than a blind devotion to an accepted order.
Institutions are
made and advanced rather than merely obeyed and defended in this
educational process. The widest scope and the freest opportunity are
allowed for superior qualities of leaders and for right principles to
have an effect upon society (and the result we invite indeed is a
profound hero worship on the part of the young), but the conditions
would be such that no other kind of authority would be able to exert a
wide influence. To secure these conditions is, of course, one of the
chief tasks of all the administrative branches of our educational
service.
The final factor of patriotism, according to our analysis, is loyalty
to country as an historical object. The ideas and the feelings
centering about the conception of country as personal, as living, as
having rights and experience, duties and individuality are likely to
be vivid and intense. They are the inspirers of supreme devotion to
country, and also at times, of morbid national pride and fanatical
country-worship. The education of this idea of country we should
suppose would be one of the fundamental problems of the development of
patriotism. Presumably we are not to try to destroy this idea of
country that all people seem to have, or to show it as one of the
illusions of personification. Country is, of course, different from
the mere sum of the people. It has continuity and it performs
functions and it is an historic entity. Modernize and reform this
idea, we must, but we cannot do away with it as something archaic and
superstitious. Country is real, the concepts of honor and right belong
to it, and country is something to which the mind must do homage.
Boutroux says that a nation is a _person_, and has a right to live and
to have its personality recognized as its own. Granting this to be
true, and that we must think of country as personal and active, the
question arises whether this concept of country is something that
_requires in any definite way educational interference_.
We should say
that if countries are essentially living historic entities having as
such a high degree of reality, this reality-sense will be an important
element in the practical life of peoples. There can be no thought in
our historical era of breaking up these entities we call nations. It
is a day of intensified rather than of diminished nationalism. The
sense of reality of nations must, we might think, be made more
intense; pride of country must remain; we may find some place even for
the idea of the divine nature of country, which is an element in the
patriotic spirit everywhere. That this conception of country is a very
necessary element in the morale of a country in war seems clear; that
the morale of peace must be founded upon the same personal and
religious sentiments we can hardly doubt.
_Ambition for country_ is a normal result of the acceptance of the
idea of country as personal, and ambition for country appears to be
the very essence of any patriotic sentiment that is sincere. Still
ambition for country has been, in some of its forms, a cause of wars.
What other conclusion can we come to, then, than that ambition for
country must be subjected to radical educational influences? This is
the reverse side of political progress. Ambition must be given new
content and new direction. All the power and the sentiment of the old
imperialistic motive must remain, but all peoples must now be educated
to see that the maintenance of its position in the world on the part
of any nation is now a far more difficult and far more complex task
than ever before. The building of empire must be shown to have been
far easier and far less heroic, and much less a test of the
superiority of a nation than we have supposed. We can show that
military virtues are much more nearly universal than has often been
assumed, and that nations that are inherently superior must abandon
voluntarily the