The School and Society

The School and Society

A second edition affords a grateful opportunity for recalling that this

little book is a sign of the coöperating thoughts and sympathies of many

persons. Its indebtedness to Mrs. Emmons Blaine is partly indicated in

the dedication. From my friends, Mr. and Mrs. George Herbert Mead, came

that interest, unflagging attention to detail, and artistic taste which,

in my absence, remade colloquial remarks until they were fit to print,

and then saw the results through the press with the present attractive

result—a mode of authorship made easy, which I recommend to others

fortunate enough to possess such friends.

It would be an extended paragraph which should list all the friends

whose timely and persisting generosity has made possible the school

which inspired and defined the ideas of these pages. These friends, I am

sure, would be the first to recognize the peculiar appropriateness of

especial mention of the names of Mrs. Charles R. Crane and Mrs. William

R. Linn.

And the school itself in its educational work is a joint undertaking.

Many have engaged in shaping it. The clear and experienced intelligence

of my wife is wrought everywhere into its texture. The wisdom, tact and

devotion of its instructors have brought about a transformation of its

original amorphous plans into articulate form and substance with life

and movement of their own. Whatever the issue of the ideas presented in

this book, the satisfaction coming from the coöperation of the diverse

thoughts and deeds of many persons in undertaking to enlarge the life of

the child will abide.

January 5, 1900

We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as

something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That

which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual

child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance

in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of

geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness,

order, and industry—it is from such standards as these that we judge the

work of the school. And rightly so. Yet the range of the outlook needs

to be enlarged. What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child,

that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal

for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our

democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through

the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members. All its

better thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the new

possibilities thus opened to its future self. Here individualism and

socialism are at one. Only by being true to the full growth of all the

individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.

And in the self-direction thus given, nothing counts as much as the

school, for, as Horace Mann said, “Where anything is growing, one former

is worth a thousand re-formers,”

Whenever we have in mind the discussion of a new movement in education,

it is especially necessary to take the broader, or social view.

Otherwise, changes in the school institution and tradition will be

looked at as the arbitrary inventions of particular teachers; at the

worst transitory fads, and at the best merely improvements in certain

details—and this is the plane upon which it is too customary to consider

school changes. It is as rational to conceive of the locomotive or the

telegraph as personal devices. The modification going on in the method

and curriculum of education is as much a product of the changed social

situation, and as much an effort to meet the needs of the new society

that is forming, as are changes in modes of industry and commerce.

It is to this, then, that I especially ask your attention: the effort to

conceive what roughly may be termed the “New Education” in the light of

larger changes in society. Can we connect this “New Education” with the

general march of events? If we can, it will lose its isolated character,

and will cease to be an affair which proceeds only from the

over-ingenious minds of pedagogues dealing with particular pupils. It

will appear as part and parcel of the whole social evolution, and, in

its more general features at least, as inevitable. Let us then ask after

the main aspects of the social movement; and afterwards turn to the

school to find what witness it gives of effort to put itself in line.

And since it is quite impossible to cover the whole ground, I shall for

the most part confine myself to one typical thing in the modern school

movement—that which passes under the name of manual training, hoping if

the relation of that to changed social conditions appears, we shall be

ready to concede the point as well regarding other educational

innovations.

I make no apology for not dwelling at length upon the social changes in

question. Those I shall mention are writ so large that he who runs may

read. The change that comes first to mind, the one that overshadows and

even controls all others, is the industrial one—the application of

science resulting in the great inventions that have utilized the forces

of nature on a vast and inexpensive scale: the growth of a world-wide

market as the object of production, of vast manufacturing centers to

supply this market, of cheap and rapid means of communication and