The social problems of education that have arisen because of our new
world relations and new internal conditions in our own country are of
course only special phases of social education as a whole, and social
education cannot indeed be separated sharply from other educational
questions. There are, however, new demands and new evidences, and new
points of view from which we see social education (or better,
education in its social aspects), in a somewhat new and different
light, as compared with our ideas of the school in the days before the
war. We have discussed some of these social problems.
Now we must
consider them both in their general significance, and also in their
more specifically pedagogical aspects.
There appear to be two things that social education needs especially
to do now: create and sustain a firmer unity at home--a wider and
deeper loyalty on the part of the individual to all the causes and to
all the groups to which he is attached; and to make our _world-consciousness_ a more productive state of mind.
It is perhaps
because such educational proposals as these are generally left in the
form of ideals and things hoped for in a distant future, and are not
examined to see whether they may be made definite programs, and are
legitimate demands to be made now, that we are likely to regard all
suggestions of this nature as impracticable. And yet the production of
_morale_ at home and a social consciousness adequate for our new
relations abroad seems to be a proper demand to make even upon the
school. In part, of course, and perhaps largely, the need is first of
all for practical relations, but we must consider educationally also
the fundamental and creative factors of the psychic process itself
which must in the end sustain the relations that we have established
at such cost and shall now begin to elaborate as practical functions.
The greatest work of social education to-day is to infuse into all the
social relations a new and more ardent spirit. It is the elevation of
the social moods to a more productive level, we might say, that is
wanted. Æsthetic elements, imagination, and the harmonizing of
individual and social motives are needed. War has shown us the
possibilities of exalted social moods; what we ought to do now is to
consider how we may make our morale of peace equal in efficiency and
in power to our war morale. This is in great part a problem of social
education.
Every nation has its own especial social problems which must become
educational problems, and be dealt with in some way according to the
methods available in schools. In England the social questions seem to
be more in mind and to be better understood than here.
They are more
conscious there of social disharmony and of living a socially divided
life than we are. They have seen at close range the dangers of class
interests and individual interests. Individualism, class distinction
and party politics and the independence of labor came near proving the
ruin of England. The Bishop of Oxford has expressed himself as
believing that the blank stupid conservatism of his country, as he
calls it, is really broken and that a new sense of service is actually
dawning in all directions. Trotter says (and he too is thinking of
England) that a very small amount of conscious and authoritative
direction, a little sacrifice of privilege, a slight relaxation in the
vast inhumanity of the social machine might at the right moment have
made a profound effect in the national spirit.
Generalizing, and now
thinking of social phenomena in terms of the psychology of the herd, he
says that the trouble in modern society is that capacity for
individual reaction--that is for making different reactions to the same
stimulus--has far outstripped the capacity for intercommunication.
Society has grown in complexity and strength, but it has also grown in
disorder.
Such disharmony of the social life of course exists also in America.
We have not the sharp division of classes and interests and the
demonstrative and protesting individualism that are to be found in
England (our individual rights are taken more for granted perhaps) but
for that very reason, it may well be, our disharmonies are all the
more dangerous and difficult to overcome. The tension of the
individual and the social will (using MacCurdy's expression) is great.
We are highly individualistic in our mode of life, as is shown both in
domestic and in public affairs. Specialization and an intense interest
in occupations that bring individual distinction and large financial
returns have certainly taken precedence over the more fundamental and
common activities and interests.
It is these fundamental and common activities and interests and
sympathies that ought to be the chief concern of social education, or
perhaps we had better say that all our educational processes ought so
to be socialized as to broaden sympathies and make activities common.
Education must constantly strive to make the common background of our
national life more firm and strong. More important to-day than any
further education in the direction of specialization of life in
America is the securing of a strong cohesion throughout society by
means of common interests and moods. It is true that specialization
carried out in some ideal way may provide just the conditions needed
for the best social order, but this can be only in so far as
individuals become specialized within the whole of society, so to
speak, in which individuals continue to have a common life.
Individuals as wholes must not be differentiated and left to find
their own means of coördination and association, or be brought
together artificially by law or convention.
Specialization must be
made the reverse side, as it were, of a social process in which at
every point coördination is also provided for. At the present time, it
is the latter rather than the former that is of most importance to us.
Social education in a democratic country must always be a matter of the
greatest concern. In autocratic societies the cohesive force exists in
traditions or can at any moment be generated executively. The
autocratic country can be held together in spite of social antagonism.
In a democracy this cannot be. We voluntarily accept some degree of
incoördination and confusion for the sake of our ideals of freedom. We
do not wish cohesion based upon any form of pessimism or fear--fear of
enemies without or of powers within. To secure unity in our own
national life we must work for it incessantly, and we ought to be
willing to, for unity means so much to us. It is not cohesion at any
price that we want, but voluntary and natural union, and to secure that
we should not hesitate to make our educational institutions broad
enough to include the education of the most fundamental relations of
the individual to society. We want neither a "healthy egoism" nor a
morbid self-denying spirit that is only a step removed from
slavery--neither instinctive independence nor an artificial and
enforced social organization. We must not be deceived either by a vague
and false idea of liberty or by the equally vicious ideal of militarism
with its superficiality of social relations and its pedagogical
simplicity. Both these ideas represent social life on a low plane.
Healthy individualism, even with its strong sense of tolerance and
comradeship and its respect for law and order, is not the kind of
social ideal that we should now cultivate, for it is too primitive a
state to fit into our already complex social life, or to be a basis for
the firm solidarity we need for the future. As for militarism, it may
become a mere shell, giving the appearance of social unity when its
bonds are mere shreds and the last drop of moral vitality has gone out
of it.
Our need and problem are plain enough. We wish to develop social
cohesion and unity upon a natural and permanent basis of social
feeling expressed in, and in turn produced by, social organization,
voluntarily entered into for practical and for ideal purposes. Such
solidarity can neither be made nor unmade by external forces. We must
form and sustain it by creating internal bonds. We live, in any great
society, always over smoldering fires, however highly civilized the
society, and we are always threatened with the eruption of volcanic
forces. It is fatuous to ignore this, and to make a fool's paradise of
our democracy. Our problem is to produce such a social life as shall
keep us safe through all dangers--dangers from enemies without, and
within, and underneath. A democracy, or indeed any society after all
and at its best, contains the makings of the crowd and the mob.
Organized as it is, it is always an order made of material units which
_may_ enter into disorder. Society is based upon social consciousness,
upon the consciousness of kind, but it also has _collective force_.
The crowd and the collective force are always contained in society.
However far human nature is removed from its primitive form, the
social order is always fragile. Mental operations that are not
intelligent and are not emotional in the ordinary sense, but which
consist, so to speak, of common factors among primitive feelings, may
gain and for a time hold the ascendancy. Eruptions in the social
consciousness are of the nature of morbid phenomena, and are rare and
exceptional expressions of the collective life, but we are never free
entirely from the menace of them. Social order, we say, is always
fragile. We must not overlook that fact. It is this characteristic of
the social life, the potentiality of mob spirit and the forces of
primitive anger and fear, that lead some writers to think, wrongly we
believe, that this is the psychological basis of wars in general. War
comes out of the order of society. The higher ecstatic states and the
ideals of man enter into them. These things we speak of are of the
nature of disorder, or are only the order of pure momentum. But
whatever the truth may be about the relation of instinct to war and
however remote the dangers to ourselves from the forces which in
society make for disorder, it is the work of social education to
control, transform and utilize all social and collective forces, the
primitive emotions and instincts, the moods of intoxication and all
the higher ecstasies of the social life, and it is only, we suppose,
by thus consciously and with premeditation controlling these forces
that in any real sense we can "make democracy safe for the world."
It is the idea of society coördinated by intelligence and by common
interests and moods that we must always hold before us.
Trotter says
that civilization has never brought a well-coördinated society, and
that a gregarious unit consciously directed would be a new type of
biological organism. If this be so, the time seems peculiarly ripe to
make advance toward this better social solidarity. Both the promise
and the need seem greatest in the great English speaking countries
now. There is waiting, we may truly think, a larger sphere of life for
all democratic countries. If it be conscious direction alone that can
bring about the change, education has a long and a hard task before
it, to make the democratic peoples capable of such conscious
direction. This must come in part by the development of the idea of
leadership, and by the production of all the conditions that make
leadership possible. In part it must come by the clear perception of
definite tasks to be performed by nations and by all organizations
within nations--tasks which have all grown out of the relations
existing within society. In part it means cultivating intelligent
appreciation of social values, and developing in every possible way
all the social powers.
What we appear to need most in our social education just now is a
conception of what the individual is and what the social life is in
terms of the desires and the functions they embody.
These are the raw
materials with which we work. We should then treat all our social
problems in a somewhat different way from that in which they are
mainly dealt with now. We should try especially to make harmony in
society not by maneuvering so that we might have peace and good
feeling for their own sakes, but by coordinating the functions which
are expressed in the life of the individual and in all social
relations. That is precisely what is not being done now, in our
present stage of society, either in the life of the individual, or in
the wider life of society. People live without deep continuity in
their lives, and we are not conscious enough of the ideal
relationships individuals should have with one another, in order to
make the social life productive. In a word we do not sufficiently take
account of the purposes to be achieved, but are too conscious of
states of feeling. We do not yet appear to see all the possibilities
contained in the social life, what voluntary unions are necessary, and
what kind of community life must be developed before we can have a
really democratic order.
We must not be content, certainly, with a merely superficial and
external solidarity or the purely practical gregariousness of the
shops or the artificial forms of the conventional social life. Society
must more and more accomplish results by the social life. Coordination
in the performance of a few obvious functions, and enthusiasm for a
few partisan causes, will not be enough. Nor will such order as
militarism represents suffice. Is it not plain, indeed, that democracy
must rest upon deeper and far more complex coördinations than we have
now, and that social feelings or moods must be made more creative? It
is the desire to accomplish ends through social organization, rather
than the desire to possess and enjoy, that must be made to dominate
it. To effect such changes in the social life must be in great part
the work of education.
Social education in our present time and conditions might very well be
considered in terms of the antinomies which exist in society. These
antinomies represent the obstacles to national unity.
They stand for
inhibitions which are expressed in feelings that are wholly
unproductive. Each one of them is a measure of so much waste, so much
failure and lack of momentum, so much disorder and disorganization. A
program of social education, we say, might be based upon a
consideration of these antinomies. It would consider mainly how the
waste and obstruction of these conflicting purposes of the social life
might be overcome by giving desires more harmonious and more positive
direction. A complete account of social education from this standpoint
would need to take notice of many disharmonies now very evident in our
life as a nation. Among them would be found sectional antagonisms,
party opposition, frictions of social classes and industrial classes,
religious differences, disharmony between the sexes, racial
antipathies. Some of these we have already touched upon briefly. Some
others seem to require further mention in the present connection.
The lack of understanding and sympathy between lower and upper classes
in society plays a larger part in democratic America than we are
usually inclined to admit. There are divided interests, divergent
mores, lack of unity and coördination in some of the most urgent
duties because of the antagonism of classes and the lack of
understanding, on the part of one, of the ways of another. Especially
in civic life the unproductiveness of the situation is very apparent.
What money and advantage on one side combined with willing hands on
the other might do is left undone.
In part this antagonism of classes is merely the result of difference
in manners. There are manners and forms that constitute a common bond
among the members of a class everywhere. Ought we not to take
advantage of this example and use the suggestion it offers for
bridging over the differences that we complain of? We have seen during
the war, also, how well common tasks can unite all classes. Does not
our educational institution afford us opportunity to continue this
advantage, and make common service lead more directly to understanding
and appreciation, not for the sake of the sympathy alone, but because
of all the practical consequences and the opportunities for the future
that are thus opened up? We assume that social feeling may be created
through social organization. Mabie says that America is distinguished
by its capacities for forming helpful organizations. We must make the
most of this habit, which presumably is derived from the neighborliness and comradeship of our original colonial life. We need
many group causes, not artificially planned as trellises upon which to
grow social feelings, but, first of all certainly, in order to
accomplish those things that can be done effectively only socially.
The secret of harmony among classes is presumably not to allow any
class to have vital interests which are exclusively its own, since to
have an exclusive vital interest means of course to live defensively
or to carry on offensive strategy. The chief interest of the great
working class at the present time is plainly to secure a living, and
it is the sense of isolation in this struggle which in part at least
is the cause of many unfavorable conditions in our present social
order. Ought not education to prepare the way for a different attitude
in which all should become vitally interested in the economic problems
of all? This does not mean an education directed toward enlarging the
spirit of philanthropy; it means mainly organization to serve common
purposes.
These social problems are very numerous. They are both national and
local. Any city which will undertake to solve in its civic relations
this problem of securing greater social unity in social causes will
provide an object lesson which will be of the greatest value. It is in
these local groups perhaps that some of the best experimental social
work may be done. Here the educational and the political modes of
attack can best be coördinated, results can be made most tangible, and
the primitive and simple forms of solidarity most nearly realized. It
is indeed by going back to these simpler forms of social life and
seeking means of coordinating the group in fundamental activities that
the greatest headway will be made in the solution of wider social
problems.
Another of the disharmonies which social education must from now on
undertake to control is the disharmony and the inequality of the
sexes, not so much as this appears in the domestic life as in the
broader relations of the social life. Brinton says that the ethnic
psychologist has no sounder maxim than that uttered by Steinthal, that
the position of women is the cardinal point of all social relations.
Every one, of course, now recognizes the fact that the position of
women is to-day in a transitional and experimental stage. Conflicting
motives are at work, and on the part of neither sex do the highest
motives seem to prevail, nor is there a full realization anywhere of
the values that are at stake. Men are thinking of the question of the
position of women too much from the standpoint of expediency, and are
scrutinizing too closely the immediate future. Women perhaps are
thinking too much just now of their _rights_. There is a decadent form
of chivalry or at least a sexuality that perpetuates conventions and
interests that on the whole seem to interfere with progress. Jealousy
and in general the tense emotional relations between the sexes obscure
larger issues. Thus misunderstanding or antagonism, or at least
disharmony, prevails in relations in which there should be perfect
harmony of ideals and purposes, and productive activities of the
highest nature. The education of women, whether for the domestic life
or for the life outside the home is plainly but a part of the
educational problem. The sexes have different desires, and it is
precisely the work of harmonizing these desires, and regulating and
coordinating activities and functions, that is the most important part
of social education in regard to the sexes.
It is not at all difficult to see what the basic need is. It is not so
easy to find practical means of applying the remedy in the form of
education, because the whole system of living of the sexes must in some
way be affected. The generalized principle on the practical side seems
clear. All classes or groups in society must learn to think and to act
not in terms of and with reference to the desires of their class alone,
but with regard to wider tasks and values that are not fully realized by
the most natural and the conventional activities of the class. The
question is not one of making a moral change--converting individuals or
classes from a spirit of selfishness to that of altruism. What we need
is an educational process and a social life in which the nature of the
individual and of the class is revealed as social, as best represented
and satisfied in situations in which both the individual and the wider
social idea work together.
Practically, we should say, the problem of education of the sexes with
reference to one another and to a wider social life consists first of
all in actually educating them together not merely in juxtaposition
but in relations of a practical character. The relations of the sexes
have evidently been mainly domestic and emotional, or in cases where
they are practical the position of women has been little better than
servitude. Of social coördination there has been little.
_Education of
the sexes through situations in which the special abilities of each
sex are brought into action_, doing for the wider social life what the
natural and instinctive differentiation of activities has accomplished
in its way for the domestic life seems to be the main principle now to
be employed in the education of the sexes. Women must be made to see
that the ideal of independence which is uppermost at the present time
is only the mark of a transitional stage, and that coördination in
which of course competition of various kinds cannot be entirely
eliminated will be the final adjustment. We should have no fear of
placing the sexes, in their educational situations, in positions where
competition is necessary, since through competition fundamental
desires may be brought to the surface and regulated.
Provided we admit
at all that a new social adjustment is needed between the sexes, we
can hardly fail to see that it is primarily in a practical life lived
together that both education for the new order will best be conducted
and the new order itself realized.
The details of method of what we have called social education for
democracy we can only suggest here and of course in a very imperfect
and tentative way. All aspects of education and every department of
the school are involved; and every available method employed in
education must in some way be turned to the purpose of developing
social relations. In a very general way we think of these specific
processes of the school as methods of learning, methods of art, and