Many more of the regular school activities could be arranged on a group basis than is now thought possible—investigation for instance. This is a big word, but the youngest children sent out to the woods in spring are being taught “original research.”
Again, every good teacher teaches her pupils to “assemble” his different thoughts, shows them that a single thought is not useful, but only as it is connected with others. The modern teacher is like the modern curator who thinks the group significance of a particular classification more important than the significance of each isolated piece. The modern teacher does not wish his pupils’ minds to be like an old-fashioned museum—a hodgepodge of isolated facts—but a useful workshop.
Again, to learn genuine discussion should be considered an essential part of our education. Every child must be trained to meet the clash of difference—difference of opinion, difference of interest—which life brings. In some universities professors are putting aside one hour a week for a discussion hour. This should be done in all colleges and schools, and then it should be seen to that it is genuine discussion that takes place in that hour.
Moreover, in many schools supervised playground and gymnasium activities are being established, athletic clubs encouraged, choruses and dramatic leagues developed, not only because of their value from the health or art point of view, but because they teach the social lesson.
The question of self-government in the schools is too complicated a subject and has met with too many difficulties, notwithstanding its brilliant successes, to take up here, but undoubtedly some amount of self-control can be given to certain groups, and in the upper grades to whole schools, and when this can be done no training for democracy is equal to the practice of democracy.
The aim is to create such a mental atmosphere for children that it is natural for them to wish to take their part, to make them understand that citizenship is not obeying the laws nor voting, nor even being President,147 but that all the visions of their highest moments, all the aspirations of their spiritual nature can be satisfied through their common life, that only thus do we get “practical politics.”
In our industrial schools it is obviously easier to carry further the teaching of coordinated effort than in the regular day schools.
Our evening schools must adopt the methods of the more progressive day schools, and must, as they are doing in many cases, add to the usual activities of evening schools.
The most conscious and deliberate preparation for citizenship is given by the “School Centres” now being established all over the United States. The School Centre movement is a movement to mould the future, to direct evolution instead of trusting to evolution. The subject of this book has been the necessity for community organization, but the ability to meet this necessity implies that we know how to do that most difficult thing in the world—work with other people: that we are ready to sacrifice individual interests to the general good, that we have a fully developed sense of responsibility, that we are trained in initiative and action. But this is not true. If the School Centres are to fill an important place in neighborhood life, they must not only give an opportunity for the development of neighborhood consciousness and neighborhood organization, but they must train up young people to be ready for neighborhood organization. We who believe in the School Centre as one of the most effective means we have for reconstructing city life believe that the School Centre can furnish this training. We hear everywhere of the corruption of American municipal politics, but why should the next generation do any better than the present unless we are training our young men and women to a proper understanding of the meaning of good citizenship and the sense of their own responsibility? The need of democracy today is a trained citizenship. We must deliberately train for citizenship as for music, art or trade. The School Centres are, in fact, both the prophecy of the new democracy and a method of its fulfilment. They provide an opportunity for its expression, and at the same time give to men and women the opportunity for the training needed to bring it to its highest expression.
The training in the School Centres consists of: group-activities, various forms of civic clubs and classes, and practice in self-government.
First, we have in the Centres those activities which require working together, such as dramatic and choral clubs, orchestras and bands, civic and debating clubs, folk-dancing and team-games. We want choral unions and orchestras, to be sure, because they will enrich the community life at the same time that they emphasize the neighborhood bond, we want civic and debating clubs because we all need enlightenment on the subjects taken up in these clubs, but the primary reason for choosing such activities is that they are group activities where each learns to identify himself
