Education for democracy

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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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EDUCATION FOE
DEMOCRACY

BY

HENRY FREDERICK COPE

jeeto gorfe

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
19£0

All rights reserved

4 O^^

COPYEIGHT, 1920,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and printed. Published, April, 1920

<?

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

-*^^ Education in a Democracy 1

II Discovering the Need 15

III Democracy as a Religious Ideal .... 28

*"!¥ Religion in Democratic Education ... 42

V Education and the Problems of Democracy 59

VI Problems of World Living . . . . . . 69.

VII The Spiritual Nature of Education in a De-
mocracy 81

VIII The School of Democracy 93

IX Beginning at Home . 108

X Democratic Training Through the Church 123

XI The Public Schools and Democracy's Pro-
gram 138

The Schools and Moral Training . . . 155n

XIII Spiritual Values in School Studies . . . 168

XIV Spiritual Values in School Activities . .183

XV The Bible and Public Education .... 194

XVI Organizing the Community 210

XVII A Community Program 221

XVIII \The Function of a College in a Democracy . 232

XIX Teaching Religion in the College . . . 245

\ XX The Realization of Democracy .... 257

' XXI Democracy in the Crucial Hour .... 266

I

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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER I

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY

Democracy is more than a form of government; it is
a social ideal, a mode of life and a quality of the human
spirit; therefore it cannot be imposed on a people; it
must be acquired.

Democracy is social self-determination directed toward
ideal ends. It is the civil organization of a common
goodwill. It is an attitude of mind which holds that the
highest gopd lies in the good of all, that the aim of all
being is common well being. It is a faith which holds
that a common goodwill may control all society. It
is an ideal which rises in the minds of a free people and
depends on their wills and their wisdom for its expression
in social life. Hence it has a fundamental interest in
education as the means by which people gain vision,
develop a social will and organize their purposes
effectively.

But democracy is more than an ideal; it is a condition

;of living; it is a social order. It_Js for practice as I

jwell as for proclamation. We believe m Tt as a mode [

oT'soci^l life. It is this practical realization which the

jworld most eagerly desires. No question grips us more

than this: How can our splendid vision be brought

\o earth and men become willing and able to solve their

j problems of living together? Two answers appear in

'American current life : by legislation — that is social

1 - ^

^

2 EDUCATXO:^f FOR DEMOCRACY

regulation and construction, and by ediication. Which
is the better way ?

In North America foraial education is the product of '
democracy; in the world-life democracy will be largely
the product of education. The American ideal of democ-
racy has developed through the practical experience of
a free people finding working modes of social organization
and control. That experience not only clarified the ideal i
of democracy, it revealed the conditions of its realization,
and convinced even the average citizen of its entire
dependence on education. The government that sets
men free must aid them to self-government. Political
self-preservation dictated universal educational oppor-
tunity. Schools were founded to save the free state,
and, of necessity, they became free schools. Education
became a recognized and essential function of a democ-
racy. The democratic state saves itself by saving its
selves. Its development depends on the development of
every member to the very last one.

Democracy gives birth to general ediication. If edu-
cation is the duty of democracy it is because the develop-
ment of democracy is a certain result of true educa-
tion. The state must maintain the school because the
school maintains the state. But the work of the schools
depends on the spirit of the state. Given a state de-
signed for democratic ends it will foster a system of
education designed to develop persons in their social
capacities. Here schools exist to train the young in
the art of social living. It is their function so to develop
in growing .persons their social powers and values that -
they will organize an ideal society. The democratic
purpose expresses itself in education in two ways : First,
it establishes a definite aim and test, seeking fully devel-
oped, socially capable citizens ; in a word, education in
a democracy is simply society organizing itself to develop
the democratic mind and democratic methods of living

ed\7CAtion in a democracy 3

Second, it detei vnines the conditions of success in popular
education: the purposes of education can only be fully
achieved under democratic conditions; that is to say,
persoTQ^ can develop to their fullness onLy^ in a society
organized jgrimarily for th&.sake of perg^gps. '^ This is
the distinguishing mark of a democracy ; it is that form
of social organization which is determined by the needs
of persons, in which civil rights are based upon personal
qualities and rights and in which the needs of persons
ultimately determine all procedures and shape all aims.
These characteristics of civil life are essential also to
an educational program, so that, in an important sense,
democracy in action is all educative.

DEMOCRACY DEFINED

The unity of education and democracy becomes clear
when, in the light of the modern personal-social aim and
process of the schools, we come to examine our current
concept of democracy. That concept is implied in
Lincoln^s famous words, "Government of the people,

^ by the people and for the people," with emphasis on the
last clause. ^ A democracy is that form of social organiza-

jKmi for civil purposes which existing by the will of the
people directs all its powers to promoting the welfare
of all the people. ^ Other civil forms may exist to main-
tain the prestige of hereditary monarchs, to perpetuate
constitutional modes, to extend territory or to advance
trade; but a democracy has the peculiar purpose, that
its people may have life and may have it more abundantly.
It is well to keep in mind this distinguishing mark. It
is often supposed that the right of every person to
participate in public affairs makes a democracy ; but that
right is only incidental to this dominating purpose, that
every power of the whole social organization shall be
directed to the public good. That end makes public and
iiniversal participation essential. The child goes to school

4 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

for public ends and not for private ,.notives alone;
schooling is the method by which he lives and learns to '
live the life of a democracy.

Democracy an educational problem. If the democratic
state must foster education it is not less true that educa-
tion must foster the democratic state and society. An
educational program of developing lives must be seriously
concerned with the society in which these lives are to
develop. The new social ideals of education are possible
only in a social order which is essentially democratic.
The social aim of the school can be realized only where
society exists fundamentally for the sake of persons.

/The difficulties in our present system of education are

largely those due to conditions of operation or control

\ which are not truly democratic or to an environment

Vwhich undoes that which the school accomplishes. We are
seeking to educate persons for freedom under school-room

'experiences of autocrac}^: the controlling purpose of the
school often is either the prc})aration of the children
of the well-to-do for the dominance of others, or the
training of others for efficient serfdom. The atmosphere
of the school may be emphatically anti-democratic ; it
may be the tool of political parties or of a social cabal.
We can hope to train for democracy only by the
experience of democracy. At present the school is set
in a society which does not yet fully believe in social
education; it is not yet deeply concerned about persons,
as such, or their powers or their social realizations.
Rather it is anxious that each shall be prepared to play
his part to his own individual advantage. And this is
only to say that our society has not yet accepted democ-
racy. All that it means and how its meaning is realized
we are slowly learning.

Education a political problem. Democracy depends
on education because it cannot exist by edict; it is made
possible only by making democrats. It is more than a\

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 5

constitutional civil order; it is a governing ideal in the
minds of those who constitute the state. It is not a
method of governing the people ; it is a method by which
people organize their common affairs. Acts of legislative
bodies do not make a democracy; it often exists in spite
of forms of government, as in the case of Great Britain.
A democracy is possible only as democracy is developed
in the minds and wills, in the habits and ideals of all the
people. This is the task of education.

As a democracy develops the educational imperatixfi*^
is intensified. Social life develops intensively and
extensively. In each civil unit democracy becomes more
complete; it reaches out further into all forms of life.
It widens the social duties and privileges of every person.
It takes over wider reaches of life. The socialization of
governmental functions which has developed so rapidly
in the last decade is, wherever these functions are exer-
cised by the people for the people, simply the more com-
plete application of the democratic principle. Even a
cursory comparison of the duties of citizenship in the
United States a century ago with those duties to-day
will suggest the greatly heightened need for the education
of the citizen. This need is based on the fact that he
has become more truly and more fully a part of the
state. He projects more of himself into the life of the
state; he not only pays taxes and votes for representa-
tives ; he must use his brain in thinking through grave
problems ; and, under the experience of the great war,
he has learned that he must serve with all his powers as
part of his identification with the state.

Democracy makes new demands on all. The,. develop- jf«
ment of democracy extensively may make even greater I [
demands on the citizen. We look back over the growing
art of democracy from the folk-meeting and the town-
meeting to the state and nation, and now we believe we
are within hailing distance of a world democracy. This

6 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

is not only an extension from one unit to many, from a
few states to all states, it is an extension from small
groups to an all-inclusive group. It is not only a political
contagion, passing on to new groups; it is a new life
which welds all the groups into one. Whatever the actual
social organization of the world may be to-morrow we
ar^ facing^ the problem of Jiving jn_ajworld of the closest
sociaLunity under^democratic^id^^ OurTmmediate tasl^
is that of learning to live in the common, close neighbor-
hood of the whole world.

A world democracy is upon us almost irrespective of
forms of civil government, at least the form of civil
organization follows rather than precedes the democratic
experience. The whole world has been drawn into a
common neighboring by the bonds of transportation and
commerce. To-day we~afe"nearer to the remotest people
tlian orice we were to those in the next state, and we are
more dependent on them than once we were on our near
neighbors. Into every home the life of every land enters
every day. The breakfast-table may carry contributions
from every continent. Into the lives of all we each reach
out, not only with ease but with tremendous potentiality.
There are no longer any independent peoples. No nation
-<:aii^any_lDiig£r._c^ary£^_mitJ^ The social

obligations that come from propinquity are on all,
together with the social duties that arise from mutual
dependence. The welfare of the least cannot be a matter
of indifference to the largest.

PROBI^MS OF WORLD DEMOCRACY

World living has become a problem in personality.
This weaving together of the world life has been accom-
panied by the infusion of the blood of personality into
the strands of the web. National living has been person-
alized. It is not governments that are thrown together
but people. It is not China with whom we have to live

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 7

but the Chinese people. This is the case because the
contacts are so largely personal. Our relations with
other people are not matters of diplomatic arrangements ;
they are matters of our daily bread, our common, personal
needs and our currency and food of thought and feeling.
Further, the relations are personal because civil organiza-
tion increasingly becomes personal. Our world-social
experiences are determined not by some overhead mech-
anism created by the state but by our own wills, our own
habits of life and thought. Our adjustments are not
between the constitutions of states but between the char-
acters of peoples. The blood of life is in the web that
binds us together and so world-relations pass from organ-
ization to organism.

Whatever the external forms of civil life may be the
fact is that all must learn to live together in a common
world-life which is increasingly democratic in character.
No one can be exempt from this world-life ; none who
have realized it in any degree desire to be exempt. But
it is a new life which cannot be lived in the spirit and
the mode of the old. It makes new demands. It estab-
lishes new standards. It is constantly revealing new
requirements. Old ideals are inadequate in a new world.
Old motives, based on individual or purely national
concepts, will not be sufficient. We need a new morality
for a new wor'ld life. And therefore we need a new
education, or, rather, we need the full development of
our educational ideals, conceived in democracy, to meet
the needs of this fuller democracy of the race.

Democracy is essentially a personal process. Before
attempting to state the characteristics of education for
democracy, one must face a question that expresses a
real difficulty to many. Says one, this reasoning moves
in a circle for it regards democracy as both cause and
effect in progress, it proposes that the world shall push
itseflf up hill. How can democracy both purpose and

8 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

effect its own progress? Can it grow beyond itself? Is
it not an attempt to elevate humanity by its own boot-
straps? Such objections appear to acquire special force
whenever we contrast the efficiency of a democratic state
with that of an autocracy. In the latter the overlord,
looking at his people objectively^ can will their betterment
overnight; in the former we must wait until the people,
who must see themselves subjectively, all will their own
betterment. But such comparisons lose sight of one
essential feature of a true democracy ; they overlook the
most important difference between autocracy and democ-
racy. That difference lies not so much in that there may
be one governor or many, but in this, that one is a form
of civil mechanism and the other is a mode of social living.
Democracy is not a method of making people do things;
it is a form of life under which people desire and will to
do. It is not a method of pushing people up hill; it is
the devotion of a people to a purpose which moves them
forward. It is not a mechanism but an inner motive
force. It does not expect to lift people but to develop
them.

The hope of democracy is not that people will make
laws regulating themselves into higher living but that
by the devotion of all to the ends of social living there
may be developed a common social will for better living.
It depends, not on regulation or controls imposed but
on ideals and motives that furnish an inner propulsion
for progress. It is government having its seat in the
wills of people and progress rising in the growing ideals
and desires of people.

Is social organization for the ends of personality pos-
sible? The central problem of democracy then lies in
the question whether people can develop their own ideals,
motives, wills, and powers of life. This development
must be in the active rather than in the passive mood ;
we must guard against speaking of " developing the

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 9

people," as by some overhead, benevolent and superior
minority. Improvement has to rise in the common will
or, if it does not rise there wholly, it must express itself
in the common. will. It is not necessary to discuss the
question whether people ever do will their own develop-
ment, for we know that there are not a few who persistently
seek higher levels and greater strength of life, and we
know that these individuals stimulate others to like
endeavors. The question is whether we can have a social
organism which, as a who'le, directs itself toward its own
development. Can a state be successfully organized for
the dominant purpose of growing the lives of men and
women ?

Is social evolution wholly subject to blind forces lying
outside our control, or is man, in the realm of personality,
a creature capable of self -directed evolution? The purely
naturalistic answer which subjects us entirely to outer
forces loses sight of the factor of the human conscious-
ness and will. This is just as real a fact as any other.
A person is not only subject to forces; he is a force.
He is the organizer of forces. He has the power of
considering, recognizing and, to a large degree, of di-
recting the very processes that determine what he shall
be. This is the power that gives rise to ediication, for
education is simply oux attempt to direct social evoliition.
Educ"ation is democracy at work developing its"own powers
of progress. The whole question leaps out of the realm
of speculation into that of demonstration. In the labora-
tory of life we are to-day scientifically working out an
answer to the question. Democracy is proving that
man can direct his own development. Every school is a
laboratory in that field. Social life and industry are
being directed and modified to an increasing degree by
the recognition of their power to determine character.
All life is being studied with reference to the educational
opportunities it offers and the forces it creates. In a

10 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

democracy we tend steadily toward the determination of
all the conditions of living by the study of their educa-
tional effects, by the manner in which they stimulate and
modify our lives. We ask, what manner of people are
being made by these things?

THE HOPE OF A BETTER WORLD

XThe realization of a truly democratic society depends
yvery much on the development of a spirit of humanism,
/that is, on an acceptance of the happiness and well-being
lof all mankind as the supreme aim in human existence.
Writing in days when the world is still in arms, when men
confidently ascribe the success of their side to the force
that sheds human blood, it is difficult to believe that such
a spirit can dominate mankind. Yet if it cannot, if the
good of all cannot be the aim of all, democracy is no
more than a political dream. A writer ^ in one of the
most thoughtful journals recently strongly urged the
" Ground for Hope," as he expressed it ; he finds many
signs, (traceable through the history of civilization, that
we are coming to a common social aim of human well-
being. He seeks for evidence in the question whether
" men have in that period .of modem history become more
united, better able to use their combined forces to a com-
mon end of social good, and wheMier on the whole they
have so used their powers. If this appears to be the
case, then in a practical sense the ideal of humanity is
brought nearer, and world relations on the mechanical
side are favorable to the increase of the common elements
in ethics and religion." - He also pertinently quotes :
" Ethically, as well as physically, humanity is becoming
one, one, not by the suppression of differences or the
mechanical arrangement of lifeless parts, but by a widened
consciousness of obligation, a more sensitive response to

1 F. S. Marvin, in the Hibbert Journal for April, 1918, page 387.

2 Jbid., page 399,

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 11

the claims of justice, a greater forbearance toward differ-
ences of type, a more enlightened conception of human
purpose." ^

The democratic ideal is being formed in all experience.
A democratic society must always tend to conceive it-
self in educational terms. It will see all life — whether
in the home, in social intercourse, in commerce, in shop
and factory or school — as an experience in school-
ing, in the development of powers, in discipline in the
art of living. So long as men are alive and so long
as their lives touch one another they must continue to
be educated. No man goes into a factory or a mill in
the morning and comes out the same person at night;
he has been changed by the experience of social contacts
with other lives, by work and by thought. Now this"
is one of those very simple facts that needs no elaborate
presentation. But it has been a fact which has not been
recognized always as a basis for action. Democracy,
because its main interest is in the changes that take
place in men and women, in the question whether those
changes are for the better or for the worse, democracy
looks at that day in the factory from a new angle, from
the educational point of view. A democracy says. We
will determine the conditions of factory-life because these
conditions determine so largely the lives of those who are
the state, in fact the factory helps to make or mar the
democracy. So that the interest in social welfare which
the modern state exhibits is something more than an
extension of its functions, it is the expression of its
very purpose, it is the discharge of its function of devel-
oping the lives of its people, ^t is government not only
of the people, as to conditions" 6T living, but for the
people, that these conditions may make the best kind of
people. No democracy can ignore any conditions that
affect the characters of persons.

1 Quotation from L. H. Hobhouse, "Morals in Evolution" (1916).

12 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

The manifold concerns of the democracy with the
details of the life of the people are exhibitions of educa-
tional activity. They reveal a social will organizing and
directing the forces of life, determining the experiences of
persons and groups, choosing the stimuli that shall come
to their lives, presenting to them forms of activity, so
that out of the whole of life there may develop a strong,
wise, just and loving people, living together in common
goodwill.

If education is democracy addressing itself to the duty
of self-development, how can we he sure that we are
moving m the right direction? How can we prepare
for the future when it is unknown to us? But it is not
necessary to predict the future nor to know the precise
conditions under which our children will have to live. We
have ground more sure than guesses about to-morrow.
We have, first, before our eyes readily discernable social
movements, the direction of which may be clearly seen
even though the end is not in sight, and, second, we
have this principle to proceed upon : that the best prepara-
tion for higher functions is the full discharge of existing
and present ones. To meet fully the demands of the
present hour is the best preparation for the coming one.
We do know what our needs are to-day and we know what
is called for by the present developments in our social
order. If this is an orderly universe we can safely pro-
ceed on the assurance that the duty of the presentfully
met prepares for the demands of To-rngxrow.
^ What then are the outsTaridtng needs of democracy
at this hour? If the concept of democracy het*e stated
is the true one then it is evident that the old answers to
this question are totally inadequate. These answers have
advocated a number of valuable additions to our educa-
tional program, some of which have proved highly useful.
They are efficient but not sufficient. We have been urged
to extend " education in citizenship," by which is meant,

EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 13

usually, instruction in the mode of our form of govern-
ment, in its local and state applications and in its constitu-
tional basis and present ideals. This needs to be done;
it is a constantly imperative duty in a nation absorbing
thousands of citizens from lands alien in government and
ideals. We jiuaL have a^jcitizjeBAhip—intelligent as to
methoil&_of-px0iSedure. And yet it takes more than civics
to make a citizen anywhere, and in a democracy more
than anywhere else.

We are told that one of the educational needs of a
democracy is that the people shall bejbrained f or^raxtical
usefulness. No one questions "tlie value of vocational
training, provided it means a vocation and a training for
all, that it does not mean the regimentation of the masses
to be the earlier ready for drafting into the ranks of
industry and that it does not mean depriving the young
of their heritage of joy and culture in order that they
may acquire the habits of wage-earning. But there is
no assurance that industrial efficiency will be accompanied
by competency to live the social life of a democracy.
Learningto make a living is part of the art of life ; but
it is only^parE A natioiTorexpert mechanics, merchants
and farmers would doubtless be better than a nation of
untrained and shiftless people; competency in industry
and commerce are amongst the foundations of national
happiness and power ; but those competencies may develop
a people into the very opposite of a democracy, into a
mere aggregation of groups each devoting its efficiencies
to its own ends, each seeking its own advantages and
thus developing, through unrestrained competition, only
social anarchy.

So slight a dismissal of these important needs in educa-
tion does not indicate an opinion that they are valueless.
They are ess_eniial. They are parts of the program of
education for democracy. But they have been so empha-
sized as to obscure certain other and yet more important

14 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

parts without which they are valueless. If democracy is
social organization for the sake of the growth of peo-
ple, for the development of their lives in a society, then
the educational program must include more than learning
the mechanics of government and more than training in
habits of self-support. It must include all that is involved
in the art of life in a society. The duty of a democracy
is to train its people to live in a society devoted to the
good of all.

Education for to-morrow's democracy will be education
for the fullness of living in society as effective, contribut-
ing members, serving its ends, devoted to its ideals, habit-
uated to its ways and trained to realize its purposes.
Education for to-morrow's democracy means facing this
problem: have we the vision, can we find the means and
develop the agencies not only to teach all how a society of
common goodwill should be organized, but also, through
actual experience, to train ourselves and our children in its
habits and activities, to grow in vision of its ideals and to
develop motives sufficiently high and strong to sustain and
inspire in all that may be involved in its realization.?

CHAPTER II

DISCOVERING THE NEED

Are our present educational plans and ideals adequate
for democracy as it must be? "" •^"-"^

Education for democracy would be a simple matter
under some conditions. It would be proper to assume
that any system of education in a truly democratic society,
when taken along with the experience of living in that
society, would constitute adequate preparation for democ-
racy. Many complacently assume that this is the happy
condition prevailing in America. Popular orators have
stimulated our pride in democratic institutions until we
often dream that a democratic society was created by
the Continental Congress and consummated by the fifteenth
amendment to the Constitution. Then they point to our
schools which, since they are ours, must be the best on
earth; surely here children receive all training necessary
for democracy for they have courses in American history
and civics ; they learn all about the theoretical machinery
of our political life! What more could democracy need?
Why should we assume that there is need for some new
or special type of education in order to prepare for the
future democracy?

If we have democracy to-day two results follow, First,
the very experience of living in a democracy constitutes
the best preparation for that form of social life; and,
Second, any true democracy will be so conscious of its
requirements as to make full and adequate provision for
the training of the young. Both these propositions would
be true if we were now living in a democracy. But we
, are not. We have at present only certain elements of

15

16 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

democracy, principally in our forms of political life. We
have some democratic institutions, but we do not have a
democratic order of society. Rauschenbusch well says,
" Political democracy without economic democracy is an
uncashed promissory note, a pot without a roast, a form
without substance." ^ We cannot have such an order so
long as society permits avoidable injustices, so long as
it exploits the weak, builds fortunes for the few out of
the extremities and adversities of the many, permits one
to reap where he has not sown, to enjoy riches that
others have earned and are not permitted to enjoy, gives
larger rights to the rich than to the poor and continues
to regard the child as largely a negligible social factor.
Life in the present social order is not an habituation to
democracy, but it is calculated to quicken hunger for it.

We have yet to acquire dcTnocracy, We must teach
the practice of democracy because it is an unrealized
ideal. It cannot be learned in the way that a child
learns his forms of play because at present it is not
atmospheric and habitual. We must not confound our
current emphasis on the phrases of democracy with its
actual realization. We are told many times every day
that the great war was fought for democracy. And, in
a most important sense, this is exactly true; it is the
price we still are paying to assert the dominance of human
rights over all other considerations. But we must not
delude ourselves into thinking that because we have
inscribed democracy on our banners, and because we are
paying a tremendous price for a common international
recognition of one of its simple tenets, that, by these
tokens, we have fulfilled democracy. Nor must we hope
that reiteration of these ideals will give our children the
training they need for the democracy of to-morrow. It
is easy to mistake the currency of phrases for the reality
they represent.

1 " Christianizing the Social Order," page 353.

DISCOVERING THE NEED 17

Democracy waits for the democratic Timid and will.
We may through the war come to the realization of .
a world civil order; but democracy's struggle will not ^ \
be over even when all political units shall bear its name- '
and use its forms. Democracy will not be achieved so
long as men are willing to use any form of social leverage
— business, education, politics, religion, or the exigencies
of war-times — to secure advantages for themselves at
the price of loss or deprivation to others. Democracy
will not be achieved so long as we consent to the contin-
uance of social relations predicated on human selfishness,
guided by competitive motives and resulting in social |
inequalities not determined by justice or merit. Democ-
racy will not be achieved until our minds have been
changed, until we have repented of the old ways that
brought us to industrial and economic chaos, until we
desire the good of all far more ardently than we now
covet all the goods we can get. Changes such as these
are much more than changes in government and politics ;
they are changes in human ideals and motives, changes
possible only through the careful, intelligent, long-
continued education of our minds and wills. Democracy
waits for a generation controlled by a social view of all
life and by a common social goodwill.

THE DEMANDS OF NEW WORLD LIFE

But we have one further and highly important consid-
eration ; that we must have special training for democracy
because the democracy of the future zmll be of a special
kind. If the society of to-morrow was to be simply the
normal development, by easy and natural stages, of the
society of to-day we might assert that to-day's experience
was the only necessary schooling for to-morrow. But the
world has broken with its past, having tested and rejected
many of its ways ; social things are being made new. We
enter a new world order. It will be different because old

18 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

methods have failed, old reliances have broken down, old
settled habits have been uprooted; old ways have proven
inadequate; new social alignments have appeared; new
experiences have been given to almost all young people;
new powers have been developed in peoples; new social
dependencies have appeared; new forms of cooperation
have been tried. Still more, in the future, new demands
will be made on all; it will not be enough to be a good
man, one will have to be a man whose life counts with all
other lives for the world's good. It will not be enough
that one is honest in business, according to the world's
customs ; one will have to be honest according to the
world's needs. Men must square their business, not with
the ethics of the trade but with the good of humanity.
Not only will men demand their rights in the worth of
living; we shall accept our responsibilities to secure to
each his full rights. CSoon we shall see that so closely are
we all bound in the bundle of life that no man can be
poor to himself, none can be abject, hopeless, oppressed
to himself, that we each have an unavoidable share in
the life of the saddest and in the suffering of all^p We
shall learn that no nation can afford to have any of its
people below par, none can afford to weaken heart and
life by unnecessary suffering, for the people are the nation
and the nation is the people. We are staggered before
the problem of the new world with all its changes, its
social reorganization, its new ways of thinking; and shall
we expect that our children will be ready for its life
unless we take some special measures to prepare them?
Democracy has been m a hitter school of experience.
Democracy came to one of its great tests in the world
war. This terrible struggle demanded the utmost of every
people. It called for the devotion of all their resources,
the application of all their energies, the development of
all their efficiencies; it demanded sacrifice and cheerful-
ness in bearing losses, suffering reverses, enduring hard-

DISCOVERING THE NEED 19

ships and facing death. All this, and more, it asked in
the name of the good of humanity, for the sake of the
ultimate ideals of democracy.

The testing of American democracy came as soon as
the struggle passed from the area of national relationships
to that of human interests, when it passed from a quarrel
between Germany and her neighbors to the defiance by
Germany of the rights of peoples, the laws of humanity
and the established morals of civilization. Then we who
had preached and boasted so long about the universal
brotherhood of man stood by and watched our brothers
being cruelly slaughtered, watched one people, armed by
decades of stem application and preparation, coolly loot
our neighbors, ravage their lands, destroy their treasures,
slay their children and ravish their women. We were slow
to see the significance of the struggle, dull to the motives
that outweighed all other considerations, such as mixed
aims in the allied nations ; the one clear issue was clouded
by their treaties and our traditions, as well as by our
commercial policies, and that one issue was that of human
rights over against autocratic, organized and brutally
strong selfishness. It was an issue of democracy ; when
at last we met it — so late that many of us will long hang
our heads with shame at the delay — then we had a
wonderful experience in democratic national life. Two
features clearly appeared: First, democracy justified
itself as responsive to ideals. A great tide of devotion
to ideal service swept over us. Men and women gave
themselves without reservation to whatever service most
was needed; families gave sons and fathers with tearful
joy, their hearts fixed on high purposes. Second, a com-
manding purpose brought us into new cooperation. We
found unity in a common loyalty to a suflficiently high
enterprise. In every community the old divisions were
wiped out as all toiled, in actual labor, for the common
cause of world freedom. We tasted the joys of a common

20 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

life under a democratic purpose to make this a world con-
trolled by human rights and interests.

The events are too near to permit of proper perspective.
The experience was not all ideally perfect. The despoiler
was present. There always will be spiritual aliens in a
democracy; often they are the ones who prate most of
citizenship. But food-exploiters, tax-dodgers, slackers,
and profiteering princes only stood out in greater contrast
to popular devotion and service. They were but evidences
of the dangers incident to democracy, as crime is incident
to the law. They indicated that we had failed to furnish
society the power to relieve itself of the real enemies of
democracy. But there were, even in the joy of our dis-
covery of common ideals and common service, frequent
stirrings of conscience to ask, why had we waited for
this strain to reveal the possibilities of democracy? Why
had we failed, in the normal days of prosperity and world
calm, to develop the commanding ideals, train in the
loyalties and furnish the controls of conduct which would
guide all persons ? Here we seemed to fail as a whole ;
it raised the question whether democracy had educated for
permanent moral and spiritual living.

We had developed the danger of perverted patriotism.
We had cultivated a patriotism of national pride instead
of one of national devotion to purposes greater than the
nation. We had been proud of democracy because it
afforded freedom of personal action, a chance for greater
rewards in personal possessions than was possible in other
nations. We contrasted ourselves with autocracy not at
the point of effectiveness in government for the sake of
people, not as to the permanent treasures of national
greatness in idealism, but at the point of individual riches.
We had hidden our ideals and exhibited our efficiencies in
making and keeping things. In a word, to a large degree,
we had lost sight of the real ends of democracy. We had ^
turned this social agency for developing people into g.

DISCOVERING THE NEED 21

machinery for making goods, for selling goods and making
fortunes.

MISDIRECTED EFFICIENCIES

Temporarily democracy had misdirected its efficiencies.
It thought of people in terms of business instead of busi-
ness in terms of people. It had listened to voices from
Prussia, voices which had been vested with authority in
our universities and confided with responsibilities in civic
life, voices which practically said, " Man lives by bread
alone, therefore organize all your society into grades of
bread-winners and bend all your energies to securing their
bread-winning efficiency.'^ We had imported large
elements of our educational system from Germany; these
elements were rapidly and deliberately crowding out all
that was not of their world of things. They declared that
aloiie^ scientific which could be measured spatially. Their
teachers were blinded to all that could not be seen. They
were fast making us think of civic life as a vast, intricate,
soulless machine, wonderfully efficient, smooth- running and
serving wholly material ends of power and wealth. We
became ashamed of our earlier idealism; it belonged to a
pioneer stage, to an earlier day when men were willing to
be misled by dreams. We had found more efficient ways ;
we could handle this human material as we would handle
any other material. Who does not remember the period
of the " efficiency engineer " who not only had his place-
in the factory but was called to the school and to civic
life to regulate its affairs ? Their systems were efficient ;
but they were deficient; they failed to take into account
all the factors. They were practical-minded ; having lost
nine-tenths of their minds — the powers of idealism, of
recognizing spiritual values — they capitalized what was
left.

A democracy/ is always in da/nger of losing its soul.
It develops a system and forgets the spirit and aim for

22 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

which the system exists. Democracy is not a system with
a soul ; it is a soul which works out its system. Democracy
is in the whole what man should be in the singular. Men
build barns and business because of their needs as men,
but in time the barns and business becoming so engrossing
that they think of building men because barns and business
need them. In any intricate system tools always have a
tendency to relegate the product to a secondary place.
Left to themselves through the calm summer days, when
the crops mature so plentifully, it seems as though life's
aim was filling barns. Then later speaks the voice at
midnight, " Thou fool ! This night thy soul is required
of thee."

We looked out on nations that heard that voice. They
answered flinging all their treasure into the struggle that
the soul might be saved. All that they had so painfully
gathered together they counted for naught that human
rights might be saved, that men might be free. We saw
them recklessly spending for an idea the very treasures we
had been so successful in gathering, and we were not yet
ready to forsake our bursting barns in order to save our
souls. We at first refuse to see that we must either turn
aside from business as usual or lose ourselves altogether.

L^ Democracy has tested the educational method. Now
when the time came that we were compelled to stand either
with free men or be slaves, when we must choose either
to serve ideal ends or to be sold into bondage, what steps
were taken to secure unity of ideal action in the democ-
racy.^ None who lived through the first years of
America's participation in the war will ever forget the
tremendous eflTorts, on a national scale, to stimulate and
direct the thought and feeling and action of the people.
In a word, we depended on an educational program. It
was a program of teaching through publicity in news-
papers, magazines, the pulpit, schools, bill-boards, the
theatres, the platform and the mail. We found out that

DISCOVERING THE NEED 23

it was necessary to form the minds of people, that we
could make no progress save as the wills of men and
women were moved. " Wake up, America ! " we shouted,
and America slept on. Then we began to teach America,
and she was awakened. A thorough campaign of educa-
tion not only secured national unity of action but, what
was vastly more important, it secured unity of feeling and
sentiment on a high level for the nation's ideals.

Standing in the midst of the great events it is evident
that the method which has succeeded in meeting an imme-
diate urgency is the method we have neglected all too long.
We have not educated the nation for democracy. Our
system and plans of education have not been determined
by the needs of the present, still less by the demands of
the future, but by the traditions of the past. We have
inherited our educational practice from aristocracy, and
we have imported parts of it from autocracy. It has not
been designed for democracy. The schools did not regard
the child as a potential socially responsible self-governing
factor in the life of the state. ^ They trained in aptitudes
which had no special reference to those forms of social
cooperation and service which are essential in a democratic
society. They taught civics which differed from mon-
archy or autocracy only in form and not in purpose or
spirit, failing to reveal the soul of democracy. Above
all they failed to develop the ideals and motives which, in
the individual, make a democracy possible.

Moreover, we have been under the necessity of effecting
certain fundamental changes in the habitual thinking of
large elements in our population, of changing their ideals
and concepts. Intellectually we are in a singular position
in regard to democracy. It is conceived as a form of
government, but all our inherited ideas as to governments
place them in the category of imposed institutions. The

iSee George A. Coe on "The Functions of Children in a Com-
munity," in ReligiotLS Education for February, 1918.

S4 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

words, " state " and " government," hold meanings almost
wholly either monarchial or feudal. They create a picture
of some overhead authority. The delusion that a few
were bom to rule and the many to serve has been ground
deep into the fiber of civilized thought. Monarchy in
some form or another dies a lingering death. The very
phrase " divine right of kings " is so old that it still
carries the authority of usage to many. Therefore, when
we speak of a democratic government we tend to think of
something outside ourselves, a power which, while created
by ourselves, has its seat and authority elsewhere. It is
difficult to keep clearly in mind the fact that " we, the
people " are the state, the government and the democracy.

This intellectual concept of an external authority ruling
over us is deeply rooted in those who were bom under
monarchies and autocracies. They know that they arc
now in a democratic state, but they think of themselves
as being wnder a democracy, just as formerly they were
under a monarchy, instead of realizing that they are not
under but in, not yielding service to but yielding them-
selves to that of which they are a part. The radical
educational problem with such minds is to get them to
see the real meaning of democracy, to help them realize
their identity with it. Democracy must be transferred
from the old grouping of governments — where it is a
better and freer kind of lordship — into a new class, that
of social self-determination.

These facts accounted for no small degree of our
lethargy and apparent indifference. They called and
they still call for a process of interpreting democracy
within our own borders. They complicated the problem
of national conversion. We faced a world-testing of
democracy with a citizenship one-half of which rejoiced
in freedom principally because of the personal advantages
it conferred and a large portion of which knew not at
all what democracy really means.

DISCOVERING THE NEED ^5

Education must recognize that democracy makes certain
peculiar demands on human nature. Since the educational
system is responsible for training the members of a democ-
racy it is responsible for preparing them to meet those
demands. Since all human relationships constitute moral
situations democracy is a moral situation determined by
motives of social interests as supreme. Education for
democracy is not only education for social living, it is
education for living under conditions in which the interests
of society, of the well-being and happiness of the whole
must always take precedence of our own personal interests
and desires. This is true if democracy is self-government
for the people. Education for democracy, then, is educa-
tion for social living under social motives.

ESSENTIALS IN EDUCATION

iNo scheme or system of educ^tifin rnr ^^ o/ioqiiQf£> cr^
long as it fails to recognize these two related facts, that
it must train the young to live in society, and that it
must train them in the motive and ideal of self-devotion
to the good of society. There are involved here the two
related and inseparable ideas of social education and
religious education. Education for democracy will be
social education in that it trains lives to live with others ;
it will be religious education in that it trains lives to
live for others. Neither is possible without the other.
We cannot live with people except as we really love them ;
we cannot love them until we do live with them.
yT;t may be said that all these considerations lie in the
realm of sentiments and ideals. The assumption under-
lying the objection is that sentiments and ideals are unreal
and negligible matters and that education has to do only
with the practical concerns of life. It is a part of that
leaden-eyed philosophy which sees only the ground at a
man's toes. Such objectors are apt to say that we must
face the stern realities of life and leave theory and ideals

/

26 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

to take care of themselves. But ideals are not theories;
they are the underlying facts which determine all things
in this world; they make cities, build bridges, lead armies

^. and really do all the big things. Your practical man
never gets beyond the plans the idealist has sketched.
And sentiments are not vapory nothings ; they are the
stem realities of life; they are its motive power and its
compass. They make all social motion and determine its
direction. Our constant danger is that we shall neglect
these realities, that we shall build engines complete in all
details except that they will not work because they lack
motive power. We think we are practical because we
build the apparatus of life and neglect altogether its
springs of action.

The need of education for democracy, then, is that we
shall fully recognize the essential importance of developing
right sentiments and ideals, that we shall not neglect what
Bismarck called " the imponderables." The testing time
has revealed our deep need of a spiritual consciousness in
civil and political life. The war has been won ; whether
the winning will be worth while depends on the kind of
men and women we are and the kind our children shall
be. v^The preparation we most of all have needed and do
still need is the preparation of our minds with high ideals,
the training of our spirits to such an appreciation of
the worth of human interests as shall move us to pay
.any price for their preservation. V^ We need to realize that,

V like democracy itself, education for democracy deals with
persons, and that persons are not educated until they
develop their powers as persons, until controls of conduct
are developed, until they have the powers of self-knowledge
and self-control, until they have the vision of life that
guides them into its social fullness. Because these needs
have been so largely neglected it would seem that the
emphasis in our educational endeavors at this time should
b^ in the direction of training^ hi life for i(Je?il ends, in

DISCOVERING THE NEED 27

the education of persons as social beings living for social
ends, or, in a word, on religious education in its broad
aspects.

This then is the need of democracy : A motive or spirit
of life which makes it possible and desirable for us to live
with others and to live for others. Democracy depends
on the social will that substitutes ' cooperation for com-
petitive struggle. Democracy requires devotion to the
good of all as the supreme and dominating purpose in all
lives. Under no other motives is it possible to live in
the congested, interwoven world life. It is not a question
of which is best; this only is possible. Any other way
lies the unending conflict of selfish passions pushing the
warring groups on to social suicide. The world is par-
alyzed so long as it is ruled by passions for greed, " red
in tooth and claw," for this world is other thahihe world
of beasts. Man needs sympathy, the things not gained
by strength alone, for he lives not by bread alone. For
the very continuance of human existence, and certainly
for its progress, no other way is possible than that of
social unity secured by common devotion to ideal pur-
poses. Only the religious will survive in the new world
order. Then the central need in education for democracy
is that of education in the life that is religious, is that
of training in the spirit of devotion to a society of good
will, is that of religious education.

CHAPTER III

DEMOCRACY AS A SJEIUGIOUS IDEAL

As the ideals of democracy are clarified they are ele-
vated. Government for the people is lifted above the
aims of government for national advantages, for the
extension of trade or for the increase of reserves of wealth.
Some old motives lose their power and others, yet older,
return with deeper meaning; America says less about the
opportunity of every man to gain riches and thinks more
of the obligations of freedom.

Democracy, seeking the good of all, discovers that no

good is abiding until all enjoy the highest good, and that

no people can be rich in things in any satisfying or

enduring manner until they are rich in themselves.

Democracy realizes that nations are never greater than

their people, and that social welfare is at root a matter

of social will. Every attempt to secure public good by

popular means leads to the same conclusion: that the

happiness, freedom and well-being of a people comes not

by regulation, nor by legislation, but all wait on the wills

of men and cannot come save from within the hearts and

minds of men. This is not a speculative philosophy of

idealism preached by a few doctrinaires ; it is the bald

fact which confronts every student of social institutions,

that human progress waits for the human will, that there

is no such thing as the prosperity of a people until they

are rich and strong in themselves. A democracy is a

social organization, in a civic form, which accepts this

law and counts principally on the quality of its people

for the power of its state.

The central interest of democracy, then, lies in peo-

28

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL 29

pie (IS persons. Its aim is not only government by the
will of the people but government by the goodwill of
all, by the power of the people constantly willing the
highest good for all. Its central problem is that of devel-
oping this will, of securing desire, intent and purpose
toward the social ideals of the state. Its task, therefore,
is one of education, of training persons in the power of
self-direction toward broad social ideals, of developing
social wisdom and power of choosing steadily the highest
good in life. Unless this power is developed our freedom
will mean but a wild scramble for passing gains, a common
and bloody warfare in which each madly strives for his
own goods. Some have so interpreted democracy, as the
chance of every man to enter with all his powers into
the common, competitive combat for the possession of
things. Sometimes we have gloried in the supposed right
of social civil war, of internal rapine. We have talked
of the glorious chance open to every one of becoming rich
at the expense of his fellows, of the chance of the poor
boy to climb from the slums to the crest of affluence as
though elevation enlarged a man. We seem to have
imagined that a mouse on the peak of a mountain must
be a mammoth. But the delusion is less common than
the superficial evidences indicate. We make much over
the feat of the mouse; but we know that our. democracy
exists for something far greater than the purpose of
populating the peaks of prosperity with freaks, men of
swollen substance and shrunken souls. And we are learn-
ing, too, that the glory of a nation lies not in its records
of sudden fortunes but in its steady development of the
common good.

In the hearts of men are the facts of life. Every
page of the past and every problem of the present pro-
claims the same fact, that neither with a man nor a
nation does life consist in the abundance of things
possessed, that happiness lies not in having but in the

80 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

power of appreciating and enjoying, that riches are not
possessed by the hands but by the heart, and that no
nation can be great unless the people themselves are
j great. The glory of a nation depends not on extent of
[ I territory, nor on resources or possessions, nor on army
■ or navy or factories or trade, but on the minds and
affections and ideals of its people. Belgium devastated
* is greater than Belgium humming with industry. France
" bled white " under the pressure of barbarism recni-
descent is greater than France in her prosperity. Scot-
land's granite hills, with all their beauty, offer little to
the seeker after riches, but Scotland's name will always
be associated with true greatness. All stand out known
by their souls.

A soidless democracy is unthinkable. When a gov-
ernment is deliberately organized with the purpose of
A protecting, strengthening and enriching the life of its
people, its first and always dominating concern must be
with the inner concerns of their lives, with their well-
being in aill that makes a people great. The problem
of democracy is a spiritual problem. Democracy seeks
the salvation of the souls of men in the widest, highest,
fullest sense, for democracy ultimately seeks the salvation
of society. It looks toward a salvation greater than
any designed to protect individuals from the arbitrary
dictates of an offended deity, a salvation which brings
each one out into the freedom and fullness of all his life,
and into the joy and power of the life of all. It is a
salvation directed toward character and condition rather
than toward any theoretical status. Democracy believes
that life may be whole, healthful, rounded-out and rich,
that its inner springs may be clear and strong, that men
may come to will the true rather than the false, light
rather than darkness and love rather than hate. It
knows that truth and light and love will not bless the
lives of all until they command the desires and wills of

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL SI

all. Therefore a democracy must be concerned with
deeper things than political forms and commercial suc-
cesses, for its permanence depends on the extent to which
its ideals rule in the hearts of men. How serious and
far-reaching, then, is the program of education for democ-
racy ! It is no less than the development of those motives,
powers and habits which enable all to live a common life
of helpfulness, of fellowship on life's highest levels, in
the fullness of all its possibilities, under its finest motives
and toward its best ideals. This is the fundamental
educational problem that confronts democracy. Is it too
much to call it a spiritual problem .^^ Can we not see it
as a religious task.'^

Democracy is a spiritiuzl process. Education for this
form of social living moves out into a broad region.
Democrats are not made by passing an examination on
the Constitution of the United States. The law may
say that citizenship is acquired by such a process, but
the law does no more than confer certain civil rights; it
cannot endow the citizen with those qualities which make
citizenship in a democracy. For a democracy is not an
affair of a social contract, based on rights granted by
authority; it is an affair of the spirit. It can exist
only where men and women have common spiritual ideals,
where they effectively place the values of persons first
of all and are willing to pay any price for these. It is
a matter of the spirit because it exists for the sake of
our spiritual rights. We speak of freedom as our
heritage; what do we mean? Is it that we have liberty
of action, to go where we will and, largely, to do what
we wish? That were a small gain. We mean that we
have freedom to follow the desires of our own hearts, to
achieve our own ambitions, to dream high things and then
to do them. It is not physical freedom we cherish, but
freedom of the spirit. Above all, this is a land of free-
dom of thought; our freedom of action is simply our

^

S2 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

right to follow in action the free path marked out by

the spirit within. Education for democracy is possible

only as provision is made for the direction of this spir-
itual freedom.

SPIRITUAL VALUES OUT OF SOCitALj EXPtERIElNCE

Education for democracy is a spiritual problem because
it deals with the great questions of social values. It seeks
to train people to living for the highest social ends. A
democracy is the political discovery of the highest form
of values in civil organization. Having rejected the aims
of personal prestige, commercial or military dominion,
territory and tribute, the democratic nation says, " We
find the good that is highest, the value most worth while,
in the lives of persons and in the life of society." Here
is a splendid ideal, seen long ago by a few prophetic souls,
sung by poets and prophets and now adopted, simply and
definitely, as a national aim. Democracy is a national
assertion of the rights of the soul, for this well-being that
is sought for all people is the well-being of the people
themselves. It is the devotion of a nation to the devel-
opment of wealth in persons. To a democracy all pros-
perity of wages, high standards of living conditions, and
^ amplitudes of resources are but means to a further end,
that those who possess these things may be richer in
themselves, happier, stronger and more noble in spirit.

Democracy becomes a national faith. It is not diffi-
cult to see how this high spiritual idealism has grown out
of Christianity and now fuses with it at every point
where it is set free to declare its meaning and value for
life. It is not difficult to see how it is becoming the
inspiring creed of thoughtful men and women everywhere
to-day. Its hope is that which makes life's struggle worth
while. It is the shining goal at the end of all our endeav-
ors for social justice, for right conditions of living for
all persons, for sunlight and air and play for children.

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL 33

for leisure and health for men and women, for intelligence
and knowledge for all, for freedom and personal rights.
The high price we pay to oppose barbaric autocracy, the
trains of treasure and rivers of blood that flow forth in
a great world war, go out with no regret — save that
for the hideous origin and the barbaric method imposed
on us — but with hearts made strong through the hope
that we may have a world-order of true democracy, that
the rights of the spirit may be set above all other rights
and become regnant in our world.

Democracy waits on the educated wills of aU. A
democratic nation and a democratic world cannot come
alone through the splendid vision of a few. It does begin
here; but it must move on until all at last have the
vision. This makes the diff^erence of our modern concept
from Plato's Republic. His ideal is an elaborate organ-
ization intellectually conceived by a few and not concerned
with the mass. For democracy is not only social organ-
ization for the good of all, but social organization for
that end as determined by the will of all and secured
through the work of all. The ideal cannot be fully
realized until it is seen and desired by all. The people,
as well as the prophets, must have the vision. The
inclusive educational task therefore is that of training
and inspiring a people to a democratic interpretation of
all life.

If democratic living is based on the primacy of spir-
itual values then its first need will be an intelligent recog-
nition and appreciation of spiritual values and its first
duties will be those of training in living for those values ;
in a word, democracy is confronted by a problem and task
of religious education. Democracy is essentially a
religious enterprise because the social ends to which democ-
racy is devoted are the values in persons and in society,
the values of the spirit to which religion is addressed. A
religious person is one whose life is devoted, under the

34 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ideal of such values, to realizing a society of the spirit,
a social order, a " kingdom of God '* in which love,
righteousness, peace and goodness are the ruling powers,
in which men become more and more like their divine ideal
and the world more and more like the splendid vision for
which men so long have prayed. And a religious society
is that which is devoted to the realization of this ideal
through its forms of social or civic life and power. Sub-
stitute " democratic " for the word " religious " and the
parallel between the two becomes apparent.

In a democracy the swpremacy of the spiritual must
he a common ideal, A common social goodwill rises only
in the wills of all. The fundamental problem is that of
developing a spiritual concept of life in all. If we resolve
the question of education for democracy into a discussion
of the problems of religious education it is because this
includes all the rest. It is because religious education
simply means that kind of education which trains persons
to live, as religious persons, in a religious society and to
realize the ideals of that society and carry them forward
into the future.

We cannot solve modern world problems until they are
treated as religious problems. So long as they are mat-
ters to be adjusted by diplomacy, by legislation or
regulation their roots remain untouched. Social solutions
cannot come by adjustments of any sort, for social prob-
lems are problems of people and people are not things;
they cannot be fitted together and adjusted like inorganic
particles of matter. No solutions are permanent until
they come from the people themselves, by the modification
of their wills, by the growing harmony of their own desires
and aims. That is simply to say that the problems of
democracy, like the aim of democracy, are personal. It
was a homely form of expressing a fundamental truth that
Josh Billings used when he said, " You will never have
an honest horse-race until you have an honest human

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL 35

race." Society will not be right until the people are
right.

Social rightness is that of which ancient teachers spoke,
righteousness, a matter of the motives and will. Social
welfare depends on social willing of the right, the good
and the mutually helpful. And this means that men
must not only know the right ; they must love it ardently,
desire it supremely and serve it faithfully. Herein lies
the function of religion, to so interpret life that men see
the good and the true, that they discover and acquire
adequate motives, that their desires are stimulated so
that they count dear nothing beside if only there may be
realized the splendid ideal of social good, of the love of
men, and their life in an ideal family of the divine.

Education for democracy is education in the religious
life, in living in and for the sake of a society that real- , ^
izes the divine ideal of a common life of love and serv-V
ice. The modern democratic ideal comes steadily closer
to the fundamental ideal of the Christian religion, that
men may live together as one great family. It accepts
the religious concept that it is possible to have a so-
ciety in which the spiritual relationships are the dom-
inant ones. It accepts the teaching that we should call
all men our brothers, basing our relationships, not on
the accidents of rank or wealth or blood, but on the un-
changing fact of the common life of the spirit in which
we find ourselves all of one family.

Therefore education for democracy is education in the
life of the world-family. It is our attempt to-day to
answer the prayer we have so long addressed, not to a
king, but to a Father, " Thy Kingdom come " ; the prayer, j
not for a divine monarchy, but for a common family under l!}
the divine fatherhood. Ideally a family is a social insti- ;■
tution founded on self-giving love and devoted to the I]
giving of lives to the world and their development in the
world, Its causes for being, if it has any sound and ;ij

86 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

enduring basis, are spiritual. Its purpose, if it is to be
redeemed from sensuality and from sordid selfishness, must
be spiritual, that children may grow as persons, may find
their full world and be able to live in it.^ A democracy
is an extension of this smaller ideal society. It is a
larger family, not governed by some splendid paternal
leader, for a family is not governed by a leader, but, like
every good family, governed by a common will of goodness
and love.

Democracy involves hwmanity^s sternest discipline.
Living together in love — that is, paying the full measure
of the identification of our own lives with the good of
all other lives — is a wonderfully beautiful concept but
a terribly difficult task. It is not easy even in a family
where many instincts aid and where education has been
strengthening the will from the very beginning. It is
infinitely harder in the larger human family, composed of
all kinds of people, likable and otherwise, good and bad,
pleasant and unpleasant, intelligent and untouched by
the spirit of life. We talk much about the democratic
spirit to-day and seem to think that we are democratic
because we ride in the street car with the man in his
working jeans, because we stand with him at the polls.
j« But how much deeper we must go to live a life of family
M devotion with all, to make our lives part of the common
life!

. EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

r^^ Evidently education for democracy must begin with
... ythe very roots of life, with the springs of character and .
will, of ideals and motives. It must stimulate us to
willingness to meet in practice all the demands of its
ideals, to pay the full price of democratic living, that
is, not alone adjusting ourselves to living with others but

1 This concept is developed and applied in the author's " Religious
EflucatioQ i^ the Family," Umv^rsity of Chicago Press, 1916.

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL S7

controlling ourselves to living for others and for all
others. Education for democracy involves training all
lives to social efficiency and social devotion. Surely it is
not a mistake to call all competent training, directed to
these ends, religious education! It is immediately of im-
portance to ascertain whether current education is directed
to these ends.

Any adequate program of education for the future
wUl mvolve a re-interpretation of education. The les-
son of the current moral assize of the world is surely,
first of all, that neither nations nor individuals can live
for themselves alone ; self-interest as the guiding principle
of life has broken down ; our plans of education — whether
in terms of individual industrial efficiency or in terms of
individual erudition — have failed and so equally has our
individualistic religion, in terms either of dogmatism or
of institutionalism. Education with its dawning con-
sciousness of social idealism is relating itself to social real-
ity and is looking forward to a coming social order domi-
nated by new ideals. Are we ^lot now facing that social
order in which all may live in unity and the joy of com-
mon service ? Have we not practically abandoned the mis-
leading biological analogy which interpreted life in terms
of bitter struggle, of progress only by survival, and have
we not come to see the greater and more imperative law
of the organized world, that life is found in self-giving?
Competition is of the past: our individualistic morality
has crumbled under present social strains. We are
already in a new world and for its order, its demands,
new motives are imperatively needed. Our world has come
almost to suicide through loyalty to the principle of
selfishness ; the new world waits for those who are learning
to live socially and therefore not simply unselfishly but
with the spirit of the larger social self.

A program of education for the future will include
the following characteristics: (a) The stimulation of all

38 EjpUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

social development in the direction of life's highest values.
Education^ill lie guided by value-consciousness ; what is
most wortfe Virile for all will determine the goal to which
aU are stimulated. To the modern mind religion is our
consciousness of the meaning and worth of life. If this
is true educAtion will be under the illumination of the
religious concepts and ideals of a .people, (b) The
motivation of each life by an adequate and developing
value-consMousness ; this will mean such a sense of the
worth of tn^life.of all as shall lead one effectively to live
for that /worth. The religious life is the life which is
governefrBy such a consciousness.^ The ultimate purpose
of all edu€a,tion mufl be to develop persons whose gov-
erning motives are religious, who are wise enough to live
in the ligh^f the total meaning of* life, (c) The deter-
mination of the mechanism of lire by the aim of life;
recognitioH^hat the tools of living are of subsidiary value
and inmppiiiJce to the product of life. We never can
have a^al educational program until we have a society
which rgalljj^ cbntrols and uses the jnechanism of living as
means p^ Ariching the life of all. ;,.This implies an intel-
ligent «)ci2fl^order, one in which purpose deliberately
formukii^'its program. In the eqd it would mean a
religious social 6rder. (d) The right of society to self-
realization in lives. Whatever h\nders persons from
growth as persons is a social crime."^ Whatever hinders
unity of social action for growth ils »a crime against each
one. Society must be organized for its own ends, for
the sake of and in order to produce the possible society.

PERSONAL RIGHTS IN DEMOCRACY

Religious education plans the organization of society
for purposes of spiritual growth ; it demands the scrutiny*

1 Cf. George; A. Coe in " A Social Theory of Religious Education,"
(Scribners, 1917).

2 " Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble . . ." Jesus.

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL 39

and the determination of all life's processes as educational
processes under religious motives, (a) The right of each
person to social realization. Whatever hinders the indi-
vidual from the joyous, stimulating experience of unity
and self-expression in the life of all robs him of life itself.
To educate men in selfishness is to withhold from them
the larger part of their lives, to cramp experience into
the minute segment of self instead of expanding it in
the wide circle of the social whole. Social realization
really means full participation in all one's world, for this
society stretches in every direction. It includes all the
splendid souls of the past whose ^f^fcwship and example
is our heritage; it embraces all b^a^^s^f the light in all
lands everywhere ; it makes a part of our own circle all
who now live for truth or die for freedom. The develop-
ment of power to know and to enter into this rich and
stimulating society is no small part of the task of religious
education. To live here is to discover life's true values
in persons, is to see clearly its abiding elements that
remain unchanged by the wrack of time, is to grasp the
central ideal of democracy that the life of all, like the
life of one, consists in qualities of personality and that the
end and purpose of life is to discover and develop these
qualities, these worths. Religious education seeks by ac-
tual experience in social living, by the stimulating ideals
of large and enriching lives, by the push of the historic
ideals of the race, by the cultivation of prophetic ideal-
ism, to guide each life to the discovery, the reahzation and
the enriching of all life, (b) The right of all, especially
of the young, to immediate, practicable instruction in the
method of living at this time. Motives and ideals are es-
sential but they must be formed in the individual's own
experience ; they must grow out of the realities of living.
We have tried, too long, to deliver motives to children;
we must try to develop them by directing the child's actual
experience in living his own life as a religious life, (c)

40 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

The right to training in the methods which social expe-
rience has indicated as the best in reaHzing our common
social purpose. It will gradually develop a science of a
religious society.

The peculiar present task of religious education lies in
the fact that for us at this time the only practicable life
is the religious life. All other motives have proved mis-
leading; all other methods evidently are suicidal. Self-
interest makes self-realization impossible because it inhib-
its social realization. Social efficiency in terms of a com-
petitive struggle leads only, by battlefields — military or
industrial — to social annihilation. The only possible
way that all can even live to-day is the self-giving way,
abandoning the policy of developing the things of life
solely as tools of gain, and definitely adopting a program
of common service and enriching efficiency, finding the self
in realizing the life of all.

Religious education claims its primacy in the interest
of men to-day, not for the preservation of religious tradi-
tions, nor principally because of the rights of the individ-
ual to his religious heritage, but because the salvation of
society lies this way and no other, no other sort of so-
ciety is possible but one in which the individual lives un-
der religious motives. Such a society is possible only as
lives are trained for this life, and the training is so impor-
tant that it ought to be the first concern of society to-
day.

All who take seriously the problems of the future of
democracy will turn their attention first to children ; they
will see in them the society of to-morrow. And, with the
children, they will set first the needs of the life of the
spirit. They will not make training in religious knowl-
edge, ideals and habits an incidental part of education;
it will come to be the most important because it deter-
mines the ideals and wills of these growing persons; it
forms their characters, and thus decides everything be-

DEMOCRACY AS A RELIGIOUS IDEAL 41

sides. All who consider the future of democracy will con-
sider with great care the agencies and the methods of this
religious training. They will seek to develop the agencies
to the highest possible efficiency; they will inquire with
great care as to the kinds of materials which are being
used. They will see that the stories told to children may
tremendously affect the whole character of the future,
that the religious concepts gained in childhood may be-
come the social realities of to-morrow. They will cease
to think of religious education as the occasional interest
of a few faddists ; they will see it as our most important
present duty with relation to the future of society.

■ CHAPTER IV

EELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION

The method of training for life in a democracy is edu-
cational; the motive which fits for life in a democracy is
religious.

Education for democracy is social training under a
spiritual interpretation of life and for the whole of social
living. This preparation for living on the plane of life's
highest values we choose to call religious education. But
the phrase " religious education " misleads many ; at least,
it still requires much explanation, for, often, it means
nothing beyond instruction in theology and creeds or
training in loyalty to ecclesiastical institutions. It is
necessary, first, to distinguish between instruction about
religion and religious education ; and then it may be help-
ful to see the inter-relation and mutual dependence of
education and religion in democracy.

There is no reason to believe that a man will be a better
democrat because he has read or even memorized a dic-
tionary of religion. {There is no evidence that, of itself,
knowledge about religion either makes a religious p€rson
or a better citizen. The cynical assertion that religion
has nothing to do with politics is entirely just and accu-
rate if by religion is meant either pure pietism or mere
information about religion. But the assertion is false
when it means that life in a democracy has nothing to
do with religion, or that religion has nothing to do with
democracy. For religion is an ideal and spirit of life
which determines the mode of life, and democracy is an
ideal and spirit of social life which determines the mode
of social life for a people.

42

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 43

Education for democracy/ is religious because democ-
racy is a religious concept. Religion and democracy can-
not be seM,rated. Education for one must include the
other. I I^^ imjiaasihle ta he an. irxeligiaus democrat. 1 \
This is^ident if we accept the definitions of democracy"
already stated and if, beside them, we place the modern
definition of religion, as one's interpretation of the mean-
ing and value of life. For it is precisely upon this valua-
tion of life that democracy is based. Christianity and
democracy accept personality as the supreme aim in exist-
ence, as that for which society is organized. Christianity
is the gospel of democracy, and democracy is the demon-
stration of Christianity. Education in Christianity will
consist in instruction in the ideals and training in the art
of living in a society of common goodwill; it will be edu-
cation in the way or mode of the society of the follow-
ers of Jesus, in the life of the democracy of the spirit.
Education for democracy is education for social life based
on a concept of supreme values in personality, of society y^
as existing for spiritual ends. Therefore such education
is, of necessity, religious in character, in its ideals, in its
aims, for it has to do with and it is determined by definite
historic religious facts, by religious experiences and by
concepts of spiritual values. Such education, then, is
religious education, that is, education as determined by
the fact of dealing with religious persons and being di-
r£j?ted toward a religious end.

Ijt is not easy to overcome fixed verbal connotations.
Religion has meant either creed, credulity or ercTesi^fiti-
cism to so many and democracy TiaF'so'long" meant no
more than a political form that it is difficult to realize^
their unity and fundamental identity. Rut it is not diffi-
cult to take the first step in realizing that our present-
day life makes demands on us that can be met only in the
spirit of religion, that it calls for sacrifices under devo-
tion to spiritual ideals. It is not difficult to see that a

44 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

society which fully practiced the social ideals of Jesus ^
would be a true democracy. It is not difficult to see that
if the young are to be prepared for a society o£ that char-
acter their education must be religious in character and
include religion in its content. Religious education be-
comes a fundamental need in democracy. Is our think-
ing of religion ready for this use.'^ Can we conceive of
education in which religion really functions?

Education for democracy is religioius because the very
> concept of education is religious. That is still a hard
saying to many. There still remain, amongst those who
are supposed to be educated, those who think of religion
as no more than a matter of superstition. ^ And there
are those who regard education as no more than an arro-
gant assumption of knowledge destructive of that cred-
ulity which they call faith and which they imagine to be
religion.

Clear thinking on the relations of religion and educa-
tion is fundamentally important. We have not yet
passed from the controversy which presupposed a con-
flict between the two. Education is still suspected of
proffering knowledge as a substitute for religion.^ But
the large tasks before us in training the society of the
future call for the light of all our intelligence; they call
for the alliance of all the forces of the higher life.

1 One thinks of his life and teaching as a demonstration and
elucidation of his answer to Pftort's query and Socrates' search,
"What is truth? What is the supreme worth in life?"

2 At a recent convention a speaker vehemently denounced religious
education, citing the moral defalcation of Germany in evidence;
he confounded German technical training with education and the
German systems of " religionsunnterricht " with religious education ;
the first is an excellent example of a system of instruction devoid
of that spirit and that spiritual aim which are essential to education;
the second is an example illustrating the difference between knowl-
edge about religion and religious education.

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 45

AN IMAGINARY CONFLICT

Ignorance is the mother of much eloquence. Freedom
from knowledge often gives liberty of utterance. Simple
information has ended many controversies and wisdom has
stopped yet more. The ancient debate on the supposed
conflict between education and religion ladifi vigor to-
day because deeper understanding reveals h^w^ony and
unity where once only conflict seemed to exist.pyPut just
as the weeds of foolish controversy flourish wheirever there
are areas of ignorance so there are not lackntaVtp-day
those who will ask, with much wise wagging or^h^ds,
whether the " heart " is not endangered by " thev heatL"
whether knowledge is not the foe of grace\ ana\ eve
whether one can go to college ancLj&till be a TeK^^o«s j)er-^

son- . V^ '"^^:rV^

It is alleged that the processes of modern ed^toation de-
feat the purposes of religion. I One hears pathetic stories
of young people who have gone up to college, their hearts
warm with religious zeal, only to have the fires forever
quenched. I They have graduated, !we are told, spiritual
wrecks. They return devoid of interest in the affairs of
the home church. Some strange paralysis, called educa-
tion, has come over their spiritual lives. They are re-
garded with pity mingled with awe. The disastrous
process of religious decay seems very simple to the quiet
souls at home; these young people have changed for the
worse; education has wrought their spiritual undoing. f
Usually those who denounce education as inimical to/
religion know neither the one nor the other. By educa-l
tion they mean some strange fantasy of popular crea-l
tion, a soulless creature constructed of cold facts, lifting
its arrogant head in proud independence of God and
goodness. But by religion they mean something ofter
[infinitely worse, a system of theories about the universe.
I human destiny and supernatural beings — rigid, mechan-

46 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ical and unrelated to life. Religion, in the mouths of
such debaters, means theology, and, of course, their own
theology, the height of which is dependent on its narrow-
ness.

That there is conflict between two such concepts no one
can doubt. Even if education were such a cold, blood-
less and largely useless compound of knowledge, it would
still be in conflict with superstition. It would oppose
theories with facts and it would shed light on the dark
places in the human mind. And as knowledge grows
from more to more it would naturally come to pass that
truth, even though it be bloodless, would oppose untruth.
Growing knowledge would mean, as Tensyson says, grow-
ing reverence, and that would mean opposition toward
irreverence and especially opposition toward that blatant
irreverence that assumes to comprehend and set the bounds
for the infinite within its little brain, that dares to declare
a monopoly, or at least a patent, on God.

While practically all the opposition to education which
is based on alleged religious grounds, arises with and is
sustained by ignorant people, there remains much doubt
and hesitation on the part of many intelligent persons
as to the relations of the two. Their difficulties arise at
the point of partial knowledge. They have identified edu-
cation with scientific research and they have been accus-
tomed by tradition to think of science as in opposition to
religion. Seldom has any fixed idea had greater currency
than that of " the conflict of religion and science " has
had in the churches. It has been conceived, not as an
historic process but as a condition inherent in the nature
of things. Moreover scientific research, fostered by edu-
cational agencies, has trimmed away so many concepts
that were once supposed to be essential parts of religious
belief that there is a strong suspicion whether one can be
a scientist and still be a religious person. Often that sus-
picion is sufficient reason for condemning all higher edu-

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 47

cation for it is generally held that the colleges are re-
sponsible for the spread of the scientific spirit. Of course
all thoughtful persons realize that science has not undone
religion ; on the contrary much has been gained, and noth-
ing essential has been lost, for we are simply substituting
facts for theories. A singular situation is revealed when
we consider the popular attitude toward science in de-
partments of interest other than the religious. No more
of faith is involved in biology than in medicine ; yet some-
how — perhaps because our immediate interests are so
real — we have unreservedly accepted science as to the
healing of our own bodies while we hesitate to accept it
as to the history of those bodies.

It may seem to many that the conflict between religion
and science is over. That is true in certain communities
and amongst a certain class of people. But it is far from
being true everywhere. Let a preacher so much as men-
tion Evolution or even the name of Charles Darwin in a
Baptist pulpit — or almost any other pulpit — in the
rural South or Southwest, and he will find himself swept
away in a storm of orthodox wrath.^ The ranter and the
demagogue make their living by persistent appeals to
prejudice of this kind. Denunciations of science are their
stock in trade and ridicule of education their reliance for
applause. Many good people in their blindness imagine
they are defending God by opposing science.

But even though the victory were won, even though
there were complete reconciliation between science, as the
word of education, and religion as the teaching of the
churches, much still remains to be done. It is not enough
to think of these as two forces which can exist side by
side in the same world, the important step is to realize

1 Only recently a school principal in a Southern city was dismissed
for " favoring Darwinism," and another in another city for teaching
geology in a manner that conflicted with a literal interpretation of
Genesis.

v\

48 ' EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

the unity and mutual dependence of religion and educa-
tion.

Now, in truth, one might as well talk of conflict be-
tween the climate and the weather as to discuss warfare
between religion and education. When both are known
in their simple, essential meanings they are seen not as
two distinct ideas and activities but as one and the same.

Religion is an ideal as to the meaning of life, humanity
and the universe which is so inspiring that it stimulates
men to seek the realization of the ideal. Education is
this religious ideal endeavoring to find reality in persons
and in the social whole. Religion presents a concept of
life and destiny ; education offers a program for its real-
ization. Thus religion is the force behind all education;
education is religion in one of its great activities. Once
accept in its fullness the religious view of the nature and
destiny of our race; once see the religious vision of a
united, loving common society rejoicing in fullness of
powers and in the riches of inner wealth, then the educa-
tional program of man's development is the natural and
inevitable attempt to realize a religious society.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY " RELIGIOUS " ?

Of course one is here thinking of religion in its broad
and inclusive meanings, as the great, vital principle that
in some measure marks all faiths and comes to a rich
flowering in Christianity. Religion historically has been
a slowly developing concept of the universe; it has been
a gradual unfolding of the meaning of human life and its
relations to all other life and to all time. Man has been
answering his own question. What does life mean and
what is it worth? Both question and answer steadily have
deepened their significances. Out of the answers have
come the creeds and forms of religion. A creed has a
religious character but it is not religion; it is a formal
statement of a point of view. It is commonly a succinct

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 49

presentation of thoughts about rehgion, and, certainly it
is almost always a record of a compromise between diverse
opinions. But opinions about religion are not religion,
often they are not even religious.

The educational concept of religion. That spirit and
ideal which we call religion views man as set in the eternal
processes of the universe, with an eternity behind in which
he has grown, and an eternity before in which he yet may
grow. It believes in life without limitations ; it sets no
boundaries before, because it can trace none in the past.
It builds its hopes for the future on the progress of the
past and the promise of an ideal within. It sees man al-
ready conscious of a life that in its outreach and aspira-
tion knows no limit. Man is religious because he has
eternity in his heart. The law of growth is in his na-
ture.

Where life means growth, where its worth is just in the
chance to grow, religion finds its hope coming to realiza-
tion in the processes of education ; faith becomes loyalty
to the laws of personal growth in earnest endeavor to
secure to all men everywhere the chance to grow to the
fullness of the divine ideal. Then religion can only be
expressed in the educational terms of all-inclusive develop-
ment, and education can be expressed only in the religious
terms of fulfilling the divine plan of growth by coopera-
tion with the eternal powers of life.

/ The religious person is that one who takes life in terms
/of growth, whose hope for all life is that all may grow
/ into closer harmony as all approach the ideal life, and
f whose plan for society is its development into the loving
family of the all-Father. He finds he is constantly seek-
ing thus the educational ideal; religion gives him an edu-
cational concept of life's processes and its plan.
,^ The religious motive is essential in any competent plan
^ of education. If life means limitless possibilities of spir-
itual social relations and development, how are these

so EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

realized? Life answers: The way is long but the path
is plain ; where life is there is growth. Perfection is not
imposed; it is slowly attained. Progress is the outward
.. expression of the inner force of life. It is the vital pow-
ers reaching out in new directions, finding new relations,
establishing new abilities. Growth is part of a universal
process which we call life. This life of personality is part
of the great all-inclusive life that moves forward, develop-
ing and growing. The law that is written on the blade of
grass and on the body of man is written not less on his
higher nature. Life comes from life and grows by the
processes of life. When this universal and divine law
of life as growth is applied to persons we call the process
education. After all education is simply our attempt to
work with God in growing men.

Educational endeavor all through the past has grown
out of a religious philosophy of life. Aspiration is pos-
sible only where life has higher possibilities. Opportunity
for realization is afforded to all only when all life has
spiritual values. The view of man as a part of a uni-
verse of life, a being made " to grow and not to stop,"
has fostered every effort to furnish him the agencies and
stimuli of growth. The early church promoted educa-
tion not simply as means of learning but as a method of
life. Schools were founded not because she needed a
trained leadership alone but because, wherever she was
the guardian and exponent of true religion, she must both
preach and teach ; she must both deliver and demonstrate
the gospel that men may have life. Her one great mes-
sage was that of Life; wherever the light burned clear
she illumined the path of life to men ; wherever she was a
voice and not an echo she* called them to larger life. The
church, like her Master, exists that men " might have
life and might have it more abundantly." She is bound,
not alone to proclaim deliverance from death, but to show

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 51

men the way into life through the truth. The funda-
mental articles of her creed are that God is life, and that
men may grow to His likeness. Therefore she not only
believes in education, she must be an educator. Nor is
this all, every true agency of education — in the high
sense of light that leads into life — shares in the divine
task of the church. The religious quality of any insti-
tution will be the measure of enriching it gives to the
lives of men. Such a test will put the college and uni-
versity into a new category. Out of a religious passion
they were bom; only a religious aim can adequately ex-
press their present social function.

The university, born of man's free search for life's
meaning, became the torch-bearer of the church ; the
schools followed. History is a record of religion — this
passion for complete life — stirring in the hearts of men,
expressing itself crudely, perhaps at times cruelly, often
blindly, but still struggling after more light and life and,
therefore, at last crowning all institutions with the schools
for the people. To-day the school stands out as the
leading social institution of our common life. We often
lose sight of the fact but, nevertheless, the school is re-
ligion applied to life; the school is religion in the flower
and the fruit. Every public school is an expression of
society's essentially religious faith that a child may grow
and that the first debt which society owes to him is to
provide him full opportunity for growth as a member of
society. Every school, too, is an expression of the re-
ligious motive which delights to sacrifice, to give life to
others, for every such school simply means the united
sacrifice of each community in order that all children may
have the chance to grow. A public school is a social
syndication of idealism and sacrifice invested in the lives
of to-day for the social life of to-morrow. It is the ex-
pression of our democratic creed.

k

63 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

m
EELIGION^ .THE MOTHER OF EDUCATION

There is no way of/ accounting for the phenomenon of
. modem education apart from the ideals and spirit of
religion. Why sho.ulS" we pay taxes for public educa-
tion except under the recognition of a higher law of obli-
gation to give life to all? Why should we withhold our
children from bread-winning cooperation in the family
except under the irhpei^tivQ call to give them the chance
to grow? Why should we expect and encourage large
gifts to colleges from persons of means, except that they
have the vision of the contribution which the college must
make to life? They see the gift not as a monument in
buildings but as an act* of obedience to the heavenly vi-
sion of youth growing into richer living. Arid this reli-
gious ideal is precisely ^;^e spirit of democracy ; it is de-
votion to the enrichniPnt ^of life. Educatioli cannot be
democratic without this religious faith in lif^, nor can
it be religious without the democratic purpose of devotion
to the life of all.

The inadequacy, for democracy, of much education lies
in its irreligious character. This lies not in any espe-
cial lack of religion in the content but in the absence of
a high aim based on the vision of human social possibili-
ties and values. In so far as we depart from the essen-
tial inspiration of all educational effort, that is, the spirit
of organized endeavor to give to all persons the fullness of
their lives in a spiritual universe, we depart from true
education and indulge in mere instruction and trick-train-
ing. Lacking this vision our colleges become m^re mills
for making money-making machines, business houses to
turn out manufacturers, chemists, engineers, wrought out
of the material that God meant should become manhood.

The mockery and disappointment of modern education
is precisely that it often has lost its soul in exploiting the
world; it is more interested in mechanics than in men

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 53

because it lacks this higher and wider interpretation of
religion. We call it training for social efficiency and we
limit it to the acquisition of proficiency in a few of the
tricks and habits of making a living. In our insistent
emphasis on the practical we have almost persuaded our-
selves that the business of school and college is all de-
termined by the needs of trades and professions. We
would reorganize the whole curriculum at the demand of
the factory.

At present we scarce have any system of education, but
rather a number of sporadic attempts to teach some of
the many things that will develop efficiency in making a
larger or bigger living. Herbert Spencer, re-acting from
the traditionalism and the proud impracticability of the
English universities, has with clever words, intended only
as an argument for the practical preparation of work-
ers, succeeded in making us ashamed of the cultural ele-
ments so that we apologize for everything that does not
have a wage or a salary potency. His popular treatise
on " Education " was a much-needed call to develop life
through actually useful training; but we have taken his
means as our end.

Our tendency has been to sacrifice the man to the ends
of manufacturing. The scholar's pride in the intellect
has given place to the technician's pride in the training
of hands. This we call vocational training, as though
the only vocation, the final and all inclusive one, was that
which cries aloud in the market places and factories.
Such training loses sight of the values of personality; it
develops only workers, efficient machines ; it defeats its own
purpose and throws the engineer under the boilers. It
consumes the very powers without which the worker can
never be efficient. That which industry needs is precisely
that which the individual needs, more man, larger and more
developed personality. Work must have not alone nimble
fingers nor alone a brain nimble with figures but a life

64 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

that has power, has found itself, can grow and Is motived
with the passion for growth.

Hard, practical and biting events recently have
smashed some of our favorite educational theories. For
over a generation we pointed to the educational system of
Germany, the most perfectly organized mechanism for
making efficient workers, artizans, citizens and parts of
the machinery of the state. Now the system has come to
its supreme test. It has demonstrated both its efficiency
and its insufficiency. It has built up a wonderful ma-
chine — without conscience or soul. We have the wheels,
but there is lacking the spirit of life, the spirit of human
feeling, of an affection and aspiration that goes beyond
the machine and a soul that counts not gain or dominion
first of all. It has demonstrated its diabolical possibili-
ties. It converted a nation into a machine and when the
devil was ready to use it then it obeyed his will.

The spectacle of a national failure of education at the
very springs of life only throws into high relief that which
is true in our own country. We have applied the fruitage
of scientific training wholly to the tools of making a liv-
ing, we have bent our energies wholly to making the two
blades of grass supplant the one and the two factories
reap four times the profit of one. We have cared naught
for making each man in himself worth twice what he was
before ; we have cared naught for the inner sources of life's
guidance and refreshing. We have been so intensely prac-
tical that we have developed the menacing machine of edu-
fcated workers who have all the power of the engine and
none of the wisdom of an engineer, who can run fac-
tories and great systems of business but lack either wis-
dom or power to run themselves. They know where they
can make business go but no one knows where they will
drive themselves, nor whither they may drift.

The present danger is that of a short-measure educa-
tion, excellent so far as it goes but failing to go far

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 55

enough, to include enough to save itself. It is good food
— but without saving salt. It is well-organized and
highly efficient, but wholly insufficient, because it deals
only with the surface of life and fails to touch the springs
of action, to develop ideals and motives. It is therefore
efficient to make skilled organizers of capital but insuffi-
cient to save them from social piracy, to make chemists
but unable to save them from poisoning the purchaser of
food, able to teach all to read but powerless to develop
the choice of the good or to check the tides of moral
poison.

THE SAVING SPIRIT

What is needed? Shall we abandon all education and
call it a failure, owning that it does but whet the edge
of knavery, that it does but sharpen the tooth of raven-
ing beasts of prey and turn our whole system into social
shambles where each may rend and devour .? Does educa-
tion tend only to make nobler beasts, more efficient fac-
tors whose energies may be turned to ill and catastrophe?
Do we not see other signs ? Have we not made much prog-
ress toward social adjustment and development and have
not the steps of progress been under the leadership com-
monly of educated men and women.? Turn to the settle-
ments, turn to the groups of men and women who are pas-
sionately devoting their lives to meeting great social and
moral issues, who are waging the real fight for right and
giving to their fellows larger life. Who are they but col-
lege graduates .f^ They are a fraternity of sacrificial, ef-
ficient service. They are examples of education as a proc-
ess of the development of powers and their application to
personal and social aims. These people have been trained
and developed, not that they might gain from life but
that they might give life. Here we have the very essence
of the religious interpretation of education, a process of
the directed development of life into fullness for the

56 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

sake of the full and efficient life of common service.

This spirit and this alone will save our system of edu-
cation and save our educated men and women. In this
spirit is the natural expression of religion in education
and it is the effective mode by which religion becomes a
part of education. It comes not alone by information on
the history and literature of religion ; these have their
place only in the degree and are valuable to the extent
that they succeed in inspiring this ideal, in that they
make us feel the force of past persons and days when this
spirit prevailed with men. The religious character of
education depends on what it makes life mean to us; it is
tested in the resultant spirit and purpose in any life.
Even though men carry on their lips catalogues of
prophets and martyrs they easily go out to be despoilers
and brigands of society, blind devouring beasts who
should be shepherds and saviors. But where life means
service, where one is governed by the democratic motive,
the great of all days become real through the fellowship
of service and religion becomes, not a thin-spun theory,
but a real experience in living.

No other spirit, than that of devotion to the common
good, can hold young people content through the toil
and waiting of student days. The immediate world offers
tempting rewards; the future seems uncertain: but it is
evidently worth while to wait if thereby growth is en-
sured, if waiting and working means greater efficiency and
thus a larger contribution to the common life.

This spirit gives meaning to all studies and disciplines.
The spiritual possibilities of life interpret the universe.
Science becomes an open book of revelation ; the impres-
sive story of evolution takes on new significance with its
promise jFor man and its invitation to aid in his develop-
ment. Given a purpose in personality to the universe it
takes over the forms of beauty ; without that purpose the
more we know of the universe the more it mocks us with

RELIGION IN DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 57

its meaningless mechanisms. To see a life purpose in the
growth of personality is to give the color of that purpose
to the whole world.

What, then, is the place of religion in the course of
studies? It reveals purpose in life. It opens doors into
the yesterdays and reveals men and women who lived for
the purposes of spiritual service, for the divine good of
humanity. Their shining vision draws us on. We feel
race movements under religious inspiration ; we find our-
selves as part of the life of peoples moving toward God.
We see, not dynasties and statecraft, but leaders and mul-
titudes who counted not their lives dear if only mankind
might find freedom and fullness of life. They poured out
their aspirations, and to us they are not merely forms for
literary criticism, they are the very breath of the life
of other days. Our race heritage and our race pressure,
moving toward God, becomes our possession and our
power.

Thus religion becomes a spirit of life, a way of think-
ing about life and a way of living. Religion is not only
that which is studied in the biblical and theological
courses ; it is that which rises to guide life in any course
when the real meanings and uses of living are seen. The
special courses in religion are designed only to furnish
through specific and easily distinguished instances the clew
to the interpretation of all fields of knowledge. They
are not the curriculum compartments into which religion
is segregated; they are the sources and springs from
which a spirit and interpretation of all knowledge and all
training flows into every department.

This spirit of religion which makes life a means of serv-
ing the life of all is that which saves the modern college.
It makes it an institution of ideals in a material age. It
makes it an institution of religion, a minister to the souls ^
of men, a means of salvation in a selfish world. The cure j
for the lust of office, spoliation of the weak, robbery of

68 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

the poor, oppression of childhood, for the mad lust of
hate and the black night of lust lies neither in the illumi-
nation of knowledge nor in the control of legislation and
regulation, but in that which determines our ideals, in-
spires our wills and guides our conduct. It lies in wills
that will the right, hearts that love the good and true,
emotions that stir toward right paths. The new day
waits for new man, and men are made new as their spirits
are renewed within by the vision of loving devotion to the
common good.

Religion is, then, such an interpretation of life as alone
can make education sufficiently broad, high and vital for
the world of to-day. It discloses a society worth being
educated, a range of possibilities realizable only through
ordered groT^i:h, motives that stimulate toward growth, a
vision of possibilities of usefulness that call for the devel-
/opment of powers. Moreover, religion furnishes the
method of personal development. It teaches the supreme
lesson, that this pathway of service is also the way of
self-realization. The life that freely gives itself fully
finds itself. Service is the secret of strength and the
source of power. This way of devotion to ideals is the
curriculum of personality. Here are the two methods of
the religious life: the vision before leading on, the activ-
ity at hand developing the power to follow the vision.
This is the process of education, disclosing the truth and
organizing experience in its realization. To be effective
education must be a religious experience; to be real in
society religion must reach us through these educational
means, through revelation of truth and through experi-
ence. And so, moved forward by the vision glorious,
heartened by the glory of all that life means, gloriously
pouring out life's flood in devotion to all, in common work
with God, men are led forward in a continuous educational
experience into that common, inclusive society, that fel-
lowship of God and all men, which is the true democracy.

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION AND THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY

The outstanding problems which must be met in the
reaHzation of the democratic hope lie in the realm of
thought and feeling. We cannot have a democratic state
until we have a people of the democratic spirit.

Democracy will reign within before it is realized with-
out. It will be the prevailing ideal of a people before it
really prevails as a mode of social organization. To what
degree can we count on the prevalence of the ideals of
democracy.? This is very different from asking whether
we, in America, are committed to democracy. By our
political history, our national traditions and our public
avowals we are a democracy. But the conversion of this
outer form of government into a vital, controlling spirit,
directing the lives of individuals and the relations of all
persons, is a tremendous task. It is predicated on the
possibilitiy of the conversion of the minds and wills of
democracy. It is possible only when we have become ha-
bituated to thinking in social terms. It means that the
popular ideals of this age are democratic. To what ex-
tent is this the case?

Our first problem is to determine the degree to which
democracy has become a prevailing ideal. Is this age
already characterized by the democratic ideal? The
character of an age depends on its current ideals. The
really important question whenever we would make a j udg-
ment of any period is, what were its dominating ideals.?
We cannot know its history until we know what is in its
heart. But it is not easy to discover and describe the
heart of an age. Ideals are always in flux and develop-

59

60 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ment. While we are defining them others are realizing
1:hem and advancing new ones. Every ideal has within it
the power of destroying itself by fulfillment and enlarge-
ment. Again, ideals tend to disguise themselves. The
more compelling they are the less likely is it that we will
confess them. We get only reflections of current ideals
in literature and song; they are eff^ective in active life
before they take these forms. We must search for them
in the activities of people, and not alone in the normal
activities, but in those which seem to have special em-
phasis or to be developments peculiar to their times.
Looking over our own times we can hardly hesitate to
recognize two outstanding social activities which have had
unusual emphasis. They are social consciousness and
education.

Social consciousness is an evidence of the democratic
ideal. Social consciousness is a term less concrete but
much more accurate than " social amelioration " in de-
scribing the activities of our times. Social service, social
betterment, social rights, civic improvement and all the
movements for improving conditions of living, for secur-
ing to men and women fair wages, decent housing, leisure
and recreation are all expressions of the social conscious-
ness. They indicate the fact that we have come to realize
not only that we live in a society and that we are a so-
ciety, but that the life of this society is the most impor-
tant of all human concerns. An awakening social con-
sciousness is simply a dawning democratic ideal. Its ac-
tivities are based on a sense of the values of people. It
/Seeks to organize all society on the basis of those values.
/ Just as democracy is government for the people by the
powers of the people so this social activity is the attempt
of the people to govern current life for the sake of people, j

It would be difficult to determine whether the demo-
cratic ideal is an expression of the social spirit or social
activity a manifestation of the spirit of democracy. They

THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 61

are inseparable. Democracy is bound to extend itself be-
yond the forms of political organization. In our social
activity it is giving evidence of its vitality and power.
Increasingly human values determine social forms, indus-
trial conditions, the aesthetic and the religious life and thus
give evidence of the extent to which the basic concepts of
democracy develop in and rule the minds of men.

Current educational activity is a revelation of current
ideals. Amongst all the interests of the present age none
more clearly reveals its ideals than that range of en-
deavors which we group under education. While we are
too near to form a judgment it is not unlikely that the
period which hinges on the opening of the twentieth cen-
tury will be known as the period of the educational em-
phasis. Two things are certainly true ; first, that educa-
tional activities constitute the largest single social invest-
ment of energy, time and money of this period; and, sec-
ond, that this field has offered the largest opportunitiy to
the free expression of the idealism of individuals. Here
is the one thing which costs us more than any other and
it is the one in which we find the largest and most lasting
pleasure, in which we take the highest pride and upon
which we are building our highest hopes. It would there-
fore appear that to realize just what education means to
this age would be to discover the dominant aim of the
age.

A brief discussion must suflfice where an adequate one
is quite impossible. HEducation is the greatest common
faith of a free people. We have many sects but only one
system of schools, in nearly all communities many churches
but only one school. We have various political parties
but all support our common educational system and their
partisans send their children to the same school&J Here,
because of agreement in common conviction, we syndicate
our efforts and our means to support the agencies of
education. No tax is more cheerfully paid, it makes no

62 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

difference whether or not the citizen sends children to re-
Iceive the benefits of the tax. The rich man forsakes his
hoarding to endow the college and the poor man forgets
his poverty to send his children there.

EDUCATION EXPRESSES DEMOCRACY

Not only does the age manifest devotion by united sup-
port of education, it is now developing an intelligent pop-
ular interest in the efficiency of the schools. We are
beginning to sell books on education to people who are
not professional educators. Lectures and public discus-
sions receive popular support. The schools receive a
growing measure of attention in the public press. And,
far more important than these tendencies, we have wit-
nessed a remarkable development of intelligent interest in
and cooperation with the schools on the part of the people.
The most definite evidence of this lies in the organization
and service of the different types of clubs and societies
organized as ^' Parent-Teacher Associations," " School
Clubs," etc. To-day, in nearly every American com-
munity, there is to be found a society or club of some
sort designed to bring the families, as an organized group,
into cooperation with the school. Parents gather to be
instructed on educational ideals and methods ; they
organize to aid the school in its work; they guard its
interests and foster the improvement of its environment
and of the conditions under which its pupils live.

But why recite these endeavors in a discussion of the
prevailing ideals of democracy ? Because these endeavors
reveal the extent to which those ideals are already con-
trolling action ; they show democracy directing society in
public service. When in a community we find the families
organized under a consciousness of unity of purpose with
the schools, when men and women devote large areas of
their time in united social efforts to make the school
the efficient center of community development, there we

THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 63

see a segment of democracy organized to secure the demo-
cratic end — the development of persons — by the demo-
cratic method — the free activities of persons. When
the activities of these groups are examined we discover
new indications of the growth of the spirit of democracy.
We find that they are not organized so much to improve
the efficiencies of the school in instruction ; rather they are
directing themselves under a concept of the entire life of
the community as interpreted in educational terms. They
see the school as the center, but they concern themselves
with playgrounds, parks, clean streets, the suppression
of social plague spots, the regulation and development
of amusements and recreation, the provision of objects
and centers of art. All these activities grow out of the
now rapidly developing conviction that the entire life
of a community is constantly operating, educationally, to
determine the development and the characters of men
and women and especially of the young. Here then we
have the democratic concept of social organization as
determined by the needs of persons actually controlling
organized social activities.

Another important evidence of this tendency lies in
the recent organization of movements for commwnity
betterment arid coordination. In a word, we have come
to an educational consciousness of community living.
Democracy has led us to see beyond our streets and stores,
our factories and marts, and has compelled us to think
of these, not alone as factors in commercial success or as
features for civic pride, but, more seriously, as active
factors in determining lives, in promoting or retarding
the great purpose of democracy, the growth of lives.

We have come, also, to a clearer and deeper realization
of the importance of the educational processes in the
agencies of religion. We have coined and given wide
currency to a new phrase, " religious education.'* We
have realized the function of the church as that of the

64 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

development of society, through the training of persons,
into the divine ideal of a great common family. A new
conscience for character comes into the churches under
the ideal of democracy. It is an old concept that seemed
to be almost lost for a long time. Now it is being
restored and the church is expected to organize its life
and direct its powers in order that men and women may
become really godlike and society may reflect the divine
goodness and love. Therefore the church gives the child
a new place. It provides courses of training ; it prepares
teachers and engages trained educators; it erects special
educational buildings and has already developed a con-
siderable literature on religious education. The spiritual
mind turns with new hope to these enterprises, looking
on the child and, believing that he can grow normally
into fullness of character, it looks forward to a world
where all men know and love the truth, where they live
for one another and find joy and peace. This is the
spirit of democracy illuminated by the ideals of religion
and counting on realization through the educational
method.

We cannot assert that the ideals of democracy wholly
control life ; far from it ; but we can surely see the signs
of developing control, promises on which we may base
our certain hopes. And the hope is the more certain
in that all this educational activity constantly includes,
both in the content of the curriculum and still more in
the nature of the activities, training in the ideals and the
practice of democracy. And so to this extent, at least,
we can see an answer to the question whether democracy
has become a current popular ideal.

Our second problem is that of developi/ng the respon-
sibilities of freedom over against the temptations of
a'wtocracy. There are types who would always rather be
governed than exercise thought and effort in governing;

THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 65

there are times for all when we sigh for some one to deter-
mine conduct for us. Then there are evident advantages
in dictatorship. One mind moves much more rapidly
than a multitude. One mind ruling all can secure
uniformity and unity of action. From the beginning of
the great war Germany was the outstanding example of
the absolute control of a large group of peoples through
one autocratic dictatorship. The most serious difficulty
of the Allies, next to their lack of preparation, was their
democratic methods of procedure; there were as many
minds as there were nations and, then, within each nation
there was a multitude of counselors which did not make
either for unity of action or for expedition. To many ob-
servers it seemed that the dictatorship had proved its su-
perior efficiency. Undoubtedly it has superiority for cer-
tain purposes. If aggression, domination and subjugation^
is the mission of a nation it had better have a dictator.
But there seem to be advantages in dictatorship when
the national energies are directed toward less reprehensible
ends. The United States utilized a series of dictators
in carrying on its war program; a food dictator, whose
function has been largely advisory; a press dictator who
attempted to control what we shall know, and, apparently,
what we shall think; a ship-building dictator, and so on.
The President steadily sought larger powers, amounting
to dictatorship in many respects. It is true that such
steps have been taken under the guise of the democratic
method, the people permitting them and retaining the
power to prevent. Bu^" the simple fact is that they are
taken as leading to efficiency in conducting the war, and
the grave question is, shall we always abandon democracy
and turn to the leadership of dictators in every hour of
national crisis? Do we take these steps because they
are necessary or simply because they are the easy solutions
of a problem

■'1

66 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

WHEN DEMOCRACY FAILS

Democracy breaks down as a practical political method,
or has to be modified at times because the political purpose
is not always democratic and the people have not been
trained for democracy. They have not so learned its
arts as to be able to practice them under strain. To
many democracy is only a political expedient to be
dropped when another expedient will work better. Most
people think only in terms of the present moment; they
will do whatever the passing occasion seems to demand.
They have not learned to take long views of affairs. They
are unconscious of any need for a guiding philosophy and
it has never occurred to them that " history is philosophy
teaching by example." They know the history of institu-
tions only in the most vague and disconnected manner.
The movement in Roman history from republican institu-
tions to absolutism, through the Caesars to the Kaiser
concept, from freedom to fall, m^eans nothing to them.
Our politicians are not statesmen ; they scoff at the term
as a newspaper man scoffs when termed a journalist.
They scorn thinking and pride themselves on being prac-
tical minded. Our political discussions are confined to
men and immediate measures. It is little wonder we
readily yield to the temptations of any undemocratic
devices that promise to facilitate government.
I Trained intelligence must be our principal hope. They
see the dangers and they have the larger confidence in
democracy who understand the long conflict of humanity
with absolutism, who see religion gradually emerging from
the notion of a dictator deity to the leadership of a
splendid Brother in the great Human family, from control
by spiritual authority to institutional democracy, who
see the many and long experiments of history with the
gradual decline of monarchy and the passing of kings,
who see peoples growing in the essential elements of power

THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 67

and permanence in the degree that they are free and
intelligent2^Faith-in democracy is founded on knowledge
of humanity. The temptations of autocratic expedients
are seen in the clear light- of humanity's long experience.
Such knowledge is the right and heritage of all in a
democracy. Nor can we stop with knowledge ; there
must be training to meet the duties and strains of democ-
racy, training determined in the light of our probable
problems. This will include actual experience in social
life which deliberately chooses the difficult path of democ-
racy rather than the short cuts of autocracy, such
experience as can be guided in the family and the school.
Democracy is a dangerous experiment where it is only an
experiment unguided by the wisdom gathered from the
race experience and administered by persons untrained in
its practice.

Third, education must face the problem of nationalism
versus individual freedom. We tend to set these two out
objectively as opposites, thinking of the nation as a sep-
arate entity and of individual freedom as a matter of
separate absolutism in the personal realm. But in a
democracy the nation is possible only because free men
will to act in national capacities. The nation has no
separate existence; it is not a something which confers
freedom on the people ; it is their creation. And yet we
must think in terms of our larger common life, as a nation.
Democracy does involve loyalty to the larger group.
Nor need that conflict with loyalty to freedom. The
diff^erence lies here: nationalism thinks of the nation as a
power over the people ; democracy thinks of the nation as
the power of the people. /(^Nationalism calls on us to serve
the state, defend the state, maintain its honor and enlarge
its prestige; democracy calls on us to serve by means of
the state, to use our collective capacities which are the
state as a means of enriching and honoring all life^ The
problem is that of developing loyalties, a matter almost

68 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

wholly neglected so far as the democratic motives and
ideals are concerned. Our emotional stimuli are nearly
all those which work just as well under a monarchy. We
fail to develop feeling regarding the great aims of our
national life. And yet the material is abundant ; parts of
the Bible are saturated with the idealism of human respon-
sibility in national life; splendid passages occur in our
American poets and essayists, as in Lowell, Emerson and

/Lincoln, not to mention others, as Mazzini and Burke.

' There is no dearth of opportunity nor of illustration in
current life if only we have the vision to see our task,
to conserve the loyalties in the lesser groups, to direct
them in service, to discover the joys of sacrificial devotion
to social ends and to lead these habits of loyalty and
activity into the larger life.

CHAPTER VI

PROBLEMS OF WORLD LIVING

The catalogue of world problems we need not attempt
to exhaust but there are at least two which face democ-
^^racy and which have forced us to realize their pertinency.
/ First, is the very practical problem of securing human
I solidarity and harmony umder the ideals of personal
I freedom. How can the highest common interests be con-
served without destroying personal freedom?

This question comes to the front with increasing
impressiveness as human life develops closer relationships.
We struggle for the rights and delights of our individual
selves in days when events are welding us into world unity.
Civilization seems to mean the breakdown of individual
living. Commerce weaves us into a world-fabric of mutual
dependencies. Separateness of living disappears not only
locally but nationally also. Shall we come into rigid
uniformity under this new unity? The question lies at
the heart of all endeavor for social welfare, for we seek
something more than the organization of all persons into
regiments living in hygienic apartments, well-fed and
clothed, we seek the well-being that comes through the
exercise of free wills. It lies at the basis of our discussion
of social problems and our agitation for social justice.
As Eucken says, " Justice is nothing other than the
harmony of life incorporated into one's own volition."

The problem of human freedom is as old as the race.
It is a problem only because we are set in society,
environed by innumerable other wills, equally free. It
is the root of the ethical problem, for an ethical life is
possible only when one is free to will and act, and

69

70 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

demonstrable only when there are other lives, other wills
in relation to which one can act. It is Plato's great
theme. He treats it so prominently because the Greeks
were the first people to apply the conception of civic
freedom. True, freedom meant for them the opportunity
of all to live for and in the state, to be parts of the
state. The civic limitations of their freedom raised the
questions which Socrates faced, the right of each man
to follow virtue, the good. In the assertion of personal
freedom to seek the good and to serve the best Socrates
and Jesus both passed through death. Socrates said,
" Knowledge is virtue "; Jesus, " Ye shadl know the truth
and the truth shall make you free." Men have come
to know some part of the truth and to claim their heritage
of freedom. Did they know all truth in the Socratic
sense of knowing and in the Christ sense of truth there
would be no problem of freedom under social relations.
To Socrates knowledge included moral insight; to Jesus
truth included the conception of life in terms of love, as
part of a universe conceived in infinite love.

We to-day are likely to see only the darker features
and to get an impression of a problem rather than a
process. We see an irresponsible electorate blindly voting
away its own soul; selling its birthright and ours, too;
asserting its freedom to choose its own good, usually
goods. We see cunning wedded to cupidity claiming free-
dom to exploit us all, and loudly asserting the liberty
of the weaker members of society to make bad and vicious
bargains with the strong, the right of the socially disinte-
grated to stay disintegrated and become the spoil of the
integrated mighty ones. Individualism runs amuck under
the fair guise of freedom. What has the educational ideal
to do with these conditions?

We face in a new world-alignment the problem of human
freedom in its largest significances: since in this modern
integration of human interests social solidarity is abso-

PROBLEMS OF WORLD LIVING 71

lutely necessary, can it be attained under freedom? Is
the German method of welding a people by the external
pressure of authority the only way? Or is it possible
that the fusing of purpose and effort will come from
within, rising in the free wills of men? If free men cannot
will unity, if in freedom we cannot find a common social
goodwill, democracy is doomed.
/^ The educational ideal has within it the solution of
/ the problem of freedom under social relations. First, it
•*' recognizes the necessity of preparing men for the strain
of freedom. It seeks to provide for every man the oppor-
tunity and the disciplines of self-discovery. Its modern
emphasis is on social experience. It begins for the child
with his organized association with other lives. It trains
in social living through a society called a school. It
develops knowledge through common experiences gained in
this society. It constantly subjects every life to the
training of adjustment to other lives. The subjects that
are taught are the means of finding and perfecting con-
tacts and adjustments with other lives and groups of lives.
It develops habits of social relations. It trains the power
of willing what one will do in the light of what others are
doing or what should be done with or for others. It
reveals the self through social experience.

We cannot know what freedom means until we know
this agent that would be free, until we learn to discriminate
between the freedom of the will and the wild abandon
of passion and lust, until we discover this self that ought
to sit supreme like the charioteer over his steeds. The
educational process brings men to know themselves as
persons. It also trains men for freedom by the develop-
ment of self-control. This free I is not free until it does
as I may will, not as driven by the hot blast of hellish
hate or swept along by greed or wild with fanaticism.
The age needs men who can rule their spirits. It needs
disciplined leaders, fit for freedom. For these it must

72 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

turn to the schools of leadership ; it must look to those
who have subjected themselves to the discipline of life
under ideal aims.
,^Next, the educational ideal meets the problem of free-
/dom by its evaluation of a motive and an aim so high
f that, while all strive toward it, all find scope for individual
freedom in the process. There cannot be social unity so
long as men set before them, as the summwm honum,
material good of any kind or any object which cannot
be shared by all alike. We are not all equally free to
be millionaires, nor equally free to be foreign ministers
or national presidents. But the educational ideal holds
that the least man is as free as the greatest, the poorest
as the richest, to set before him as the chief aim in life
the fullness and freedom of personality and of social
realization. It calls on men to take their money making,
their toil, their legislating and presiding as means toward
life, the ultimate good. It is the voice that speaks to
the barn-builder, " Thou fool, this night thyself is required
of thee ! " When men live for personality they find har-
mony in freedom. With this aim we discover that those
very sacrifices due to social living which seemed to limit
our freedom under selfish and material aims, make for
the greater freedom and fullness of personality, that the
constant struggle between the individual desire and the
social welfare is the crucible in which the pure metal of
manhood is refined. This is the meaning of the word,
" He that will lose his life shall save it." The higher
goal places right values on the lower aim. The educated
man has learned to live for values that can only be found
in the way of service, of investment of self in the good of
all ; he has seen a goal that can only be reached as he shall
help others toward it. In such a program of human
action harmony, unity, and solidarity is consonant with
true freedom.

But this is only part of a more inclusive solution of

PROBLEMS OF WORLD LIVING 73

the problem. By its insistence on ultimate values edu-
cation has enabled us to see that life's present values
are to be realized only m the social whole. Reiterating
the question, what is life worth? it finds satisfying worth
only in the life of all. It has so stimulated lives to seek
ideal ends that most of us have discovered the very simple
fact that they cannot be found individually and can be
ours only as they are possible to all. If the idealist could
be an egoist he could not be an individualist practically ;
he is forced to depend on all others for any realization
of ideal ends. But this is not all. The fundamental
thesis of education that man was made to grow implies
a goal for growth. This it now sees in an ideal society.

The other problem is essentially one peculiar to bur
American life, are we sufficient for the new world oppor-
tunity?

We are at the dawn of a new day; its coming was
indicated by a darkness that seemed to obscure the moral
vision and a sleep that lay like a paralysis over all
patriotism. We sneered at the ideals of yesterday; the
cynic's laugh drowned the songs of love of country or
the sentiment of devotion to her good. We seemed to
be content with the glory of gain, with the proud achieve-
ments of kleptocratic princes. Then came the deluge,
the world catastrophe of the war. With a tardiness that
will be our shame for many days we at last realized its
moral significance. We entered the world.

We have found our new worlds to conquer. They are
not those of the old world nor of territorial extent any-
where. They are in the realm of human values. We say
that we entered the war to make the world safe for
democracy. This is a new idea, fighting for a principle,
fighting not for our form of government but for the rights
of people to govern themselves. But are we ourselves
ready for democracy.? Are we willing to pay its high
price.? It means so much more than that every one shall

74 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

be permitted to participate in government; it means
that every one shall take up the burden of sovereignty
which is not less than high-minded devotion to the common
good. The worth of a democracy is determined by the
worth of the lives of its people. We are not ready to
demonstrate democracy to the world until we set aside
all our personal aims and desires in order to give to the
whole world democracy the full service of a worthy life.

ARE WE PREPARED?

The new tasks are much more difficult than the old
ones. We had completed one task, subduing the material
difficulties, subjugating the material forces, and developing
the physical resources of a great new domain. These
days of schooling past, are we ready for world living.'^
The grave question now is whether we have the spirit
amd power to take up and carry through the greater^
higher amd more elusive task that awaits^ to conquer
ourselves^ to apply ourselves to the impressive problem
of a world society. We are called from developing a
continent to develop the resources of humanity. This
is the call of the new patriotism.

The moral glory of American character in the past
century was due not one whit more to puritan ideals than
to the stimulus of a tremendous enterprise; pioneering
made men as truly as puritanism. We were saved by
our shortcomings and our struggles. From Valley Forge
to the Panama Canal is one eloquent chapter of splendid
moral achievement under the curriculum of a nation's
birth throes. The vision of a new land of freedom and
a new humanity nerved our fathers. The vision has been
largely fulfilled and we are the most impoverished of
all peoples if to-day we are ready to sigh that there is
no more chance for heroism. The difficulty is not to find
chances but to find those who will measure up to them.

PROBLEMS OF WORLD LIVING 75

The real test of the people comes after the desert has
been made to rejoice as the rose, then comes the trial of
spiritual greatness. Solomon's glory was too much for
Israel's moral fiber. How shall we face our new day,
with its demands for costly sacrifices for the sake of
aims and ideals that are less easy to apprehend than the
rallying cries of " No taxation without representation "
or " The union one and indivisible," with purposes less
palpable than the clearing of forests and the crossing of
the plains, purposes which call for finer heroism.'^ Are
we to die where others have died with the good indeed
attained but so blindly cherished as to be fatal to the
best.?

And this is not all; we were thrown into the world
life to share in the struggle for moral ideals. The war
brought few of the old thrills of patriotism, for we were
not fighting for the glory of a nation but for the rights
of humanity. The war may be our purging; it will
certainly be our testing. It called for pioneering in the
realm of ideals.

We confess that we were caught unprepared. Certainly
we were destitute of fighting tools; we slept too long in
a fool's paradise of separation as though we could be
separate from humanity. But one does not lessen appre-
ciation of the colossal task of physical preparation in
suggesting that America was not wholly without prepara-
tion of an even more essential nature. Even before war
was declared the college youth showed that they were
intellectually prepared. Since then the streams of vol-
unteers have come from the universities. They but fol-
lowed the courses that idealism flowing from these centers
had traced. The wide views gained in education had
saved them from provincialism and had brought a world
within their habits of thinking. The social spirit of the
universities had taught them to think in terms of human

76 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

sympathies. That preparation which education had given
constitutes just the preparation which the making of a
new world will demand.

The problem of to-morrow is one of living in a con-
gested world. It involves the discovery of those values
which all can enjoy to their fullness without trespass one
upon another. It is a problem of world-wide social justice
under conditions of most intimate neighboring. We will
have to solve in world living the very problems of con-
flicting interests which have been ours at home. It is
an extension of our intense social problem; are we ready
for it?

We have been living in the glut of material power
and prosperity. Now we will have to adjust ourselves to
new conditions. The prosperity of abundance is past.
The appalling fact that the tremendous wealth of our
day is accompanied by abject poverty is evidence that
we had not learned how to live under conditions of material
prosperity. We have been rudderless on the tide of
riches while still clamoring for new tributaries. Once
the problem was to get wealth out of the forests and
the hills, now it is to apply that wealth without waste
to the whole of our lives, to insure its highest and
enduring values. As we have become masters of the
untamed land it is ours also to become masters of its
untamed crop of wealth. Our danger is that the rank
growth of that crop shall choke us.

There is little danger that we shall delude ourselves
with the false hope that the new day will come in a
beautiful roseate flush of universal benevolence born of
affluence. A terrible object lesson has forced us to aban-
don the program of salvation by material civilization.
Left to the old motives and the old methods man easily
relapses into madness we thought he had outgrown. The
struggles of the weak and the iniquities of the strong
are not of the past alone. They did not end when the

PROBLEMS OF WORLD LIVING

world war ended. That has only projected on a larger
screen our social problem. Now the sword is laid away
and the social warfare is fiercer and more cruel than ever.
Our social problems are intensified with the return of
peace. The competition in business will be keener ; the
strain of readjustment will call for new modes of organ-
ization between capital and labor, the worker will have
tasted new power and greater freedom and the employer
will be seeking to recover from heavy exactions. Shall
we look for solutions only in conflict.^ Shall we who
have disowned war nationally rely on it industrially.'^
Shall we own up that this problem is too big for our
brain .^ It is a tremendous issue, but the very intensity
of the problem is the measure of our opportunity.

CONTROLLING IDEALS

Again our hope is in the educational ideal. Our hopes
have specific bases. First, that with its insistence on
personal values, education also insists that greatness is
only by growth and that growth is not a matter of
accretion but of development. It is the prophet of the
gospel that there are riches all may enjoy without any
one being the poorer, that there is property that all may
possess in common and yet each one hold for his own.
It is our hope because it holds out the one great religious
message this age needs. We can look for nothing beyond
conflict so long as the one aim of every man is to possess
all he can of the world's limited stock of things. There
will be harmony when the aim of life is not to possess
but to enjoy, not to put things in our names but to use
them for the enriching of all life. It is our hope as it
leads to the new ultimate aim of a society in which all men
unite their eff*orts for the increase of the common goods
of love and joy, of truth and beauty.

The educational ideal gives sanity and worth to our
national program. It reminds our youth that, as a

78 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

people, we are not great simply because we are big, nor
because we have so much. Barns do not make the man
nor banks the nation. Size is the last and least criterion
in the scale of infinite values. Greatness lies in ideals,
it is revealed in human standards. It is manifest in
development. Life grows only as it comes into finer and
more complex relations. A man is greater than a geologic
mammoth because he is a more complex organism. The
hope of to-morrow lies in the democratic-minded who
will put old goods into new scales, who will teach us to
spurn some of our highly cherished lumber, who will help
us to see worth and wealth as yet unknown. We shall
seek our growth as a people intensively^ not in holding
more but in becoming more. Before we grasp new lands
we will seek to make our own better, our cities places
where the boys and girls shall play on the streets thereof,
our schools homes of idealism. The increasing complexity
of our modem life means for us the opportunity of devel-
opment. But it demands more of us ; it requires wider
and deeper preparation. The future with its greater
social complexity calls on the educator's patience, the
pupil's loyalty and the people's cheerful payment of the
price of training the powers, disciplining the judgment and
developing the will until we are ready for this new day.

Our hope is in the educational ideal because it is an
ideal; it is always richer with promise than with achieve-
ment. It is prophetic. The educated man never shrinks
from being called an idealist. He rejoices in the good
and the glory of the past as an index of that which is
to be. He scorns ease, for the good he has inherited
constitutes his indebtedness to the good that may be. He
is not ashamed of great emotions, of the hopes that stir
men and the passions that compel them, for he has learned
that all existing personal wealth has been created in the
visions of enthusiasts; the world has ever found its pot
of gold because it followed the rainbow. The cynic's

PROBLEMS OF WORLD LIVING 79

contempt of life is not the sign of culture ; it is the evidence
of intellectual atrophy. One measure of a man's educa-
tion is his response to great stimuli. If the poet's appeal,
the prophet's promise or warning, the patriot's ardor
mean nothing to you, you have not seen the educational
ideal, you are not educated. " Though I have all knowl-
edge and understand all mysteries, and though I speak
with the tongue of an angel and have not love — I am
nothing." Life is desolate without ideals. The out-
reaching after that which is not yet seen, the answer to
that which cannot be demonstrated, this is the fruitage
of education. This is the reason educated men meet emer-
gencies, build bridges which make concrete their visions,
dig canals which the nations have declared impossible and
enter on social programs which earn at their beginning
only the laughter of the practical. This is what might
be called the function of fools, to follow the ideal. This
is that which the world has ever called foolishness whether
seen in Jesus at Calvary, Paul at Rome, Garibaldi in
Italy, Livingston in Africa, or Lincoln in Illinois. These
fools are the people who have seen the day before it is
full morn, who believe that one setting of the sun does
not mean the crack of doom, who in the night carry
the light within, who fear not the future because they
have faced the past and have found the eternal values
that spring up, fresh with the dew of every new day.
They live in the strength of timeless knowledge. They
are ready for the new days because neither the rack of
clouds at dawn nor the incoherent cries of those who awake
from sleep can daunt them ; they have heard of other
dawns and they serve the ends that last through all the
days.

Problems of industry and economic relations perplex
us ; under organized greed men writhe until they rise in
hot rebellion; torn by passions and led as sheep by false
and greedy shepherds mobs meet and battle with one

80 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

another. " Is this democracy ? '^ we cry ; " Then give us
a benevolent autocracy i " Yes, this is democracy, blind,
untrained and in the dark. Yet these are better men
who strive for their ideals, who fight for freedom — even
though in strange ways — than are those who sit as
stall-fed slaves. And the cure for their darkness is light,
and for their bitterness true brotherhood and for all their
divisions the healing of a common love and the recognition
of common rights. These are the ways we all must learn.
And these ways we must teach our children lest they fall
heirs to a world sadder far than ours.

CHAPTER VII

THE SPIRITUAL, NATUEE OF EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY

The spiritual, still regarded as a mysterious, separate
something, appears unrelated to the problems of a democ-
racy; can we discover it as an integral quality in life?

Modem emphasis on religious education has one serious
danger, that we shall fall into the habit of thinking of it
as entirely separated from general education, saying to
ourselves, Here are these two, general education and
religious education; each has its own aim and its own
institutions, workers and methods; work in one has no
necessary relation to work in the other. Commonly our
mode of thought to-day permits us to think of these two
quite independently. We assume that general education
is that which a child receives in public school and college ;
religious education is that which the Sunday school
attempts. The aim of the first is recognized by all; its
processes are generally indorsed; but about the other,
religious education, there still remain much doubt and
more indifference. This is not strange so long as religious
education continues to mean instruction about religion,
creating an annex to the child's educational edifice and
furnishing it with the history and literature of religion.
Given a good school system, why should children go to
an additional institution to receive this appendix of
knowledge? Those who think in this way naturally ask,
is it really essential to one's life equipment to get this
extra knowledge?

The difficulty arises in part from our use of words ; we
have been speaking of general education, musical educa-
tion, business education, physical education and religious

81

82 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

education as though we could split education into so many
fractions. There is no such a thing, for example, as
musical education unless we mean that all the process of
education is accomplished in a musical manner or by
musical methods. Only two of these phrases or terms
have a reasonable basis; general education is conceivable
as signifying the entire educational process; religious
education is conceivable as signifying a special aim or
value to be given to all education. If by religious educa-
tion we mean the special processes of instruction in
religious knowledge alone then we use the phrase in a
misleading manner. Religious education does include this
special instruction, but it also includes whatever has to
do with the full development and the social realization
of a person as a religious being.

EdiLcation is religion m action. Only the short-sighted
mind can speak of the separation of religion and edu-
cation. They are not two separate things which we must
somehow harmonize; they are related as are thought and
action, as are life and feeling. Religion is not some-
thing to be added, if possible, to the present content of
education; it is its. cause and motive. And education is
not a process which religion can use for its ends, but
education is religion finding a mode in lives. All true
education is religious in the degree that it realizes the
possibilities of persons growing into social fullness ; all
religion is educational in that it moves lives out into the
realization of social destiny. The organizations and
mechanics of both may be separate, but the meanings,
ideas and forces of both are inseparable. We cannot
have adequate education apart from essentially religious
concepts of persons and society, and it is hopeless to
think of religion without the educational ideal of the
development of lives and society. These are the truisms
of which we must often assure ourselves lest we fall into
the habit of partitioning and even setting up in conflict

SPIRITUAL NATURE OF EDUCATION 88

the great forces that make for human development. In
this long labor that alone gives life worth and meaning,
the labor to realize our social ideals, to have a world of
love and righteousness, we must keep alive the full vision
of all our allies, we must see home and school and church
as the great forces of hope, the means by which the new
day and the better world is to be.

It is highly important that we shall not permit the
building of a barrier across the field of education with
the sacred on one side and the secular on the other. We
must try to avoid the divorce that has come into the rest
of our thinking as though one day were sacred and the
other days secular, one place sacred and others not, one
profession sacred and others devoid of religious signifi-
cance. We are trying to redeem the non-sacred from
the implications of entire separateness. We seek not alone
one sacred day but the sacredness of every day as conse-
crated to man's highest good. To-day we would think of
all professions in the light of their high responsibilities,
their sacred obligations to humanity. There is henceforth
nothing common or profane to the man who has seen how
even the least things affect that which is most sacred of
all, human personality. The idea of separation into
sacred and secular is really so modern that it has not
obtained ineradicable rooting. Once practically all educa-
tion was under the recognized sacred authorities. It still
carries over some memory of that association. It is some-
how difi'erent from other human interests. It must be re-
stored to human reality at the same time as religion un-
dergoes a like process. Then it ought not to be difficult
to prevent the unfortunate cleavage in our thinking of
these two.

Naturally some one says. But we cannot mix the
religious elements into general education in a country
where religious freedom is consistently observed. That
is to say, the public schools cannot teach religion. Very

^i,

84 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

true; but that is not at all what we are thinking about
now ; that is a problem which will be considered in another
place. We are pleading against the custom of parceling
education out into distinct packages labeled " sacred "
and " secular." Perhaps we can best see how illogical
such a partition is by considering how the characteristics
of sacred and secular are common to all true forms of
education. ^^^^^^^^

General education rmist he essentially religious. That
which we call secular education is just as sacred as any
other. The task of the teacher in a public school is,
in the finest sense, as truly religious as the task of the
church-school teacher. Of course we all know some week-
day teachers who are more effective religiously than
are some church-school teachers. But that is not the
point; the significant consideration goes much deeper:
rightly conceived the aim of public education involves the
most sacred concept that has ever come to the human
mind ; it is nothing less than this, that the most important
enterprise for society, as society, is the development and
organization of persons. The public-school system is our
social recognition of the sacredness of personality. It
is democracy directing itself to the development of its
sources in personality.

It is true that public education is often a very poor
affair. It is true that the system is often guilty of
crimes against personality. It is true that few work
with vision and the greater part of school life seems to
be controlled by a blind following of traditions. But the
ideal is there. One single fact stands out clear, that
education is the largest social enterprise of our day.
Another fact has always controlled, though it has not
always been patent, that this our largest social enterprise
is directed toward the good of the society of to-morrow.
It seeks to direct the growth of the lives that make the

SPIRITUAL NATURE OF EDUCATION 85

citizenship of to-morrow. It is devoted to persons. It
works in faith.

General education is sacred because it deals with lives
directly. This it is that gives sacredness to any pro-
fession, the responsibility it has for persons. If religion A-
is our ideal or concept of the meaning and value of life y
then whatever gives meaning or value to life is to that /
extent religious. The aim of state education is the enrich-
ing of the life of the people. It is building itself through
its developing members. It seeks finer people in a finer
world. It is doing the work which we think of God as
doing. The real meaning of every school, that is every
one which is more than an information packing house, is
that men might have life more abundantly. It works that
the ideals of the race may be realized.

Public education reveals the soul of democracy. Pub-
lic education is our supreme demonstration of democ-
racy. It takes more than universal suffrage to make a
democratic people. It requires a popular aim, a popular
purpose — that is an aim conceived by people for people
— as the ultimate aim of all social life. It means a
people united by the dominating aim that life shall grow
from more to more. It means the determination of all
the mechanisms of civil life by that dominant aim. A
democratic state is that state which exists that its people
may find fullness of life, that their social vision may be
realized. Now this is the direct aim of the public school.
H;ere democracy is immediately engaged in its supreme
work.

Somehow that high aim must be held clear above all
the maze of details of school work. We must clearly avow
the spiritual character growing out of the democratic
purpose of education. Somehow a responsibility for per-
sons must be laid on the institution that is shaping the
ihabits, forming the ideals and setting the standards of

86 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

living for our children. Our concern for democracy will
help us to see always the spiritual significance of the social
aggregation of all the children of a community day after
^ day. It will help us to realize the larger processes that
are going on in the school, those to which lessons and
learning are incidental, the actual determination of the
spirit of youth and their steady habituation in modes of
social living.

The school is the largest spiritual influence outside the
family. Hour after hour for five days of the week all
the children of a community are together learning what
life means and what it is worth. How foolish it seems
for the church, reaching only some of these children for
only a few minutes every week, to stand on one side
and to assume that its work alone is religious and all
the rest, though very useful, is still, at best, non-religious.
In the measure that any institution interprets life, gives
meaning to life and trains in habits of living, trains as
a society, it is religious. Since the public school to-day
does this work consciously more fully than any other insti-
tution certainly there is a very real and important sense
in which it is engaged in religious work. Above all it is
religious as by an experience in democracy it prepares for
full life in democracy, that is, it is preparing for a^social
order determined by spiritual values.

PUBLIC SCHOOL AND RELIGION

It scarcely seems necessary to face the common objec-
tion that the school cannot be religious because it does
not teach religion. That is to confound two different
things, religion as a quality of life and an experience, on
one side, and religion as a field of knowledge. In the lat-~
ter sense religion is not necessarily religious ; it is religious
only in the degree that it imparts the religious quality
to life, only as it gives meaning and value and direction
to the whole of life. The school is religious, but it is not

SPIRITUAL NATURE OF EDUCATION 87

sectarian; it is not ecclesiastical. We have been using
the word " religious " as a descriptive adjective. Here
it expresses a quality and a purpose, not a certain group
of facts, not a peculiar field of knowledge and not certain
special forms of activities. Religion never will be a
dominating force in life until we take it out of its ecclesi-
astical pigeonhole and open our eyes to see it as a quality
and force and an ideal everywhere.

The purpose of the school lies with a religious per-
son. The schools are necessarily religious because they
deal with persons who are essentially religious. They
cannot take boys and girls and split off a section of their
personalities which may be called the religious nature and
bid them leave that outside the schoolhouse. They cannot
do this because there is no sectional partition in human
nature. It is the whole person who is religious just as it
is the whole person who is being educated.

In all thinking on the problems and plans of religious
education few things are more important than this, to
have always clearly in mind the fact that human nature
is not a divisible thing; always and everywhere education
is dealing with the same person and always in a very true
sense it deals with the whole of the same person. The
boy who goes to Sunday school may not look like the
same boy who is yelling on the school playground; but
he is the same, not only in name but in nature. He takes
the same nature to both the schools. The Sunday school
has for a long time assumed that when John came to
its classes he brought only his spiritual powers, but that
mistake was no more common and no more serious than
the other assumption, that he takes only his mental
powers to the public school. The Sunday school is
recovering from the mistake of attempting to teach souls
without minds ; but the public school must turn from the
error of trying to teach minds without souls.

Whatever any influence of life does with a boy or a

88 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

girl it does with them as persons, not as minds, memories
or spirits. Whatever change the school effects is a change
in a life, in the totality of a personality. To change
any one^s mind is to change him, is to change his life.
This is now recognized in modem Sunday schools; but
it must be recognized as precisely what is taking place in
any school.

As soon as we escape from the traditional concepts of
human beings as divided into separate departments or
faculties and grasp their essential unity we find it impos-
sible to think of the public schools as entirely separated
from the religious lives of the pupils. They cannot be
separated from any part of their lives.

It is impossible to have an educational effect and avoid
a religious resvlt. The important thing is to realize that
whatever affects a person must affect him as a religious
being, that whatever really affects his character must
really have some religious quality in it. Whatever the
attitude of the school may be on " religious questions '*
it cannot avoid contact with religious persons and it can-
not avoid affecting those persons as to the value and
meaning of life for them.

One danger lies here, however, that teachers shall
become unduly conscious of the religious nature of their
tasks, shall feel that they must always be thinking of the
effect of their work on religious natures. The better
>course is for one simply to do the work that has to be
done, giving each life every possible stimulus and means
of nurture without attempting an analysis of the parts
or phases of growth. Again we have to insist on the
unity of the person who is being educated. Only harm
can come from attempts to disintegrate the total process
of growth in order to determine how a soul is getting on.
The fact of religious responsibility is not an occasion
for morbid anxiety but rather one for rejoicing; it must
be seen as the ground for greater dignity in the teaching

SPIRITUAL NATURE OF EDUCATION 89

profession ; it must give the teacher the j oy of sharing in
a great and holy work. \/-

CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS

After all what does this religious responsibility and
privilege mean but that public education deals with lives?
The schools teach the fine art of living. That is their
business. This is their immediate, practical contact with
all religious activities. Religion is the motivation of
life; it is such a vision of the meaning and value of life
as transforms and compels the life. The church and the
school have the same task: to lead people into fullness
of living. The difference lies principally in two facts,
First, that the church being an entirely free, voluntary
body can select and use its own materials and fields of
training. Second, churches work with selected groups
while the school accepts the entire community. Each
church uses the special teachings of its own group. But
the schools being the common agencies of all the people,
are limited to those forms and activities about which there
is general public agreement. This gives the church a
much wider range of interests as to subjects. The social
limitations of the schools have the practical effect of
preventing the current concepts of religion and its special
interpretations from coming into use there. But they
do not prevent the greatest of all concepts, the glowing
ideals of life and its worth and possibilities. On the
other hand churches are limited by their group aspects
which often tend to give children caste training.

If we were to ask the schools what product they have
for society they would answer " Citizens." They seek
to give back these boys and girls trained to live the
social life of their day. If we ask the church as to its
product do we not look for the same answer, " Men and
women who do the will of God here ".^ The training in
the life of present-day society js, at least, an essential

90 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

part of training to live in the democracy of God. A
sense of the unity of such work must be encouraged. The
church must recognize every teacher of lives as a spiritual
agent and servant. If it does not do so it loses the aid
of its best allies. More, if it does not do so it gives
evidence that it does not know its own task. No one
can seriously seek the development of lives and the organ-
ization of an ideal society without discovering and recog-
nizing every agency that develops lives. Whoever touches
a life to make it more or less, to give it new riches and
strength, to teach it the supreme art of living, works with
the great Life of which we are a part.

PvhUc education is sustained by spiritual ideals. Es-
sentially the best ideals of public education are religious
ideals ; they look to the realization of the noblest hopes
the human race has ever cherished. They hold before us
the glowing vision of a new earth that is a new heaven.
Every true teacher is an idealist in the simple, everyday
sense. They have in their hearts the evidence of things
not yet seen. Their faith carries them forward. Nothing
could be more dreary than the daily routine of telling old
facts to unwilling pupils ; nothing could be more like a
tread-mill existence than the dreary round through a
curriculum that is no more than a highway paved with
information. Merely to drill unwilling .slaves in intel-
lectual exercises is to become a slave where one might be
a priest. Professional pride is the sense of the worth
of service in the light of its high aim. Teachers believe
that education is the means by which the world is coming
to self-realization. They see democracy coming into its
own. They look beyond school mechanics to their splen-
did end in a finer, nobler society. If they teach for wages
they are poor economists ; the same energies would give
larger rewards anywhere else. They are not prone to
boast of the fact, but they labor not for salaries but for
society.

SPIRITUAL NATURE OF EDUCATION 91

Just as the church is sustained by that vision of a
world in which men live in love and do justice and find
and follow the truth, so is our system of public schools
maintained and conducted in the high hopes that men can
learn to live and to so live that the outstanding ills of
this day may be no more and a society that fulfills our
hopes can come to be. Surely this is working for what
the church calls the will of God. And that consciousness
is peculiarly keen in the school of our day.

The social theory m education is a further indication
of religious purpose. This is the period of the social
emphasis in education. That means not alone that we
recognize that all education is a social process, but it
means, too, that we see that these social processes must
have social results. Education not only uses social
experience but, because it is social experience, it makes j
society. Evidently we have hardly caught sight of the \J
tremendous religious implications of modern education. /\
Besides the considerations advanced we might mentioiiN!
the religious nature of the school processes ; here we have \
three great social facts cooperating: first, an ideal social
group affording children a tremendously potent social
experience ; second, a social theory dominating the methods
of modern education, and, third, a social aim gradually
emerging as the reason for and the ultimate aim of the
work of the school. Along with this comes the fact of
the social emphasis and interpretation of present-day
religion. It has discovered the world in which it works
and it sees it as the object of its work. It is satisfied no
longer with plucking selected individuals from an earth
of woe into a heaven of selfish felicity; it seeks to bring
about a society which is the very family of God. In this
it works immediately with the schools, no longer conceived
as packing houses of information but seen as social insti-
tutions organizing social experience that the new society
may be realized. That is the faith of teachers to-day.

92 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Whatever else is true, the true teacher must be a
religious person for to be an educator implies that one
has faith in life as growth and this is to make a spiritual
interpretation of the universe. The teacher is one to
whom life means for every one just the chance to become
and to become fully in the life of all. The concept that
lives may grow and that all life may increase, develop,
find harmony and fulfill its hopes underlies all educational
eff^ort. But the teacher is one who, as it were, says to
the world, I believe so much in life as growth that I
give myself wholly to this as my first purpose, and not
to my own growth alone but to aiding the growth of all.
Each man^s work is really his creed in action. Your
religion is what you do for the world. To give greater
meaning and worth to life is surely the most religious
service any one could render. The world is really
religious in the measure that life, the life of all, becomes
rich and full. It is not talking about religion that gives
life its divine quality, it is finding that quality and worth
of life that makes the world religious. Many a school
has done more to make a community religious than all
its churches, for often they have given it nothing but
analyses of religion while it has led the people into more
life; it has opened for them the world of the spirit; it
has lifted their eyes from things to the eternal facts ; it
has helped them to love one another and to live together
kindly, cooperatively; it has enriched for all the life of
things and made it but the means of the life that is more
than things.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY

Society has a social purpose; its highest duty is the
development of a more perfect society. The degree to
which this primary duty is recognized becomes the measure
of the democratic tendencies of any society, and our imme-
diate community groups are the societies in which this
ideal must be demonstrated.

Democracy is realized in the degree that society adopts
the program of the development of persons. There are
many evidences of social consciousness of such a purpose.^
There are signs of recognition of its educational char-
acter. There are those who see its spiritual significance.
The college sophomore is not the only one who asks, What
do we live for? Older men come back with deep serious-
ness to that question. It appears in an enlarged form:
What do we all live for? When one is conscious of society
there must surely be some questionings as to its purpose.
And are we not under intimations of meaning as to our
world life? We hope for a finer order of life, growing
put of this present, one in which the inner life really
shall be supreme. But whether we thus cherish high
vision or hope only for proximate improvements it is quite
clear that life ought to have a plan, and life's organiza-
tion, in society, ought not to spend itself without purpose.
If one looks at a village or a city, with its manifold com-
plex activities, there ought to be an answer to the question,
To what end all this endeavor.?

lAs in the development of the social sciences, in attention to
eugenics, in courses of popular study on social welfare, in the
quickened conscience of churches on social needs and in the tendency
to predicate social programs on human needs.

93

94 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Granted the social aim of society, what is the program
for its attainment? Here we have to plead guilty to
the pathetic indictment so vigorously presented by
Wallace ^ and acknowledge that, while we have applied
science to practically every other phase of life we have
developed no technique and no scientific theory of the
development of the personal qualities and phases of life.
Boasting of progress in a thousand other fields, of what
worth is it to us if we, the masters and users of these
processes, ourselves show no improvement? In what ways
are our modern methods more efficient in the development
of character than were those of Egypt, or in the Athens
of Socrates or the Rome of Cicero? True we have multi-
plied schools and democratized the processes of instruc-
tion ; we have systems of schools ; but it would be impos-
sible to show that their courses are determined by the
needs of society, by any program for the development
of society. The difficulty lies in the fact that we have
no consciousness of a real social program. The large
game of living society does not play in any completeness ;
it rather develops sporadic plays, parts of the game. We
discuss democracy as though it were one of a number of
efficiencies which society would do well to acquire, failing
to see it as the essential program of society, as the real
business of developing the lives of all.

Perhaps the situation is not as bad as at first appears.
The very nature of society establishes certain educational
efficiencies. The function of social education is not im-
posed on society ; it is inherent in its nature. Society
cannot stop educating itself because it cannot cease associ-
ating itself. It cannot cease to be a school of social
living so long as it affords an experience of social living.
As the social order becomes more complex it becomes a
school for higher living. Even our present competitive

1 " Social Environment and Moral Progress," Alfred Russell Wal-
lace (Cassell, 1913).

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY 95

order, rent and torn by failure and disaster, plowed by
discontent and watered with ideals, becomes the soil in
which a new democracy grows.

Social experience is the most effective school. In liv-
ing with people democracy is learned. We cannot say,
Lo here ! or, Lo there is the school of democracy ! It
is everywhere. It is wherever lives are gaining vision,
forming motives and ideals, establishing habits and devel-
oping methods of living. It is in every family, every
school, every village and city way, every social gathering,
every college and factory and store, for good or ill. Of
course this is one of those very simple facts, a truism,
as commonplace as to speak of the earth's perpetual
motion. But a truism is that which is so true it is always
likely to be overlooked. We know that education is
continuous, going on everywhere ; but we do not act upon
the fact; we do not plan our streets nor control them in
the belief that character is being determined more in them
than in the school-seats. We acknowledge the fact of
continuous education but we limit our attempts at direc-
tion to schools. We speak of systems of education and
delude ourselves in watching the intricacy of operations
in their little sphere. But the whole of education cannot
be systematized, though it must be realized; it must be
viewed with a comprehension of its forces and their
effects.

Educational potencies must he recognized and under-
stood if they are to be wisely used. The first step to
be taken in the preparation of the new democracy is to
understand the constantly operative forces which are
determining its character. That will compel a consider-
ation of all that happens, especially in the lives of the
young, in the light of its educational effects. Forgetting
our traditional formalisms of education, with beginnings
and endings, we will think of the cradle, home life, the
long, sweet and happy play of childhood, the growing so-

96 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ciety that extends down the streets, takes In the school and
widens out into the whole world as the child's and man's
never recessing school. All the environment of growing
lives will be seen in the light of effects, under the questions,
In what ways does this help to make the child a true and
fit member of society? In what ways does this qualify
him for democracy? New scales of values will be applied
to the physical conditions of family life, new measures to
community conditions, streets, amusements, newspapers,
books and occupations. Instead of asking what do men
make out of them, we shall ask, what men are made by
them? Nor must we impatiently say, these are, again,
but truisms, for we do not habitually think or act in
this manner regarding the real factors, the everyday
experience, that makes men and women.

VARIED ACTIVITIES IN EDUCATION

But does not this general concept of all life as a process
of education leave us in vague confusion of mind because
of the interweaving of the many agencies, and in a state
of helplessness because of their lack of definite educational
characteristics? There need be no more serious diffi-
culties here than are found in any real system of educa-
tion, for all this variety and intricacy, found in the
common experience of living, is essential to the develop-
ment, the education of such a complex as man Even
in the school there must be approximately similar variety
or the school fails to educate. The variety and infor-
mality of everyday experience increases its educational
potency. As to any attempt to organize it, that is not
the principal need, rather we need to organize our own
thinking about all that is happening around us and to
give it a guiding spirit of life. Schematic control can
only wisely develop as it follows a recognition of functions
which has come out of long and patient study.

Social agencies serve as ediucators each according to

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY 97

its own function. Perhaps the lines between the different
forms of experience in life are less vague than we are
accustomed to think. If we analyze social experience
into the family, the play-group, the school, the com-
munity and industry or occupation we have fairly distinct
lines emerging which each form of experience deals with
as a distinct phase in one's education, and, in the order
stated, there is indicated the steps of development. Each
one is a circle of experience containing the preceding
experience and reaching out to the next and larger one.
Each form of social experience has in it the elements
preparing one for Hfe in the larger form. Each has a
definite part to play in education for democracy.

The need of an educational standard. If education
is going on everywhere and all the time, why worry .^^
Why not simply seek to improve life in general and let
education take care of itself? The answer is that this
is precisely the proper procedure provided we know just
what life in general ought to be, and in order to know
this we have to determine standards of life, standards
of growth of persons. We cannot tell how society ought
to be ordered until we think it out in educational terms.
We do not know what is wrong with our times until we
examine them in the light of their effects on lives, until
we test them by the educational gauge. How do we know
that a six-day week and an eight-hour day are best?
Not by our own desires for rest, nor by any traditional
imperative. We know only in the light of what is best
for man's all-round development. We test all conditions
of life by whether they are favorable or otherwise to
the growth and happiness of man as a social being. And
constantly new factors come into our tests ; even the
slave-holder tested conditions by their physical effects on
the efficiency of his slaves ; we have to move beyond that
and test our cities, our streets, factories and homes by
what they do for man as a free spirit.

98 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

So that an educational standard gives a clue to the
worth, the value and righteousness of life's conditions.
It suggests a social order determined wholly by a con-
^ trolling purpose to cause all conditions to stimulate the
growth of persons, the realization of their powers, not
alone of action, but of thought and feeling, of aspiration
and ideal. That would be a democracy of the spirit, for
that purpose would rise out of the common will and be
devoted to the common well-being. That cannot come
until we all learn steadily to think through the life of
our everyday experience, of family and school and com-
munity and see them as they determine the lives of people,^
the breadth and depth and wealth of their lives.

So far we have an educational consciousness only as to
the schools and the colleges and universities; what would
be the effect if we were to accustom ourselves to thinking
in educational terms of the family, and of the community
life.? What further changes would take place should we
emphasize, under education, the training and development
of the spiritual nature? Should we be able to develop
a program of education which would include equally all
phases of human development, which would prepare
properly for competent and complete social living because
it called on every one of the agencies of life to play its
full part.J^ Such a program would not depend on formal
schools alone; it would coordinate the powers of every
agency and of every institution into a program for all
lives.

A real program of education for democracy — and this
is the same as speaking of a real program of full educa-
tion — would determine the part played by each agency
or institution in its social function ; it would determine

1 See studies on " The Functions of Community Agencies " in
Beligious Education for Feb., 1918 (Vol XIII, 1) in which thirteen
agencies are considered; also on "Libraries," April, 1918 (Vol.
XIII, 2).

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY 99

the character of the relations of the growing life to
each institution by two things, the need of that life and
the purpose of democracy.

THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY

Any program which includs all the powers of lives
for all the purposes of society will give the place of
first importa/nce to the family. Its function is that of
bringing lives into the world and nurturing them in a
small social group. It has a more distinctly personal
function than any other institution. First, because it deals
with the young on every side of their lives, it has no
reserves or limitations during early years; it has free-
dom of access to the feeling, judgment and will in a
constant and most effective manner. Second, it accom-
plishes its educational ends by personal means ; it educates
by influences, and personal contacts, in a word by being
a society ; and. Third, its purpose is avowedly more
personal than any other agency. It is known by the
kind of persons it produces. It is proud when its mem-
bers secure the wealths of personality. Fourth, it reaches
lives in the years when the greatest part of the educational
process is being perfected. If the child learns more in
the first five years than in all the rest of his life then
the home must be the greatest of all schools.

It may seem difficult to state the precise task of an
institution which appears to have all tasks for its own
at least for the first years of childhood. But two clarify-
ing facts are to be noted: First, that society is tending
to take the sole responsibility for several phases of early
training away from the individual family and place it
on the social group, and Second, there are certain well-
defined areas of responsibility, indicated by the nature
and function of the family, which society is assigning to
it most distinctly.

Society does tend to relieve the family of some immediate

100 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

responsibilities by itself caring for the health of infants
and the young. The family has ceased to be its own
physician just as it has ceased to be its own weaver and

, tailor. But there is no tendency to establish social
machinery which will take the place of parents in the
care of the child's early mind and will. In fact one of
the reasons for organizing social aid to the family in
its physical task is that it may be stronger and have
greater freedom for its spiritual duty. One thing society
certainly has a right to expect of every family and that
is that its first concern shall be for the characters of
the children. Parents are under social obligation to
organize the home for the education of the spirit, for
training young lives in the motives and habits of social
living.

There has been a tendency to evade the responsibility
of the family for the early development of social good-
will and social ideals. Parents, recognizing their own
failures, have demanded that the schools rectify their
errors and make up their deficiencies. But that is im-
possible. A child is not clay to be given to-day a twist

. this way and to-morrow to have the twist taken out of
him. The schools begin too late; character is not fixed,
but it is well formed by the time children go to school.
Whatever value moral training may have in the schools
it cannot have the values of beginnings. To attempt to
build national character on school training is to try to
build by beginning at the third floor with neither plans
nor agencies for the lower ones.

In any program of education for democracy there must
be such a recognition of the fundamental work which the
family has to do with character in its beginnings that
we shall not only expect certain things of the family but
we shall provide the family with the means of accomplish-
ing its work and protect it in the prosecution of that
work, We shajl i^ot hold him guiltless whQ interferes in

%.

THE SCHOOL OF DEM)mACY im,

any way with the freedom and powers of the parents to
live with their children and to know them, to guide their
minds and train their lives. We shall not look with com-
placency on a system that provides us cheap goods or
the manufacturer large profits by labor that makes
physical parenthood a mockery and spiritual parenthood
an impossibility. Nor shall we regard with complacency
the family that deserts its opportunities and drives chil-
dren either on the streets or into the care of those not
trained for spiritual education while parents use its life
as an instrument of their pleasures. In both cases we
shall realize that the crime is committed against us all,
that in such cases the family is simply passing its prob-
lems on to the future and society is permitting the devel-
opment of social misfits, aliens and despoilers.

Any true program of education of all the people for
the life of all the people will have a definite, socially
recognized and adequately supported place for the family
as an educational agency. That task will be just as
clearly seen as the task of the schools. Society will count
on the family with exactness for the spiritual nurture, the
social development of the very young. And it will also
count on the family for the continuation of its peculiar
processes of intimate personal contacts, of the life of the
small social group, through the years of youth. It will
be the school in which young people learn first of all and
most steadily of all, through immediate experience, the
arts of social living and the motives of democratic living.

THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH

The church mil range beside the family in the pro-
gram of education. It is really a larger family, the
membership of which is determined voluntarily. It is
a social group brought together by spiritual ideals and
organized to accomplish spiritual purposes. Its function
is that of realizing an ideal spiritual society, a democracy

102 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

of the spirit. It accomplishes its purpose by bringing
persons together in a common program which seeks tlie
development of the likeness of God, the realization of
< a spiritual ideal in men and the development of the
society of God in the world. It is an educational agency
because it deals with persons for the purpose of devel-
oping their lives and with society for the purpose of
developing its life.

Its place in the social program is very definite; it is
the means by which, in a democracy, we afford persons
freedom to form their own groups for religious purposes.
It is the means by which, under civic freedom, it is
possible for society to gather up the many forms of spir-
itual stimuli which religion affords and to apply them to
the whole of social life. It is the socialization of the
traditions and the race heritage of religion under social
freedom. The measure of its efficiency is the degree to
which the stimuli of religion carry over into social life, the
degree to which the faiths of the churches and their social
life make better and more efficient members of society and
a better, more spiritual society.

The church then is that social agency which has freedom
under democracy to use those powers which the state
cannot use through its agencies ; it exists, specifically, to
make religion count for life and society. It is to be
held responsible in a democracy for the use of this power.
Democracy commits to the churches and their agencies
that part of the program which has to do with the explicit
teaching of religion and with the direct training of
religious life. It has a place in the program that is
taken by no other. It has a place which is absolutely
essential to any complete society. Therefore a democ-
racy, as a political organization, will recognize the func-
tion of the churches, will protect them in their proper
spheres and, so far as it can do so in justice to all, it
will encourage their work. This it will do because the

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY 103

churches are the special agencies for the spiritual life
and this life is the fundamental basis of the power of
a democracy. The church then has the function of spir-
itual education under conditions which afford entire free-
dom in the use of religious ideals and teachings. In its
various forms it is democracy finding free association
about many types of spiritual ideals.

THE FUNCTION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The public schools have a highly important part in
the program of education for democracy. They, again,
are manifestations of democracy at work. Their pur-
pose is to organize the powers of communities and of
states and to direct the cooperation of professional
workers so that the young may be properly trained in
the life of democracy. This function we must keep clearly
in mind, abandoning our inadequate concepts of the
school as existing to equip our children with certain
useful tools of knowledge; it exists because democracy
wills its existence in order that these on-coming members
of the democracy may know its life, its ways, its ideals
and may be quickened to carry forward its purposes.

The schools as social agencies must be judged by social
products. In thinking through the life of any community
we have a right to look to the schools to accomplish cer-
tain results with the wills, minds and social purposes and
habits of the young. This is the basis on which all the
varied activities of the school must be determined. Con-
sidering the institution functionally we can no longer
determine the range of its work by text-books and
curricula, but by its responsibilities in social character.
Such considerations justify playgrounds equally with
libraries and laboratories; they justify social enterprises
and recreations equally with recitations; they justify
social usefulness equally with study programs. The
school has its part to play by doing all that can be done

104 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

under forms of social organization and experience to
guide the young into the life of democracy.

The functions of the schools in a democracy are based
on their nature as institutions rising out of the will of
the people. A school stands in a community, speaking
through its brick and stone, and through all its work, in
the words of state documents in the United States " We,
the people of ... do will and hereby do carry out our
purpose " to secure to to-morrow an intelligent, trained
democracy. But if " we the people " do this a serious
responsibility lies upon us all. We must know what it
is we plan to do and we must know how it is done. Pop-
ular education means popular responsibility for educa-
tion. The recognition of the function of the school in
the community carries with it the duty of all citizens
to understand, through careful, painstaking study and
intelligent, patient observation, this process of education
for which they are responsible.

COMMUNITY AGENCIES

Communities organize many special agencies to assume
specific functions: the public library, the park and recre-
ation boards, special institutes and associations to care
for special groups and numerous clubs and societies to
accomplish particular ends. There is always the danger
that organizations and institutions shall multiply, each
arising in response to some definite and real need, until
their lines of service cross continuously, until forms of
service are duplicated, energies ar6 wasted and com-
petition becomes the order of the day. A social cross-
section of some communities looks much like an ant-hill
that has been over-turned, revealing bewildering activity
without compensating results. The condition is so
familiar that it is not necessary to attempt to describe it.

The problem of commwnity organization is altogether
too large for satisfactory study here but there is one

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY 105

aspect which may be considered properly ; it is one which
is fundamental. At present our current studies in com-
munity organization seem to emphasize the desirability of
adjusting the various activities into a coordinated pro-
gram. This is desirable, but it surely must be predicated
on deeper considerations than harmonious adjustments.
The most perfectly adapted mechanism would be of little
value unless it was designed and used to accomplish some-
thing. The fundamental consideration, upon which all
community organization must proceed, is that of the pur-
pose of the community. Adjustment follows common con-
viction of purpose. Purpose determines programs. The
community is a mechanism; it has a purpose which lies
beyond itself. It exists to shelter, nurture and train
persons; it has the purposes of democracy; it is the
larger association of persons for social ends. And it is
much more than a mechanism; it is an organism; its
life is the life of persons in a society ; so that all programs
must take into consideration its vital powers.

The first step in community organization is the realiza-
tion of the tremendous power of this social mechanism
to produce social results, its influence over persons, its
constantly exerted power to determine what they think
and feel and what they are. It is making persons, not
alone by its intentional educational work but because
these persons respond to its life; they see its ideals
realized in actualities ; they answer to the community's
impress on their lives. The community is seen as a real
school when its effects on character are understood.

The basis of all community organization ought to be
in the power of the community to determine the character
of lives. It should express the purpose of the community
to determine lives. Much as we may boast of the wealth
and the industries of our villages and cities they have a
potency far greater than all their factories; it is the
potency over the lives of persQns, They have a purpose

106 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

far higher than financial standing or statistical glory, it
is that they may produce the best kind of persons. This
power and this purpose will furnish the test for every
community agency. Your community, seen as a school,
will accept or reject activities as they make for or against
life. It will make that test final and absolute. No matter
what other inducements this or that industry or amuse-
ment may offer, it has no right in community life if it
does not minister to its program as a school of living.
In like manner, this power and this purpose will determine
the relationship of the various activities. It will furnish
the point of their cooperation. The school will co-
operate with the family not to lessen family duties but
for the sake of richer, stronger lives. The school will
cooperate with the churches, not to save the churches their
intellectual labor, but to help them in growing finer
manhood and womanhood. There will be cooperation
between school and factory, not that the factory may
have more intelligent human machines, but that all life
may be enriched and especially the life of the worker and
the community.

The basis of commumty organization lies in the concept
of the whole commwnity as a school of democracy. And
the basis of community endeavor of every kind lies here.^
This is the test to which we may bring all our projects
for community betterment. It is likewise the test to
which we may bring all our plans for social amelioration ;
do they contribute to the greater efficiency of the social
order in developing itself, in developing stronger, happier
men and women f^

1 This is not in conflict with the plans developed by B. S.
Winchester (" Religious Education and Democracy," Pilgrim Press,
1917) and W. S. Athearn, (" Religious Education and American
Democracy," Abingdon Press, 1917). Both these authors describe
methods by which the work of general education may be supple-
mented, and complemented, by community cooperation in religious
instruction. They present in detail one feature in the program of
a community,

THE SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY 107

Education for democracy, then, is not a special exer-
cise, set into some apportioned periods of time, as the
school and college days, the hours of church and church
school. It is that which is going on all the time in our
families, in all the life of the community. Whether we
will to have it so or not the total social life is a school
and is determining, by its teaching power, the kind of
society we will have to-morrow. We cannot escape this ;
we cannot offset this power of life to educate by any
special provisions we may make. It is always there and
inevitable. Surely then it is the part of wisdom to direct
this power. If life is always educating; if it is such a
school as we have suggested, should we not begin to regard
it as a school, to determine its character and its effects.?*
Is it not high time to look out beyond the public schools
and the church schools into the real schools, to consider,
with care, how democracy is being determined on the
streets, in the vacant lots, in the movies and the play-
grounds, in the fruit-and-soda stores, wherever lives are
together.^ Is it not simple common sense, if we organize
the regular schools with a view to their purpose, to
organize and direct this larger and constant school of
life also with a view to its purpose to develop a finer
democracy ?

CHAPTER IX

BEGINNING AT HOME

The family is the first and the most effective school of
democracy.

Democracy as an experience is an educational process.
It is, for every citizen, a schooling in social control. It
involves the participation of all persons in self-govern-
ment, not alone because all naturally desire to have a
voice in their own affairs, but because only through such
participation can they learn the social life, only through
the experience of governing can they become fit to govern.
Democracy rests, as a method, not so much on the rights
of persons as on their social and educational needs. As
the actual experience of living is the real schooling for
life so this laboratory of civic living is essential to citizen-
ship. Exercise through social experience is essential to
the development of man's social powers; he learns the
life of society through sharing all its experiences including
the experience of self -direction.^

Democracy J as an experience, must begin early in life.
If it is true that persons learn the life of democracy only
through the democratic experience of social self-direction
then it is evident that this experience must come as
early as possible in life. The exercise of the suffrage
may be deferred until maturity, but the experience of
democracy must be realized as soon as any experience

1 The discussion of woman suffrage would have been settled long
ago had it moved from the plane of personal rights to that of
social needs. Since all in a democracy need the full experience of
democracy it follows that women need, for the sake of the democ-
racy, a full share in its life. The state cannot afford to have part
of its life cut off from its own educational experience.

108

BEGINNING AT HOME 109

can be known. The importance of early beginnings will
be clear when we remember that democracy is not a matter
of intellectual concepts or of political opinions; it is a
form of life, a way of social living. It is a continuous
'social life. Its habits cannot be too early acquired.
Democratic citizens are not created by suffrage legisla-
tion; they grow through social training. If it is true
that the foundations of society are laid in childhood then
here we must begin to build our democratic society.

Democracy begins at home. The family is the child^s
first educational group; no other has equal power. An
autocratic family makes a poor school for democratic
society. Yet nearly all families are either autocracies
or dual monarchies. We still hold to the theory of the
divine right of paternal kings to absolute rule. True,
in American homes, the rule is largely a fiction. As a
working man said recently : " We people of to-day catch
it both ways ; when we were young we were compelled to
respect our parents ; now we are grown we are compelled
to respect our children." The seeming conflict and
breakdown of the old authority in American homes is due,
in part, to our attempt to maintain autocracy there
while indorsing democracy outside. But the strife of
wills, the asserted and ignored authority of parents, works
only to develop individualists. The young often experi-
ence a society in which they either live in subjection or in
perpetual conflict of wills, devoid of all attempts to work
out a common goodwill. They look out and forward to
another and different society in which they will play their
full and free parts. There is no relationship in experi-
ence between the child's first social group of the family
and his larger group of the state.

To many it will seem a revolutionary doctrine to in-
sist that the family must be organized as a democratic
society. So men once thought about the state. But the
modern free state is founded, not on some newly discov-

110 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

! ered theory of government, but on the very nature of
inan, on his inalienable rights and his social needs. So
with the family. Its very nature calls for a democratic
form of life. The state is democratic because civic forms
exist for the sake of social ends, for persons. The fam-
ily must be democratic because it exists, even more simply
and evidently, for the sake of persons ; it is the one social
group which has this sole and dominating reason for exist-
ence. It is a little society organized in order that per-
sons may be bom into the world under conditions favor-
able to their nurture and that they may develop as per-
sons. Its raison d'etre lies in social persons. It is or-
ganized for people. Its mechanisms for feeding and shel-
ter are subsidiary and only contributory to its larger
purposes; they could be conducted much more efficiently
in larger groups. The apparently wasteful methods of
the small household are justified in the light of the social-
educational advantages of the small group for the young.
Here in this small group, so closely related, so mutually
dependent, the art of life is learned. Social considera-
tions dominate all its methods. Because it exists for
the growth of lives the weakest and youngest have the
largest claim on it. Those who are strong here serve the
weak. The baby is the center of the home because de-
mocracy always sets the child in the midst.

But the practical question remains, how can the home
life be so organized that children find in it a real expe-
rience in democracy.? How can the family provide train-
ing in self-government and social direction? Many ask.
Does not the practice of democracy involve the abandon-
ment of parental authority and, therefore, of parental
responsibility ? No ; on the contrary it increases both ;
it increases responsibility by making it the duty of the
parent not so much to see that the child does as it is told
but to aid the child in willing that which is good for all ;
it increases authority by adding to the will of the parent

BEGINNING AT HOME 111

the will of the child. It makes parents educators of wills
instead of dictators of actions. Authority is increased
as it passes from autocracy, which has authority only as
long- as the governed are too weak to resist, to a common
social good will.

METHODS OF FAMILY TRAINING

What, then, are the methods ? By affording each mem-
ber a steadily developing experience of participation in
all the joys and duties, the service and responsibilities of
the home; by ceasing to think of the family as a benev-
olent autocracy on one side with the children as passive
beneficiaries on the other; by beginning to think of and
steadily cultivating the habit of regarding the home as
the common possession of all, of its life as a common life
in which all have a share and toward which all have serv-
ice to render.

Democratic parents train democratic children by mak-
ing possible the democratic family. The first thing
needed is that parents shall " rep^ent," change their minds.
Perhaps, even before that, we need repentance on the part
of society, a change of social mind so that all shall think
of marriage and home-making in democratic terms, in the
light of the needs of society. We might be frank enough
to recognize that the foundations of home-making, the
desire for children, are at one with the central motive of
democracy, the passion for lives. Then we might con-
sider mating in terms of possible lives. A democracy
cannot afford that the means by which new lives are
given to it should be shrouded in social superstition or
its processes of increase regarded as accidents, or ca-
tastrophes. We shall recognize that families are
founded for social ends, in order that children may be
born and trained. Accordingly we shall prepare those
who are to give children to society; we shall not only
train them to competency in physical parenthood but also

lis EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

to efficiency in spiritual, in guiding minds, developing
spirits and educating persons. The true spirit of de-
mocracy grows in parents as they realize these vital re-
sponsibilities to the whole of society, as they think of
their home life in the light of the claims of the world of
which it is a part.

The democratic home will be guided by .Ibc-rights of,^
the^Mld. ' It will be organized in the light of his right to
a full share in social living through the use and posses-
sion of its resources; in the light of his right to a share
in its life of service, of common work and fellowship.
Think out the home life as we think out our civic life
when we say, " The school belongs, not to the school
board, but to us all." Just as children have learned to
say, " We must not destroy the trees in the parks nor
the lamps on the street because they belong to us all,"
so in the home they learn to think of a common sharing
of all possessions and to develop both a sense of social
rights and of social responsibilities. The point may seem,
at first, an insignificant one, that children should feel
that the possessions in the home belong to them. But
the principle is fundamental; any ideal identity of inter-
ests rests on real interests; we are never a part of the
state until we realize that the concrete property of the
state is ours. A child passes to a new attitude when he
comes to the sense of the plural possessive. This is the
attitude he must take toward the state; he acquires it as
a natural attitude in the home when the sense of common
possession is real, practical and habitual.^

The problems of discipline give way before the practice
of deTnocracy m the family. This is not because de-
mocracy is some happy cure-all for the waywardness of
children and the arbitrariness of parents, but because

1 On the development of the communal spirit in the home see Chap-
ter VIII of " Religious Education in the Family," Henry F. Cope,
University of Chicago Press, 1916,

BEGINNING AT HOME 113

democracy is a process of substituting a common purpose
for conflicting wills. The problems of family discipline
arise from conflicting wills. It is true that the will of
one may be right and that of the other wrong, but the
purpose of the home is not achieved by forcing the wrong
will to yield to the right. The vanquished does not
thereby learn to will the right. On the contrary, a van-
quished one is not vanquished in will ; he is commonly only
strengthened to resist. Even though, at last, all resist-
ance is worn down, no gain has been made; on the con-
trary a serious loss has occurred; he has lost the power
of resistance. Where the will is " broken " through dis-
ciplinary conflicts in the family, the child is robbed of
one of the powers he will seriously need in life. And yet,
the parent's problem seems to be this : " Shall I give up
to the child .'^ " However, is it true that the only alterna-
tives are either the child's giving up or the parent's yield-
ing?

Democracy has a better way. It seeks to discover a
common purpose which both can will ; it seeks to develop,
in all situations, a common will. This is not the same as
a compromise; it does not mean the parent consenting
to this on condition that the child agrees to that. It is
rather the gradual development of a common social pur-
pose which being seen and followed by all the members of
the family group secures harmony and unity of action.
Democratic training means more than securing a modules
operandi between parents and children ; it means patiently
developing ideals, purposes, plans, methods and, most
potent of all, compelling enterprises which are accepted
by all members of the group. Thinking things over to-
gether, discussing them and doing them together, a com-
mon will is developed. Through experience in common
enterprises a social will is formed; unity of action is se-
cured, with freedom of wills.

A common social wUl is secured only wnder freedom.

114 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Nothing can be imposed on the will. Democracy in af-
fairs rests on democracy of the spirit. If the family is
to train for democracy it must give every member free-
dom to exercise his powers of judgment, choice and will.
This can take place only through real participation in
family government and management. To be concrete:
we will suppose that the B — family, living in the city, are
considering moving to another house or apartment. The
selection of a future home could be made by the parents
alone; but, in the democratic family, no decision is made
until all the members have considered the matter, until,
as in a council, all have thoroughly discussed the situa-
tion. Commonly the reasons for removal, the advan-
tages of different situations, of streets and types of
homes, of costs and upkeep, are all regarded as details to
be settled by the omniscient heads of the household; but
they are all vital to the interests of every otie; they af-
fect the well-being of each one. And they affect the daily
conduct of each. Thorough discussion has several direct
effects: it gives a sen^e of participation which quickens
responsibility; it commits each one to the family enter-
prise; it quickens thought on the problems of family life;
it presents unconsciously and indirectly aspects of many
moral problems and ideals. When a decision is reached
it is the decision of all, it expresses the will of all. The
consciousness of unity, of common purpose, responsibil-
ity and action is strengthened and tends to carry over
into all the current of family life. This one incident has
furnished an experience in democratic living.

Does this matter seem trivial? It is no trifle for chil-
dren to think habitually of family life as a social expe-
rience in which they always have a full share. It is no
trifle when they pass from the home passively to regarding
it actively. It is no trifle when this kind of experience
goes on, day after day, so that all the children are un-
consciously forming habits of social cooperation.

BEGINNING AT HOME 115

But supposing, in the instance just cited, that no com-
mon unanimous decision is possible? Everything then
on the practical side depends on the degree to which the
members have already practiced this method of democ-
racy. In beginning, it is best to learn through lesser
experiences, through the everyday life. But a disagree-
ment calls for the exercise of the larger social will, the
will that chooses to ignore my own interests for the sake
of the interests of others and especially for the interests
of the larger number. It is an opportunity to practice
the principle on which our social life proceeds, that even
the clear interests of the few must often give way to the
welfare of the many, that individual rights cease to be
rights when they conflict with social rights. Such a les-
son is learned in the laboratory of life, but children may
receive it through instruction, — care should be taken to
make the welfare of all so clear to them that they will
cheerfully sacrifice individual preferences, and the realiza-
tion of the joy of the social will then becomes their own
through experience.

LABORATORY EXPERIENCE

The family, as a school of democracy, applies the edu-
cational principle that learning comes by doing. It main-
tains constant experience in social action and thus it is
a training school in the habits of social living. It is
either making social citizens or selfish individuals. It
is doing this, not by the adoption of codes of action, nor
by even the wise counsels of parents, but by the direction
of activity. It forms habits by guiding repeated actions,
strengthening them with desirable associations and illum-
ining them with ideals. It makes social citizens by guid-
ing its members into social activity within its own circle.
All the relationships of the family are socially interpreted.
Its duties are not tasks for the " head," nor are they
" chores " in the day's routine ; they are simply a part

116 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

of the common life, the part which each one plays in the
life of all. They are not tasks at all; they are as much
a part of life as breathing or eating.

The child needs to begin very early to learn the life
of a democracy, the life of constant social cooperation.
In few ways could we be more cruel than we are when-
ever we attempt to train a child for a life free from labor.
The " primeval curse " was not that of work, but that
of sweating for mere bread. Work is man's high priv-
ilege ; it is the point at which he effectively becomes a part
of the world. Children need real work in the family.
They are being trained in social pauperism where seiVants
do everything. It is true that modem conditions have
deprived the home of many forms of activity ; but we only
suppose that they have taken all those forms because we
lack imagination to see the new ones that arise and that
are constantly developing and changing as economic con-
ditions change. A boy may not be able to bring the wood
and water into the modern home, but he can run the
vacuum cleaner and he will not be degraded by washing
dishes, or he can help in the cooking. To his society
these tasks are just as essential — and therefore just as
honorable, despite our prejudices — as desk work or sell-
ing goods in the larger world. Those who would be
ashamed to have their children work at home may be yet
more ashamed to find they have trained those who will
not work, as social cooperators, in the larger human fam-

It may seem to many that dishwashing has very little
to do with democracy, that such trivial affairs weigh noth-
ing as compared with the high task of inspiring the young
with the splendid ideals of our country, with love for the
flag and devotion to national destiny. Such judgments
left us, in an hour of great national need, with an over^
stock of rhetorical patriots and a shortage of effective
servants. But the hour pf national need also brought

BEGINNING AT HOME 117

out the splendid spectacle of the " dollar-a-year " men,
the leaders of great commercial and industrial enterprises,
who willingly gave their time, working long hours, under
difficult conditions, and without compensation, for the
national service. They were men to whom work was the
natural thing; they were habitually active and mentally
cooperative. They are not produced in a single hour of
opportunity. They come out of a long training in the
habits of active contribution to life. Such habits depend
for their strength very largely on early beginnings ; they
are acquired, not by waiting to do some splendid, ideal
things but by doing everything that one can do on every
possible occasion. They begin with the trifles of every-
day service.

Education for democracy is a widening social expe-
rience. It is possible to have a home in which every mem-
ber actively shares, making a contribution of service, and
yet no education for democracy takes place. The school
of democracy must take a social attitude to all life. It
is not only a little democracy within itself; it is part of ,
a larger society. The family can easily become a selfish
institution. It can develop unsocial attitudes in chil-
dren by failing to take, as a society, an attitude of com-
mon living and service toward its community, toward
other homes and the city and state. The life of democ-
racy is not alone that of individuals who cooperate with
and contribute toward other lives ; it is rather the life of
groups which work, as groups, for the social whole. The
family trains in the group life, but it must also train
in the life of the group for the whole. It must be con-
ceived as a part of society having a common life with all
the rest, under the obligations of service and inheriting
the joys of self-giving.

The democratic family makes the democratic citizen.
Its attitude, as an entire group, expresses its social con-
sciousness and trains in habits of democratic relationships

118 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

to society as a whole. There are families which are
ethically and socially marooned by their own selfish spirit.
They live only to themselves. A home is separated in
order that it may be socially integrated. It is not a band
of persons associated to secure advantages over all other
bands. It is a social group which so fully learns social
living that it looks out on all its community as a field
of opportunity. This involves the difficult problem of
developing a sense of universal brotherhood through fam-
ily living.

To save itself democracy mtist save the faimly. But
what of inefficient families, without moral consciousness.?^
It is suggested that we will meet this difficulty by the
changes that are now taking place in the narrowing of
the area of family life, and the tendency to transfer its
functions to other institutions. Perhaps something may
be accomplished in this direction when we have invented
a process to be substituted for parenthood. Wlien chil-
dren can be born without mothers and fathers we may
get along without families. The psychological parent-
hood that broods over the child during all its years of
growth up to manhood is as real a fact as the physiolog-
ical parenthood that brings him into life. We have to
remember, what is more important, that, with all its short-
comings, psychological parenthood is still the most potent
force within our knowledge for the purposes of develop-
ing character. No mechanizations of education can take
the place of people. A phonograph repeating French
phrases may be just the thing to teach the language to
a bank clerk, but a phonograph can never teach life to
any one. Moral training is not a matter of reciting les-
sons, but of learning what life means and then feeling,
willing, and doing aright toward it.. That is a lesson that
needs all possible reenforcements in affections, ideals and
examples.

BEGINNING AT HOME 119

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL NECESSITY

We too readily assume that the family is either an eco-
nomic accident or a social institution founded on physio-
logical conditions; it is vastly more, it is a social insti-
tution evolved out of the developing necessities of human
nature. The breeding of babies does not absolutely neces-
sitate a family, but the breeding of human creatures does,
for that is a process of slow and long continued growth.
Men and women are not bom full-grown morally; they
have to acquire the art of living in this world. We can
easily establish institutions for feeding, clothing, and
teaching infants, but we cannot find a substitute for the
family group which will do its work of fitting people to
live in the world in social relations. The family is a so-
cial necessity in democracy because it is that school
which the nature of man has developed as necessary for
his training for social living.

Granted the necessity of the experience found in family
life, it is evident that we do not solve the problem of in-
efficient families by wiping them out and substituting an
institution. It becomes the responsibility of society to
see that we substitute good families for bad ones. And
this is one of the first social duties of a democracy. It
will first make fully efficient that which first deals with
lives and deals with them most effectively.

Now all this is so elementary as hardly to seem worth
the saying. But the fact is that, elementary as it is, we
have gone no further than to talk about it ; we have failed
to act on the simple concept of family life as the essen-
tial and altogether fundamental element in the moral
training of a people. We will spend without stint for
schools but the State is unwilling to spend for improving
family life ; that is to say, we are willing to take all sorts
of pains to build moral citizenship, beginning when the

120 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

foundations have already been laid, but we are unwilling
to spend any thought or money on these foundations.

Democracy must protect the family. The first step
necessary, in order that the family may meet the present
moral crisis, is to give it a chance to do its work. Such
industrial and economic adjustments must be made as
will give fathers and mothers a chance to have healthy
children and a chance to influence them healthfully in their
moral development. No matter what the industrial order
may seem to demand of the father no State can aff*ord
to have children growing up who have been robbed of
the sight of his face and his friendship. The rights of
the child and the rights of the State of to-morrow de-
mand that we shall not rob either of the value of hours
of leisure in the family. To build fortunes by grinding
the face of the poor is to steal from the citizenship of to-
morrow for the lust of to-day. The hovel in which the
family is forced to live to-day simply means that we put
that family to the school of hovel living, taking lessons
in building cities of hovels for us all to live in to-morrow.

We build our cities so that there is no real family life.
We mourn over this as a sentimental loss but a practical
necessity. So short-sighted are we that we fail to see
that it is not the sentiment of the past we are losing, but
the citizenship of the future we are dwarfing and distort-
ing. The tenement not only represents the loss of the
ideals of the " Cotter's Saturday Night " ; it represents
economic pressure throttling human spirits. Wherever
economic considerations alone dictate conditions they rob
the man of to-morrow of the one school that can make a
real man of him, the one that can surely prevent his be-
ing a social burden or menace.

Whatever robs the child of his rights to-day robs so-
ciety of its portion to-morrow. We cannot steal from
the child of to-day without despoiling ourselves in yastly
greater measure in the future.

BEGINNING AT HOME 121

Democracy must tram home-makers. The second step
necessary is to take this school of moral living so seri-
ously that we will train its teachers for their highest task.
We have normal colleges to train teachers in the meth-
ods of the knowledge that children must acquire in schools ;
we insist that all teachers shall establish their fitness.
But we make no conditions of efficiency for the effective
teachers of morality. We assume that the high office of
parenthood is acquired by accident, that while one must
take a course in domestic science before cooking an ^gg^
any one can teach life to a child. The State would have
a perfect right to demand before issuing a marriage li-
cense that parents prove both their physiological fitness
and their ability to train children.

At any rate, we may set many capable agencies at work
preparing parents. If the church would teach its people
directly, practically, how to make their homes better, it
must do more than give us sermons about a " home over
there.'* We need homes over here just now; the rest will
take care of itself. We need classes to turn from dis-
cussing the genealogies of the Old Testament to a study
of family life here.^ We need to develop the efficiency
of our public schools and colleges in this direction. Why
teach young people everything in the world except the
one thing that is greatest and most important of all
in the world to them ? We need an educated public opin-
ion that will see how fundamental to all true democracy
is the right social experience in the family. Then we
might hope that, for its own sake, the state would be
willing to spend at least as much in aiding the family
to efficiency and competency as it now spends in improv-
ing farms and orchards.

Because the family, through its normal experiences of
democracy, is the earliest and most influential agency in

iSee the author's discussion of this subject in "Religious Educa-
tion in the Church," Ch. XVIII, Scribners, 1917.

122 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

training democrats, society must begin here its work of
social organization; it must first develop efficiencies for
its purposes. It must give new thought and make wiser
provision for the life of the family. Until the home be-
comes in the mind of the educator and in the public vi-
sion more important than the school or the college social
reconstruction works under a perpetual handicap. They
work wisely who begin at beginnings.^

1 The Religious Education Association, Chicapco, 111., publishes,
free, a very useful short bibliography on " Religious Nurture in
the Home," prepared by Mary E. Moxcey, and including the more
important titles dealing with the general problems suggested in
this chapter.

CHAPTER X

DEMOCEATIC TEAINING THROUGH THE CHUKCH

The modern church is both the product and the prophet
of democracy. Ideally a church is a free social organ-
ization of persons associated for the purpose of realizing
in men the divine ideal and in society the kingdom of God.
It seeks to lead men into godliness in a god-willed society.
In other words, its purpose is that of a spiritual democ-
racy.

If the central spirit of democracy is religious, if its
prime needs always will be a spiritual interpretation of
life and a Christian motive to guide action, then the
church must be the principal agency through which this
kind of democracy can be realized. That is, however,
supposing that the church is in our society the principal
agency of the spiritual life.

Democracy needs churches. These religious societies
which we call churches have grown out of the needs of
democracy. If the autocratic state finds it needs the
absolutist and authoritative church, how much more does
democracy find it needs the guidance of those ideals and
that light that develops as men freely associate in search
of the ultimate values and meanings of life. Democracy
needs not alone a spiritual ideal; it needs definite formu-
lations and expressions of that ideal. It needs the ex-
pression of that ideal in social purposes which gather men
and direct them toward spiritual aims. It needs, in or-
der that all its life may be saturated with religion, many
definite social foci of religion.

The special part which the church plays in relation to
the development of democracy is an educational one.

123

IM EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

This is because the function of the church is essentially
educational, it is that of social organization for the
growth of lives and the direction of society. Much has
been written on the educational work of the church,^ so
that only one aspect of that work in relation to democ-
racy will be developed at this time.

In order that the church may prepare men and women
for democracy it must offer them a real experience in de-
mocracy. To belong to a church must be to enjoy a
progressive experience of life in an ideal democracy. Per-
haps the most important, the most influential relation
which the church effects with any person comes neither
through preaching, nor classes, nor worship, that is, not
through any of these alone, but through the social expe-
rience of belonging to the church. Unconsciously we
conceive church membership as a social experience; but
the church appears hardly to recognize the value and
the effects of all those relationships, activities and expe-
riences which constitute its life. It is a society ; its chief
power over lives is a social power, the force of the life
of the whole group on the one and the effect of the ex-
perience of living in the group. What men shall be is
determined less by what the minister says, by what teach-
ers teach or by what forms are followed than by the kind
of life they find inside the church group. Is it an au-
tocracy? Then they become accustomed to think of their
ideal society as autocratic. Is it an oligarchy? then, as
their ideal society, it glorifies oligarchy and retards de-
mocracy.

While there are wide differences in institutional forms
there is not so very much difference in social spirit in
the churches. An Episcopal church may be more demo-
cratic than a Baptist congregation in spite of the well-

1 See the author's " Religious Education in the Church," (Scrib-
ners, 1918) which gives references to practically all the recent
literature on this subject in English.

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 125

known democratic form of government belonging to the
latter. But, whatever the form, the fact remains that,
on the whole, the modern church is not a democratic in-
stitution. It may be well to look at a few evidences to
support this statement. Many churches, the greater num-
ber, neglect the first principle of democracy, that the so-
cial organization exists for the sake of the lives of its
people. They do not exist for lives ; they are organized
to maintain customs, institutions and forms of thought.
They are not judged by their service for lives; they are
judged by their success in developing institutional effi-
ciency, in buildings, plant, finances, and membership.
The impressive purpose of " saving souls " usually means
securing adherents to the institution. Nothing could bet-
ter prove that the churches are indifferent to the chief
motive and ideal of democracy than the fact that they
give the place of least importance to the person of great-
est import in a democracy, the child. They do not seek
to develop lives ; if they did they would spend their chief
energies on lives when they can be most influenced, when
development is really taking place, in childhood. Th^
church will continue to lag behind the democracy of its
own day and of the state until it pays at least as much
attention to the child as does the modern democratic
state.

What then should be doneP Furnish eoery life with a
progressive experience vn democracy. This cannot be ac-
complished by substituting deacons for elders or pastors
for bishops. It will not come from without but, rising
within, determining the life of the local society, the spirit
of democracy will in time change the character of the
entire institution and remove the vestiges of monarchial
forms and vassalage.^

Beginning with the child the church will furnish the
child a child's experience of democracy. Ideally, for the
child, democracy is an enveloping, protecting, nurturing

126 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

society devoted to the chief purpose of developing his life.
To the child to live in a democracy is like living in a fam-
ily, it is an experience which reveals life as favorable to
his development, as stimulating, inviting, alluring him
out into living. This is true in the family because the
family exists to nurture the child. It is true in democ-
racy because democracy exists for the sake of lives. To
such social environment and stimulus the child responds
not only by a natural growth but also by an increasing
consciousness of life in terms of growth. Thus he learns
to live the life of democracy through the experience of the
nurture of democracy. Where are the churches that offer
io the children of their communities a society devoted to
enveloping, protecting, nurturing their lives.'* They may
be found ; but it is with difficulty.

THE CHILD-CENTRIC CHURCH

The first step, then, toward a truly democratic church,
will be to set the child in the midst. This will be done in
the practical manner in which democratic communities are
now doing the same thing. The evidence of the child-
centric community is the school-house, the teaching force,
the playgrounds and the determination of custom and
regulation by the needs of child-life. The largest house
the community builds for itself is the child's house, the
school. Is this true of the church.'* The heartiest and
most immediate response of a community always comes to
an appeal for the child's welfare, for playgrounds or civic
betterment in their behalf. What is the response of the
church to appeals for the child's needs ? The best brains
of the community are devoted to the training of the child.
Is this true in the church.'*

We meet with so much confusion and difficulty in reli-
gious ideas, knowledge and efficiencies because the young
have failed to receive religious training. To men and
women religion is an unreal or an extraneous interest be-

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 127

cause in childhood there was for them no normal and
continuous association with religion. To the child the
church is so remote, as an institution, that we institute
schemes of artificial direction to bring children under the
influence of the church. This simply means that the
church does not function in their lives. It cannot func-
tion for them until it ministers to them according to their
needs, until, as a society, it takes the democratic attitude
of devotion to their lives. When the church assumes that
attitude a new situation is created. The child is no longer
an outsider. Responsibility unites him to the church. It
may not be a formal union of membership; it is a union
of nurture. That is the union the child can feel and
understand. When the church says, " Our resources all
belong to these children," it will come to pass that the
children will say of themselves, " We belong to this
church." That is the only vital kind of belonging. It
is the union that exists in a family; children belong be-
cause the family is theirs.

Out of this attitude of primary devotion to the needs,
to the lives of these little ones there will grow the neces-
sary provisions for their development. No forms of or-
ganizations, no schools, classes nor anything else can min-
ister to them unless all are but simple expressions of this
attitude of devotion, unless they manifest this purpose as
the chief purpose of the church.

The church will furnish a developing experience of de-
mocracy to growing persons. The life of the growing
child will respond to the attitude of the church by devo-
tion to its ideals and purposes. The democratic church
will aff^ord opportunities for the child to express his devo-
tion to its life aim. He will find himself as a member of
a society with a purpose. He will learn what that pur-
pose means ; he will be taught how it may be realized.
The church will teach him how to live. If it is organized
to develop lives it will make the lessons of living its chief

us EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

teaching concern. But it will do more than talk about
living ; it will furnish the laboratory of life. That active
response under which the child acquires the sense of be-
longing will continue only as long as he can project his
life into the society. Here is the fatal weakness in the
plans of many churches; they do much for children, but
they make no provision for the child to live his life in
the life of the church. Children do not belong save
through the realities of their experience. The church is
a real society only as each one in some way can share
its life, its activities and service.

The church mil direct experience toward the ideals of
democracy. As a society it is one of the best schools of
social living. But it may be a society without being a
democracy; it may have unworthy ends and exist socially
in spite of unsocial motives. Mere association does not
make a real society ; social motives, social purposes and
social living all are necessary. So, also, the church be-
comes a democracy not by the elementary expedient of
permitting each person to vote at its official meetings, but
by consciously associating persons for the democratic pur-
pose of nurturing lives and serving society. It is a fel-
lowship of the spirit for the spiritual ends of democracy,
that men may have life more abundantly. The experience
of church membership is a reality only as it is an expe-
rience in common devotion to the ends of democracy. The
purposes of the church with a person are not achieved
merely by getting his membership; they are achieved as
he becomes a living and active part of its spirit, its activ-
ity and its program. The essence of the Pauline figure
of the church as a body is that the members are in the
body only as they live its life, only as they actively func-
tion in its work. The church makes democrats by giving
every one a share in its spiritual work for society.

The ideal social life is realized in active service. This
experience of the life of democracy, as sharing and self-

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 129

giving, is possible at very early stages of life. It is not
reserved for the mature man any more than real partici-
pation in national life is reserved for adults. Ask the
small boy on the street if he is an American ; he will not
tell you that he has to wait until he can vote. He al-
ready belongs. Perhaps nothing has so strengthened his
sense of belonging as the practical things which the nation
has called on him to do. To plant and care for a " war-
garden," to sell stamps, to serve as a messenger in some
patriotic organization is just as important, as vital and
as valuable to the boy as anything his father can do as
a voter or his big brother as a soldier. So children in
the church are finding a part as important and, in the
whole scheme of spiritual democracy, as essential as any
that the adult may have. One can only refer to the many
interesting projects of services which children carry for-
ward in their classes or their own societies.^ We must
see, however, that these projects are not simply schemes
to amuse them, not simply devices which clever adults in-
vent to serve as toys for the very young, but that they are
the forms of normal activity along which the child's life
moves out; they are as natural and real to them as our
work to us. Their purpose is not to hold children in
the church until they are old enough to be useful; their
purpose is positive, to let the child live out every ideal
he has or can get.

The provision which the church makes for children and
the young, so that they may have an experience of reli-
gion as life and service, is a corollary of our modern
emphasis on the reality of the child's religious experience.
If he is a spiritual being then he has rights in the church

1 See the plans suggested by Miss Rankin in " Religious Education
for Beginners," December, 1917, "Handwork in Religious Educa-
tion," A. G. Wardle, U. of Chicago Press, 1916; "Graded Social
Service in the Sunday School," W. N. Hutchins, U. of Chicago
Press, 1914, " Religious Education Through Activities," H. B. Robins
(a free pamphlet), American Baptist Publication Society, 1918.

180 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

which are equal to those of any other person. To object
that his rights are less because he is immature is to sug-
gest rather that his rights are greater because his needs
, are greater. No matter what our adult desires may be
our duty is perfectly plain, we must cease to think of the
church as a community institution in which we adults
" have our little day," we must learn to think of it as the
association of the community's spiritual forces in order
that every life may have its full day. That will force us
to give the child an opportunity for activity in the church.
That will compel some resignations. It will make us
ashamed, instead of proud, of saying that we have held
an office for forty years. It will apply logically the
principle that since the young have their religious life to
live there must be for them religious work to do, respon-
sibilities to acquire and joys of accomplishment to expe-
rience.

FACING AN ACTUAL WORLD

// the church is to be an experience vn democracy it
must face the realities of this present world. Men are
to-day so far from the church because the church has set
itself so far from men. It is not long since many, per-
haps most, churches were ashamed to have any concern
for human affairs; often they affected to separate them-
selves so thoroughly from the secular that they gave no
care to sickness, human misery and need. But a spiritual
democracy is in the very core of life ; it is the life of the
people. It cannot lift itself above the human. It knows
nothing as spiritual that is not also human. It is con-
cerned with men now, and not so much with their shrouded
past or their unknown future. The world it would save
is a world of men and women. Then religion becomes not
a speculation about anything, but an experience. Doubt-
less it will be said that the church must remain unspotted
from the world. Of course she must, but there would

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 131

have been no need for such an injunction if she was to
remain aloof. There is no danger of being spotted save
as one gets into the crowd. Then the best preventive
of soil is service. The modern church must go through
the experience of the modern university. It has passed
from a remote, cloistered affair into a laboratory of life
set in the midst of the affairs of men. To-day it func-
tions in the field and the factory. If the church is to edu-
cate for democracy it will be not by quiet, dignified re-
treats of instruction but by prophetic leadership in the
ways of men, by living the life of the people, by dealing
with their real and present problems.

Need one insist again that present-day reality loses no
whit of religion, that the great Teacher of the church
drew men because He treated the realities of their imme-
diate lives on the plane of the eternal .^^ To-day the at-
traction which some preachers have is due to the fact
that they speak the language of our present experience.
There are two extremes of attraction in modern preach-
ing; one is that of the seer who deals with the eternally
true, the deep and high places which abide forever; we
answer to his voice, as deep to deep, because those things
of which he speaks are the unchanging verities of all life.
The other type speaks of our every-day plans and prob-
lems; his language is that on our week-day lips. We
answer because of the note of reality and because of our
need for help and guidance in these present problems.
Can no man combine these two messages ; cannot the man
who has been on the mount bring its light into our dark-
ened valley and help us to see these realities of sin and
sorrow, of affection and joy in the splendor of the vi-
sion eternal and glorious? Unless that can be done
preaching is likely to be an outworn custom. Democracy
needs the prophet. But he must speak in a known tongue
about real things and with that voice of authority that
comes from touch with the eternal.

182 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Democracy needs spiritual guidance. The prophet who
deals with realities must ever be something more than a
photographer or a newspaper; he is a seer. He deals
with the present that the future may be determined. He
leads forward. Democracy is ever in evolution and its
course is determined by the dominant ideals of the people.
When we lose faith in the potency of ideals we turn back-
ward. If we do not believe in the vision we perish. The
sense of reality must not dim the light or lower the stand-
ards of ideals which the church gives to its age. Yet
those ideals find their natural and most helpful expression
in forms of reality. Just as it is vastly more effective
to speak of a splendid future in which no children shall
toil in factories, no men be slaves to others than it is to
generalize the picture, so the church makes her vision plain
by definitely pointing out possible reforms and improve-
ments. It can translate righteousness into immediately
practical forms of right-dealing and relationships. Some
may sneer at these " impractical " ideals ; but the church
can practice them and then proclaim them. She must
insist not only on looking present-day reality in the face
but on picturing before men the realities of a forward-
looking righteousness ; she must make real the ideals of
men.

A real experience in democracy wiU reveal those spirit-
ual valties for which democracy exists. Belonging to a
church ought to be a continuous process of the discovery
of the joy and splendor of knowing people, of human
friendships. In the very simplest and most practical man-
ner it ought to make us prize just people above all other
prizes that life has to offer.

« Hand

Grasps hand; eye lights eye in good friendship

And great hearts expand,

And grow one in the sense of this world's life."

— Browning, '' SauV

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 133

This is something we are in danger of losing. Our
hurried life leaves little time to cultivate these human
values that become ours only in friendship and intercourse.
But this consciousness of human values as the supreme
worth of life will go much deeper than the joys of friend-
ship ; where the church serves life its people will learn
the joy of seeing lives grow. The very stuff of life seems
here to come out more vividly and distinctly than anywhere
else. No enriching can come to any life greater than that
which is ours when we see that we have been able to help
a life, when we, perhaps, can see young men and women
stimulated, year after year, until our hope for them is
passed in their fine lives.

LEAVEN MUST BE IN THE LUMP

The democratization of the church will involve a more
general fusing of its life with the lives of all the people.
It is still a separated institution. It is still a class affair,
belonging to the group called " church people." The
great streams of city life flow on untouched by it. Its
ministries do not really reach the mass for they are im-
posed by an external and socially foreign institution.
There are very few instances in which, even in smaller
places, the church is so much of a community affair that
it can be said to be the church of all the people. This is
largely due to the fact that a church is still regarded
as a group of people integrated by certain intellectual
statements or by certain special customs. It does not
seek to spread its real life to all; it seeks to draw the
lives of all into itself. It does not belong to the com-
munity ; persons in the community belong to it. Churches ^
in a community are commonly small islands of intellec-
tual, or of emotional coherence in a sea of practical in-
difference. Few are social leaven ; most are more nuclea-
tive than disseminating. Apparently the church is effec-
tive in educating only those who are already in its group,

tr

184 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

so that the great flood of democracy moves on not imme-
diately influenced by its work.

If the church is really democratic it will gather to it-
self all the spiritual life of its community. It will be-
come inclusive of all spiritual purpose and power. It will
become the fellowship of all who seek the good and the
clearing house of all who serve their fellows. It will
polarize scattered idealisms. Its emphasis will not be so
much on diff^erentiation as on association, assimilation and
inspiration. Its fellowship will be, not through forms
or through philosophies, but through common ideals, pur-
poses and service. The development of popular forums
indicates something of what is possible. Here there are
no formal conditions of membership; the people are asso-
ciated and united in their common interests. Somewhere
the people will find common spiritual centers. Their so-
cial idealism will be polarized in integrating rather than
in segregating agencies. The tendencies are quite clear.

In some communities the public school, with its social
center, parents' clubs and recreational program, has be-
come the means of nucleating social ideals, stimulating
activities, enlarging vision and uniting workers. Com-
munity organizations, bringing all who desire the common
good into one fellowship, are doing the very work that
churches should do. In an age that does not hesitate to
pay the highest price to make the world a decent place
to live in our former, narrow conditions of spiritual fel-
lowship seem wholly ridiculous. A democratic church
must find a basis for membership sufficiently broad to em-
brace all who give themselves in true devotion to the
higher and spiritual purposes of democracy. It must
associate all who set spiritual values first. Its test will
be ability to bring together all good men, to bind them
in common ideals and to send them out in common serv-
ice.

Custom has so long bound us in the churches that it

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 135

now has an authority which is blindly accepted; it is the
cause of our class and creedal divisions and our exclusive
groupings. We search in vain elsewhere for a justifica-
tion. It hides the simple, basic principles. If Chris-
tianity is a democracy of the spirit its churches must
be spiritual democracies. Unless they practice democracy
they cannot persuade our world society to spiritual de-
mocracy. Here, if anywhere, men must have the oppor-
tunity to experience democracy on its highest levels. The
educational function of the church cannot be discharged
by telling the world about an ideal society ; the world
needs a demonstration more than an exposition. Espe-
cially it needs a demonstration of that fellowship of which
the church has spoken so long. If any man is willing to
learn Christ's way of life, if any is willing to live for the
ends for which he lived, there ought to be a place for him
in a church. And surely that way and those ends are
perfectly clear to us to-day ; it was the way of a brother-
hood; it was the democratic purpose of pure devotion to
the lives of all, to the realization of a social order deter-
mined by spiritual rights, needs, duties and possibilities.
To all accustomed to think in terms of denominational
machinery proposals of this kind will seem to be fatally
vague. Yet organized religion cannot lead democracy
save as it is essentially a part of democracy. If the
church is a leaven it must be in the lump and not on the
side of the mixing bowl. If our organization efficiencies
stand in the way of the saturation of community life with
religion they are not efficiencies. We value many of them
because they do effectively serve the whole institution as
it is at present organized. But the business of a church
is not that of serving an institution, it is that of saving
society. To become effective in determining the char-
acter of the democracy of to-morrow the church must be
democratized to-day. Organized religion must become
democratic if democracy is to be religious.

136 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

CHURCH MUST EXPERIENCE DEMOCRACY

To become an experience in democracy the church must
^ experience democracy, it must become a part of the life
of democracy. In order that democracy may experience
religion, religion must experience democracy. To satu-
rate society with the religious ideal the bottle must be
opened and the life-giving stream flow out. Then rigid
lines of " membership " will stand out less prominently
as separating walls. The membership that counts will be
that of fellowship in common ideals and projects. Some-
how we must realize on the splendid flood of good life, of
spiritually minded persons, of those who seek the king-
dom that is peace and righteousness, and who are now
outside the churches.

The church, in the education of democracy, will cause
democracy to become an experience m religion. It can
lead democracy on from a political experiment into a
spiritual reality as it reveals the spiritual nature of the
work and the purposes of democracy. The church exists
not alone to give society a religion it has not hitherto
possessed but to help it to identify the religion it already
has. Many are serving spiritual ends who would be sur-
prised to have their work thus characterized. The tem-
ple of God is neither in this place nor in that but it covers
all the ways of men wherever men seek the purposes of >
iGod. True democracy is not something that may be/
made religious; it is religious already in that it is de-
voted to spiritual ends. Men find it hard to see this. The
very word spiritual misleads them into thinking of some-
thing strangely indefinite, belonging to another and un-
known world. ^ They go on working for the well-being
of all ; but they regard that as something quite separated
from religion. Such persons, of whom there are many,

1 As Pres. Henry C. King so well suggests, and explains, in his
"Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life," Macmillan, 1914.

TRAINING THROUGH THE CHURCH 137

need to discover the religious character of every kind
of service that determines the lives of men and the char-
acter of society. They need to see that they are playing
a part in forming the kingdom of goodwill and righteous-
ness.

CHAPTER XI

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND DEMOCRACY'S PROGRAM

If education is our dependence for all permanent social
improvement public education is the peculiar method upon
which democracy depends.

The public school is the most democratic institution in
American civil life ; it is democracy at work on its pecu-
liar task of developing people into social unity and effi-
ciency. It is democracy in action. Its development in
American life is concurrent with national development from
a republic organized for freedom to a democracy of free
men organized for the fullness as well as the freedom of
life.

The public school, in the United States, has been at all
times democratic in organization, a public institution in a
special sense, maintained for the public, and governed by
the public. It has been more immediately controlled by
and responsive to local sentiment and ideals than any
other public institution. Direction and control have been
exercised in small local units. Each school has been kept
very close to its own social group. Many efforts have
been made to centralize control, to erect national educa-
tional standards and to secure federal direction. Local
control has not been an unmixed blessing ; the system is in
need of decided changes to meet present-day needs; cer-
tainly centralized aid and direction is desirable; but the
advantages have more than compensated for the losses.
With all their short-comings local boards of education
have been a force making for democracy, developing local
responsibilities and keeping alive the immediate conscious-
ness of education as a right and a duty. But for such a

138

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 139

democratic system it would have been impossible to de-
velop to their present efficiency the central agencies of
counsel and stimulus such as the United States Bureau
of Education and the voluntary organizations of educa-
tors.

Through its schools democracy educates itself. In an
important sense public education educates the public. It
is unfortunately true that the citizen knows little about
educational theory and little about the real work of a
school; but the very fact of the school as one of the
heaviest charges in his taxes leads him to put, habitually,
a relatively important valuation on its work of develop-
ing lives. A platform orator recently hurled lurid de-
nunciations against state legislators because they appro-
priated more money to hog-conservation than to baby-
saving. But, while admitting their shameful blindness to
human values, we must not forget that the public school
is weighty evidence that, after all, we do think more of
children than of cattle. Our educational ideals may be
hazy, or they may be archaic, but, in the last few decades,
taxation for elementary and secondary education has
more than doubled in ratio to population and — since this
might mean nothing — the more important fact is that
this larger investment has been made with greater intelli-
gence than ever before. The marvelous growth in facili-
ties and working staffs is not a thing separate from pub-
lic life ; the people cause this and they know they cause
it. Their participation in the educational enterprise has
led to a remarkable development of appreciation of its
importance until, in normal times, it is accepted as our
most important single social task.

The development of public education — in enriched and
extended curricula, increased facilities, larger and more
beautiful buildings and enlarged and more efficient teach-
ing force — has been made possible because democracy
has fixed its faith on public education. Such impressive

140 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

developments are the results of large expectations as to
public education. These expectations have changed and
developed in recent years. When Horace Mann and
Henry Barnard campaigned for common elementary edu-
cation the people responded because they recognized that
intelligence was necessary to public safety and to personal
prosperity. But since that day the vision has been devel-
oping until public education is seen as not only necessary
for social protection but essential to social progress. To-
day we look to the school not alone to keep growing citi-
zens from wrong-doing but to stimulate them to right-
living. One might speak of this as a development from
protective education to constructive education. More and
more the schools have a positive function, to guide the
young into service for and devotion to the public good.

Education m a democracy/ is directed toward ideal ends.
America counts on the school to develop the American
spirit, to make democrats. The public demands more
than intelligence ; it demands an attitude of mind. In the
trying days of the great war the school was called on not
alone to teach things about democracy but to train in
the life of democracy, to develop its spirit of service for
life. It is true we are not altogether clear as to what
, this spirit implies ; we often confound mere sentiments of
i patriotism with devotion to the ideals of democracy. But
the ideal is becoming clearer ; it emerges in practical ways,
it reveals itself as the energies of school children are
applied to forms of human, social service. And, looking
forward, our principal concern is that the school shall
inspire the young with motives and ideals adequate to the
demands of to-morrow; we grow impatient with political
tricks with the school machinery and impatient with dis-
cussions over categories of information, and we demand
habits of life and attitudes of mind ; we expect the school
to develop democratic citizens. Public sentiment regard-
ing the school reveals the soul of America. No other in-

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 141

stitution is cherished so highly, no other guarded so zeal-
ously. It is our one common institution of social ideals.
It is the one on which we depend most completely for so-
cial improvement and national salvation.

Such high expectations as these are the bases for pop-
ular criticism of the school. Like the church it is gener-
ously criticized because its possibilities are generously
appraised. Much of the criticism is negligible, but there
is a deep and serious inquiry as to the kind of persons the
school is producing. It inquires why, after so much edu-
cational progress, there is, in schooling, still so little con-
sciousness of direct social purpose? The criticism that
points to the juvenile-court records, to the growth of
youthful crime and the spread of political corruption may
not always be just but it is a clear indication of moral
expectation.

Democracy demands a moral product from its schools.
The demand is entirely justifiable, for the ultimate pur-
pose of education is moral and the primary needs of a
democracy are moral and spiritual. Education is the
organization and direction of social experience to the end
that persons may be competent to live as social beings.
Social living is essentially a moral process; it involves
every form of human relationship; in it are included all
the problems of life. Democratic living is a social and
a moral process ; it is a matter of human behavior under
social relations ; it involves all matters of the will, of
ideals of habits, of conduct, of right and wrong. Our
whole system of education is a farce so far as democracy
is concerned, an utter failure, if it does no more than
impart information, no more than give to the world so
many million heads holding that which so many thou-
sands of books already contain. We count on public
education for no less than the growth of citizens who in-
creasingly see and know and love the right, the social
good, the democratic ideals of a world of righteousness

142 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

and loving good-will, who increasingly devote themselves
with growing intelligence and skill to these ends.

American schooling has often turned its back on the
realities of democracy. Many a boy comes out of high
school knowing a good deal more about Athens and Carth-
age than he knows of his own city ; the college student
often recites on Plato's ideas on justice without the least
thought of their possible applications to present social
conditions. We train youth to shun the split infinitive
with holy horror but we care not, educationally, whether
they separate their neighbor's families or their fortunes.
We tithe the mint and anise of dead conjugations and
neglect the living principles of daily conduct. We are
so burdened with learning we have no time to learn to
live. As Sir Arthur Helps remarked of another day,
" Some persons have learned so many languages they have
ceased to think in any one."

WHAT IS WRONG WITH EDUCATION.?

Better far to have been a boy educated in long-ago
Egypt, where Plato says the " Youth were suffered neither
to hear nor learn any verses or songs other than those
which were calculated to inspire them with virtue," than
to be one of the high-school youths whom one may see in
almost any city, uncouth, flagrantly regardless of the
rights of others, slaves to the cigarette, affecting blase
cynicism on all ideal subjects, and boasting of filthy-
mindedness and craft. Such lads do not represent their
class; but they are sufficiently numerous in the high-school
crowd to give rise to serious thought. It is, of course,
true that the school is neither wholly nor principally to
blame, that selfish and foolishly indulgent parents must
be called to account. But the question still remains,
what are the schools doing to counteract the tendencies
that cause such types to exist? Are they endeavoring to
make good citizens out of these boys.? If they fail to

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 143

meet squarely the problem created by these youths they
acknowledge failure in their entire program. We are
wasting a lot of money on schools where cattle pens would
do if we can only raise brutes. Ancient systems may be
idealized, but our system will avail little until we have
realized some of their ideals.

Something is wrong when year after year our social
statistics report, parallel to the decreases in illiteracy,
appalling incre^ases in juvenile delinquency. This is more
than the result of increasingly exact regulation of youth
life, and it is more than a matter of social awareness to
offenses. Both these factors increase the figures, but they
by no means account for the fact that boys commit the
crimes that once were confined to men, that the crimes
are actually more prevalent and often much more vicious.
Our court records simply indicate that our methods of
training for life have not kept pace with the developing
moral demands of life. Properly to distribute the blame
for this condition would call to account industrial, eco-
nomic and social conditions, family life, the polarization
of population in great cities, and those changes in social
ideals under which we have passed from the concept of
life in terms of discipline and endeavor for improvement
to the concept of life as pleasure. But just here we are
concerned with only one social institution, that which is
charged with responsibility for training youth for the life
of the state. What is it doing to prevent juvenile delin-
quency ?

The public schools have ideal possibilities. The school
is an institution which has developed remarkable moral
potentialities and which has a clearly stated ideal of moral
purpose but has not organized those potentialities toward
that purpose. No one can fail to see the moral power of
the schools as social organizations. They are adminis-
tered by a body of idealists, people who remain in that
profession because it satisfies their ideals, because of a

144 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

consciousness of sharing in the development of persons.
If this is not the case it is hard to account for the fact
that the pubHc-school system draws to itself the best
brains and abilities of the country and holds them in its
trying service. True there are many who are merely text-
book mechanics; but they are not representative of the
great teaching body. To know the teachers in American
public schools is to know a people with a passion and an
ideal. Their eyes lighten whenever they have the chance
to look above the wheels of the factory system of instruc-
tion and to tell of what they are really doing with lives.
Why not give these idealists a chance?

The schools are least efficient in that i/n which they are
most potent. The schools have several distinct forms of
moral education already in operation. First, they are
forming character by the simple fact that they are asso-
ciating the lives of youth. They form character as they
direct and organize the experiences of these lives under
social conditions. Children here, unconsciously, learn the
greatest lesson the school can teach, how to live together.
They learn to work together, to play together, to secure
social harmony and cooperation. Morals is wholly a mat-
ter of living harmoniously and helpfully with other lives.
In this the school affords experience every day. Second,
they are imparting, in the course of instruction, the ideals
of life. This takes place not only in the study of heroes ^
and great deeds, but even more effectively in every item
of instruction as it is given as an expression of the method
of life, the law of life, the best way to do things. Third,
pupils are under the direct influence of persons whom they
tend to idealize whenever personal worth is evident.^

1 On a method of imparting spiritual ideals through biography see
E. O. Sisson in " Religious Education," Vol. VI, p. 78-f, and F. C.
Sharp in "Education for Character," Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1917.

2 " We believe that the personality of the teacher and the general
organization of the school are primary agents in the development
of character," New York Conference, 1911.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 145

Fourth, moral principles are directly taught in some
schools and incidentally in almost all.

The schools are moral educators lacking moral con-
sciousness. The very fact that we complain at not re-
ceiving the moral product indicates social expectancy as
to the schools. The school acknowledges the justice of
the expectancy, but appears to be powerless to meet it.
This is so because neither an ideal leadership nor an un-
organized, and largely unrecognized, potency for social
training will be sufficient to meet the very real and stem
demands of these times. If socially-, morally-minded per-
sons are to be the principal product of the school their
development must be its principal purpose. We will not
have personal effects in education until we set first the
personal aim.

The public school is not moral in that it does not have
a moral aim. It is not yet a social institution. It is bom
of society, supported by society. Its purpose is prepara-
tion for living in society. But it is not organized as a
society in order to give children real social experience.
We have constructed a sound theory of social education -^
but we have applied it scarcely at all in our public schools.

It is hardly necessary to suggest that the failure to
apply the principles of social education involves failure
to accomplish moral training, for social training and
moral training are the same thing. The morality we de-
sire is not that of isolated, individual perfection ; it is that
of persons trained to live in society, to discharge their
obligations to their fellows gladly and in love. We do
not charge the schools with failure to produce unstained
characters; our charge is that they do not attempt the
task they confess is theirs, to train lives for right social
living.

iFor example in Dewey, "The School and Society," Univ. of
Chicago Press, rev. ed., 1917; S. Button, "Social Phases of Educa-
tion," MacmiUan, 1910; G. A. Coe, "A Social Theory of Religious
Education," Scribners, 1917.

146 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

THE LACK OF MORAL. PURPOSE

Public educators have not designed the school courses
for moral ends. The curriculum is a traditional bequest
from the cultural ideals of the leisure class who once
monopolized educational privileges. Where these ideals
have been abandoned the changes that have been made
have been for the purpose of training individuals to suc-
cess in business. The curriculum, almost universally, has
remained unaffected by the development of social think-
ing; social principles which have become the founda-
tions of modern educational theory have been ignored in
its selection. Until in the curriculum there is evidence
of a real consciousness of the actual facts of the child's
life and the citizen's life we will find it hard to believe that
the schools are organized for life purposes. These facts
are not alone those of business ; they are not found alone
in literary and mathematical activities ; they are the facts
of social living, of daily contacts and of relationships
with all other human beings. The great problem of life
is not after all that of making a living; for us all it is
the problem of so determining the relationships of men
that all problems of work and means of living are solved.

Our schools are not moral, and therefore cannot have
a moral effect because they are not supported by public
moral convictions. We parents do not send our children
to school for any particular reason. Usually they are
sent under a vague, general notion that " education is a
good thing." We are taught that it gives every one a
chance to get ahead in business. Public money often is
spent in an immoral way, in the support of institutions
which have no clearly understood public function in life.
To consent to the use of public money either because
schooling is the fashion or in the hope that it will boost
my boy into a position of social superiority is to abuse
a public trust. In a democracy public institutions must

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 14!7

^xist for social ends. We need a new democratic con-
science on public education. The schools constitute de-
mocracy's great opportunity to train the youth of to-day
for the life of to-morrow. To send a child to school is to
take a significant step in committing him to public liv-
ing ; it is the act by which the family consecrates the child
to the life of democracy. It is a recognition that his life
needs more than the family can give; it needs the experi-
ence of the larger public life ; it needs training for de-
mocracy by experience in a democratic social life. As
they return to our homes we are solicitous about their
lessons ; are we solicitous about their education in social
life? Do we realize that the lessons are only incidental
to the entire experience of school life? Are we willing to
hold things in true proportion, to hold lessons to their
contributory place and to see the entire school process
in the perspective of training in and for democracy?
We say that the schools exist to make good citizens, but
we do not hold them to that purpose and judge them by
that product. When we do we shall think of schooling
primarily as a moral process and test it by moral re-
sults.

No matter how many formal systems of morality are
taught schools do not become moral institutions until
they train moral persons, who coming up into life take
it all in terms of social responsibility, who are both
desirous and competent to solve the problems of social
adjustments. One may test a school by the attitude of
its graduates to public interests, to slums and municipal
vice, to tuberculosis, to labor problems, to neighbors and
to other nations.

Public schools will he as good as public ideals. We
must create a popular demand for a social product from
our schools. We must test these institutions, no longer
by whether our children have acquired certain facilities
in memory exercises, nor by whether they have a brief,

148 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

temporary and fading acquaintance with the classics, but
by whether they are learning to live as social beings,
whether they know the right, love truth, hate a lie and
delight to follow the life of service, the pursuit of the
good. We must demand efficient democrats. We begin
to realize that while efficiency does mean ability to earn
one's living, it must mean also ability to contribute to
the whole of life and ability to be of service, ability to
count for a better age.

Any failure in the school is a social failure; it is a
common, public responsibility. The real difficulty lies
just here: the school is a public institution responsive
to the public will. Its short-comings are largely inher-
ent in democracy; it is created by the people and admin-
istered by the people. It is giving us what the people
want. This would seem to indicate that a rigid adherence
to the democratic principle would prevent any progress
in the schools. But there are several saving considera-
tions. First, democracy may mean improvement. Prog-
ress depends on the principle that if a people can be
moved to will their own elevation they will go much farther
than they would under any sort of external power. Sec-
ond, the people can be taught to desire better schools, and
so to recognize the need for social training that they will
insist on a moral product from the schools.

Some of the best, practical improvements in public-
school activities have been the results of campaigns to
educate public opinion. The teachers wanted better meth-
ods ; the principals agitated for them. But the changes
were only effected when a Parents' Association, or some
like organization, developed the public mind and when
an aroused social opinion insisted on better things.

The public is the real educator and the public needs
education. Evidently, then, an immediately practical
step would be a program of the education of public opin-
ion on the subject of democratic education. One of the

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 149

first steps will be to make the schools more truly public
property. The customs of educational, professional se-
crecy must be abandoned. Through the press, through
school papers and through public gatherings at the school
that familiarity with the school which we had in child-
hood can be maintained and developed through life. Par-
ents' Associations will help greatly. Leaders of public
opinion may develop sane popular thinking and warm in-
terest in the schools. It is just as much the duty of the
church minister to preach on public education — pro-
vided he really knows something about it — as it is his
duty to preach on private righteousness.

PvMic responsibility places all persons in a moral at-
titude towards the schools. It is the moral duty of the
people to understand the work of the schools. It is an
immoral act to send children to an institution from which
we expect moral traiiling and not know whether that train-
ing is being given or how it is being given. It is an im-
moral act to be one of the owners of this social institu-
tion and to remain in ignorance of its operations. Ig-
norance regarding modern educa^tion is ignorance on
social duty. It is strange that so many religious people
to-day apparently are more concerned about how a few
thousand people lived several thousand years ago than
about how the millions of people of to-day are being pre-
pared to live in to-morrow.

It is the moral duty of the people to express their will
regarding the schools. This they do not do to-day. The
common system of the administration of public schools
in the United States is an insult to education and a trav-
esty on democracy. We elect, to conduct the affairs of
the school, a board of people, who know no more about
education than about anything else. This board is quite
incapable of discharging the duties it assumes and usually
unwilling to select a trained expert to whom the admin-
istration might be committed. The failure of our schools

150 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

in their moral product has been due, more than to any-
thing besides, to our method of public control. The
method has been immoral; it has involved the acceptance
of a social responsibility without any serious effort to
discharge it. It has been imperfectly democratic. The
public has lightheartedly laid its responsibility upon
others without the least concern for their competency.
Now we are demanding that the workers in the schools
take more seriously their social responsibilities while we,
the society which owns and conducts the schools, refuse
to take our trusteeship seriously.

Social responsihility involves obligation to the world's
future. We have a high religious duty toward public
education. It lies not in the details of administration,
not in insisting that this or the other specific internal re-
form shall be immediately made, still less in exercising
our freedom of general criticism. It lies in discharging
in the spirit of full social responsibility our trusteeship
for the lives of the young and for this public institution.
That we can best do at this time by insisting that in this
educational agency the science of education shall have free
opportunity to effect the purposes of education. We are
not all educators, but we are all trustees. We cannot
administer, but we can insist that only those who are
capable shall administer. We can take the school out
of politics and set it in education. We can secure com-
petent administrators and then give them freedom and
responsibility.

AWAKENING OF THE EDUCATIONAL, CONSCIENCE

Educational administration, backed up by public opin-
ion, will make possible a tremendous step toward social
efficiency, that is, toward securing the desired moral prod-
uct from the schools. This is the case because. First, the
trained educators are the very ones who realize the essen-
tially spiritual character of education and its social,

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 151

moral aim. They have been trained in the science of
education. They have seen it as a social process. They
are the ones who have most openly and fully expressed
their conviction as to the moral aim.^ Second, they alone
are capable of directing the necessary reorganization un-
der the acceptance of the new ideals. This is an educa-
tional problem calling for the most exact scientific knowl-
edge and the widest experience. Third, trained educa-
tional administration under freedom will secure the de-
sired moral results because these results can flow only
from a thoroughgoing application of the principles of
education.

The last mentioned consideration is so important that
it deserves more than a passing mention. When we criti-
cize the schools for failure to train in moral living we are
simply stating their educational failure. Education which
does not develop the powers of living in social relations
is not education, for the development of those powers is
both the process and the purpose of education. We are
not demanding that the schools take up some new duty;
we are only asking that they fully discharge that which
they already have. Education is for purposes of social
training ; it must have a moral product in lives habituated,
motivated and efficient to live with other lives and to ren-
der to the world the service of full living. This is all we
are asking. It will be secured when we give the educa-
tional process free course to work in the schools.

We can only, after all, lay at our own doors, we the
public, the blame for the failure of the schools. They

1 See the Declaration of the Conference on Moral Education,
conducted by The Religious Education Association at Teachers
College, New York: "We . . . believe that the moral aim, i.e., the
formation of character, should be treated as fundamental in all
education; that morality has a positive as well as a negative content;
that the former should receive primary emphasis; that it consists,
in one aspect, of promotion of the common good, in another, of
the attainment of individual character." See the complete statement
in Religious Education for April, 1911, pp. 117, 118.

152 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

are what we will them to be. We prate like idle children
when we complain of moral inadequacy so long as we
evade our own moral responsibility toward these our own
institutions.

WHAT IS MORAL EDUCATION?

Undoubtedly the situation would be simplified if we
were entirely in the light as to what is meant by moral
education. If we mean enriching the student's knowl-
edge of ethics, then it is necessary only to organize the
material on the historical development of moral princi-
ples and to present this together with a philosophical
analysis of moral conduct and its principles. But surely
this is not our aim. Moral education is something very
different from and vastly more important and practical
than instruction in morals. " Moral education " is es-
sentially a misleading phrase; it implies the notion that
there is a department of human interest or abilities which
may be regarded separately and which we call " morals."
It carries the implication that the desired end would be
attained by special topics in the curriculum, by adding
courses in morality. This concept has led to the prac-
tice of arranging lessons on the different so-called virtues,
conducting drills on selected moral maxims and attempt-
ing moral education by instruction in morals. It assumes
that an intellectual analysis is the same thing as a vital
experience. But the aim in education is not an expert
on morality but an expert in morality, one who is capable
habitually of the moral life. As in the phrase " religious
education" so in "moral education" the adjective is
descriptive, indicating the aim and quality of the educa-
tional process. That aim, which determines the process,
is that through the experience of all schooling youth
should be habituated to full competency to social living.
Moral education means education directed consciously to-

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 153

ward a society of righteousness, a brotherhood of good-
will, a democracy of love and goodness and well-being.

At all events what we as parents desire from the schools,
that which as citizens we seek, is that education shall count
for moral character. We desire boys and girls who love
truth and honor more than aught else of their own, and
their fellowmen more than anything that is their own.,
We would have our children grow up to hate a lie, to,
loathe all meanness, to honor all truth and greatness,
to cultivate the things that are good, to seek out high
thoughts, to give their lives to noble, unselfish ends, and
unreservedly to live for the common happiness and good.
We seek spiritual democrats. We desire the schools to
help us to this end; we expect the schools, in a word, to
teach children how to live and to teach them this great
inclusive subject, so that they will naturally, habitually
work out strong and fair lives for themselves and a better,
finer, sweeter society for all. The aim turns us back not
so much to any special subject as to the need for a social
consciousness that will dominate all subjects.

The primacy of the moral aim should make it dom-
inant in the curriculum. It will be said that the school
curriculum is overcrowded already. Then it is time to
take stock and see what had best be thrown out. Take
first things first ; if conduct is the largest thing in life,
let conduct become the guiding principle in the curriculum ;
then all things can come in the order of their merit for this
actual social life of ours. Our present curricula are de-
termined by a process which has for decades introduced
new subjects and never shown an old one to the door.
They have become more and more crowded, until all a
teacher can do is to hurl the bare bones at a class. Why,
for example, should the school attempt to exhaust life's
knowledge of the classics of English literature? Why
not be satisfied to start a habit? Life leaves much time

154 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

for learning; the schools can leave some facts unknown.
Really to teach the art of right living will mean the
abandonment of the factory method of pedagogy by mass-
drills, giving teachers smaller classes, choosing teachers
for their powers of leadership, not for their cheapness ;
paying more in taxes for this supreme task; abandoning
our follies, our weak pride over traditional trifles and
putting life before everything else in the curriculum.

CHAPTER XII

THE SCHOOLS AND MOEAL TRAINING

The society of to-morrow is in the school of to-day.
Democracy invests in the education of youth to-day be-
cause it believes it is possible to determine, through them,
the character of to-morrow.

The possibility of realizing democracy depends on the
training of the young in its habits and ideals. As a spe-
cial type of society democracy demands special types of
education in order to secure preparation for its special
form of social living. Therefore, education for democ-
racy is social training specifically directed toward certain
qualities jand characteristics. The tests of democratic
education pass beyond the intellectual to the moral. We
look for certain kinds of persons from the schools.

Once we sought to make youth good by repression. In
fact the only good child, of whose goodness we could feel
assured, was the one safely laid away in the church-yard.
Now we believe that the duty of society is to stimulate
the child to express his whole life normally. Instead of
lamenting that there are no good children we subscribe
to the doctrine that there are no bad ones. Faith in nat-
ural depravity has waned and faith in growing lives takes
its place. Education emphasizes development rather than
discipline. It sees in children not only the society of
the future time, but society in the future tense, further
along on the road toward realized ideals. We no longer
seek to force young lives into the set molds of our present
ways, ways that we know to be but sad compromises, after
all. Rather we would face them forward ; we would stim-
ulate them to self-realization. We do not know what they

165

156 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

may yet attain to, but this we do know, that above all
besides, we ^crave for them riches and power in the realm
of character.

Changing tiTnes call for changed methods. In a rela-
tively simple order of society the functions of the schools
«eem to be simple and easily discharged. The experience
of the students is comparatively uniform; their relations
are simple and the demands of society upon them are
easily met. But when we face our modern congested life,
with its cosmopolitan character, its complexities of liv-
ing, its temptations and varieties of possibilities, it is
obvious that the schools have new problems. City living
frequently involves the loss of home consciousness and the
decay of neighborliness with its power to mold lives;
it brings a multiplicity of distractions and a new variety
in types of living. Add to this the industrial situation,
the demands on youth to early exclusive application to
toil, the infinite variety of possible tasks, the moral strain
of the current conflict between diff'erent orders of work-
ers and between employer and employee, and it is evi-
dent that the old simple type of neighborly school will
not meet the need of the present day.

Our " general culture " has failed. We have expected
to meet the need of increasingly complex social living in
two ways. First, by dependence on compulsory general
education. We said, Give every child all the cultural ad-
vantages and knowledge discipline that belongs to a
gentleman and you will make gentlemen of all. We, there-
fore, selected a wide, inclusive curriculum designed to be
applied by a factory process which passed the child
through the stages of a knowledge mill, the elements be-
ing determined by the traditional requirements of the gen-
tleman. We forgot that the knowledge processes were
only incidental to the making of the gentleman, that the
informational elements in the training of the favored son,
of a few generations ago, were only a small fraction of

THE SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 157

that whole course of life, that total environment which
molded all his thoughts and habituated his whole life.
The aim was right, to make every youth a gentleman,
that is one who took life in terms of obHgation and who,
preparing himself for the life of usefulness, learned to
live in gentleness, goodwill, social harmony and efficiency.
But we centered attention on the gentleman's head and
forgot his hands and his heart. How signally the infor-
mational process has failed to make gentlemen in this
sense of efficient social factors must be evident when we
remember that juvenile criminality is not less prevalent
among our American school graduates than amongst for-
eigners, that the personal factors in our severest polit-
ical problems are graduates of our schools and that,
popular indifference to honesty of action, integrity of
word, civic honor and domestic purity is accompanied by
growing general intelligence.

Our vocational traming has been divorced from the
greater realities of life. Second, we have sought to meet
the demands of an increasingly complex civilization by
vocational training. This is a wise recognition of obliga-
tions of service to society, of the moral obligation of every
one to do his work and to do it well. We can scarcely
over-estimate the values of vocational training. Its dan-
ger lies either in a narrow emphasis or in a wrong aim.
Popular emphasis is distinctly industrial, trying to make
full men by making efficient hands. Vocational training
can easily mean the exploitation of youth for the sake
of factories and dividends. The aim is wrong, too, when
vocational training means emphasis on technical abilities
as ends in themselves. It is of value only as it seeks to
develop persons in efficiency to do their best work in the
world.

Moral education remains a problem because it has never
been attempted in any large and comprehensive manner
during modem times. The educational world is afraid

168 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

of it because of its apparent indefiniteness. It cannot be
counted and it is intangible; what place could it have in
this age of corporeal realities? The educator who is
up-to-date must be a man of business, " practical," iron-
minded. If, under the pressure of the public will, he
recognizes moral education, it becomes a segregated part
of his mechanical scheme of things. His mind is fixed
on its schedules, texts and tests.

MORAL TRAINING NOT YET TRIED

Moral education has never had a real trial in our mod-
em schools. Almost all the practice that has come under
that name has been no more than instruction in ethics or
lessons on moral concepts and ideals. Educational in-
stitutions have been offering courses of studies on morals
instead of training and adjusting pupils as moral per-
sons. There are numerous text-books on the virtues, de-
scribing, analyzing and usually disintegrating them ; there
are numerous syllabi classifying the virtues, directing and
planning just when Truthfulness, Justice, Honesty, and
Helpfulness shall be taught, but scarcely one comprehen-
sive outline of education as a moral process for moral
persons. With all these schemes it might well be supposed
that children would come from many schools as familiar
with the virtues as with the mountains, rivers, capes and
bays of their own country and, also, that, just as these
latter are but names until encountered in experience, so
might the virtues lack all significance and reality. Fur-
ther, just as the school geography becomes but an insuffi-
cient and, often, a dangerous guide to a man lost amongst
the very mountains he memorized in youth, so mere nom-
inal familiarity with the topography of the realm of vir-
tue would be valueless to those who seek to make their
way therein.

Moral training has been hindered hi/ pedagogical mech-
anisms. The multiplication of devices to teach things

THE SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 159

about morals is probably due to the natural demand for
the easiest way of doing things. It is part of the tend-
ency toward routine. The teacher who is confronted with
the broad and appalling task of the adequate education
of a number of persons as moral beings, will welcome the
conveniently arranged syllabus which relieves him of so
much anxious thought and makes the task of moral edu-
cation as simple as a drill in arithmetic. Such devices
tend, however, to keep teachers satisfied with blind obedi-
ence to schedules ; they move around in sawdust circuits
and offer pretenses of education; they become blind to
the breath and dignity of their real tasks. They cannot
afford leadership and their dismal efforts have only dis-
credited moral education.

Dismtegrating moral character. It will mean a seri-
ous set-back to educational progress if we yield to the
notion that moral education is a separable part of educa-
tion, that it can be segregated, departmentalized and made
the duty of a specialist, so that any others would have no
responsibility in regard thereto. This is the fatally fac-
ile method of settling the moral problem: push it into
a pigeonhole, appropriately labeled, and place some one
in charge of it. If " Morals " becomes a separate study
in the school that separation is the most impressive lesr-
son we can possibly give as to its unreality. If you can
separate your morals from your mathematics then in later
years you can separate your morals from your money
making. So many now are able to keep their ethical con-
ceptions in sealed packages where there is no danger of
their escaping into life because they received them in that
form, as a pedagogical pack.

The familiarity with the virtues which comes from -
habitually analyzing them breeds only contempt of them.
A lesson in which motives are threshed down to the dust
and ethical situations studied as one dissects a flower may
easily breed prigs who know all about the virtues but

160 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

are innocent of entertaining any of them. There is no
virtue in a memorized catalogue of virtues any more than
there is any religion in a series of scriptural passages.
Here we meet the old fallacy of substituting the symbol
for the experience, imagining that a child grasps com-
parative values because he throws his head back and
sings that " two times two are four." He does not use
the formula when he meets the experience; and he does
not carefully repeat " Honesty is the best policy " when
he sees his neighbor's peach within reach. Indeed, in the
instance of this maxim, he might be even less moral if
he repeated it and were controlled by the statement.

Now this does not mean that there is no value in the
direct teaching of ethics, but that (1) no systematized
scheme of teaching virtues or goodnesses will ever make
good men or train them in virtuous lives, (2) that immoral
results are likely to come from separating morals into
special courses, special teachers and departments, and
(3) that moral education must be the aim of the whole
school, dominating every teacher, guiding every course
and touching all the pupil's life.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DEFINITIONS AND DEEDS

The natural objection raised just here is, "You are
throwing us back into chaos just when we are working
out a system." Alas, the fallacy of systems \ They are
the good that fights the best ; they are the means at which
men rest content instead of going on to their ends. The
system and the syllabus are the teacher's guides and never
the pupil's goal. They are a good deal like railroad time-
tables, something one can go by but not go on or in.
Present practice in moral education faces the danger of
mistaking the time-table for the journey. It is a good
thing to work out syllabi; they should aid teachers par-
ticularly in recognizing the moral significances of current
lessons and in determining varying emphases on moral

THE SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 161

meanings according to the life-development of each pupil.
Further, they will have value as the social and introspec-
tive powers develop ; in the years from sixteen on youths
can often discuss ethics without prejudice to moral con-
duct. But, as means of education, they defeat the moral
purpose by substituting discussions for deeds and anal-
ysis for activity.

There may be a capital difference between teaching
morals and moral training. Our emphasis on the task of
character development will be a disappointment to the^
methodologists who are concerned only with the content
of the curriculum. We are more concerned with the ef-
fect, and that brings into consideration all the causes
which will produce the desired effect. We need often to
remind ourselves of the perfectly obvious fact that lessons
about morals have no special power to make moral people.
The analysis of the virtues is not a virtuous act and mem-
ory catalogues of moral attributes could be the mental
possession of an immoral life. Some excellent definitions
of morality have come from poor demonstrators. In
other words, the task is not to be accomplished by courses
in ethics. These may have some advantages especially in
developing a certain needed awareness of moral situations
and their possibilities. But even that has its dangers in
developing undue consciousness of action.

Because the democratic life is a moral experience train-
ing for that life must include the essential elements of that
moral experience. We are beginning to realize that so-
cial living is a moral experience, that it makes tremendous
demands on the moral life and that the single great and
appalling deficiency of present plans of education lies in
neglect to train that life. Therefore we see a quickened
and spreading interest in what is called moral education.
But there is little hope that we shall accomplish any-
thing worth while so long as we go on playing the old
tricks over with new variations. We have been unwilling

168 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

to think our problem out. We are demanding new
courses in morals, new " codes of morality," new sets of
commandments, new syllabi for the guidance of teachers.
We hear of prizes offered for " codes of morality " as
though the great need was that of defining right con-
duct, as though the world had just discovered morality
and needed to have it digested and codified. Shades of
Aristotle! Why add to the o'er-topping mountains of
definitions? A feeling of sadness at the futility of it all
comes over one when the long lines of books on ethics are
surveyed. Is it sloth or is it blindness that leads us on,
generation after generation, following the faith that de-
fining a virtue is the way to obtaining it, hoping that
courses on disintegrated virtues would give us the power
of the virtuous life.'^ ^

There is only one pathway here ; it is the same as that
followed by educational science in all other departments
and phases of life, the pathway of directed experience.
The abilities come only through their exercise and dis-
cipline. School-training will have moral effects in the
degree that it is recognized by those who train as con-
stituting steadily a series of moral situations. It will
train for the life of democracy as it practices democracy
in the social relationships of the school group, the rela-
tionships between all the members of the society composed
of pupils, teachers, supervisors, principals, board and
other officers.

Perhaps the problem is difficult because it is so very
simple. It would help if we were to forget all our dis-
cussions and seek to state simply just what we expect,
particularly from the schools, as to moral effects. Is it
not this, that our boys and girls acquire right social con-
duct.'^ Supposing, for the sake of simplicity, the prob-
lem is transferred to another and more limited sphere;

1 See " Virtue and the Virtues " by Gep. A. Coe, in Religious Edvn
cation for Jan., 1912, Vol. VI, No. 6.

THE SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 163

what would we do if we desired right musical conduct?
The expression is not very exact; but let it pass for the
sake of illustration. Modern methods in teaching music
comprise at least these elements : creative action, constant
repetition, discovery of meaning, development of judg-
ment, taste and discrimination, introduction to ideal lead-
ers and their work, the development of feeling and senti-
ment. The process seems to be first action, then defini-
tion and illumination and then idealization, action con-
tinuing through and giving reality to all and securing
the development of powers. The process results in abil-
ities, habits and tendencies. Now the desirable results
in moral training might be stated in quite similar terms,
provided the experience be considered as a social one.

The largest leverage in social, moral training is the
control of conduct. It must be control of behavior, not
control of mechanism. The principal element in moral
training is action, action repeated, action more and more
easily willed until it becomes involuntary. Actions make
character ; they determine ideals and they interpret ideals.
They create ideals for others. The school not only can
control social action but it must do so if it is to carry
on its ordinary work. It establishes standards of action
and thus sets up ideals. It demands adherence to those
standards and thus it develops habits. But often it has
been thinking of these regulations of conduct purely from
the disciplinary point of view, with regard to their rela-
tion to the mechanisms of class-rooms and teaching. It
is still, apparently, commonly unaware that such controls
of conduct are teaching. The behavior of children is
really determined in three like ways : through directed
action in the learning institution, the school, through
imitative action in the nurtural institution, the home, and
through free, social action in the playing group.

For moral purposes conduct must he creative. This
means not simply making things but planning and realiz-

164 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ing purposes through chosen organizations and activities.
This implies two elements, ideal enterprises and democratic
self-control. Surely it is sufficient to suggest the value
of these two elements in developing moral character. In-
creasingly the young must realize the school, not as an
imposed institution, but as a social enterprise in which
they all have a share. This can come about only as spe-
cial enterprises are developed, as they pass into student
initiative and as they all merge into a general sense of the
school as a social enterprise. This process develops pow-
ers of control and makes it possible to throw increasingly
responsibility for school life, " government '^ in a wise
sense, on the members of this society, the students.

Certainly experience of this kind is necessary in prepa-
ration for citizenship. As it is, the child on leaving school
is suddenly thrust from a condition of abject tutelage into
one of unlimited personal freedom. He has had no train-
ing in controls, no experience in self-direction as a mem-
ber of a free group. Little wonder that we have juvenile
delinquency when we have these lads and lasses plunged
into life with no schooling for life. Some steps have been
taken to meet this need by the organization in the class
rooms of model cities and junior republics. The purpose
is good; but the plan does not meet the need. The pu-
pils need self-direction in the normal activities of school
life. Their training for moral living must be by experi-
ence in the morals, the social relationships and duties
of the school life itself, for this is their real world.

Ethics rise out of moral experience. Given the ex-
perience of right action its meaning usually takes care
of itself. Whatever definitions may be necessary should
follow the deeds. But definitions are seldom necessary.
No good fables need a tag. There comes the time, in the
high-school years, when youth asks its questions about
conduct. The desire to analyze situations may be
indulged where the situations have gone before. Then

THE SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 165

moral training is possible through the discussion of life's
real situations. For example, let high-school people dis-
cuss their possible occupations, let them discuss the voca-
tions and then go on to discuss training for them. These
elements are parts of real experience. They would lead
to the discussion of the ethical situations involved. It
would be a simple matter to develop a series of useful
discussions on the choice of life work and on the social
functions and ethical standards of different occupations
and professions.

Idealization is the dynannic of moral conduct. There
is no moral situation concerning which the school cannot
reveal controlling ideals. They are presented in varied
forms, through persons, their actions, social situations
and movements, and moral sentimients or ideals. They
appeal to youth's faith in life, that one can make of it
what he will. He believes in heroic determination. The
splendor of heroic character makes its alluring appeal.
While not so immediately determinative of action as are
social habits and incentives it serves to color and often
govern action under social stimulus. It sustains good
habits and helps to inhibit bad ones. It is difficult to
imagine any person with a consciousness of life teaching
in a public school and avoiding the revelation of life's
ideals in heroic persons and inspiring situations. History
is a dry category of dull facts without them. If " history
is philosophy teaching by example " the examples are
commonly wonderfully inspiring. Through history and
literature the door is wide open to ideals in persons, his-
torical and fictitious. But the door is open also in all
the sciences. Huxley, Darwin, Newton, Kepler, Galileo,
Wallace, were far from being saints, but their lives preach
devotion to ideals, heroism, courage and initiative. Each
in their own specialty is part of the child's scientific
heritage. How can one teach mathematics and ignore
Newton and Kepler or, if the teacher were really human.

166 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

fail to open a door into the mind of Lewis Carroll? If
he was truly a mathematician he would find those spiritual
worths that Prof. Keyser has uncovered for us all.^ And
in like manner with all the fields of knowledge, they cluster
about great persons, souls worthy to lead our youth to
greatness, men and women whom they can well idealize.

There is a tendency to discount the value of sentiments.
But one thing is clear, that all persons who think of life
objectively cherish some high forms of sentiment, of ideals
set in literary beauty. Literary moral maxims have of
themselves as much value as table manners. They must
be part of something else, part of their setting and, in
some measure, part of experience. They become sources
of inspiration, they sustain when opposition presses hard,
they guide in doubt, they give us choice vehicles to convey
encouragement to others. Everything depends on their
reality. They cannot be given to a class by an excursion
through " Gems of Literature," nor by means of an
encyclopaedia of quotations, nor by the old copy-book
method. They are discovered as part of the experience
of knowing life through literature, history and the
sciences. Where the first is taught we learn to read
souls, the souls of individuals and of peoples and then
there flashes out here and there the shining hope and
idealism of these souls. We catch the gleam and hide
it in our own souls. That is not a process that can be
precisely directed. It does not stand alone. It comes
only when there is good teaching, only when one life
leads other lives.

There is nothing new, nothing added to the curriculum
in what has been suggested here. There is no need of
adding anything; the great need is that of interpreting
all in terms of conduct. Before we attempt to add
another subject called " Morals," would it not be well to

1 See his illuminating discussion of The Spiritual Significance of
Mathematics in Religious Education, April, 1911, p. 384.

THE SCHOOLS AND MORAL TRAINING 167

see what can be accomplished by really using, for the ends
of conduct, the means now at our disposal?

Once to see clearly that the aim of the school is to
train persons in competent social living, and to set the
school free for that purpose, is to convert the entire
school process to moral ends. A school governed by such
a purpose would saturate community life and create the
environment favorable to its own plans and cooperating
with its program.

CHAPTER XIII

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES

Granted that the primary purpose of the school is a
moral one, what relation do the common studies hold to
this purpose?

The answer would be very simple if the moral aim
implied only instruction about morals, but, since it involves
a program of the development of social character, vari-
eties of relations appear at every point. Any subject
is related to the moral aim of the school in the degree
that it affects the student's social attitude and habits.
The test of the values of studies, for the moral-social
purposes, lies in questions such as these: What interpre-
tations of conduct and life do they present? What ideals
do they help to create? What motives do they stimulate?
What social experience do they afford? In what ways
do they stimulate feeling toward worthy purposes? In
a word, we ask. In what ways do the general studies
constitute spiritual experiences?

Morality is religion applied to conduct, that is, it is
the issue in behavior of our view of social relations and
the meaning and value of life. It is the work that results
from a faith. All moral training rests on some sort of
an idealizing basis. It is a basis formed in whatever
constitutes or offers a spiritual experience, a quickening
of the feelings of joy and confidence toward life, an eleva-
tion of ideals and deepening of meanings. The schools
cannot teach sectarian religious facts but they can and
do offer this basis of the spiritual. They minister in

many ways to the child's spiritual nature. The reality

168

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 169

and power of that ministry is the measure of their moral
value.

VALUES IN CIVICS

Courses dealing with practical living peculiarly in-
volve spiritual experiences. Civics is an instance. It
is the science of social organization by political means ;
therefore it involves social relations and duties. In a
democracy it is a subject peculiarly rich for it must
study the social mechanisms by which democracy realizes
its spiritual purpose of the growth of social persons and
the development of society. The teacher of vision makes
it mean vastly more than the mechanics of government;
it passes over into a study of persons in their relations
for a common welfare. It emphasizes the importance
of political organization as affecting the well-being of
people. It studies relative standards of well-being and
so must involve questions of spiritual values. So taught,
the subject becomes intensely human. It is no longer a
matter of collecting taxes and administering justice but
a study of how a free people live together and effect their
ideals for the common good. It is evidently a moral
subject since it must consider social conduct and, as it
enlarges into a vision of a common human brotherhood
it becomes really religious. Civics rightly taught is
simply the teaching of social morality on the wide scale
of total social interests.

But even larger moral values are possible; this subject
affords opportunity to apply the principle that teaching
is the direction and organization of experience. Classes
are easily led to actually work on the problems of social
living; specific situations with which all are familiar in
the community become the objects of practical service.
A group of boys and girls discussing sanitation in their
neighborhood will discover more than the facts revealed
by a survey; they will find opportunities for usefulness;

170 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

they will form ideals and concepts of duty. They will
practice moral living and, in the experience, find its spir-
itual significance.

Still this may seem to be remote from religious teaching.
Of course, objectively the matter is clear; all teaching
of the art of social living is teaching the practice of
religion. But we could make a like claim for whatever
relates to conduct in any form. What more, then, is
needed? The motivation of conduct with religious sanc-
tions and ideals. And these are precisely the results that
flow, for example, from teaching civics under the demo-
cratic concept in any adequate fashion. For the demo-
cratic ideal is a social method based on spiritual ideals;
it is the expression of the principle for which Jesus lived,
that each life was each man's chance to help the world
to larger life. Democracy, studied in the concrete as
presented in civics, reveals a social situation possible only
as all men learn the way of common service. Thus a
definite purpose toward a life of service is established in
the pupil's mind.

The search for an ideal civic life establishes certain
habits of the religious mind ; it is a search for a practical,
common, social goodwill; it is an attempt to organize
all our varying interests in a common good. It reaches
after the experience of a common brotherhood. The
ideals involved may not be entirely clear to the student's
mind, but the important thing is not so much to identify'
religious ideals as to establish the habits that express
them.

The social emphasis in religion has forced the churches
into civic interests ; it has compelled them to work for
better civic conditions; surely whatever helps youth to
a better social spirit, through the understanding of civics,
must be a direct contribution to the common ends which
the churches and schools have together in an ideal society.-^

1 Some of these ideals are stated in such text-books as. Ward &

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 171

PHILOSOPHY TEACHING BY EXAMPLE

History. Many a teacher wishes, in view of the con-
duct of youth, that time might be given to courses in
the art of life. Yet often these teachers turn, with
weariness of spirit to their work in the greatest of all
courses, that record of man's endeavor to learn the art
of life which we call history. The very people who
attempt to teach right living by means of Hebrew history
on Sunday often are blind to the spiritual values in other
history. This is not so much because of any artificial
division between sacred and secular history as because
they have never seen how either Hebrew or early Christian
history really count for life and society to-day. When
that is once realized all consciousness of essential differ-
ences is swept away. All history has two characteristics :
it is objectively " philosophy teaching by example," and,
subjectively, for the student it is his projection into the
race experience of learning the art of social living.

For the young history is mediated through persons,
through great lives. Necessarily it lacks synthesis ; it
is polarized about great persons. They become leaders,
ideals, revelators of ways of life. The young delight in
them. Study may become a social experience of being
with these exalted ones. Let no one object that such
idealization is the foe of scientific accuracy. The danger
lies in the other direction, that we shall imagine we are
scientific when we have gathered up only the surface facts,
the spatial details of the lives of persons and the move-
ments of affairs. Scientific completeness demands more;
it demands that which lives crave, to know the feelings
of men, to see their motives and measure their influence;
it must include the facts of the spirit. History cannot
be taught unless the pupil is led to see the forces within

Edwards, ** Christianizing Community Life " (Associated Press) ; H.
K. Rowe, "Society, Its Origin and Development" (Scribners).

172 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

men. But to make a boy the worshiper of a worthy
hero and one justly appreciated for his inner life is to
give the worshiping life stimuli in the right direction.
^ To establish the pupil's will toward ideal lives is to make
history real, vital and effective. It is to gather up the
flood of the life of the past for the forward movement of
present lives.

The light of personalized ideals is organized by the
pupil, if he is wisely directed, into a moral consciousness
in history. He thinks, no longer of individuals alone, but
of groups, of persons in social relations, of the effect of
lives on other lives, of the consequences of actions on
the well-being of all. Without moralizing the teacher
who sees these significances can help the pupil to discover
them. Then the pupil enters sympathetically into the
process which history records, man's endeavor for right
and full life.

But the essential contribution is that which has been
only hinted at, the study of history may be a social
experience. The ideal personages, the thrilling causes,
the splendid situations, when youth's imagination touches
them, pass from the past and the pages of books into
living, present realities. The student feels himself in the
moving throng of other days ; he shares their feelings ; his
muscles quiver to act with them; he enlarges his area of
social experience as he idealizes it. Then the skillful
teacher directs and develops this social experience through
dramatics and pageantry, intensifies its reality, and clari-
fies its accuracy through wider study. There are those
to whom heroes are very real for they have walked with
them and learned of them.

THE SOUL AND SOCIETY IN UTERATURE

Literature. Here we stand on very familiar and oft-
trodden ground. Few have thought with any care regard-
ing the work of the schools without realizing that while

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 173

the study of literature marks its high point of spiritual
possibilities it is also its low tide of pedagogical and
social efficiency. English is the one required course prac-
tically all through the high school and it is the one
toward which the students most unanimously have an
emphatic aversion. It is the bete noir to all save the few
who manage to get beyond the mechanics of teaching and
discover joy for themselves in the material studied. The
reasons are very simple : First, they do not study English
Literature; they study things about it, its history,
language forms and its creators. They are drilled in
descriptions and dissections ; they are invited to admire
that which they are required to analyze, an impossible
combination. Second, the logical processes are inverted;
the teacher expects love for literature to grow out of its
facts ; on the contrary, a desire for the facts would grow
out of the love quickened through an experience of
literature. The interest in an author's life follows a
long acquaintance with his work. We have been pur-
suing wrong ends, developing literary critics. We have
constructed courses for the high school in the anatomy of
literature, for the college in its pathology, as though we
were training its physicians. And when the lower schools
would fain respond to the student's hunger for the joys
of literature they find themselves hampered by the college-
entrance requirements.

The tragedy of it all lies in the fact that the lower
schools are using the years when youth's tastes are being
determined not only in failing to quicken literary appre-
ciation but in developing positive aversions. It is not
strange that the people prefer the tawdry magazine and
the defiling newsprint when they have been told that the
path to real literature lies through the desert of dry
facts, through the wearying analyses and the dust of
the specialist's workshop.

But for the purposes of democracy the most significant

174 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

values lie in the peculiarly vital social experiences that
are involved in the love of literature. No one can enjoy
a worthy book alone, for the enjoyment is pleasure born
of the contact with another spirit and commonly involves
idealized contacts with the beings created by the author.
Literature is an open door into fellowship with all the
great, with those who have actually lived in the flesh and
those who have been bom of the imagination. They wait
to walk with us. That which society has stored for our
enriching becomes easily and immediately ours. Such
communion and stimulus is only one side of social fellow-
ship, but it is a most valuable side. Young lives
especially need the stimulus of wiser minds and richer
hearts; they have a right to the leadership of the great;
they have a right to belong, not only to the society of
the passing hour, but to the fellowship of all time, and to
know its joy and strength.

Literature is the means by which the democracy of the
spirit is open to all; it is the means by which we have
communion with the soul of all. This is its vital spirit.
Here " spirit to spirit may speak."

Here lies surely one of the large spiritual oppor-
tunities of the school. If we could but hold clear the
distinction between the letter and the life ! Literature is
a spirit of life which takes form in letters; it does not
consist in them, it only uses them as a means of revelation
and communication. To know its ways is to enter the
society of all those who have enriched the world with
enduring thoughts, to hear the songs of those who have
given us new heart, to catch the vision of those who have
not been afraid of light, to grasp the hands of those who
have not feared to walk alone, in mist or fog, in face
of foe or doubts. It is to enlarge one's personal world.
It is to have the power of banishing the rattling street
and drawing within the magic circle of the evening lamp
the calm face of Socrates, the sparkling eyes of Cellini,

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 175

the saturnine grin of Cervantes, the cynical smile of
Carlyle, the human sympathy of Browning, Dickens,
Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell — time fails to tell the innumer-
able company that wait our silent invitation.

Such a society is very real. Habituation in its ways
develops familiarity with its ideals, its language and its
customs. The love of good literature is a high social
experience and no one knows how to read a worthy book
until the worth sought is just this contact with persons,
with them in a degree that grows in reality and intimacy
until the page seems to fade and the spiritual becomes
the only reality. 'Not only is such experience possible
to youth ; it is their right ; it is our social necessity.

AH this involves the conversion of the teaching of
literature into an experience in literature. Surely this
is precisely what we are doing with all school studies ; they
pass from descriptions about facts to the facts them-
selves as life realities.

Those who are sighing for an opportunity to teach the
Bible in the public schools have overlooked the fact that
a thorough acquaintance with the masterpieces of English
prose and poetry of the last three centuries would either
give directly or would lead to all the biblical knowledge
that would be definitely useful to their lives. ^ This does
not imply that direct study is without value, but surely
the values of biblical material do not depend on whether
they are found in books or bound in limp leather.

Language studies have their spiritual values, not only
as the doors into literatures and the means of enriching
the significance of our own literature, but as revelators
of the inner lives of other peoples. They bring close to
us those who are separated by language. They break
down our prejudices and broaden our sympathies and
appreciations. Race prejudices are possible only in

1 See, e.g., the many works on Browning, also such books as " The
Bible in Shakespeare," W. A. Burgess.

176 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ignorance of the spiritual life of other peoples. Our
derisive phrases shame us when we know their souls.

Mathematics may make moral and spiritual contribu-
tions. What can be more impressive than its universality,
the sweep of its higher laws.'^ Reverence, humility and
some sense of or desire for harmony with the universe
comes when the student goes far enough in this subject.
But, for the schools, the more immediate values appear
in the methods of teaching the lower branches. To-day
it is held in close relations to real life; it so penetrates
everyday experiences that it involves definite moral inter-
ests in human relations and behavior. When problems
deal with food-distribution, health-statistics, interests,
rents and wages, while the teacher does not need to tag
a moral, the pupil is always ready to discuss the social
rights and duties that are involved. It is not enough
that young people learn how to calculate the profits on
a transaction ; they must be able to discern all its impor-
tant elements, to think of it in its entirety and especially
in its social relations. Where there is no consciousness
of conduct, under social relations, any efficiencies acquired
may be only those of the enemies of society. Meanwhile
habituation in exactitude is no small discipline of the
soul because it involves real experiences both in thought
and in action. It is hardly necessary to call attention
to a less important but still quite valuable possibility in
mathematics, the teaching of the current principles of
commercial honesty and business integrity. Such social
standards are surely a part of the curriculum of the
school if its purpose is to prepare pupils for social
living.

CHOOSING A VOCATION

Vocational guidance studies; these often consist in
courses planned to survey the different occupations, to
reveal their social functions and to aid in selection of

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 177

vocation. Thej are predicated on great moral concepts,
such as the duty of work in order to play our part in
society, the duty of choice under motives of service and
the duty of fullness of cooperation with all the work of
society. In the discussion of the various callings their
ethical standards and their social relations become very
clear to the minds of students. Pupils may gather the
codes of professions and callings so far as they have
been codified,^ and they may endeavor to discover the
current principles or rules in other cases. These codes
furnish the basis for discussions that are never lacking
in interest. The discovery of the existence or the lack
of moral rules opens up the whole field of human relations
in the trades and callings. Scarcely anywhere else is it
possible to find interest as keen, participation as complete
as in groups of high-school students discussing this two-
fold subject: what occupations should we choose and what
are the rules of the game in these occupations? Further
a valuable moral contribution is made as the school
actually aids the pupil in making a wise, suitable choice
as to his life-work. Given teachers and guides conscious
of the issues involved, with imagination seeing the youth
going out into the world of work, it becomes a spiritual
experience to consider life's opportunities. The total
attitude toward the world may be determined here.
Seriousness is natural to youth at this time when he
thinks of occupation; it constitutes his great social
puberty initiation. He may find it a spiritual experience,
a time of forming high purposes to play his part nobly
and well, to give a full and rich life to his day.

Industrial training may have spiritual values. Such
training is very closely associated with vocational guidance
and choice. But in the actual hand work in shops new

1 As, e.g., by the American Medical Association, the various Bar
Associations and the Rotary Club. All these may be obtained from
the respective local representatives.

178 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

possibilities appear. They arise in the peculiar relation-
ships which here develop between instructors and workers ;
they come into a common field, on a common plane, work-
ing together. The informality and freedom of the shop
with its close contacts gives opportunity for the use of
personal influence and leadership. Other values appear
as the shop experience calls out powers of discrimination,
of foresight and will in the selection of objects of work
and materials to be used. These are forms of will develop-
ment and motor control. They throw the pupil on his
own selfhood; they call on him to weigh, choose and
initiate conduct under conditions very like those which
prevail in everyday life. Such values are easily lost where
the school regards industrial training simply as a means
of training mill hands and factory operatives.

Hygiene. Here the moral values are evident; the
religious ones are not less. When we consider the life
handicap of disease, the spiritual conflict that many wage
simply because of unnecessary loads on the body one is
tempted to place this subject first in the category of
values. Who can live aright with others who is not right
in himself? Who can live the life of devotion to the
common good whose goodness harbors dirt and disease?
And, still more fundamental, the life of the spirit rests
so largely on these foundations that touch the earth. It
is hard to live a holy life without a whole life; every
strain carried by the will on account of unnecessary
physical disabilities draws off from the power needed for
life's preater purposes. The program of democratic liv-
ing calls for the " keen joy of living," for strong and sup-
ple muscles, for clear minds in clean bodies, for the free-
dom and vigor of the healthy life.

Most of all, social dutv emphasizes the moral and
spiritual value of the teaching of hygiene. Personal
hv^iene is only a form of social hygiene; health is
desirable because one is a member of a larger body which

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 179

not only needs our full powers but must be shielded from
ills we might disseminate. That leads to the study of
community hygiene as a social duty, to the means by
which we may cooperate to make this world a healthy
place to live in, constituting an environment positively
counting for joy and goodness.

Personal hygiene is a splendid means of teaching social
duty under spiritual ideals. Much of the teaching of
this subject has been highly individualistic. It has often
tended toward morbid self-consciousness especially where
undue emphasis has been thrown on the aspect called sex-
hygiene. All instruction in this special aspect should be
merged in general hygiene. The facts of the sex life do
not need the impress of singularity by specialization in
youth; they need integrating in the normal ways of life;
they need to become part of one's thought of society.
But this does not lessen the importance of instruction in
the facts of sex and training in the controlled sexual life.
The important consideration is that it shall not be segre-
gated from life, and, still more, that it shall not be
divorced from its social significances.

Certain simple facts must be faced regarding the teach-
ing of the laws of sex-hygiene. They are : that the foun-
dations of all social well-being lie in physical well-being,
that immeasurable wretchedness, suffering and social loss
result from offenses against the laws of sex and repro-
duction, that much of this is due to ignorance and to
partial or mistaken knowledge, that parents do not teach
their children but permit them to acquire information from
misleading and polluted sources, that the church has
neglected this field of teaching and, in any case, would
reach only a fraction of the youth population, and that
the public schools have the knowledge, the texts, the
facilities and the access to youth necessary. Let no one
ask, why impart any information.?^ Children are not
remaining in blissful ignorance — even admitting that

180 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ignorance has any elements of bliss — for the street and
the school-yard companions are their teachers ; they know
much more than almost any parent suspects. The sad
fact is that they know so much that is not true and so
much with vicious emphases.

Four things have to be held in mind as to the work
of the schools in moral training in this particular field.
First, that the purpose is conduct. Courses in personal
and social hygiene are not designed to satisfy curiosity ;
they are intended to stimulate toward right living. Light
thrown on the physical facts of life is for purposes of
leadership. Second, distinguish between the pathology of
this subject and the plain clean facts which make for
health and social ideals. On the point under discussion
two things are to be taught, how life begins and how it
is maintained in health. Both are only parts of the
entire, embracing subject of physical well-being and effi-
ciency in which this particular subject must be merged.
The facts on the beginnings of life are a normal part of
the subject of biology; they can be taught so that it is
as simple and natural for the youth to know the biological
facts regarding himself as to know those regarding any
other living organism. The maintenance of right habits
of sex ought never to be thrown out into a consciousness
separate from general health and social duty. The third
essential is that this subject shall be taught only by
regular teachers, scientifically qualified, trained not only
in the biological and physiological laws but also so trained
that they will teach the subject with reference to social
conduct. They are teaching in the light of the next
generation; they must have in mind the making of the
democracy of the future. The fourth essential consid-
eration is that no amount of information alone will
accomplish the desired effect unless accompanied by rever-
ence of spirit, by strong idealisms and by conscious rela-
tions to con4uet. Youth must be moved to love the right

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL STUDIES 181

way of life, to reverence their own lives, their own bodies
and the lives of others. To hold in high reverence an
ideal of purity and personality, to loathe heartily all un-
cleanness will guide where much knowledge would fail.
Such idealisms and reverences may be largely generalized,
young people may be trusted to make their own special
applications.

But, next to the matter of scientific accuracy as to
the facts to be taught, nothing is of greater importance
than that the teacher shall feel that here one is dealing
with spiritual issues, that here one is developing ideals
and creating standards of value for living. This is true
because here we deal with one of our primary and most
controlling instincts, here we deal with forces that will
continue to control large areas all through life, and
here we touch that part of the life of feeling where ideals
mount highest, where the greatest sacrifices may be made
and the largest joys discovered. One has only to con-
sider for a moment the relation of this phase of life to
that which we call character to realize its spiritual im-
portance. One has only to consider its importance to
society to realize the duty of a democracy in this respect
as to the education of the young.

A few subjects have been taken from the curriculum of
the school and their opportunities for moral training, for
the development of spiritual values, have been considered.
Surely they sufficiently illustrate the principle that teach-
ing the young the art of social living is, in any of its
phases, a spiritual process, and that all forms of true
teaching, when addressed to persons under a consciousness
of their social relations, are but forms of moral training
and, in a broad sense, forms of religious education. Such
considerations are by no means unfamiliar to teachers in
the public schools, but our mechanical processes,-^ our

1 See the vivid description of current schooling by Professor
William E. Hocking in his discussion of Education in " Human

182 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

bread-and-butter measures in public instruction, con-
stantly tend to inhibit the teacher's interpretation of his
everyday task in spiritual terms. The result is that we
obtain only routine instruction. Every true teacher deals
with souls; subjects are only his tools.

Nature and Its Remaking," page 237. (Yale University Press,
1918).

CHAPTER XIV

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

Since a school is much more than an agency of instnic-
tion and is principally an organization of lives it will
be in the activities of pupils that we shall look for the
development of moral and spiritual powers.

It is an axiom of modern education that the activities
of the school are more important than its formal programs *
of instruction. This principle holds with equal force
in religious education. In his activities the child has a
real experience into which all his powers may be projected.
It becomes a much more complete experience than is
possible with class instruction. In action purposes are
formed, projects are undertaken, ideal social purposes
take form in the will. Ideals become real as they are
realized in action.

First, the school, as a total activity may aid in devel-
oping a democratic ideal of social purposes. In itself
the school is an expression of democracy. It is a social
institution devoted to the development of society through
persons. It preaches democracy, clarifying, illuminating
and enlarging ideals, as it is explicitly organized for
social ends. In the community, as each person shares
in supporting and conducting the school, it affords for all
some experience in democratic living. This participation
is not confined to tax-paying; it is most valuable in an
intelligent understanding of the school's work and in
cooperation therewith, as through Parent-Teachers clubs
and the like. Further, the very fact that the outstanding
common institution of community life exists for the devel-
opment of persons strengthens the community sense of the

183

184 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

value of persons. Such impressions affect not only adults ;
they carry over to the children in the community. The
school itself, as an activity, is a lesson in the meaning of
•democracy.

Second, the more direct results will come from the
pupil's own activities in the school. One can arrive at
some judgment of the spiritual values of school experience
by asking as to the changes that take place in the social
life of the school. What are the effects in attitudes and
conduct of certain studies and of certain activities.'^ If
at any time one finds that kindness, consideration for
others, social cooperation, earnest truth-seeking and con-
sciousness of social standards for conduct become current
on the playground and amongst student groups, it is
usually safe to look for the causes in ideals which have
grown out of actual experience in school work. Some-
times the course of development is quite apparent as
when, following certain courses, children play at civic
organization, municipal serv^ice or do actually attempt
in seriousness these forms of social relationship. But
many of the most valuable lessons in democratic living
come within the normal experience of the school itself and
involve no social projection beyond its life.

Spiritual values for democracy are developed in the
school's discipline, government and organization. A
school is a little world. It is the child's most immediate
and impressive world. By its character it is determining
the meaning of all his worlds. Sanity, order, precision
and joy may here become normal to his universe. In the
school where the plan of organization is definitely appre-
hended by the teachers, where their cooperation and loy-
alty to its ideals secures staff harmony the student con-
stantly sees and feels lessons more impressive than any
that could be put into words. Constantly he is catching
ideals and adopting standards. What these are often
appears when the child plays school ; they become evident

SCHOOL ACTIVITIES 185

when he goes out into the larger world. In such a school
student-government gives expression to these impressions.
Student self-government has value only where the school
itself is wisely governed. We owe much of the loose and
morally disjointed, slip-shod methods of civic life to the
happy-go-lucky, undisciplined, disorganized and often
chaotic conditions of public-school management. This
may have seemed inevitable in the small country school
but it is without excuse in any organized school.

But the value of all organization and government will
depend on the degree to which it arises in the pupil's will.
In this sense it must be self-government. So long as it
is only imposed it will not be possessed as a personal
quality. We are training for the life of democracy in
the schools; that must be a life of free willing for the
common good. But our still prevailing idea of school
discipline is that of a feminine Prussianism, a rose-colored
but none the less absolute pedagogical autocracy. There
are two very simple considerations to remember: First,
school-life is the child's first experience in making wider
social adjustment; Second, the life of the school is his
first interpretation of the life of the state. If the school-
room means the arbitrary regulation of his life, then
social living is likely to mean that he will be good just
so long as society succeeds in regulating him, in keeping
an eye on him and a rod over him. If the administration
of the school-room is imposed he is likely to feel no
responsibility, no sense of a common social life and no
ambition beyond that of beating this over-lord at its own
game.

DEMOCRACY AS AN EXPERIENCE

The suggestion that democracy should actually be prac-
ticed by classes in the school-room comes as a shock to
many. " It would never do to let children have so much
power; they would run away with the school." But that

186 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

is precisely what the autocrats have always said to pro-
posals of democracy even for adults. The theory always
has been that only those who now have the power can
be trusted with it. Yet there does seem to be some ground
for the objection that children have not yet acquired the
powers of self-control; they do not yet know how to
govern. That objection constitutes the most impressive
argument for extending the experience of governing to
them. We do not deny a child the right to sing because
he has never had a course in singing. We expect he
will, perhaps, come to the point where his singing may
justify the listening audience if he has the chance to
practice and undergo discipline. But, in every art, he
will never learn without practice, least of all in the art
of social organization. This art of living in a democ-
racy, of social self-direction, is acquired just as other
arts are. It cannot be learned through books or lectures
or picked up after the habits are fixed. The way to
become proficient in democracy is to practice democracy.

Something has already been accomplished by the organ-
ization of " school cities " and the like in classrooms. All
such plans have merit in the degree that they furnish
social experiences in control. But they have one serious
shortcoming; it is evident to the pupils that they are
special creations, importations to the class situation.
The class turns from being a class to become a city or
a junior republic. The experience of democracy should
be integral to the normal social situation, or, if it takes
a new form, the movement should rise spontaneously in
the will of the group and not be directed or imposed.
Otherwise the " school city " is likely to be only a routine
exercise.

But democratic experience may he provided vn the nor-
mal life of the room and the school, the playground and
^11 that belongs to school experience. Here we meet what

SCHOOL ACTIVITIES 187

is to many a serious difficulty in thinking of democracy
as an activity in the school; it is objected that the
children could not possibly elect their own teachers, nor
could they select their courses and text-books. This is
stated, apparently, as a fundamental objection. But it
is based on the false assumption that the principal func-
tions of a democracy are exercised in electing officers and
directing legislation. So far is this from the fact that
such activities are quite occasional; they are simply
special forms of exercising those responsibilities in democ-
racy which belong to adult life. The real practice of
democracy goes on in all the common life of service, in
our daily labor as contributing to the common good, in
service we can render as citizens, in paying taxes, in
common neighborliness. Just as in society the principal
activity of democracy goes on through normal participa-
tion in everyday life so will it be in the democracy of
the school. To be temporarily debarred from electing
officers is not to be deprived of the major functions of
citizenship in democracy. The whole democratic society
determines this matter of selecting teachers and courses
— it is important that the child shall clearly see that
the school is conducted by the will of the people — ; but
this young citizen has ample opportunity to contribute
to the democracy by regular work, voluntary service,
serious applications to tasks and to play and to the
social ideals of the school by controls of conduct.

The special need now is that school people shall take
their eyes off text-books and school politics long enough
to realize the possibilities in the child's actual experience
in the school, that they shall become conscious of the
school as a society and the child as one of its members.
Here the child is actually living a social life, rather than
" getting ready to live." In that social life many forms
of activity arise, enterprises develop and powers are

188 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

called into play. The many-sided response of the child
to the school's stimulation suggests the variety of forms
of democratic initiative and control open to him.

In free play, sports and athletics. Here the child is
essentially at school; more of him is likely to be present
here than at any other time. To him play is one of
the most natural experiences of social living. No peda-
gogical consciousness obtrudes itself and yet nowhere can
teaching be more effective. Every power of life is called
into play under conditions and for ends which are often
thoroughly democratic. Here not only is play effective
because it involves social mingling but because it develops
social cooperation, coordinated and concerted action.
Here social autonomy is exercised ; whatever is done is
by the will of the people, the playing group. There is
experience in guiding and modifying the social will under
the pressure of school opinion. The mode of modification
may often be far from calm or academic; but it affords
real experience in democratic living. In any organized
play the social will is called into use and developed. A
game is simply practice in the formation of a common
goodwill. Play always reveals the anti-social child, the
one who will not get into the game because he has not
seen how much better is the common will than his own
way. Some never get into any game as long as they live;
play is one of the best cures for their moral ill. The
playing group will often succeed in curing selfish individ-
ualism where the parents have failed. Here, too, the
future men and women determine how they will play the
game of life and whether they shall play for the game,
or merely for winning or for some reward exterior to the
game.

In the care of rooms and grounds. Democracy implies
common property rights, and responsibilities in the
school. If the room belongs to the child he must learn
to accept the stewardship of his rights. Formerly the

SCHOOL ACTIVITIES 189

school patrons presented plaster casts to the school rooms
or hung enlarged photographs of the Forum; now the
room decides what it wants and, after discussion for
weeks in which more is learned of art and beauty than
ever before, the room experiences community improve-
ment. It has made its own standard. The group has
lived through a social passage from " your room " or
" your old grounds " to our room and our grounds.

COMMUNITY AS A SCHOOL

Community service. The school trains for democracy
through an organized experience in democracy ; a part of
that experience will be participation in the life of the
community. If, as a society, the school group does not
share in community service it does not train for com-
munity living. A self-centered school cannot educate for
democracy. This principle has been emphasized by mod-
ern educational science, regarding education as a social
experience directed toward a social aim it insists that
all shall participate in the realities of social action.
Therefore we find the group leaving the school room and
going out into the factories and workshops to discover
their community. They go out, also, to work in their
community. Civics, mathematics and agriculture effect
combinations that lead to the cultivation of garden plots,
the eradication of weeds on the highways, the planting
of trees and the realization of city ideals. Often it is
difficult for older folks, with memories of the drill-room
school, to realize that their children are being properly
trained, educated, when they take the tools of highway-
making in hand or do any useful, directed service. But
all doubts would be removed if we could see what takes
place in these pupils as they work, how they not only
thus acquire the text-book lesson but, also, the lessons
of social cooperation and the habit of thinking of the
community in terms of obligation and service.

190 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

The purpose of democracy will convert the community
into the child's school of social living. It will not only
regulate its life for his protection: it will direct it so
that it may be morally creative. It will devise forms of
social cooperation. It will so organize its activities that
there is a proper place for the voluntary service of the
school group. Where the school becomes a part of the
system of the city or village or county it has a working
place, and its workers become part of the normal life of
their community. This was what was happening recently
when a dozen high-school boys left the building each
carrying pick, or hoe or shovel. They spent the day
in a small village, under the village official's supervision,
in repairing certain spots in the highways and walks.
They went as volunteers: they certainly enjoyed them-
selves. But the point is that they identified themselves,
by a social experience, with their community's life. That
was effective moral training for democratic living.

The great war gave a remarkable stimulus to school
activities in service, calling every child to a share in the
national enterprise. Red-Cross work, knitting, garden-
cultivation, food-conservation, thrift, bond-sales, and
work for children in other lands all projected the child's
energies, feeling and imagination into the world life. The
nation became more real and better loved, and the far-off
world was brought near and into personal relations. The
child shared the national life in a deeper degree and in
a new manner, through service and sacrifice. It has been
possible to make all this service something much finer than
loyalty to the national group, valuable as that is; often
it has become loyalty to universal ideals, a process of
identifying ourselves with a national life that sought to
serve splendid aims. Such service has been an expressional
activity in relation to spiritual ideals. As the vision
has been kept clear and high it has had spiritual value.
Jt has been simple, normal and most valuable moral

SCHOOL ACTIVITIES 191

training. But it need not be confined to the times of
national stress and emergency. Service is the normal
experience of every member of a democracy. What is
done when the need stands out in a startling manner may
be done always — though the degree of intensity may
vary — so long as there is developed a consciousness of
common life in the nation and a purpose of loving help-
fulness toward all men.

Only a few of the possibilities of developing high pur-
pose and establishing social habits through the experience
of activity have been suggested. These simple facts are
that the school is doing work with active persons; nor-
mally they are active all the time, and all their activity is
determining the quality, the levels and power of their
lives. They are always in the active mood. The school
has ceased to be governed by its old-time picture of a
child as a slightly animated ear, a passive vessel for
information. Whatever it accomplishes with the child it
accomplishes through his cooperation. If then, in all
that it causes the child to do, it has the purpose of train-
ing his powers of willing, choosing and doing from motives
of social life, under the democratic ideals of life, as a
member of a common, loving society, it is always carrying
on moral training. It is always dealing with spiritual
natures for social ends.

It will be objected that the results that flow only from
a general purpose are vague and likely to be unimportant.
We are always tempted to turn from general purposes,
from a common program that is a part of the whole
school program, to some special efforts, such as courses
of direct instruction in moral conduct. That is because
it is difficult for some persons to have faith, hard to
believe that the highest good is always a by-product, hard
to see that when life has its entire program it accomplishes
its entire purposes. Just as no one finds happiness by
looking for it, so no one finds strength or elevation of

19^ EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

character by any deliberate efforts to these ends. In
every life spiritual strength comes through unwelcome
pain, through everyday joys and appreciations, through
diiBculties met and struggle experienced. Desirable mo-
tives develop in the life by indirection ; they do not come
usually by observation.

The principle which leads us to look for spiritual
effects from the ordinary work of the school is one of
the highest importance. It is fundamental to moral train-
ing. We must remember that the spiritual is not a sep-
arate faculty, a something disintegrated from the total
personality. It cannot be taken out of the life nor can
it be treated or influenced without influencing the whole
of a life. And so that which is sought is the develop-
ment of a whole life. Whatever symmetrically develops
the powers of a life develops its moral and spiritual
powers. Virtues are not separate items to be separately
acquired. Indeed, it is not a series of virtues that is
sought but the virtuous person, that is one whose devel-
oped powers are directed toward certain ideals and ideal
purposes.

But to many all these considerations will seem to be
very far from religious training. They certainly are
if by religious training is meant instruction about certain
subjects, biblical lessons and drills in catechisms. But if
we regard the aim of religious education as that of prepar-
ing persons to live in a religious society then these school
experiences will not seem to be without value to that
end. These school experiences may not extend the pupil's
knowledge of theology, but they may lead to habits of
thinking about all life and the world in religious terms ;
they may lead to those habits of mind and of action
which characterize all religious persons. They will serve
their purpose in realizing the religious aim of a society
which sets first spiritual ends and is organized for love
and truth and goodness. The school which furnishes

SCHOOL ACTIVITIES 193

the pupil an experience of a society of common goodwill
and of loving social cooperation is constantly, without
the least danger of sectarian trespass, engaged in religious
education.

The effectiveness of the school to develop those qualities
of life which are essential in a democratic society depends
very largely on our faith in its spiritual possibilities.
The whole problem of moral training is merged in this
larger matter of developing social lives', in creating and
making effective social ideals. The school is efficient in
moral training in the degree that it stimulates and guides
the child's spiritual nature, in the degree that it makes
life mean for him a common living with all, common joy
and common work under spiritual ideals.

CHAPTER XV

THE BIBLE AND PUBUC EDUCATION

If a religious spirit is essential for life in a democracy,
and if this spirit is developed through education, does it
follow that instruction in the Bible must be included in
public education?

Many answer with an emphatic affirmative and they
bring many arguments to support their contention.
Those who are urging the use of the Bible in the schools,
however, often have no special educational basis for their
claims; they are likely to believe that religion is something
which, in a mysterious manner, is conveyed from the
Bible to those who study it. While we reject this notion"
it is worth while to consider other reasons for including
the Bible in the materials of education, and to face the
question whether this book can be used in the public
schools.

The Bible is integral to the heritage of democracy.
Our developing ideal of democracy is the result of a long
process of moral and intellectual growth, an accumulation
of spiritual ideals. We have not created it ; it has come
down from our fathers and each age has enlarged and
enriched it. This heritage of freedom is inextricably
woven with the history of the Bible. This is largely
because the struggle for political freedom was so much a
struggle for religious freedom. Wyclif, Tyndall, Milton,
all suggest the relatedness of political emancipation to
the popular use of the Bible. The ideals of man's worth
and man's rights inspired the leaders for freedom; the
writers seem to be saturated with the language of this
book. The literature of Anglo-Saxon freedom cannot be

194

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 195

! understood by one ignorant of the Bible. The prophets
of democracy found here their strength and inspiration.
Our peculiar type of civilization is a direct descendant
of that which Hebrew prophets outlined and Hebrew
people enjoyed. There are vast differences due to devel-
opment, but there are the same insistences on certain
values, personal, ideal and social, and there are the same
endeavors after freedom of the spirit. He who would
know the heritage of democracy in world ideals must have
the prophets and poets of the Bible in his mind.

The Bible is a unique book and yet a universal book.
Every man finds his own heart there. Every people finds
itself at home in the biblical ideals. That is because
they transcend their own settings ; we lose sight of the
orientalisms and the common language of religion is heard.
Thus the Bible becomes for us the most natural and the
most powerful instrument in developing religious ideals
and feeling. When we seek to teach religion no other
literature can approach this. Whatever view we may .
have as to its historic making we are compelled to recog-
nize it as the supreme religious classic. It has been
greatly misused in the name of religion, abused as the
tool of sectarians, and treated as a fetish by the ignorant,
yet it comes to us with the dew of the morning, stimulating
with ideals, compelling in its commanding characters,
touching the deep places of all sincere lives. It is the
literary precipitation of the spiritual life of a people
" with a genius for religion." For us who are their /
spiritual heirs it is difficult to think of any kind of train-
ing for life which omits this book.

The Bible is peculiarly the book of democracy. When
we clarify its essence from the incidental we find, all
through, one consistent, developing emphasis on the inter-
pretation and valuation of all life in spiritual terms.
That emphasis is distinct in the later prophets and finds
its most illuminating setting in the life and teachings of

196 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Jesus. Now this central emphasis is also that of democ-
racy. The total effect of the Bible sets forth those values
in personality which democracy holds supreme. For the
strengthening of the spiritual ideal of democracy society
to-day needs the stimulus of its historical development,
needs that setting in noble words and that illumination in
heroic lives which come through an open-minded familiar-
ity with the Bible.

Now if the Bible is so valuable how are we to make
sure that it becomes the spiritual heritage of the children
of democracy? There is only one institution which
reaches practically all the children, and so the ready
answer is, See that the Bible is taught, or at least used,
in all public schools. That suggestion is easily made,
but it calls for courses of action in which the difficulties
and objections seem to be insuperable. These must be
faced before we can be quite clear as to any plans for
teaching the Bible as a part of education for democracy.

There are, first, serious problems which arise in con-
nection with the three reasons urged for the reading and
study of the Bible in pubHc schools. These reasons are:
that it is part of the child's literary heritage, that it is
of value in moral training, and that the child needs its
materials for religious instruction. But the three reasons
are often confused in the public mind. Many are urging
the literary and moral value of the Bible who are inter-
ested only in its doctrinal teachings. Those who urge
the value of its direct moral teachings must face the
question of its immoral teachings, as in the practices of
an ancient people and the claims for divine approval of
social customs long since outlawed. An examination of
the propaganda for the use of the Bible in the schools
reveals a preponderance of interest on the dogmatic side.
The reasons adduced are educational but the motives are
ecclesiastical. While many teachers recognize and seek
to use the literary values of the Bible, the vigorous cam-

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 197

paigns for its introduction into public education are'
distinctly sectarian.

Now it ought to be clear that we must not endeavor
to secure the teachings even of our own faith — even
when we are confidently and complacently certain of its
superiority — under false pretenses. No purpose is so
noble it can justify ignoble means. Even though we
desire with all our hearts, and with the best human aspira-
tion possible, that all the young should become Christian
we cannot covertly, by means socially unworthy, attempt
to secure their conversion. The question of the Bible in
the schools must be examined altogether apart from our
convictions regarding our own religious doctrines and
institutions.

THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE USE OF THE BIBLE

The Bible and the child^s literary heritage. The first
reason for the use of the Bible in schools seems to be a
good one. The school must help the child discover his
literary heritage. Not only is the Bible an essential part
of that heritage but biblical language has saturated all
our everyday speech. Moreover this book is a part of
the world's literature. Our day calls for sympathy with
the thought of people of all lands and times. There is
the same reason, at least, for the study of the Bible as for
the use of Greek, Roman, Romance and Norse literature.
But we must be sure that it is used as literature, subject
to the laws that govern all literary productions, treated
precisely as we treat Greek and Norse legends and poetry.
The school has no right even to suggest its religious
authority over the child's conscience. We may, with
propriety, insist that, in our American civilization, the
Bible lies back of Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Lowell,
Lincoln and Ruskin. There can be no valid objection to
the inclusion of passages of literary worth from any
religious classics. The Shepherd Psalm should be included

198 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

in school-work, not because of its teaching on God, but
for the same reason that passages from " In Memoriam "
are included, because elevated ideas are expressed in
' stately, harmonious and simple language. On the same
grounds passages from the Buddha legends might be
included to advantage. Biblical passages, coming under
this category, are found in school-readers. In high
schools there could be no valid objection to the reading
of the book of Ruth, for example. But all this would
be simply the study of literature. Would that pure
literary study content the advocates of the Bible in the
schools ?

The Bible and moral training. The second reason is
a part of the public demand for a moral product from
the schools. But there are serious fallacies in the argu-
ment that we can depend on the Bible to accomplish the
moral aims of the school. In the first place, morality
is more a matter of training than of instruction ; it is
principally dependent on the actions and habits of the
life. One might have complete familiarity with the moral
teachings of the Bible and yet be the veriest rogue and
menace to society. Moral living does not develop from
a study of the rules of behavior even in the most exalted
books. To memorize canons of conduct will not make a
gentleman. Literature does help in forming ideals but
it does not insure conduct. Next, the morality of the
Bible is not the morality of this age. Social ideals have
developed. The moral conduct of Abraham or of Jacob
would hardly pass muster to-day. Democracy demands
more of men. Which would we commend to a young man
to-day, the example of Jacob or that of Henry Esmond?
The young find difficulty in modifying Abraham by his
historic setting.

It is true that lofty ideals, framed in sublime language,
are presented in the Bible. They have passed over into
our common life to such a degree that they owe their

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 199

authority not so much to the book which contains them
as to the answer they quicken in our own breasts. They
have the authority of conscience. Some of the characters
have been idealized for our times; they owe their force
to this idealization rather than to any evident superiority
to heroes more immediate to our lives. It is difficult to
be more attracted by Samuel than by Lincoln, or Living-
ston or by Florence Nightingale. And which would count
for more to a boy to-day, Saul and David or Chinese
Gordon, Theodore Roosevelt or Dr. GrenfelL? The latter
are real, comprehensible; the former are entangled in
historical data and oriental customs. The attempt to
find nearer at hand material of moral value does not lose
sight of what has been said on the place of the Bible
in our spiritual heritage. But it is necessary to discrim-
inate ; there are degrees of value within the Bible. The
Bible is essential but it is not the most convenient nor
the most effective material for moral instruction. When
its use in the schools is urged on grounds of moral teach-
ings the school-men have consistent objections; they have
other material, ample and free from divisive elements and
historical difficulties. They say, moreover, that the
churches which have entire freedom in the use of the Bible
do not use it in teaching moral living. Those who are
insisting on the Bible in the public schools for moral
purposes are not organizing their own biblical courses in
churches for moral ends.

The Bible and religious instruction. This third and
most common plea comes from those who regard the Bible
as a book of explicit religious authority. They point
to the large number of children growing up in ignorance
of this book and urge that, since it is essential to their
welfare, the pubHc school is the one agency which can
give it to them all. This propaganda commonly ignores
the fact that much biblical material is already in many
school-readers, that quotations from the Bible abound in

200 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

English literature. Often it denounces the schools
because they do not make a special subject of Bible-study.
It is indifferent to what the schools are now doing with
the Bible because they are not doing what is desired :
teaching religious doctrines by its use. It would be
impossible to meet their wishes, not only because religious
doctrines lie beyond the province of the schools but,
equally, because there is not and there cannot be agree-
ment as to what doctrines should be taught nor as to
how the Bible should be interpreted.

PBOBLEMS AND DIFFICULTIES

A second group of problems arises from the nature
of the schools as institutions of a state which is founded
on freedom of conscience. The Bible has a unique place
in Christianity; it is a book of religious authority,
officially so recognized by most churches. To many it
is a book of supernatural authority, direct and explicit.
It contains exact directions for conduct and for belief.
To others it has authority in the degree that it speaks
with power ; it is followed where it leads forward. What-
ever the attitude of individuals may be the Bible has
become peculiarly an ecclesiastical book, associated often
with church ordinances and ceremonies. It has been
differentiated from other literature, in part because it
is different in many resj>ects, but more because it has
been historically associated with the founding of churches,
with their conflicts one with another, and with their
propaganda. It cannot be disassociated from these sec-
tarian connections. It is still commonly used against
faiths that are at home in the United States, and each
group tends to use it in a sectarian manner. Parents
desire their children to know it as the foundations of
their own faith and the foe of other faiths.

The sectarian character of the Bible, as it stands in
popular usage and thinking, and the sectarian aim in

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 201

biblical instruction must be remembered whenever we
consider a plea for its use in the public schools. The
schools are public institutions and the public life of
America is absolutely committed to the principle of the
separation of church and state. When the state lends
its power to support any particular creed it steps beyond
its province, it passes from the civic realm into that of
conscience; it breaks the agreement of freedom of con-
science upon which this democracy is established. When
the public-school teacher treats the Bible as a book of
religious authority, using it in worship or for dogmatic
purposes, that teacher, while an agent of the state, is
engaging in religious functions of an explicit character
and is trespassing on the rights of the churches. He is
offending against personal religious liberty. Even though
we may agree entirely with the doctrines that are taught,
though we may admire the worship, we must still insist
that the state has no right to teach religion, as such,
and that we have no right to depend on its power for
the propagation of our own faith, for we would oppose
the propagation of error by the same agency. It is
easy to understand how many indorse the teaching of
religion in the schools — meaning their own religion, but
the plan is fair neither to the school nor to the churches.
If it is urged that the schools can agree on a common
body of biblical teachings, the answer is that it is not
the business of the school to determine the content of
religious teaching ; it is not their duty to formulate a
common American creed, nor have they the right to
select any sort of literature for the schools on a doctrinal
basis. That they can select and use parts of the Bible
purely as literature no one questions, but any selections
made upon a doctrinal principle would be offensive to
nine-tenths of the people. So far as any attempt, as
has been seriously proposed, to agree on a few simple
statements of religious truth, is concerned, such a state-

202 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ment, no matter how simple, would constitute the creed
of the public schools which adopted it. Whenever we
find ultimate common ground in religion we get down to
' a substratum that is already commonly held, that has
no special significance for life, a creed too thin for life's
foundations.

The public school is not prepared for the work of teach-
ing religion. Teachers are not trained for that purpose.
They are not selected with reference to their creeds, as
a rule. Nor are we, on serious thought, prepared to com-
mit the religious teaching of children to teachers who may
have no effective religious life or who may be of faiths
emphatically different from those in which we would train
our children. The state has a right to engage teachers
of any faith; but usually parents are not quite ready to
have religion taught to their children by Catholics,
Protestants, Jews, Christian Scientists or what not. In
fact the school system does not regard the teacher as a
teacher of religion. If it did it would institute courses
in teaching religion in the normal colleges ; it would engage
teachers with reference to abilities in this field, and it
would test their work by results in religious knowledge.
Lacking the consciousness of this duty the state expects
no professional training with reference to religion. The
result is that any efforts in this direction are purely those
of amateurs so far as teaching is concerned.

State instruction vn religion is an invasion of the rights
of the churches. In the degree that we seek to lay this
duty on the public schools we. rob the churches of their
greatest religious opportunity and privilege. When the
church evades the duty of proper religious instruction and
turns to the public schools, saying " You do this," she
closes the door on her future. There can be no church
to-morrow unless the church trains the children to-day.
We have no right to relinquish the religious training of
the young. It is a private duty that cannot be given to

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 203

public agencies. Primarily it is a duty of the family;
here it must begin and be maintained. Then, as families
are associated in churches, they are able to agree on suit-
able teachers of religion for their children in the churches.
This selection they cannot make with reference to public-
school teachers. It is a careless, thoughtless attitude, one
of indifference to the importance of religion, that leads to
the demand that the school take over this duty; it fails
to see that this work calls for special training, for an
atmosphere of religion and for spiritually minded persons.
The agitation for direct biblical instruction in the
schools is due to two causes ; first, it is an attempt to
lay another duty on these public agencies, a part of the
habit of extending the field of public activities, and,
second, it is an attempt to import the customs of other
countries having civic ideals and civil conditions different
from ours. Now, in the United States, we cannot urge
English methods for England still has a state church;
also, England is by no means united as to the propriety
of religious instruction in state schools. We cannot
urge German methods because the German system of
control down to the last detail of the content of instruc-
tion was possible only under Prussianism. Even the prac-
tices of New Zealand, Australia and Canada do not hold
good for the United States, for these countries still follow
the traditional ways of their mother land.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

Acknowledging the difficulties and limitations as to the
use of the Bible in public schools it has been urged that
it would be possible not only to exercise freedom in
teaching the Bible but to extend into thorough rehgious
instruction by one of the following plans: 1, Through
pastors, priests or appointed church workers who would
visit the schools at stated periods in order to teach
religion. But this would be to ignore the principle of

20* EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

separation between church and state : it would take advan-
tage of the power of the state to gather children; it
would use the equipment of the public agency for private
purposes. Further, it would tend to disrupt the social
unity of the school by injecting sectarianism, by quick-
ening the consciousness amongst children of church lines
of division. 2, By providing that schools be dismissed
for one half day each week in order that students may
go to their churches for religious instruction.^ This plan
is without objection so far as questions of civil relation-
ships are concerned. It could mean, however, nothing
more than the erection of an extended Sunday-school
program in the midweek. It has no special relation to
the question of teaching religion or the Bible in public
schools save as it would tend to make it less necessary.
This plan is not the same as the so-called Gary system;
here a regular schedule of classes is maintained by the
united efforts of the churches and children are in at-
tendance at religious instruction in a number of church-
schools — in practically continuous operation — when
they are free from the regular public-school program.-
Neither of these plans, nor the numerous forms of after-
school instruction carried on by the churches in New
York, must be confused with plans to teach religion in
the public schools. These plans have no organic relation
to the schools ; they use neither their time, money, forces
nor authority. 3, It is proposed to teach religion indi-
rectly in the schools, using the Bible in literature. But
we ought to be honest, not attempting to crowd religion
in surreptitiously; when the Bible is taught for its
religious values — our religious values — it is dishonest
to call that the teaching of Literature. 4, By the presen-

1 Proposed by Dr. G. U. Wenner in " Religious Education and the
Public Schools," (Am. Tract Soc).

2 The Gary plan is discussed under " Community Organization."
Full particulars may be obtained by addressing the Religious Edu-
cation Association, 1440 E. 57th St., Chicago.

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 205

tation of religion as a subject of scientific study. This
might be perfectly proper, but it would be devoid of
religious value. Religion as a subject of knowledge is
not necessarily religious. To master its history may not
mean that one is mastered by its spirit. 5, By Worship.
It is still the custom in many places to open pubhc
schools with religious worship. The practice is forbidden
by statute in some states. The prevalence of the custom
is due to its long establishment; it comes to us from two
sources, tradition first, the methods in vogue for so long
in days when there was agreement on Christianity as the
one faith, and also from the tendency to think of the
school assembly in churchly terms. But a consideration
of what is really taking place in public-school worship
must give us grave thought. Selections from the Bible
are read as selections from other books are not read; it
is treated as a book of peculiar religious authority.
Hymns are sung which were written to express and develop
specific doctrinal concepts. The principal, or teacher,
or visitor offers prayer, a distinct act of religion with
definite doctrinal significances. In a word, the state here
takes over the functions of a church. No matter how
desirable it may seem to be to cultivate a spirit of wor-
ship, is it really fair, is it honorable toward the Jew —
to be specific — to use this school which he is compelled
to support as a means of propagating a faith contrary
to that which he holds ? Can any faith afford to advance
itself by unfair means?

Arguments drawn from the custom of prayer in legis-
lative halls will avail nothing here. The case does not
rest on precedent but on right. It ought not to be
decided either by legislative custom or enactment ; it ought
to be decided by our own sense of justice. But the legis-
lators do not engage in sectarian worship — nor usually
in any sort of worship; even that is beside the point,
for legislatures may act unconstitutionally. Nor does

206 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

the case of chaplains in the army apply, for they are ap-
pointed under an agreement between the different church
communions. In both cases only mature persons are af-
fected who can and do use their powers of mental inhibi-
tion and their right to be absent.

General exercises are a valuable part of school training,
but they ought not to be ecclesiastical, nor doctrinal, nor,
in the popular sense, religious exercises. The religion of
the school finds expression in an ideal of citizenship. If
you want to see school children really worship go to a
general assembly focussed on patriotic ideals. Social
aspiration and service give ample opportunity for common
feeling and devotion for the school group.

There is only one attitude for the religious citizen, one
equally essential to the preservation of civic freedom and
to the welfare of religious agencies: it is to stand uncom-
promisingly on our spiritual principle of the necessary
freedom of religion and the consequent separation of
church and state. This attitude is no small contribution
to democracy; it is democracy expressing itself as to
the relations of the state to the religious life and to
religious thought.

Doubtless it seems that we have only suggested diffi-
culties and have offered no suggestion of a solution of
the problem of religion in the schools of a democracy.
This is inevitable: there is no solution, so far as formal
relations are concerned, which will give religious teaching
a place in the schools. We must remember that the prob-
lem goes back of any question of religion in the schools ;
it exists in this form simply as a phase of the under-
lying problem of securing for religious teaching an
adequate place in the child's program and experience.
The problem to be solved is not, how can we get religio^
into the schools, but, how can we get religion into the^
child's life? Before that problem it is worth wlule to
clear the ground, to make up our minds as to certain

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 207

methods which cannot be used and certain agencies which
are not available. Then we can take the next step of
concentrating attention on the development of the means
and the agencies which are available. If the schools
cannot be used, if the Bible cannot be formally taught
in public schools, why waste time over that issue? Would
it not be well to go back to the original purpose and
begin to improve the opportunities now at hand and open
to us in which the Bible may be taught.'^

The blame for ignorance of the Bible lies not with the
public schools but with those who are directly responsible
for religious instruction; it lies with those who clamor
to have the Bible taught in schools and who also crowd
the children into basements, cut the time schedule, furnish
untrained teachers and levy on the children for the sup-
port of a school which they call a Bible school. We
trifle with religious education in religious agencies and
then ask civil agencies to take it seriously. We say
that religion is the all-important concern for the child
and for the welfare of civil life; but there is no evidence
that we mean what we say for religion is the last matter
and the least to which we pay attention in the child's
educational program. We have no right to criticize the
public schools for any shortcomings so long as our own
efforts are so feeble, so fainthearted. When the church ,
takes the child with anything like the seriousness with
which the state treats him, the new kingdom, the democ-
racy of the spirit, will be much nearer at hand. There
is no reason why the churches of a community should
not fully and properly provide for all the religious instruc-
tion needed by all their children. It will call for only
as much thought and investment as is needed for our
community provision for general education.^

1 For a discussion of this point, and on the practical methods
involved see " Religious Education in the Church, Henry F. Cope
(Scribners, 1918).

208 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Along with an adequate program In the churches, along
with the acceptance of full responsibility for all direct
religious teaching of the young, it is important that there
should develop a sound opinion and social attitude as
to the relationships between the churches and the public
schools in educational matters. This necessity is the
prime reason for what may seem to be a long discussion
of a negative character. Every attempt to secure
religious ends by means that are not wholly right defeats
those ends. Every attempt to evade the law or to ignore
the civil and social rights of all others — no matter how
erroneous their creeds may seem to be — only stirs divisive
strife, obscures spiritual purposes and hinders the realiza-
tion of a united, spiritual society. Besides, the agitation
which emphasizes the values of biblical instruction in the
schools tends to create an opinion that this is the only
way that religious values arise in school life and to lead
teachers to forget those means of spiritual influence and
leadership which do not raise controversial questions.

If we are estopped from the use of the Bible as a special
religious literature we are not estopped from spiritual
results in the schools. All that training which democracy j
involves and requires is essentially a training of the spirit ; \
it may be given in the schools and it must be or they '
fail of their purpose. No one will accuse a school of
sectarian influence because it leads children to love their
neighbors and to follow the life of goodwill and service.
No one will bring the charge of sectarianism because the
school aids children to live the life of truth and goodness,
to realize the ideal of a spiritual democracy. The school ,
IS expected to be a force developing character by reveal-
ing life, inspiring motives, training habits and quickening
ideals. It cannot avoid these spiritual duties, for it is
an educator of those who are spirits, and it either develops
a certain spirit of life or it does not train for democracy.

THE BIBLE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION S09

Would we not do well, then, in the churches, to accept
our own special share in religious training and to lend
our energies to aiding the school in discharging their spir-
itual mission?

CHAPTER XVI

OE6ANIZIN6 THE COMMUNITY

Education for democracy will involve the democratiza-
tion of our entire experience of life under an education
ideal so that all living will be a scheme of education ; a
plan of education undemocratic in any particular cannot
train for full democracy.

Our institutions have been developed under political
freedom; they have been modified by experience and in
response, to some degree, to the public will. A vital,
social aim is molding them to-day, but they are far from
being truly democratic. For democracy implies more
than freedom; it implies purpose, the united action of
a people for a better society. No commanding, unifying
purpose has been generally followed, nor have we recog-
nized any common principles under which our varied edu-
cational activities might be coordinated. Our endeavors
are divided between homes, elementary schools, high
schools, churches, community agencies, colleges and uni-
versities. Some relationships have been established be-
tween the formal schools which take the child on from the
age of six to the end of a college career. But it would
be a mistake to think of these schools as constituting an
educational system. The public school gets the child
when his education is half completed ; by the time he en-
ters its doors his life has received its most significant
development. The public schools have, as yet, little to
do with the child's hours of leisure when the process of
education is most active, and they are debarred from
formal endeavors to develop him as a religious person.

There are those who hold that the present situation is

210

ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY ^11

inevitable, that it inheres in our political freedom. Cer-
tainly if unity meant uniformity, or if it implied central-
ized control we would resist all efforts to coordinate edu-
cation. In spite of the fact that popular education is the
first duty of a democracy, in spite of the fact that educa-
tion for democracy must include all the powers of life
and, to be effective, must proceed in all its phases under
unifying social concepts, we do well to make haste slowly
in the organization of education. We are not willing,
in its important, determinative activity, that there should
be so much as the semblance of autocratic control. Even
though we might have the power of selecting the educa-
tional authorities we are not ready to commit unreservedly
to them matters so vital. We fear the dead hand of tra-
dition ; we fear the tendency of fixed boards to become
dull and wooden, conservative and unresponsive to the
public will ; most of all we fear the attempt to standardize
processes, to establish arbitrary fixed norms in matters
so vital as education where the elements of personality
with all its differences enters in so largely. And, when
we seek to include the elements of spiritual training, it is
difficult to conceive how any board, no matter how broad
its intellectual sympathies might be, could design and
direct systems for all the children of all the people.

Education affects so directly the ideals and the wills
of people that a free nation will always regard with sus-
picion any attempts to establish centralized control.
Free schools must not only be free from fees for tuition,
they must be free to respond to the public will. Germany
established control with the indubitable purpose of mold-
ing a nation to the inherited will of a predatory monarch
and a military caste, making of a people a single intelli-
gence and will, automatically registering in response to
its rulers. The result has been the sacrifice of freedom,
the loss of those spiritual qualities upon which freedom
grows — free vision of ideals, virility of conscience and

212 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

sympathetic consciousness of common human rights —
and the creation of the most serious problem the mod-
ern world has faced.

But centralized or autocratic control is not essential
to a fairly complete system of education. Here, as else-
where in a free society, the one thing needed is a common
will based on intelligence and worthy purpose. This com-
mon will would be the universal standard in education.
It would grow out of an understanding of the social proc-
esses of education, of the needs of persons and society
in a democracy, and the gradual establishment of minimum
standards based on the rights of those being educated and
the needs of society. The next step would be unity of
action in social units to see that in every detail the needs
of society are met, that existing activities are coordi-
nated and provision is made for whatever may be lacking
in our present plans.

The community is the unit in which it is feasible, and
natural, to secure educational unity and comprehensive-
ness. Communities have already learned to cooperate in
providing instruction for children through certain years.
The public schools are demonstrations of community pro-
grams as far as they go. The group constituting a com-
munity is a working unit, conscious of its own needs, re-
sponsive to these needs and capable of meeting them.
They may constitute the units of a larger and more gen-
eral organization, the many communities finding ways of
cooperation through their community of interests.

The first step is for the community to discover a com-
mon ideal and standard of education. It must answer the
questions. What are the rights of our children? What
are the functions of children in community life? ^ What,
in view of the future of democracy, is a right program

1 A question answered in a special study made for the Religious
Association by Professor George A, Cge, published in Religious Edu-
cation for February, 1918,

ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY 213

for these children? It must establish standards of com-
munity life determined by the rights of lives and the needs
of democracy and not by the exigencies or the greed of
business. In a word, the community must come to see
itself as existing for democracy and as functioning by
education. Every community goes through some of these
three stages of progress : First, a recognition of exist-
ence, the simple realization that a group is being formed ;
second, conscious purpose to enlarge, strengthen and
organize the group ; that is the stage of most communities
to-day, and, third, consciousness of function, an awaken-
ing to the question. What is the ultimate purpose of this
community? When that stage is reached they outgrow
the old standards expressed in civic statistics; they are
not content with the aims of commerce and industry, nor
can they rest satisfied with beautifying streets simply
that they may be more beautiful than some other streets.
Men do not care to live in " Spotless Town " if all the
town exists for is to be spotless. Better to be in a mud-
hole trying to grow men than on a marble slab in a grave-
yard.

THE PURPOSE OF A COMMUNITY

The ideal commimity has specific purposes. It is a so-
cial organization for the sake of people. Gradually it
tends to interpret all its life in terms of their lives. Its
programs of commercial development, schemes for the city-
beautiful, parks and institutio^s, laws and ordinances, are
all parts of its general plan of growing, strengthening
and directing lives. It finds its function, a vital one —
dealing with persons, an educational one — developing
their lives, a democratic one — associating them in a com-
mon life for the good and happiness of all.

The first and greatest contribution a community can
make toward education for democracy will be the develop-
ment, in all its people, of the habit of looking out over

214 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

its entire life and asking, Just how does this or that make
for the manhood and womanhood we need? Just how
does this or that promote or retard the common social
life of goodwill and goodness? This is the growth of a
consciousness of function. It is to think of the township
or village or ward as having a definite, controlling pur-
pose, as existing in order that people may find the condi-
tions most favorable, the stimuli most helpful and the
opportunities of activity most effective for the realization
of full social living. y

The commwaity in a democracy^ then, accepts an edu-
cational function. The pu/pose which finds expression in
the maintenance of public'^chools penetrates every activ-
ity of the community. Where a sense of this responsi-
bility exists it will organize itself. The local group has
its machinery for civil government, but, at present, it
lacks organization for larger social purposes. It has the
means of syndicating its resources to secure common con-
veniences and necessities, such as light, water, sanitation,
policing and transportation. But its council, or govern-
ing body, is concerned exclusively with these physicalcon-
ditions and, usually, regards them apart from their Rela-
tionship to the higher life. Either the representative
body must be directed by a full consciousness of the pri-
macy of the interests of persons, or, since this is not
likely to be possible because they are chosen for other
ends, there must be created another body which will repre-
sent the community in its interests in moral and spiritual
well-being.

Community direction for spiritual ends waits for the
formation of representative bodies chosen for their wisdom
and power in this field. At present, no matter how well-
disposed the common council may be, it has been elected
to administer public affairs on an economic basis. If it
provides for welfare it does so, not because welfare is its

ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY 216

primary concern, but because to neglect it altogether
would interfere with the orderly administration of eco-
nomic affairs or might reflect on the city's fair name.
Votes are seldom determined by any consideration of a
purpose in civic life — except the purpose of keeping
one administration in, or getting another in. So that we
do not have an organization of community life, but only
of certain interests. The larger task waits for fitting
organization. The pecuHar nature of the task, its height
and breadth, seem to demand a special organization for
direction. Just as the public has committed to special \
boards the care of the parks, to others the libraries and I
still others the schools, so it may well create a directing!
organization which will organize community life as a \
school of democracy.

Such an organization might be called the Board, or |
Council of Moral and Religious Education. It would be
better, as a rule, to be less exact and to call it simply
The Commimity Cotmcil. Then it could direct its ener-
gies toward moral and religious training. There is noth-
ing^ew or startling about this suggestion. The writer
advocated it over ten years ago and the plan has been
a^pted in a number of villages. It differs somewhat
from the Maiden (Mass.) plan ^ since it calls for an organ-
ization representative of all the ideal interests which will
attempt the organization of all the common activities of
the community so that they may form a unitary pro-
gram designed to develop character. The plan would
work in complete harmony with the Community Center
organization, adding thereto a representative body which
would become the agency through which the Center would
carry forward its community programs for ideal ends.

The Commimity Center is a helpful and simple form

1 Advocated and promoted by Professor Walter S. Athearn, notably
at Maiden, Mass., at Lowell and a number of other places in Mass.

216 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

through which community organization may be realized.
The Centers ^ are the natural development of many ef-
forts to secure active neighborliness, growing out of Neigh-
borhood Clubs, Open Forums, School-Centers, Parent-
Teacher Clubs and the like. The plan is now being pro-
moted by state organizations; state universities are ap-
pointing officers to develop its usefulness; the United
States Bureau of Education is aiding its application to
educational problems, and the President of the United
States wrote a letter urging the formation of community
councils.^ The constitution proposed in the pamphlet is-
sued by the Bureau of Education suggests the following
specific activities: Forum, Recreation, Civics (informa-
tion, education, service), Home and School, Buying Club,
Community Bank. The Centers may be characterized as
organizations to do together all things that can be done
together. They are much like town meetings that func-
tion all the time, that cover practically all common inter-
ests and that carry out their own decrees. Their simple,
democratic form, their high ideals and their practical
emphases are rich with promise. They may be directed to
an educational program for the entire life of the com-
munity. They may be saturated with an educational
consciousness which recognizes the spiritual needs of a
democracy.

A COMMUNITY COUNCIL

The community needs democratic leadership. As the
Center brings them together they will look for guidance
in work, instruction in community principles and training
in method. Guidance will be needed to coordinate the
existing activities and to plan new ones. This work of

1 They are described in Bulletin No. 11, 1918, of the U. S. Bureau
of Education, " A Community Center, What it is and How to
Organize it." Price ten cents.

2Woodrow Wilson in a letter to the Councils of Defense in the
different States, under date of March 13, 1918.

ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY 217

leadership and coordination would belong to the Council.
It would plan careful surveys looking toward common
programs, toward the suppression of social menaces and
sources of moral contagion, to the development of friendly
forces and agencies and to the provision of ample, happy
healthful recreation, instruction and service.

Can such a council provide for community action in
religious education? There is no doubt that it can se-
cure community action in the most valuable forms of re-
ligious development as it makes recreation, amusement
and social living stimulating, helpful and a means of ideal
social experience. This — the life of streets, playgrounds,
homes and social mingling — counts more than all besides
in actually developing character. To be surrounded'^
with a moral atmosphere favorable to righteousness, to\
social goodwill, to see constantly the object lesson of a
community devoted to the good of all is the most effective
form of religious training. In all that follows this must
not be forgotten. Yet children need more. They need
that direct religious instruction which both enables them
to interpret this atmosphere and example and to under-
stand and practice its methods. This direct instruction
the public schools cannot give, the homes either will not
or cannot, and the churches, at present, devote less than
an hour a week to giving small groups instruction at the
hands of amateurs. The churches reach fewer than forty
per cent, of the children ; their instruction in the Sunday
schools is an antithesis of that to which they are accus-
tomed and, being given in church groups, it tends to set
off this instruction from the united community life. If
we are to make democracy a spiritual experience for the
child we must make his religious experience in instruc-
tion truly democratic ; it must become a part of his com-
munity life. It must have a larger share of his time, for
it is manifestly impossible to learn anything in from forty
to fifty periods of thirty-five minutes each a year, espe-

218 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

cially when, as a rule, these do not occur under school
conditions. It must have a larger share of his active
experience, for instruction standing alone can accomplish
little ; it must be so organized as to become a part of
his everyday living in the social group; it must go on,
under normal conditions, into his play and work.

Adequate religious instruction is impossible under the
program of the present typical Sunday school. It is as
impossible as general education would be if all the children
were divided into sectarian groups, limited to one period
a week and left without financial support or proper su-
pervision. Even though general education were possible
in parish schools education for democracy would not be
possible there. The young cannot learn the life of de-
mocracy in caste and class institutions. It is as necessary
that religious instruction be democratic as that general
instruction should have that character. So long as the
religious instruction is disassociated from a genuine com-
munity experience there will be difficulty in carrying over
that instruction into practical community living. The
effect of confining the teaching of religion to churches is
often an impression that the practice of religion is con-
fined to the same area.

The present Sunday school is wastefully inadequate.
The system of independent small groups, each school
teaching a series of smaller groups, each maintaining its
own staff and equipment is not only bad as it divides
social life but it is exceedingly wasteful. This is discov-
ered as soon as it is attempted to place a church school
on a plane of educational efficiency. It costs almost as
much as though each school were attempting to meet the
needs of all the children of a community. There is fur-
ther waste in current plans as they lay on the community
the strain of a peak-load of religious instruction on one
hour of each week with absolutely no load all through the
rest of the week. That is as economically wasteful as a

ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY ^19

system of street cars designed to carry the entire popu-
lation to Sunday morning service and to lie idle all the
rest of the week.

The inadequacy of the present Sunday school for the
community's need for religious training is due largely
to the fact that the school is an inheritance rather than
a designed institution. It was planned for quite other
work than it now seeks to perform. It has been devel-
oped in a manner that carries over much obsolete ma-
chinery and maintains impossible limitations. It is still
conscious only of a duty to give the young instruction
about the Bible rather than to give training in living a
religious life in a democracy. It still lacks any con-
sciousness of a community mission. It is conceived in
ecclesiastical terms rather than in terms of a democracy
of the spirit.

Our complex social order makes vastly increased de-
mands on children. Living is more complicated; life's
moral strain is more intense. And, much more exacting
than any current conditions, than any struggle for per-
sonal goodness, are the demands of our own social ideals.
This day calls for men and women who can make the
kingdom of heaven a current reality. Our vision of a
democracy of the spirit must come down to the practical
terms of living, of industry and social intercourse. But
that vision cannot become an actuality by means of gen-
eralized hopes; it requires both trained spirits and par-
ticularized efficiencies in methods. The inadequacy of
our present plans becomes evident when we realize that
we seek, through religious training, the preparation of
the child for the great problems of democracy, for life in
this polarized world, that we hope he can learn to live
on the plane of spiritual values with others and to make
this a world guided by the life of the spirit. Can that be
done by separating the children into little groups to listen
to often aimless talks for thirty minutes every Sunday?

220 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

In a word, we need a new religious education. Are we
ready for its broader program? Are we ready, in the
' light of the needs of democracy, animated by the hope of
a spiritual society, to take the steps necessary to furnish
a full program of religious training? Are we ready to
tear down and to build anew, instead of patching here
and there, building now according to the demands of our
day and the promise of a kingdom of God? Such a pro-
gram is possible only as it is conceived in terms of the
life of all the people and carried out on a common pro-
gram for all who are willing to unite in it.

CHAPTER XVII

A COMMUNITY PROGEAM

If the community is the unit through which we must
seek to secure an extension of religious training in prepa-
ration for the hfe of democracy what are the steps neces-
sary to organize a community program?

First, to convert the religious agencies to a democratic
spirit. The churches are insisting that Jesus was the
world's great democrat, but frequently they are more
brahmanistic than democratic ; they tend to separate peo-
ple into more or less self-satisfied groups ; they afford chil-
dren only a special sect experience in education. If reli-
gious experience is to be effective for democracy it must
itself be democratic. Caste experience in training is not
training for a common, social life.

What can be done.^ Would our churches be any less
attractive or their membership any smaller if, instead of
planning the religious training of the young as a scheme
of recruiting their own organizations, it should be ar-
ranged primarily as a preparation for a spiritual society,
a religious democracy.? Such a plan would not only en-
rich the curriculum as to its practical content but it
would thoroughly socialize all the experience of children
in their church schools. It would make the school of
religion an actual experience in living in a common so-
ciety. Even though the school could not include always
the entire community — though that would be a desirable
aim — it would be so representative that to be in it would
be to realize community living. It is to be doubted if we
can hope to spiritualize community life until we have
thoroughly socialized religious life.

221

EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

The religious organizations of the community need,
next, such an impressive, intelligent understanding of the
requirements of their village or neighborhood as shall com-
pel the development or remaking of present methods un-
til they shall be adequate to the task of reaching all the
children and reaching all their needs in the spiritual life.
Tf we really believe that it is essential for every child that
he have proper religious training we will not permit tra-
ditions, sectarian divergencies nor ecclesiastical interests
to stand in the way of the children's rights. If we take
rJigious education as seriously as we have taken general
education we will find a way just as we have found a wa^
in spite of all the difficulties with public education. If |
we have any regard for the fully sixty per cent, of the
child population not now reached by the church schools
we will confess our present failures and take up this pr»h-
lem with open-minded seriousness. Moreover, if we have
looked squarely at our present systems and have realized
how little fruitage they bear in the realities of life, how
little they have to do with the making of our social order
or with determining the character of a community, we will
be anxious to discover and apply plans of religious train-
ing that will have some effect on life. The present situa-
tion is that, in spite of many organizations, much serious
effort and much money expended, we have a task but
partially accomplished and that only for a few.

Before a solution of the problem is possible, however,
we need cm awakened community, one with a sense of re-
sponsibility for the spiritual in its life. Communities are
accepting responsibilities for the lives of people ; can they
evade responsibility for any part of life? If they are
responsible for health, why not for health of mind? If
they accept responsibility for conduct can they avoid
responsibility for character? This does not mean that
communities will formally adopt religious professions or
creeds. But they are adopting creeds which are essen-

A COMMUNITY PROGRAM 2^3

tially religious. They even publish these creeds, such as
" We believe it is our duty to make the best pos-
sible place to live in. We place first the interests of our
children, health before commerce," etc. Such professions,
whether stated formally or not, imply the acceptance of
responsibility for the full development of every life.
When we stop to think we know that our communities
exist for ends not to be expressed in statistics of the
census, in wealth or in size. If they care only for our
bodies of what worth is it to make us healthy brutes
only to gore and devour in their rich and beautiful pas-
tures.'^ The community has a ctire for souls because it
exists for persons.

The religious responsibility of the community does not
interfere with the freedom of the churches. It does not
dictate their views or their tasks. It does not deprive
them of their work of religious education. But it accepts
a responsibility to make it* possible for the spiritual
agencies, whether churches or families, to do their full
work. In its program of coordination of agencies it
recognizes the churches and their functions and calls on
the entire community to stand back of all agencies that
support and develop the religious life.

Community cooperation at feasible tasks is the next
step ; there are things which all the people of a community
can do together in the field of religious service. Just how
easy it has been for all the people, regardless of creedal
affiliations, or of none, to work together in social serv-
ice, in deeds expressive of high religious purpose has been
demonstrated during the period of the great war. In a
like mood other needs are met when their seriousness is
realized. One of the tasks at which it has been proven
i it is possible to secure community cooperation is that of
I week-day instruction of children in religion. Back of all
efforts in this direction lies the long agitation for reli-
gious teaching in public schools, and back of that even

S24 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

the common custom of such teaching; then there is also
the growing recognition of the inadequacy of the present
church school even under the best of conditions. Seek-
ing to provide a larger measure of instruction in religion
schools have been established which meet during the week,
often with programs of instruction providing from two
to three hours of regular work for all pupils in the ele-
mentary schools who care to attend. Some of the schools
have trained, professional teachers devoting their entire
time under regular salary contracts, their work being
guided by expert supervisors.

WEEK-DAY RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

Week-day instruction develops as a community enter-
prise. At first it was assumed that all that was neces-
sary was to extend the time program of the Sunday school
into the week. But it soon became evident that this meant
only spreading the present inefficient efforts over a larger
area of time, with the same purely amateur workers and
the same results as before. It involved, also, no exten-
sion as to persons reached; the schools were simply Sun-
day schools meeting in the week. We have abandoned
the church-school extension plan and are now coming to
think of week-day instruction in terms of the community,

Eot only that all the children of the community may be
eached but that we have here what may be a community
aterprise. The two current general ideals have been
well presented in two recent books. Dr. B. S. Winches-
ter has presented the argument for one method,^ the fed-
eration of the churches in a community so as to provide
and conduct a school or schools, meeting during the week
and giving religious instruction. Prof. W. S. Athearn

1 In " Religious Education and Democracy," a report presented
to The Federal Council of Churches in America, Dec, 1916, published
in book form by the Abingdon Press, 1917.

A COMMUNITY PROGRAM 226

has presented another method,^ that of organizing in the
community a special Council of Religious Education, in-
. dependent of the churches. He has conducted a number
of enterprises for the training of church-school workers
under his plan. He especially urges the inability of the
churches to carry forward common enterprises of an edu-
cational character. Two things seem to be certain:
First, that the local federations of churches cannot meet
the needs of the communities in religious training; they
have, usually, no developed educational expertness; they
represent only certain sections of organized religion in
a community, and they have, as yet, no programs for re-
ligious education. Second, a community enterprise in
religious training must have the leadership of its churches.
It cannot be conducted independently of them ; to attempt
this is to ignore the basic principle of using the natural
existing social groups; it is to create another religious
agency and to attempt to separate the churches from their
most important task, the training of the young.

Do we then stand at an impasse; the churches cannot
do this work and no one else ought to do it.'^ Not at all.
First, we have been confounding two parts of this enter-j
prise, the function of the church to train all its young\
lives and the function of the community to make it pos-
sible for every life to receive religious training. The
churches cannot leave to the community responsibility
for instruction; the community cannot leave to the!
churches its responsibility for conditions and social or-]
ganization favorable to instruction. Second, we are con-
fused because we are still thinking of a Sunday school
magnified into a week-day affair while we ought to go on
to think of the community accepting its responsibility for
the whole of life, making provision in plant and program

iln "Religious Education and American Democracy," Pilgrim
Press, 1»17.

«86 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

for all, while the churches accept the challenge of the
community, enter into the program, use the plant and
discharge the duty which is specifically committed to them.

Where the community council is alive to the religious
needs of life, to the place of the spiritual, it will be quick
to furnish the plant and equipment for instruction.
Where the churches are alive to their real work they will
be able to forget differences and to work together in the
use of the community plant. The important thing to do
is to develop a sense of community responsibility parallel
in this field to that which is now felt for general educa-
tion.

To be specific, we are recommending that when the
Community Council has been organized, representing all
the churches and higher interests, it begins to provide
suitable buildings which can be used all through the week
for instruction in religion and for such training as the
churches may desire to give. Common provision for
school plants would involve a community-organized pro-
gram but it would not at all involve community control
of teaching. Each church would be as free as ever in
this respect. The community has no more dictation over
the teaching of any church in its common building than
it had when it provided separate buildings. Just as the
community in furnishing common facilities of communi-
cation in the streets cannot dictate our motives in walk-
ing but leaves us free so long as we respect the social
rights of others, so in the community school of religion
there would be freedom under social obligations.

It is not at all inconceivable that the community shall
do three things: recognizing the child's need it shall so
arrange its general time-schedule that all the young may
have opportunity for religious instruction and training;
next, provide the necessary facilities which shall be at
the disposal of all, and, then, use its existing educational
agencies, or, if necessary, provide others to give the

A COMMUNITY PROGRAM 2^7

proper technical training to those who are to instruct the
young.

The time-schedule is no small part of the problem
everywhere. The curriculum of the school has been so
enlarged and its field of activities so extended that young
people are likely to find every hour occupied with either
school-work, home-work, school-supervised recreation or.
the school's social life. Now no single aspect of life ought
to monopolize the child's program. Yet there are chil-
dren who for five days from rising to sleeping have a
schedule of nothing but school work. They are entitled
to time for the free life of the family, for their own social
groups, -for the life of the spirit. The coordination and
adjustment of the now overlapping and competing parts
of a time program will be one of the first problems for
the community council. It is quite possible for a neigh-
borhood to come to an agreement that certain hours be-
long to certain plans, to end the present wild competition
for youth's leisure and to arrange and carry out a pro-
gram which would leave no empty hours and none in which
a dozen agencies distract our energies.

A COMMUNITY BUILDING FOR RELIGION

The matter of provision of facilities is not a difficult
one. We already have community schools everywhere,
and, in many places, community parks, recreation grounds,
concert and lecture halls and film theatres. Is it im-
possible to have a building with the necessary class rooms
and meeting places which any religious body shall be free
to use for purposes of instruction? Such a building
ought to be the voluntary enterprise of the community,
neither erected nor supported by taxation. None should
be forced to pay; the compulsion should be that of the
democratic conscience. It would be erected and main-
tained by the community council by funds freely con-
tributed. The building need not be as large as the public

828 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

school because it need not receive all the children at any
one time. If, for the sake of illustration, we agree that
the time spent in classes in religion should be related to
time spent in general education as one is to six then the
community religious plant could have approximately one-
sixth of the pupil accommodations needed in the other
school. Some latitude would be necessary for maintain-
ing a larger number of classes proportionately, while the
ratio would depend on whether the public school had
proper, modem facilities. But probably all the children
in a sixteen-room building in the public schools could pass
through four periods each a week in a four-room school
of religion. This must not leave the impression that the
only or the principal activity of the community school
of religion will be instruction: classes may not be nearly
as important as directed activities.

Programs would be arranged by agreement so that the
facilities of the building would be in use practically all
the time. The building could be used for many com-
munity purposes, such as night-classes, lectures, social
gatherings, community dances, community sewing and re-
lief work. Naturally it would be the home of the com-
munity center, the plant from which all its work would
be carried on. It would stand in the community the cen-
ter of its life of spiritual purpose as the public school
stands the center of its life of intellectual purpose; but
the two purposes would never be separated.

The need for a plant of this kind needs no emphasis,
not only because of the inadequacy of church edifices for
instructional purposes but from the present dispersion
of the many activities of the community which should
find a home here. The public school has opened its doors
to the community center; in many places it will long be
the center of neighborhood activities, but it has not been
planned for the type of work advocated here; it is free
only in the evening hours and often it finds community

A COMMUNITY PROGRAM 829

service an embarrassing guest. The community needs a
special plant and, in securing the religious educational
building, could design it with reference to the larger
needs of the center and the cooperative work of the com-
munity.

Will the churches find it possible to agree in the use of
a community educational building? If religion cannot
exercise social coordination it needs conversion. But
churches are agreeing to the common use of plants, even
to using them for preaching and services of worship. In
the instance proposed they know they would be the losers
unless they could fit into the community plan. Indeed
such a plan might prove to be a means of religious edu-
cation to some churches. It would force them to look
beyond their own groups; it would make them conscious
of all the children of the community and of other forces
working therein; it would compel cooperation. It would
be a simple but signal step toward that unity of purpose
for which all long.

This plan does not assume that only the so-called evan-
gelical churches, or only the Protestant churches, or even
only the Christian churches would have a share in the use
of the building proposed. The community cannot distin-
guish. It is responsible for the success of no particular
group, but for the success of every group making good
citizens. Its attitude should be the same to one as to
another. Nor does any church in using this building
sacrifice or attenuate its own faith. It simply respects
the civil rights which all hold in a democracy and the
consequent social obligations of respect which each must
have for all others. It accepts the cooperation of the
community in the discharge of those special responsibili-
ties which it has in regard to the instruction of its own
youth. ■ i' ' •■! W-f^

Religious cooperation is much nearer than we some-
times think. The old rancors and feuds lie in our mem-

880 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

ory more than in the hearts of religious leaders to-day.
Perhaps churches assume a bellicose attitude toward one
another because that is what we expect them to do.
Groups are more likely to find cooperation possible in
large enterprises than in trifling ones. In our new spirit
of social unity in the face of great world problems there
ought to be found the possibility of a cooperative spirit
sufficient to make the community school ecclesiastically
feasible.

Provision for technical training of workers in religious
education in the community school is not predicated en-
tirely on the present program which calls once a week for
a large number of unskilled workers. Given the com-
munity plant and program, with the work of the school
scheduled through the week, fewer workers will be needed
by each church and it will be possible to use those who
have had expert training and who are professionally em-
ployed. But, just as we ought to have, in every com-
munity, provision for the continuous training, the inspi-
ration and professional development of public-school
teachers, so we will need provision for the educational
nurture of the staff of the proposed school. This task
the community may attempt directly, for no creedal or
sectarian differences enter into the science of education.
No city would step beyond its proper province if it should
provide a course of lectures or arrange a regular cur-
riculum of classes for those who desired to learn how to
guide the development of children in religious character.
The principles of education would be the same for all
teachers whatever church they might support, and the
principles of ideal development would hold even for those
who cared for none at all.

It is too early to attempt all the details of this plan,^

1 For a survey of experiments of this type see the various pub-
lications of The Religious Education Association, and, for a succinct
outline. Bulletin No. 13, Week-Day Religious Education, free, from
The American Baptist Publication Society.

A COMMUNITY PROGRAM 231

and one must remember Portia's words on the relative
ease of telling how it were done compared with doing it,
but certain it is that it never will be done unless we enter-
tain the vision and make the attempt. The principal is-
sue is that we shall recognize the responsibility of the
entire community for the development of the spiritual life
of all its people. Then we shall apply this principle at
the point where application is now most feasible, and also
most important, at that of training the young. We shall
seek to move as united, cooperating communities and we
shall expect all formal plans and mechanisms to grow out
of the ideal of the organization of the entire life of the
community for the purpose of developing spiritually
minded citizens.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE IN A DEMOCRACY

Democracy constantly seeks the improvement of the
type of life; it is not blind to the biological law that the
higher the type the longer its period of development. A
fly reaches maturity in a few hours ; man allows his young
many years and increasingly realizes that life itself is too
short to attain full, all-round maturity. And civilization,
that is man organized as society, sets aside ever length-
ening periods for the preparation of youth for its life.
The college and university are our modern extensions of
the formal periods of youth's preparation.

Democracy extends the period of infancy. Because de-
mocracy exists that lives may develop it not only sets
about those lives many forms of protection in their early
stages of dependence but it extends the time in which
development is fostered by society. The rapid develop-
ment of colleges, their articulation with systems of public
instruction and the increase in the proportions of the
population receiving higher education all point to the
ideal of democracy, a condition under which all persons
shall be free to receive formal training through the entire
period of youth. This does not imply that all will re-
ceive the entire curriculum of the typical college; it does
imply that society will provide for all youth training de-
signed according to their needs. The college is one of
democracy's mechanisms for directing personal develop-
ment.

Democracy expects that this extension of training shall

be for the enriching of its entire life. It expects that

those who are trained will become servants ; it hopes for

232

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE . 233

three experiences : the development of the powers of indi-
viduals, their social awakening, adjustment and efficiency
and the discovery of a social motive in the meaning of
life. College life is more than an extension of the fields
of learning ; it is an experience in new ways of living. It
affords a life under special stimuli and advantages. It
affords freedom for the development of powers at the
time when social consciousness is growing, when ideals are
most potent. It should result in a life controlled by
ideals and devoted to democracy's purposes.

How can the college develop the motives and form the
ideals of democracy? The college is the home of social
idealism. A large number of instructors are democratic
idealists. Its courses in social sciences are often regarded
as dangerous by those whose interests demand the preser-
vation of ancient forms of social injustice or who would
hold society in status quo so that they might continue
its exploitation. The principles and the methods of
democratic living are both taught in college. Campus life
is often a high demonstration of very simple democracy
and frequently enduring social motives come to youth
through this experience. All that is needed is to bring
the social idealism of the college to its logical complete-
ness, to see and apply it as a plan of life and to develop
the motives and emotions sufficient to carry it over into
life. For the purposes of democracy the social idealism
of the college must be vitalized into action and unified
under the ideals and habits of the life of love and service.
College life must become a spiritual experience in devotion
to democracy.

The college student needs not alone to know the mech-
anism of democracy, nor alone to see its ideals, but, also,
to acquire its motives. The problem of higher education
is less one of information than of motivation. How can
we be sure that these young men and women, the social
leaders of to-morrow, will retaiin their ideajs, will return

234 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

to us fully willing to pay the price of democracy, so satis-
fied of its high ends that to them the life of devotion to
the good of all will be the only reasonable and possible
life?

The training of the spirit is the central purpose of the
college in its service for democracy. Here we have a spe-
cial application of the principle that, in view of the spir-
itual aims of a democracy and the spiritual demands it
makes on people, its first need is that of religious educa-
tion. Nowhere is that training more needed than in the
years of the extension of education in the college. Yet
this is the aspect of life which the colleges have most neg-
lected. Young people graduate alert, fairly intelligent,
enthusiastic and idealistic, yet without consciousness of
the religious meaning and motif of life. Their idealism
does not carry over into the practice of democracy.
They have converted industry to scientific methods much
more successfully than they have converted society to
democracy. They are not especially marked as a class
in leadership in social service and progress. Is this not
because the college leaves social training incomplete? It
does not treat social studies as dealing with a mode of
life and a faith for society. It gives youth a vision of so-
ciety reorganized, but it fails to connect the program
of reorganization to those ideals, devotions and activities
which constitute the motives of life to the young. It does
not connect their faith with a program of service.

Yet the college years are peculiarly those in which train-
ing for democracy must involve a religious experience.
They are the years in which life gets its bent, in which
men acquire motives deep enough to hold when the lesser
prizes promise so much, the years when we establish hab-
its of devotion to ends which are ideal but which no cold
reasoning can ever take from us. They are the years
of opportunity for true teachers to help youth discover
life's meaning in terms of its highest values and life's

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE 235

method as devotion to the realization of those values in
the lives of all. If the college fails to do this it may be
a great instructional agency but it is not an educational
one; it is mistaking extension for elevation. It must re-
veal the spiritual nature and the social method of de-
mocracy or it is not carrying out its part in extending
the period of life training for the young. It has to de-
velop the lives of persons for social ends and these ends
involve motives that must be based on spiritual meanings
in life. The primary responsibility of the college lies,
then, in the field of religious training.

THE COL.I.EGES AJND RELIGION

Historically the American college grew out of religious
convictions. The first colleges were organized by reli-
gious persons for religious purposes. Their charters fre-
quently expressly stated those purposes. The early col-
leges were poor in money, limited in curricula and small
in enrollment, but they were mighty in one respect, they
stamped the leadership of America with idealism. To-
day the colleges are rich, with widely inclusive curricula
and with immense bodies of students — and one of the
practical, puzzling questions of their executives is. What
is the place of religion in the college? Here is a change
that is at least worthy of consideration. How has it hap-
pened that religion, once central to the life and purpose,
now holds a debatable position?

The widenmg of the field has made religion less con-
sciously focal. The early college sought only to prepare
leadership for the field of religion ; the modem college pre-
pares leaders for every field. Meanwhile there has been
an extension of the fields of leadership. Two hundred
years ago the ministry was the one great profession,
easily above all others in social distinction, commonly
above the others, as law and medicine, in intellectual prep-
aration. Then the parson was the person in each com-

'236 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

munity. We have not lowered the intellectual demands
for the ministry, but we have raised immensely the stand-
ards of the other professions. This has been in response
to a recognition of their developing social responsibilities.
To-day in each of their fields these professions offer op-
portunities for the same kind of leadership that once
belonged exclusively to the minister. This enlargement
the college has recognized and has, therefore, sought to
provide general training for all who might hold leader-
ship in any field. It has ceased to be a school for reli-
gious workers and has become a school for all leaders.

But this is not all. Democracy strikes out beyond
the concept of a selected group of leaders. It is not con-
tent to think that there should be peculiar opportunities
reserved for a few. Whatever aids men in the develop-
ment of powers of leadership is the inalienable right of
every man. The college has followed the logic of de-
mocracy in offering to every one those opportunities which
once were reserved for a few. It has led the way in
democratizing higher education. Now it needs to take
the next steps, of making its method democratic and its
message such as democracy needs to-day.

No one can fail to see that the extension of the field
of the college has taken from it an easily apprehended
religious character ; but it is a question whether it has
not, at the same time, developed its religious quality.
No single statement will cover all cases. There are col-
leges in which the total emphasis and impress is decidedly
religious, in the sense here insisted on, to a degree that
we believe was not surpassed in any of the earlier institu-
tions. But there are others in which, even though they
bear ecclesiastical names, it would be difl[icult to discover
even so much as a reminder of religion. Speaking gen-
erally, the extension of the field of the college has not
operated to attenuate its religious influence but it has

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE 237

markedly reduced the place of religion in the curriculum
and in college activities.

More elaborate organization has obscured religiows
purpose. The change has been due in part to the transi-
tion from personal leadership to academic organization.
There cluster about the earlier colleges the memories of
great personages, chosen to their positions because of
religious qualities. The modern college does not depend
on the over-shadowing personality of any individual, nor
does it choose its head for the earlier reasons. Com-
monly it counts on an aggregation of scholarly powers, on
the total impress of a learned faculty, on high standards
and ample facilities and on the organizing power of an
executive. It was the outstanding, personal, religious
figure that drew men to early Princeton, Harvard, and
Yale and to many smaller schools. Their presidents were
great men and pronounced religious leaders. Since the
special field of the college, then, was religion the academic
leaders were those who towered above their fellows in
religious knowledge and religious life. Our modern lead-
ership is just as likely to rise in any other field, in
physics or economics.

Changes in curriculum have affected the place of re-
ligion. The principal change has been that which has
taken place as the college has moved from a school of
preparation for the ministry, a simple theological sem-
inary, to take its place in general culture. Since reli-
gious studies were included on professional grounds they
have been dropped because their relation to the life-needs
of students have no longer been clearly evident. Studies
in religion have only formed the vanguard of a long pro-
cession retreating from the campus under the exigencies
of the practical demands of the age. Moreover, religion
has often been held back while other studies have gone
forward. Has there been any change in the method and

238 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

content of teaching in religion which would in any degree
correspond to the changes in the teaching of chemistry,
for example, in the last century? Or, to take a closer
analogy, consider the development in the teaching of lit-
erature. Progress has been made in religion ; in instances
one feels that it compares favorably with any other de-
partment in college. At least this is true as to the teach-
ing of one aspect of the subject, its literature and his-
tory, and here the results have been such as to indicate
a solution of the whole problem.

Democracy has clarified and elevated the purpose of
the college. The tendency of a true democracy will be to
regard all human affairs with spiritual vision and to think
of all life in religious terms. Its high purposes with per-
sons in society converts all social life into a spiritual
enterprise. Therefore it regards all forms of social lead-
ership with the same reverence that our fathers felt for
the ministry and the leadership of the churches. It feels
responsible for every form of leadership, since in every
department of life we need both the same expertness and
the same spirit that the early colleges were designed to
give to the ministry. The modem college discharges a
spiritual responsibility in all fields, giving not only intel-
lectual training but, what is vastly more important, vision
of the meaning and motive of life and leadership in a de-
mocracy. The purpose of the college to-day is to serve
democracy, this kingdom of the spirit, through all its
leaders just as the early college sought to serve through
a few. So that, even though religion may seem to hold
a debatable place in the curriculum, it is possible to think
of the college as distinctly a religious agency. In so far
as it makes life in a democracy mean fullness of living,
fullness of service and devotion to the fullness of life for
all, it serves religion.

The spiritual function makes the college a religious in-
stitution. It is folly to talk of training leaders unless we

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE 239

hold ourselves responsible for leaderships, for the vision,
motive and ideal that must lead the leaders. The prime
quality of leadership is spiritual ; power to lead is a mat-
ter of the spirit. Faith is the leader's loyalty to an ideal
that compels him to step forward in untrodden paths, to
attempt the unprecedented, to follow the vision wherever
it may lead. Faith is that loyalty to truth thai trans-
lates its concepts into action and makes them the common
possession of the world. Religion is the life based on its
faith; it makes men live for the abiding values. It re-
veals the only possessions a person, as a person, can
have and the only ones he can share unreservedly with all
others. It makes the leader's life possible; it furnishes
him his food for desert days, his sources of strength for
all tasks. These are the needs of men, the demands of
their inner life, which any institution of leadership must
enable them to possess.

The college needs a new interpretation of its problem
of religion, a setting in terms of a democracy of the spirit.
Whenever the matter of religion in the American college
is discussed four focal points appear; they are: courses,
worship, voluntary activities and local churches. These
seem to limit the vision of religion's function in higher
educational institutions. It is assumed that the problem
is to be solved by one or the other of these means. The
emphasis shifts from time to time; not long ago it was
almost wholly on services of worship, later it passed to
voluntary classes and activities; to-day it is on courses
of study. These various devices indicate a failure to face
the full problem ; they are attempts to meet special phases
as they appear.

If the college could discharge its whole duty toward
learning by its courses in a prescribed series of subjects
it might, conceivably, discharge its religious duty by
courses in religious knowledge. But the college does not
think that its work is done when a body of knowledge

840 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

has been tested and found not wholly wanting in the
student's mind. By directed activities it develops habits
and powers; by ideals expressed in buildings, in forms of
art, in the characters and habits of persons, by its whole
life it seeks to cultivate habits of mind, to lead youth to
certain levels of living and into certain power. It recog-
nizes a responsibility toward life, toward persons and
toward society. Its courses are means and not ends. So
should it be in the matter of religion.

The college discharges its spiritual function by furnish-
ing an experience in religion. We are in danger of re-
peating with the college student the mistake we have made
in the religious education of children in the church school,
that of assuming that the problem was simply one of
providing the materials of religious knowledge. Almost
exclusively current discussions on religion in the college
center on courses in the Bible and other religious subjects.
At first this was natural as an attempt to restore these
subjects to the area of the student's academic interests;
the prevailing exclusion of religion was so striking an
anomaly as to call for protest. But no one seriously
supposes that the introduction of these subjects would of
itself secure the ends of religious education. That cannot
be, first, because there is no assurance that religious re-
sults flow from the academic study of religion, and, sec-
ond, college class-work does not have any marked tend-
ency to carry over into action and immediate living; on
the contrary it often tends to place the subject in the
category of so-called purely intellectual interests. Col-
lege Bible study can easily mean placing the Bible on a
mental academic shelf. - — -

It is worth while to have clearly in mind the end that
is sought. We assume that the college is a religious in-
stitution in that it was organized by religious persons
and is being conducted as a part of a program which
looks toward a religious social order. Its function is to

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE ^41

give society trained persons, developed in their general
powers, who will become effective leaders in developing a
religious social order. The end, then, looks far beyond
any body of knowledge; it is directed immediately to the
lives and conduct of persons and ultimately to society.
It implies habits of mind, habits of conduct, ideals and
abihties. Now this must not be conceived simply as a
matter of training for an experience into which the
student will enter later ; there is no such thing as a separa-
tion between training and the experience for which it is
designed ; the experience is the training. If these young
men and women are to make a religious world, they must
live in one now. Modern education assures us that this is
the right emphasis, that all schooling is really a partici-
pation in life in which the doctrines are discovered through <
doing.

The great need of the college student is the opportimity
to experience religion as the normal life of his own society.
The very fact of going to college and of doing its work,
living its life may express his ideals and his faith, may
be his religious experience. The college may say to him,
" To be here and to do well your work is the highest re-
ligious Hfe you can live now." If he can see that, it will
make religion much more real than it could be as a matter
of historical or philosophical inquiry. It will make it a
matter of the present, of the daily life of campus, of class
room and of comradeship. College living may be an ex-
perience in religion when it is saturated with ideals of
worth and service.

Religion must he first of all a positive active experience.
It will rise in the wills of men and find ways out through
their actions before it will be a reality in their thinking.
It will come out of their own aspirations rather than from
overhead authorities. It will not come out of abstract
thinking. But finding itself in the concrete, in action,
it will be saved from the purely speculative attitude. One

242 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

of the dangers of student life is a negative critical atti-
tude toward all things; this may be only an assumed
attitude, but it easily leads men into thinking that criti-
cizing the game from the bleachers is the same as playing
the game on the field. It tends to satisfy with an analysis
instead of an experience and to substitute a definition for
the deed. Thinking about religion is not necessarily re-
ligious; the academic habit develops the critic who never
creates. It helps to account for the failure of college
men and women to take an active part in the work of the
churches. The common rejoinder that the work of the
church is not worthy of their attention is simply a fur-
ther indication of this critical attitude, for, to trained
men and women, the deficiencies of an institution ought
to be an invitation to the enlistment of their services.

If the records of college graduates are examined it is
usually found that whenever they devote themselves to
social service it is to those forms in which they had some
experience while in college. Whenever service stepped out
of books into the student's activities it became his per-
manent possession. College politics have been a school of
political service. But the college relation to philanthropy
is almost entirely bookish, with the result that it does not
carry over into after-life. So long as college religion is
purely a bookish affair the same will be true here. The
intellectual aspects will be the only vital ones in the col-
lege period. On this plane the actualities of everyday
religious life have no chance; the preaching in the home
church cannot compare with college chapel, the teaching
cannot hold a candle to college class work, the level of
intelligence in the prayer meeting will remind only by
extreme contrast with the groups in college. But this is
not the plane of reality; on the level of life and action
the village church will be able to take care of itself and,
on this level, college training will carry over into after-
life experience. The student who has had experience in

THE FUNCTION OF A COLLEGE 243

religion as service in his college days will find ample scope
for exercise later.

Of course all this is only another way of saying that
in the college religion is one of the subjects for which a
laboratory is indispensable, and that the laboratory is
that of the college life and its avenues of service.

BIBLE STUDY IN COLLEGE

What is the place of Bible study? Does a program of
the character suggested involve the abandonment of col-
lege courses in the history and literature of the Bible?
Have we, then, been developing so many efficient depart-
ments of the Bible, and ojf Religion, only to find them
useless? Not at all; courses in religion have their place,
an essential and important one. But they are only a part
of a program of religious training. They have the same
relations here as in other departments.
y^ Courses in the Bible belong in the college, first, on the
^ same ground as courses in any ancient literature, because "^
it is part of our spiritual heritage. But the Hebrew and

) Christian scriptures are part of our heritage in a pecu-
liarly distinct and valuable degree. They have entered,
more than any other, into our thinking, they determine
our ideals, they mold our current philosophy and they
are so much a part of our every-day speech that it is im-
possible to understand the language of our times without
some knowledge of the Bible. It has guided our institu-
tions and saturated our literature. Every teacher of
English knows the difficulties that arise through popular
ignorance of this well of English undefiled. This has been
so often stated that we accept the fact complacently to-
day. And yet we can hardly claim that any youth has
had a fair chance to possess his world from whom this
part of it has been held back.

Second, biblical courses have their places in social^
studies. The college years are peculiarly suitable for the

£44 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

study of the Bible; the mind is then ready to take the
historical point of view. While it would seem that much
of the general knowledge of the Bible which seems so la-
mentably lacking in the college ought to have been ac-
quired in earlier years, the greater wealth of this litera-
ture is not within the appreciation of children. But in
college it is possible to trace the rise and development
of moral ideals and social-religious institutions, to trace
religion in its development and to see the inter-action be-
tween social life and spiritual ideals. These are studies
in moral evolution, in the development of social ideals
which should precede any study of our own times.

Third, biblical courses have values of leadership. With
the historical background there appear the great charac-
ters, men who are ideals personified, who sweep on the
stage of time majestically, thrilling and persuading us,
compelling our heroic worship. Youth needs to know
them. They are the very soul of literature, for what is
literature but a social experience with the great ? To live
an hour with them may change a life. Biblical courses\
belong in the college because they may minister to its
spiritual purposes.

The spiritual purpose of the college in a democracy is,
then, first of all, one that cannot be readily exhibited in
catalogues. It implies the saturation of the college pro-j
gram as a whole with spiritual purpose. It means that
the college is conceived as a religious institution, and that
all its work looks forward, with religious purpose, to a
spiritual world order, '

CHAPTER XIX

TEACHING RELIGION IN THE COLLEGE

It is not difficult to understand the spiritual mission of
a college in a democracy ; but for the college worker, the
immediate problem is to see how the spiritual power and
purpose of a college may be definitely precipitated in a
college program. In that problem are several elements
which may be stated briefly:

The college is no longer classified as a religious insti-
tution. A religious purpose is no longer taken for
granted. The change from professional training for re-
ligious work to one embracing all general culture grad-
ually stripped from the college its special theological
character. Being divorced from religion on a vocational
basis it has not been easy to maintain relations on a basis
of cultural interest and human need.

Civil relationships have limited religious freedom. The
relations of colleges to the states, as through endowments
and support, at first had no effect on religious teaching.
But, as the United States became the home of many faiths
and questions of conscience rights arose, the day passed
when the state could support a single faith. One of two
things happened to the colleges in most instances ; either
they became state institutions, disavowing all sectarian
connections and any special religious purpose, or they
ceased to accept the support of the state and were free
to teach religion. In either case, however, the status of
religion had been affected. In the case of the State Uni-
versities great care is always exercised to avoid even the
appearance of sectarianism. In a few instances this is

245

246 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

"^ carried to the extreme in the refusal to recognize even the
fact of religion. In any case their strictly non-sectarian

^ policy makes the recognition of religion, which usually ap-
pears in the form of some particular faith, quite difficult,
and this tends constantly to modify their academic prac-
tice. The leadership of the state university affects all the
colleges of a state and, without knowing just why, they
are likely to follow the path marked out by this institu-
tion, a path determined by many considerations which
do not affect the greater number of smaller or more free
institutions. The free colleges have failed often to see
and to use their freedom.

Church relationships have limited religion. Many
church colleges have serious difficulties with ecclesiastical
control. If the churches determine the content of the re-
ligious teaching of a college it loses its spiritual leader-
ship. It becomes simply an echo, its notes determined b}^
voices speaking in the past. That condition is much more
common than we are apt to confess. There are colleges
which never have a free thought; every word and act is
determined by one of two considerations — often by both,
by the desire to stand well with the churches and the fear
of offending the patron who has sinned against human
rights. In such institutions the fear of the brethren
exercises the spell of a general inhibition in the class
rooms, especially those in biology, philosophy and eco-
nomics. Here two grim shadows haunt the executive, the
loss of financial support and a heresy trial. This is not
a general picture; but it is so sad and striking in the
instances where it is true that one cannot escape from
its horror. Religion cannot breathe in an atmosphere
such as that ; that college is not a prophetic voice ; it is a
hireling, peddling the petty wares made in darkness.

Last, the introduction of pre-vocational studies has
complicated the situation. The question arises. Shall re-
ligious studies be confined to the pre-vocational purpose.

TEACHING RELIGION IN THE COLLEGE U1

designed for those looking forward to a religious profes-
sion? And, in any case, how difficult it is to plac& reli-
gious studies in any other category seeing that religious
knowledge has been systematized on a vocational basis, by
colleges preparing for the ministry and by theological
teachers.

What is the way back? The college is a religious in-
stitution; religion has a place in the life-training of all
men and women; the world properly looks for religious
persons as a result of higher education, and the college
has neither time nor a program for religion. The first
step will be to distinguish between two sets of problems,
first, to determine the function of religion, in its various
aspects, in the process of the college, and, second, to se-
lect the necessary elements and means, rejecting, electing
and coordinating the traditional religious parts of the
college curriculum. Many are still attempting to fit the
theological curriculum inherited from an institution de-
signed to train ministers into an organization which has
outgrown that purpose and passed it on to a specialized
institution. Of course it is true that to a large extent
the program of the college is determined by custom rather
than by function; much remains by the sanction of the
yesterdays alone. In the field of religion, where the hand
of the past has been absolute, is the finest place to estab-
lish the practice of a thorough examination of purpose
as predicatory to any program. Such an examination
involves a study of the precise social function of a college ;
that is too large a task to attempt here, but it seems worth
while to consider briefly the part of religion in that social
function.

COLLEGE PEOGRAM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

The program of religious education in the college will
have three principal elements : the discovery of a reli-
gious interpretation of life, training in the habits of the

248 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

religious life, and the development of efficiencies in reli-
gious social realization and self-expression.

First, the discovery of a religious interpretation of life.
It is an axiom of everyday thinking that the college fails,
no matter what else it may accomplish, if it has not en-
abled the student to get a grasp on life's meaning. Of
course this is not done either by chapel talks or by any
sort of dissertations on the subject. It is accomplished
commonly indirectly, by establishing habits of thought,
by developing interest in the great subjects of human
philosophy, by stimulating thoughtful minds one with an-
other, and by the vision caught through ideal persons,
purposes and concepts either met at first hand or discov-
ered in history, literature, science and, most of all, in ex-
perience.

Such a conscious purpose makes the academic respon-
sibility primarily a spiritual one. The most helpful for-
ward step in religious education in the colleges would be
the awakening of the staff to consciousness of responsi-
bility for ideals. That would mean setting first things
first. It would not mean the abandonment of any aca-
demic standards, the lowering of any professional ideals
nor the attempt to make a college a compromise between a
university and a prayer meeting. Rather a sense of re-
sponsibility for the ideals of students will make the most
exacting demands on professional duty and professional
skill. But the college professor must see that even his
all-absorbing and all-important specialty is but a means
to an end, and that end is personal, social and spiritual.
He is a teacher not of subjects but of persons. His suc-
cess will be measured not by monographs but by men.

Whenever this responsibility is active in the staff it will
be keenly felt in the student body; its existence will be
more effective than any homilies on the subject could be.
Like all great ideals it will be caught and each genera-
tion of students will hand it down to another. Do we not

TEACHING RELIGION IN THE COLLEGE ^49

know colleges where this is true, where, high though the
standards of scholarship are, the greatest heritage of all
has been that of high and splendid lives who have accus-
tomed men to thinking worthily of life?

Students are aided to their interpretation of life in
many specific ways; perhaps at no point does a more
specific evaluation appear than in the choice of vocation.
This commonly takes place, for those who have higher edu-
cation, during the college years. It is influenced tre-
mendously by the traditions of the institution but even
more by the opinions of instructors or professors. Not
only are opportunities sedulously cultivated by older
students to secure the professor's opinions on the profes-
sions but they watch and repeat his less formal judgments.
Their choices are fundamentally based on theories, thus
acquired, of what is most worth while. They choose the
law, for example, because it offers one an opportunity
to lead and serve his fellows, because it promises fair
financial returns with large opportunities for a few —
of whom the student is one, — or because it offers a digni-
fied profession with some scholarly aspects. The reason
for choice is really an evaluation of life. The basis of
choice is gradually developing through the years before
it is 'determined. It is a way of thinking determined by
the example of parents, the tone of public opinion and,
markedly, by the attitude and judgments of teachers. So
that vocational direction has a marked influence in form-
ing the student's ideals and his theory of the meaning of
life.

Every study is likely to have open avenues to lifers
Tueaning, The study of the Bible is an excellent example,
but what is true here is just as likely to be true elsewhere
when the life purpose is held in mind. Where the study
of the Bible is more than mere pedantry it determines
one's ideals by revealing great spirits. It does more than
instruct in the geography, history and archaeology of a

250 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

remote people; it develops these fields only to form the
life-setting of great souls, of those who found life as a
way to God. No one can really study the Bible without
feeling the reality of those impressive personalities, and
no one can know them without learning something of their
secret of life. But there have been great souls in every
field of human knowledge. History is dead information
without its spiritual heroes and its compelling motives,
science is dead without some vision of the vigor and faith
of Kepler, Cuvier and Huxley, literature without Dante,
Milton and Homer, politics without Plato, Mazzini and
Burke. It is not learning only to know what they did
but to know them, and this is to know what life is.

INTERPEETING EXPERIENCE IN SPIRITUAL TERMS

The college aids students to know the meaning of life
by directing their experience. This is the application in
the college of the method now accepted as a fundamental
principle in religious training. But the difficulty is to
see just how experience may be organized and directed.
Yet the situation is very simple if we put it into other
terms and ask. Is it possible to take the life of the college
as a religious life, to lead young people into its full
meaning, so that they will freely and happily live this life,
and then to make them see that in so living they have had
a religious experiences^ Our task is not so much to give
them something new as to aid them to a right interpreta-
tion of the life that is already theirs. They must come
to know the spiritual possibilities of the present. They
come to college thinking of religion as something sep-
arated from everyday life. To them the religious people
were a separate group. They need aid in realizing their
place in a religious order, in apprehending the normality
of the religious and in recognizing the religious quality
in acts and ideals. How is this knowledge to come to

TEACHING RELIGION IN THE COLLEGE 251

them? College preachers can help by revealing the spir-
itual nature of the student's everyday experiences ; teach-
ers can help by taking religion as a matter belonging
as normally in life as any other interest, but, most of all,
this knowledge will filter down through personal contacts,
through leaders in the student's group. Close friends
can take us by the shoulder and say, " Wake up I religion
is not something apart from you ; it is this life you are
now living. God is not in the world outside alone ; He is
in this commonplace round of tasks and joys."

As a sociar experience college life may reveal life's spir-
itual meanings. Friendship is the great revelation of
life's abiding values, and its extension through the wide
fellowship of a common society may be simply a mar-
velous revelation of the possibilities of joy in life. It is
not strange that graduates look back and say that the
best of college life was the fellowship ; they are right, for
this revealed human values, it opened practically the world
of personality and it was, commonly, an experience in an
ideal community, one which realized a democracy of the
spirit, bound in free affection. Often college authorities
affect to ignore the social life of the campus, to ridicule
student friendships. But the educators watch these lives
discovering life, learning that a man's value lies in what
he is, getting down to the basic terms of a true democracy.

The second general factor in college religious training
is the estahlishment of the habits of religious living.
Habit-formation through the direction and organization
of experience is one of the normal processes of religious
education. Surely amongst the desirable habits we will
place prominently those of affectionate regard for the
good of all men, full hearted devotion in service to the
good of all, the control of the powers of one's own life,
steady and insistent search for truth and reality, sympa-
thetic adaptation to the needs and even the weaknesses of

«6« EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

men, the cooperative mind that can work with others for
ideal ends and loyalty to our own highest standards.
These are characteristics of democratic living.

Such habits are formed by living in these ways and
doing these things. But how is it possible, in the highly
mechanized life of the college, to provide for so many and
varied experiences? It is not possible if each experience
is taken by itself. But they do not need to be so taken;
they do not rise under any special program for they are
but parts of wider experience. They must be acquired
as habits, as parts of a variety of activities. Children do
not acquire the habit of truth-telling by exercises in con-
sciously telling the truth ; it is learned through the prac-
tice that comes in play, in social relations and in all du-
ties. Courtesy is not an exercise which can be called for
ten A. M. on the college program — often it seems to be
postponed until graduation — but actually it is a habit
formed by social thoughtfulness at all times. Social serv-
ice is not that which is reserved for the Social Service
Club and set on the program to begin after dinner on
Friday night ; it is that attitude of mind and consequent
activity which finds expression on the campus and in class
rooms as well as in the city slums. Thus all college life
is a school of habits.

The college is responsible for " college life.'* The de-
velopment of such habits as have been mentioned cannot
be left entirely to student initiative any more than the
habits desired in the elementary school are expected to
rise in the child's will alone. There is desire there, and
the power is there, but it needs stimulation and direction.
" College life," we often say, " is the largest part of edu-
cation." Why then is this largest part left without di-
rection? In what sense are college leaders educators if
they have no care for that which plays the largest part in
education? When, in the face of high standards of schol-
arship, slovenly habits of living are permitted, when men

TEACHING RELIGION IN THE COLLEGE 253

crowding through class-rooms and halls become discour-
teous to women, when dormitory life becomes slip-shod
and dirty, what are the ultimate educational effects?

It is said that it is beneath the dignity of college pro-
fessors to give these young people lessons in personal
cleanliness, courtesy, truth-telling and truth-living. This
is the rankest kind of childish pedantry. It could be
maintained only by the dignity of purposeless pride of
erudition. It might be true if the college had no respon-
sibility for the future which is to be determined by the life
habits of graduates. But, as it is, instead of training in
living, we exhaust our interest in conduct by leading the
class in ethics through dry analyses of the bases of group
behavior. If nowhere else, here is an opportunity, in-
stead of developing an analytic interest in human behavior
as a remote affair, to fix attention on the problems nearest
at hand. Why not treat the college life as a real life
involving real ethical situations. It is very real to the
student, as real as any world ever will be ; it is his imme-
diate opportunity of learning the art of living.^ If the
college is to train for a democratic society it must be
done by actual training in the arts of social life as they
must be practiced in the college.

TRAINING FOR SERVICE

The third general element is the development of efficien'
cies in religious self-expression and social service. Can
the college impart such instruction and develop such forms
of experience as shall send young men and women out to
live the life of a democratic society, one that calls for de-
voted and efficient cooperation in the common good ? Can
it add to the vision of a world organized for spiritual
ends the abilities to realize that world? This is true vo-

lAs an example of this method see the excellent text book by-
Professor Bernard C. Ewer on "College Study and College Life"
(Badger, 1917). i

254 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

cational training, for men are called to that which is
greater than their professional callings, to serve and en-
rich their world. The sweeping vision must, however,
come down to practical details. This is the difficult mat-
ter ; youth glows with the vision but it easily chills before
the small tasks that alone can make the vision real. Their
ardor will certainly die if our preparation is purely theo-
retical. Here practice must go on step by step; they
must be guided into service and their ideals must find
immediate application and expression in practice.

The college can train in practical religious usefulness.
Looking forward to their lives the college must see them
living in communities where religious enterprises are in
operation and where they wait for efficient workers.
Much of this will be work in churches ; this is not to as-
sume that church-work is the only or the most important
form of religious service. But it is certainly a very nat-
ural one with which to begin and it is one which is already
fairly well organized. It has a broader claim than we
sometimes think. If the total society is to be governed
by spiritual ideals we must preserve this smaller society
which is specifically organized as a spiritual group. If
the community of to-morow is to be one in which children
will have their full rights and men may find their measure
of happiness we must aid those societies which are organ-
ized for ideal ends to function effectively in society to-
day. The church needs those who know how to make her
social force count for social development and rightness.
The college is the one institution which can train for com-
munities workers capable for this task.

Such a purpose will lead to courses of instruction and
to the direction of experience in the actual work which
churches have to do. These courses would not look to
serving an institution ; they simply accept the fact of
social groups in communities organized for religious
ends and they seek to train young people to efficient

TEACHING RELIGION IN THE COLLEGE 255

service through these groups. The courses look for-
ward to lay service; they have no professional intent.
Up to the present the application of this principle has
been largely in the field of the educational work of
churches. It has developed from the definite plans pro-
posed by the Religious Education Association.^ It is
found in chairs of Religious Education, with courses on
Church-school history, organization, worship, child-psy-
chology, methods of teaching, materials, community work
and in the adaptation of biblical courses to this field. An
excellent beginning has been made which needs no justifi-
cation so far as its practical value is concerned.

Sometimes objection is made to practical training on
the ground that such courses lower college standards, be-
ing foreign to cultural purposes. Strange to say the col-
leges that insist most on these cultural standards have not
hesitated to devote themselves extensively to pre-vocational
work in the field of general education; their catalogues
show their intent to prepare young people for public-
school service.^ No one objects to this, but all the argu-
ments that hold for general education as a subject in the
college curriculum hold for religious education. And so
far as " culture " is concerned, what is culture but the
growth of life, and life grows not for itself but for and
through service. Culture for culture's sake is worse than
art for art's sake. It is an end that turns inward and
defeats itself. Culture must have purpose. The higher
the purpose the greater the reach of the life upward.
Training in the realization of spiritual ideals through so-
ciety gives the ideal vigor and reality ; it secures its steady
development. To deny the student training in the ex-
pression of spiritual ideals through social activity is to

iSee the Memorial addressed to the heads of departments of
education in colleges and universities throughout the United States
by the Council of the Religious Education Association in 1913.

2 See the survey by W. S. Atheam in Religious Education for
Feb., 1916, Vol. XI, No. 1.

256 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

refuse him an essential part of his means of growth, to
shorten the radius of his graduate experience and, in prac-
tice, to deny that religion is a real part of life.

.More important then than all courses dealing with the
theories of religion, as a means of developing men and
women of religious spirit, the college will recognize the
necessity of simply accepting religion as a part of life,
as a real experience in college life and a reality in the life
which the graduate will live. Then religion can be made
integral in the student's life, in his school experience, in
his course of training, in his social living and service so
that as all life grows his total life grows as a religious
life.

CHAPTER XX

THE REALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY

Men stand to-day on tip-toe. It is an hour of tre-v
mendous possibilities. The whole world is awake with exv
pectation. All who look forward speak of a new world.
And there are more looking forward than ever before.
We know that every day in the past has held the con-
sciousness of the possibility of change, but we have more ;
we witness vast social changes ; we see peoples in the mak-
ing. The terrible struggle for the rights of humanity
against the powers of the flesh and the desires of the devil
has given us a new sense of the worth of those ends for
which democracy exists. The high price that all have
paid and are paying for freedom not only makes freedom
itself more valuable, it gives it new and more spiritual
meanings. We cannot but believe that this is the crisis
of an age-long process in which the world has been finding
itself, that we shall see the da^ whenumeiLjrill live for
those values which a.fe^^^jialy-~£ka.t when we speak of
and work for free^Sin we are thinking of only one part
of a greater process, one which appears with growing
clearness, the emergence of the spiritual aims of existence.

But the far-seeing warn us that our high hopes will
not be realized without further struggle; they warn us
of the danger of reaction. We have been forced to at-
tempt our spiritual ends with material means. Our em-
phasis on the power of things may easily give the phys-
ical and material the ascendancy. Unless we are pre-
pared to defend and nurture the spiritual fruits of the
struggle they will be snatched from before our eyes. De-
mocracy will not be realized until we are ready for it.

267

^58 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

The problem is not alone one of making the world safe
for democracy, now it is rather one of making ourselves
ready for democracy.

: The spiritual conflict knows no end, for the minds and
wills of men are ever battling between desire and duty,
between the immediate satisfactions and the far-off^ ideals.
This is the conflict in which all issues are really settled.
We have thought much on plans which would insure the
conditions of human freedom ; are we thinking sufficiently
on plans which would insure the will to use that wisdom
wisely? We made tardy preparation for our share in
making the world safe for democracy ; are we now making
timely preparation of the minds of men to realize democ-
racy? The ultimate issues are in the souls of men. Not
on battlefields but in our wills the future is being formed.
The real victories are being won to-day in homes and
churches and schools. Democracy will be but an empty
word unless we ourselves are democrats, unless our eyes
are open to see what it means and our hearts are ready
to walk in its ways. The immediate duty is that of edu-
cating a generation who know and love and will the ways
of democracy. A sense of these needs has been coming
over the American people. In the fall of 1918 the
President of the United States sent a letter to the Depart-
ment of the Interior urging the necessity of maintaining
at their highest efficiency the schools and colleges; the
Commissioner of Education sent a circular to every min-
ister of religion in the country calling attention to the
need " to fit ourselves and our children for life and citizen-
f^hip in the new era which the war is bringing in." The
colleges of the country organized themselves for a plan
by which the immediate needs of the nation might be met
and at the same time a larger number of young people
might have higher educational training. Believing that
a new and larger democracy is possible we must turn our-
selves to preparation of mind and heart therefor.

THE REALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY 259

BASES OF PREPARATION

Preparation depends on the development of vision
through education. First, a vision of democracy. Do
we know what it means .^^ The word is current on all
tongues. To many it seems to be some concrete blessing
to be dropped from the skies. To more persons it is
simply a form of political organization, the one we use —
and therefore the best. And yet the world knows it
would not pay the tragic price it has paid for any par-
ticular form of civil government, and it sees many forms
of government uniting for this common ideal. It is pos-
sible to make the vision clear. Children in the schools,
youth in their varied ways, men and women through the
churches and the press must have the full spiritual and
social meanings of democracy explained to them.
" Where there is no vision the people perish." The vision
of many comes through the teaching of a few. It depends
on clear and explicit statements. It is the duty of the
responsible agencies, the school and the church particu-
larly, to teach the people. Education for democracy
must mean, first of all, instruction in the meaning of
democracy.

A vision of democracy will depend, however, on that
which goes deeper than instruction. It arises in our own
souls slowly through experience. All training in life as
an experience of devotion to the good of all, and every
experience of sacrifice for common spiritual purposes
becomes a revelation of the worth and glory of democracy.
We believe in that to which we learn to give our lives.
Just as we purposively instruct in the meaning of democ-
racy, so We must definitely organize its experiences. The
spiritual significance and character of democracy appears
when it becomes a personal experience. Through the
organization of the life of the family, the school, the
church and the city so as to effect full social cooperation

mo EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

we can lead young lives into the knowledge of democracy.
A democratic society teaches democracy.

Through such teaching and experience we discover
democracy as a social order and a spirit of life.

Second, a vision of the meaning of education. This
will follow from an understanding of democracy. We
shall see the school as the child's experience in democracy
on one side and as the people's work in democracy on the
other. But, also, in answer to the tremendous spiritual
demands of democracy, we shall see that education is
principally a process of the development of the spiritual
life. A people prepared for democracy will be a people
who have rejected life's lower aims and have found spir-
itual unity in common seeking for its higher values.

Education will become the experience through which
men learn what are the ends worth while in life and how to
attain them. It will disclose life's values and train in
life's social methods. The machinery of instruction will
take its proper and subsidiary place; children will go to
school that they may learn to live. Life will make
learning its servant in the curriculum. Schooling will
mean the socializing of persons. Education will become
the right of all and the concern of all because it will be
the method by which society instructs its growing mem-
bers in the meaning of life, trains them in the habits of
the common life, and develops the motives and vision which
sustain through that life.

Then education for democracy will become, not a special
course or a single subject, but the interpretation of all
life in educational terms and the direction of life's educa-
tional processes in the light of man's spiritual needs and
his social aspirations. All the organization of life will
be controlled by an educational consciousness, a recogni-
tion of what is taking place in the changing characters
of persons at all times. Home, school, church and com-
munity will be recognized as educational factors; they

THE REALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY 261

will be organized to educate. The new education will be
the direction of the orderly development of the whole of
lives in their social setting and for their social functions.

Third, a new vision of religion. If democracy is a
society of the spirit it depends, most of all, for its perma-
nence and growth, on the development of the life of the
spirit. As the spiritual conception of democracy devel-
ops the life and service of democracy will become the prac-
tical and social expression of religion, and its sentiments
and hopes will become the aspiration and shining goal
of spiritual faith. Either our old religious ideals and t
our old religious forms will carry their force over into Y
this new life or men will find new forms. A spiritual y
passion is sweeping over men to-day. ' It is the passion
for a social order in which the soul has freedom and
dominion. Somehow religion — that which lies in our
concepts as churches and creeds — appears unrelated to
the vision of the age. Religion must become spiritual.
It must again reveal man as a spiritual being. It must
again associate men for the rights of the spirit. It
must again call man to himself, to this life of a spiritual
universe of which he is part, and aid him in bringing into
subjection to its purposes and its fullness all other powers
and activities.

Democracy really waits for the realization of Christi-
anity. When the churches teach and practice Christianity
they will reveal a social order existing for spiritual pur-
poses; they will demonstrate the life of social groups
wholly devoted to the coming of the kingdom of God, the
reign of love, goodness and truth. They will believe in
the possibility of their prayers being answered, that men
may in a common life of love do the will of God together.
But spiritual ends seem to be very vague to almost all
persons, and it is the function of religion to make them
clear. This is possible, not by explanation, but by
experience. Our new vision will reveal religion, not as

262 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

something that we teach and discuss, but as a way of
life which discloses life's quality and meaning. It is a
social way of life, a way of living together the experience
of which leads men to realize the true worths and purposes
of living.^ Religion, like education, has hidden its pur-
pose under its mechanisms. Its means have become too
largely its ends. It is not in churches nor in creeds; it
is in life. It is life as lived for spiritual ends. It is
that range of values in life which makes us men and women
and, most important of all, makes us social beings. It
is the common life we can and must share together. It
must appear as the basis of democracy, its underlying
philosophy, its sustaining motive and its ever enlarging
ideal.

Then we shall have religion everywhere. It will not be
a matter of places or days. It will so saturate all life
that apart from it no part of true living in a democracy
will be possible. It will be so common it cannot b6
sectarian. It will be in all our toihng together, all our
social organizing, all our pleasures, all our schooling, all
our common experiences, the life of democracy.

Preparation demands organization. Society is not
yet organized for social ends. Democracy can never be
realized under social mechanisms designed for individual-
ism. But the reorganization necessary cannot be imposed
on our life as a ready-made scheme. It will be effected as
in every form we seek to direct our plans to the purposes
of democracy, as each group is organized for the experi-
ence of social living and for the purpose of training for
the life of a spiritual society. The changes may come
slowly but come they must until men who toil know that
they are not working by the sufferance of an over-lord

1 For an adequate treatment of this too-briefly stated position see
"The Psychology of Religion" (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1917) and
"A Social Theory of Religious Education" (Scribners, 1918), both
by Prof. George A. Coe.

THE REALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY 263

for wages to keep body and soul together, but they are
working as their part in complete social living; they are
sharing life. Changes will come until the home is not
simply a stall and manger to gain strength for toil ; it is
the place of the group-life devoted to the growth of lives
through sharing a common social life of joy and service.
Changes will come until the church is the common social
organization of the spiritual life of its community, until
the school is the socialization of the child and youth life
of the community so that it may be directed to discover
the wealth of joy and life and the ways of common living.
The changes will come until all living becomes a spiritual,
educational experience of common living, of social devo-
tion, of religion.

But the changes wiU come as the results of social
intent on our part. Our dreams must lead to deeds.
Children must be taught by courses in church-schools and
community schools; parents must be trained; teachers
must be prepared. On the other side there must be
organization to secure conditions which make possible the
common social life and cooperation of democracy. Prep-
aration includes legislation, direction and organization to
make the world a place in which democracy can be prac-
tised.

The realization of democracy waits for leadership.
We have been discussing ideals that seem to be very
far off. They are the ideals of leadership. Many may
criticize them as impractical; others may object that they
do not sufficiently deal with methods and details. But
details always follow vision ; methods are discovered when
men seek to achieve. All who see the ideals must declare
them even though the means be not yet in sight. The
leadership of ideals, of vision, precedes all else. If there
are prophets of democracy to-day woe be to them if they
are silent! Woe be to the preachers who wait for the
people to indicate a pleasing theme when their hearts are

964 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

burning with a message on life ! Woe be to the teachers
who lead youth in a treadmill when their own eyes see
a vision afar off, while the youth are hungry of heart for
that which the teacher sees and does not tell! We dare
not be " afraid of that which is high."

But all leadership is the result of training. Democ-
racy must train its leaders in democracy. We are train-
ing leaders ; but are we training them to lead toward our
spiritual goals? Are the colleges and universities schools
of leadership in democracy? Do we definitely plan that
the young men and women who graduate shall be able to
show the way to the better social order? We train a
leadership for the church but what consciousness is there
in that training of the function of religion in the realiza-
tion of democracy? ^ Is the ministry trained to lead the
churches in making their communities spiritual democ-
racies?

And yet democracy is fast coming. No one can fail
to see its signs, not alone in national and political move-
ments but in the every-day ways of men. It is coming
through the new attitude toward the child. It is clearly
presaged when the national government sets up a depart-
ment of child-welfare. More and more communities think
of themselves in terms of the life of the child. We would
save the children; we would enrich their lives; we would
give them all that our life affords, not because they are
so interesting, nor alone because they tug at our heart
strings, but because they so clearly stand for the simple
values of life, because they are our coming society, because
they are our supreme opportunity to express democracy
in giving our lives to the development and enriching of
their lives.

Democracy is coming fast through education. The

1 See " The Seminary and Democracy " by Owen H. Gates, in
Religious Education, June, 1918, Vol. XIII, No. 3, page 193, also
pubUshed by The Religious Education Asspciation as a pamphlet.

THE REALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY 265

emphasis on social principles, social rights and social
duties is its promise. The old intellectualism is going
as an ism and becoming the servant of the life of all.
The college and the university are conscious of the total
life in which they stand ; they are the servants of society.
Their attitude of devotion to the good of all is the most
effective means possible to develop in students a like
personal social attitude.

Religious education is the promise of democracy. It
is our social endeavor to train all persons, as spiritual
beings, for a spiritual world-life. What, then, is educa-
tion for democracy but religious education, the training
of persons for living in a social order which is guided by
religious motives, is conscious of present religious values
and looks toward religious ideals? That religious ideal
involves an interpretation of all life in spiritual terms.
It calls the family back to its function of nurturing
spiritual beings. It calls the church to train and instruct
persons in the ways of a democracy of the spirit. It
calls on our organized social life to realize its undeveloped
educational powers, to make all life an experience in
common living, in the splendid joys of common service
and of self-devotion to all. It calls us all to jeam^-to
love one another; it invites to tEe^ discovery that life is
our greaF/cTlin^^o love and serve. It would lead each
one to declare, m all humility an3""air faith, " I am come
that they might have life and that they might have it more
abundantly." The life of each is found in the life of all.

CHAPTER XXI

DEMOCEACY IN THE CEUCIAL HOUR

OuE faith in democracy served us well in the long
period of growth, under the strain of settlement, organ-
ization and development; but what of these days of a
world distraught, what of days when mankind is in a
high fever and breaking out all over in eruptive spots
of political revolution? Where despotism has reigned
anarchy takes its place and emphatically proclaims its
political philosophy as the ultimate gospel of social well-
being; and where democracy has been developing seething
discontent scoffs at it as an out-worn, unworkable idealism.
It demands its overthrow and the forcible establishment
of control by the class that has been so long exploited.
We sit at home and imagine that the revolutionary con-
flict will be confined to the areas where protest has long
been inevitable and to peoples crushed under the heel of
the oppressor. If we hope this we do so only by closing
our doors and pulUng down the shades while we bask
by our firesides. And that we cannot do for long; the
crowd presses at our doors and no police force will long
avail. For our democracy this is the great hour of
decision; is our faith adequate for such times and is it
strong enough to go forward and fulfill itself.?

Is Bolshevism the logical fruitage of a genuine and

thorough loyalty to the democratic principle.? Is this

new way, either in its mild and theoretical form, or in its

hideous menace as a wild, unrestrained, brutal creature

of hatreds and lusts, the natural and riper realization of

democracy.? Many believe so, for, they argue, what is

Bolshevism but the free and complete action of the will

266

DEMOCRACY IN THE CRUCIAL HOUR 267

of the mob, without restraints of custom, precedent or
law? To them it seems as though the shameful, blood-
stained and lurid episode of Bolshevik dominance in
Russia, with its overflow to many other lands, stands out
as a fearful warning of what will happen to any govern-
ment that goes beyond praising liberty to practice it by
giving power to the undisciplined will of the proletariat.
It is an exhibition, they say, of the extreme form of popu-
lar government which is no government at all and only the
anarchistic violence of a mob. But Bolshevism is not
the fruitage of democracy ; it is the direct result of blind
autocracy. It is not the logical outcome of popular
freedom and self-government; it is the inevitable ultimate
of autocratic control and repression.

Even the children who have lived through the years of
the great war know that Russia sowed the wind and reaped
the whirlwind. No one could expect that the bitter school
of cruel repression would furnish the disciplines for a
restrained democracy. Wherever the methods of old Rus-
sia have been applied they have brought forth similar
fruit. It makes no diff^erence whether the serfdom be
applied in a state or a factory, whether the oppressing
class be hereditary nobles or industrial barons, their view
of life and, especially, of the lives of others results ulti-
mately in developing in men a distrust of all systems of
government, a hatred of all forms of power and an habit-
ual impatience with all legal and social methods of secur-
ing their rights. Under the exploitation of their op-
pressors they have seen these methods fail too often ; they
have seen the social processes of life subverted to the ends
of employers. So steadily and successfully have they been
deprived of their social rights that, having ceased to
experience them for themselves, it is not strange they
cease to regard them or to believe in them for any one.
Wherever the methods of old Russia have been applied
they have made possible the Russia of the past few years.

268 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

That accounts for one kind of Bolshevik, the fruitage,
not of democracy, not of any sort of a social theory held
in his mind, but of greedy, selfish, class oppression. There
is another source from which the ragged ranks are re-
cruited, the incapables and socially subnormals, the ones
who because of physical and mental inefficiences and defects
never would win to a fair share of goods in the current
social system of competition. Up to this day our world
has paid little attention to this class. It has been willing
that the deficients should breed their kind in greater pro-
fusion than efficients. It has regarded laziness as a mental
state, a matter of the imagination and feelings, and it has
felt no responsibility for those who must live on short
rations simply because they lacked the good sense or
the grit to stand up in the fight and gain a full share.
Such persons welcome a social upheaval as promising
bread without work. They have so long nursed a sense
of injustice, so long cherished grudges against the suc-
cessful and so long laid to the social system the inequal-
ities in possessions of men that they feel everything is to
be gained and certainly nothing to be lost by sweeping
changes toward which they have only the irresponsible
attitude of beneficiaries.

Surely the remedy for the existence of this class is
not so very hard to find though it may take a long time
to effect a change. It lies in the more thorough applica-
tion of democracy. A truly democratic society will feel
an inescapable responsibility for the defectives and the
inefficient. It will not be satisfied until every life has a
full chance to be all that it might be. It will not leave
to chance the fitting of these incompetent persons into
their places in life. It will not thrust on the refuse heap
of social failure thousands of its people by trying to
make mechanics out of farmers and ministers out of mar-
iners. It will not be satisfied to charge physical handi-
caps to Providence but, in the light pf its primary func-

DEMOCRACY IN THE CRUCIAL HOUR 269

tion to develop lives, it will seek to remove these handicaps.
It will decrease discontent by removing deficiencies. How
many of our " under dogs " are really lame dogs, blind,
under-nourished, embittered by early experiences of misery
and driven into lives of snarling, bickering over refuse and
bare bones of social neglect !

Then we must remember that these are days when the
methods of the Bolshevik are likely to gain currency.
Overturning and upsetting has been the order of the day.
We have been forced into rebuilding a world. We who
are conscious of our sanity could hardly hope io be
granted a monopoly on rebuilding nor were our efforts
so professionally rounded out in proficiency that we might
hope to discourage amateur rebuilders. Then, think how
much we have prated about reconstruction, until the word
is frayed and obsolete; it is not strange that some who
always tend to scorn mere words should try their hands
at a little practical reconstruction and should find many
ready, willing aids in those who certainly could not find
things rearranged any worse for them.

MORE DEMOCRACY OUR HOPE

The hope for this hour lies in more democracy, in carry-
ing out our principles to their full and logical conclusions.
The menace of what we popularly generalize as Bolshevism
lies in the fact that it is simply a rabid application of
class control. It does not disguise that fact ; it freely
asserts that it is the control of all by the class that has
hitherto been controlled by a few. And the dangers of
our current methods of combating this new class menace
are, first, that of subverting the processes of democracy
by the artificial control and manipulation of public opin-
ion, and, second, a falling back on the Bolshevik method
of an appeal to class consciousness. The only difi^erences
between the methods of Bolshevism and the forms to which
some of our saviors of society would resort, are that the

210 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

former does not pretend to be democratic; it uses no
screen of the general benevolence to hide its purposes of
benefiting its followers. Its orators do not prate about
the public good while they control legislatures for private
gain, and the Bolshevists use weapons less refined, more
concrete and evident than our class politicians. The
latter are skilled in effecting their purposes by innocent-
appearing laws, by controls of markets, prices and con-
ditions of living. But when the whole thing is summed
up, it is not likely that the world has been robbed of
more life by the rough-and-ready method of the sword
and flame than by the smooth Marchiavellian " gentle-
manly " tactics that have stolen strength from the workers
and made large fortunes by robbing the helpless infants
of ice and milk.

Much that many indiscriminately label as Bolshevism,
Anarchy and Socialism — some to intensify their indigna-
tion place all three labels on such as they would excom-
municate — is simply inchoate resentment against our
modem juggling with democracy. Blind Samson knows
he has been shorn of powers and rights and fain would
tear something down. Economic changes have given the
under dog a new position. He is not an angel either
because he is under or over. But he is likely to try on
others some of the tricks long practiced on him. His
methods are all wrong; explaining them does not justify
them. But the wrong and failure is not to be charged
to democracy. Our social chaos is due, in the main, to
two causes, that we have neither prepared persons for the
life of democracy nor have we really practiced it, and
that, under the pressure of a world strain, we called a
practical recess on democracy as a political method.

If democracy has failed it has been because it has not
been tried. It has failed because it has not depended on
the wills of all; it has not depended on the development
pf a common goodwill in all and it has not applied the

DEMOCRACY IN THE CRUCIAL HOUR 271

will of all to the well-being of all. The situation, even
in the face of so many outbreaks of violence, even when
the mob seems to have thrown all restraints to the wind
and to have demonstrated its utter unreliability, calls for
more faith in humanity, for a more direct and generous
dependence on the will of the many. The greatest mistake
we can make at this moment is to lean on autocratic con-
trol for our protection.

Our danger is that having tasted the efficiencies of
autocracy in the manipulation of the forces of the nation
through the crisis of the war we shall depend on the same
force to shield and guide us through reconstruction.
Dependence on the " strong arm of the government,"
as it is now construed, is only a relapse into feudalism.
Being unable to work out our own salvation we place
ourselves under the ward of bureaus and autocratic
groups. Accepting a medieval political serfdom we grate-
fully depend on the forces organized for control while our
own powers of social organization and direction degenerate
into flabby uselessness and final paralysis.

The corollary of this political serfdom is submission to
the undemocratic control of public opinion by overhead
manipulation and propaganda conducted by the con-
trolling forces. The possibilities of propaganda have
been demonstrated by the war. A group can gather in
a committee room and determine what the nation shall
think. A campaign of advertising, through the ordinary
channels of publicity and, most pernicious of all, through
the creation and coloring of news, can start and control
a tide of feeling that passes for thought and determines
action throughout the nation. A bureau can, through
a censor, suppress facts or so distort and maim them,
lopping off here and enlarging and luridly coloring there,
that the passions of men are inflamed, hatreds are
engendered without cause, opinions are created and the
vast and splendid instrument of the public will is played

^72 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

upon to any tune the manipulators wish. What Prussia
did to control the wills of her people, by the direct and
detailed control of the press, by the explicit direction of
the content of the materials of education and the use of
the pulpits as tools of her purpose, we have been doing
in every particular. Our motives may have been the op-
posite of hers, but our method has been the same in almost
every particular. We count it a crime to use the force
of clubs and steel but none to use the greater force of
organized manipulation of public thought.

We are in danger of preserving the externals and
killing the essentials of democracy. Maintaining the
trunk of this fair tree above the ground, in the superficial
matters of the ballot, we are cutting off its life-roots by
refusing freedom of thought. There can be freedom, the
essential of democracy, only where thought is free. But,
with all our vaunted faith in democracy we do not believe
in freedom of thought. There were good reasons for the
control of certain classes of information during the period
of the war; but there is no justification for the control of
the currents of popular knowledge; there is no justifica-
tion, except that of autocratic expediency, for the manip-
ulation of the facts upon which intelligent judgment
must be based. Who knows, at this hour, what is really
happening in Russia? Who knows what happened at
A^ersailles? We, the people, who are supposed to deter-
mine our own affairs, cannot be trusted with knowledge;
we must be fed like children too young for the real facts,
with* gooseberry-bush genetics and expurgated world
politics. We who would have no Caesar over our bodies
must submit to the Kaiserization of our minds.

If these conditions were but a temporary phase, an
accommodation to war conditions, we could wait for the
return to the normal. But they are not a passing
exigency ; they are the expression of a philosophy of social
control that is as old as the hills. They are the spirit

DEMOCRACY IN THE CRUCIAL HOUR 273

of class-control in action. They express the purposes
which undermine democracy. They mark the methods of
the groups which have always been able, despite any party
lines, to unite for aristocracy — their own class being the
aristocrats. The motto of " the people be damned " has
been wiped out of business, but the politician simply
enlarges it into *' The people be damned by being fooled."

The remedy lies in resistance, the resistance of men who
are and must continue to be intellectually free. It lies
in a full acceptance of the faith that an enlightened
people may be trusted and in an acceptance of the cor-
relative duty of both demanding fullness of light and
diffusing whatever light we have. It calls for the work
of education, giving the light and training and exercising
the powers of all in living according to the light. The
attempt to control and manipulate society is an abandon-
ment of the educational method in the development of
democracy; that method must be fully restored. We
cannot lie quiet, tamely submitting to the arbitrary con-
trol of our very souls.

But, specifically, what can be done? We can demand
freedom. We can reject from public trust all who do
not trust the people. We can reject the subsidized press
and support every organ of freedom of information and
discussion. We can and must show up the facts ; let the
scientific investigators of social phenomena throw a clear,
cold, undimmed light on the present processes of propa-
ganda. We can erect and conduct other agencies than
these that have proven false to the democratic trust, not
only new newspapers and journals but such effective
means as public forums, discussion clubs and fearless
pulpits and platforms must be encouraged. Any agency
that is loyal to facts must be developed as a sustainer of
democracy. We especially should protect the sources
of the informing and training of the young; the public
schools are still — at least until some current plans of

274 EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

bureaucratic control get into operatiofn - — subject to
local control; they must be protected. The churches,
while they have largely yielded to the machinery of
propaganda, have done so with good intent; their free-
dom can be maintained and their power for enlightenment
and the development of the spirit of freedom can be
strengthened. If they refuse to save their own spiritual
freedom they must be allowed to die.

And yet more, how much every man needs to fight
against the tendency that grows with advancing years
to give up the struggle of spiritual freedom and to accept
the easy ways of external protection and control. The
peace that Newman sought in the Church of Rome tempts
us all. There is no rest for the spirit that seeks growth.
And there is the tendency to seek stability in the status
quo. Our material interests in things as they are make
us fear the ferment of a changing world. Having a little
holding it is so much safer, apparently, to be serfs, to
accept the protection of our over-lords than to go on
venturing all in the long struggle of freedom. The pass-
ing years accentuate our dread of change ; thought habits
have cut deep ruts and it is so much easier to travel in
them than to try the new ways. The spirit of youth
passes and we no longer feel the stronger attraction of
pioneering. Against all these things we must fight, or
cease tb grow and live, or cease to be democrats. And
such a fight we ought not to, indeed we cannot wage
alone. By social means we must develop self-culture for
democracy, strengthening the hearts of one another,
enlarging the common vision and clarifying the common
knowledge.

Further, all who believe in democracy must be wholly
loyal to their faith in these days. Many are the
attractive short-cuts that open up to the desired ends
of social well-being. The democrat is always tempted to
depend on external controls to effect the social good he

DEMOCRACY IN THE CRUCIAL HOUR ^75

desires. Legislation, social regulation and regimentation
promise to do by compulsion that which education, work-
ing through the will of all, can effect only in a much
longer period of time. But whenever we take advantage
of these short-cuts, every time we place our reliance on
external compulsions we defeat the ends and short-circuit
the processes of democracy.

Nor is freedom all we need ; one other dominating prin-
ciple of democracy must be put into practice and given
larger power ; we need the controls that, rising and ruling
in each man's breast, guide all into ways that are above
our present conflicting aims and competing struggles.
Society will be saved only as it is ruled by social ideals
that set first for every one the aim of social good.
Democracy is more than freedom of action; it is that
freedom which ultimately liberates every man from the
bondage of his lower purposes and gives him freedom of
action in that range of interests where the enriching of
one never means the impoverishing of another. In a
word, democracy to-day needs a dominating spiritual
purpose. It needs a religious ideal, one that will be freely
discovered and adopted through religious education.

Are we really democrats? This is, do we believe, first
of all and most of all, in the personal-social values in
life? Are these the ends for which we live? Do we
organize our lives for these ends, test all our institutions
and laws by their effect on these purposes and constantly
insist on social conditions which make possible the devel-
opment of spiritual value? Do we interpret democracy
religiously, as a spirit of life, as an ideal to be realized
only through faith, sacrifice and self-giving, as a passion
and hope, as a way through which the world will find its
soul ?

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