The Psychology of Nations Part 13

Presentation of facts is surely a necessary part of all education, for it is an indispensable means of giving the content of experience upon which wisdom as a selective appreciation of experience is based. But erudition is only a part of education. We must hold firmly now to the principle which is indeed an aspect of the democratic ideal itself, that partic.i.p.ation is also a necessary part of education.

Inst.i.tutions become real to the child through the child's a.s.sociation with them in some active way. We shall probably see the idea of free organization carried far, and in every organization and every inst.i.tution, private and public, there must, we believe, be some place for the services and the interest of all. Let us take the position that there is nothing in government, in any of its branches, that is outside the sphere of the practical life of the individual and we shall have the right point of view even for the work of the school room. Government, in a word, is not a specialization of function in which the few are involved, but it is a generic function, the means, we a.s.sert, of carrying to completion all the projects of individuals in all their social relations. Therefore all, not merely those who just now are included among voters, but all women and children, must have a part in the general education for democracy and also have a part in some way in the inst.i.tutions of government. From first to last government must be thought of and understood in terms of what it does, as a phase of the total social life of the nation, not as something outside the social order. Government is a collective activity. It is as an aspect of the day's work of the nation, that government must be impressed upon all--both legal citizens and citizens in the making.

The second phase of the educational problem in regard to government is perhaps after all only the first in another form. If we hope to have a democratic civilization in any real sense anywhere, we must secure efficiency and superiority both in individual and in social conduct, not mainly by the exertion of authority (except as a temporary make-s.h.i.+ft) but by making all the people of a nation susceptible to the influences of the best life and thought the nation contains. This means the voluntary and intentional development of leaders.h.i.+p. This we have spoken of as a general need; it is also a phase of political education. The genius, the leader, must of course himself be produced in part by education. We must have such conditions as shall allow natural leaders.h.i.+p to come to the surface, and every spark of genius must be carefully nourished. But there must be also opportunity for what the genius produces to work its effect upon all, as a stimulating and directing force, in turn arousing the creative activities of the people. Democracy seems to be wholly dependent upon what seems now the accident of genius for raising it above the mediocrity of the average, or even preventing a decline in its civilization. It is this idea of the relation of the best to the average that James evidently thought to be the fundamental point in education. Education consists in his view in the development of ability to recognize the good in every department of life, the ability to recognize all sham and inferiority and the habit of responding to and choosing the best. Applied to the problems of government, this means such a method of educating the young as will make all susceptible to and appreciative of the superior qualities of mind and character that may be exhibited in public life.

Such responsiveness being itself creative and a powerful factor in producing and bringing to the front the superior man, it must be regarded as one of the most necessary and fundamental qualities of a democracy.

We might single out the teaching of history and biography as the best means of educating the appreciative powers in regard to values in human life, and the best means of facilitating the emergence of the best individuals and the best principles, and of making their influence powerful, but after all it is something more than any or all teaching that is required. Most fundamentally, no one can refuse to admit it is such an organization of the whole educational situation as will allow, or rather cause and encourage, precisely the total of the good and progressive life of the world to play upon the mood and the spirit of the school. a.s.suredly the school is not to-day so fortunately situated. It is too much removed from some influences and far too closely joined to others. Much of the good of society is walled out from the school by barriers that arise in politics, City ways, all the bad life of the streets, the trivial interests of the day, affect the school too much. We are greatly at fault in all this, because we do not take education as yet seriously enough. There must be now a decision. Either the school must be content to remain what it is now, a local inst.i.tution performing a very limited service, or it must arise to quite new heights, and mean far more as a civilizing and creative force than it has thus far. The school must occupy more hours of the day and more days in the year. It must claim the child more completely. It must extend its influences further, and draw its life from a deeper soil. We certainly shall never allow the school to become a great evil in society, but it is almost as bad morally to leave it but a feeble good. Let no one speak any longer of good schools. Our schools were good for yesterday, perhaps. But of to-morrow's needs they are not yet even fully aware. The school has yet to learn with certainty to lay hold upon the fundamental things in the nature of the child, and to appreciate the child's real and greatest needs. Continuity and creativeness are still for the most part beyond the powers of the school.

But perhaps after all we are asking the impossible. Perhaps the forces needed cannot be brought to bear upon the child. Perhaps conditions are too unfavorable, and an educational situation cannot be devised that will be greatly superior to what we have already. Perhaps the time is too short. Perhaps worst of all the nature of the child himself is too trivial and unpromising. But if we believe this, we certainly at the same time conclude that democracy is a failure and is not in any true sense possible at all. Democracy cannot be created by forces from without, for this would be indeed a negation of its nature. Democracy is self-creative. It grows from within. But how can it grow from within unless the new life which enters into it be creative; and how can this life be creative and progressive unless it be so lived that it shall absorb all the good the old life has in it, and also be inspired to go beyond it in every possible way? Unless democracy is merely a product and natural direction of growth in society, democracy and education are not unrelated to one another. If democracy is a good that can be obtained only by conscious effort, we may suppose that one of the greatest factors in producing it will be education.

CHAPTER VIII

INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION

We have as yet no deep philosophy of industry. For better or for worse work came into the world as a result of desire. Men did not desire work, but they desired that which could be obtained only by work.

These desires multiplied and the modern industrial world is the result. When material objects alone were desired, the motive of work was relatively simple; but as we pa.s.s from the desire for goods to the desire for wealth, and to the desire for wealth as a means of gaining power and prestige, the industrial movement becomes more complex. We go on and on, producing ever greater wealth and generating more and more power, and we do this we say with no deep purpose and with no philosophy of life. For the justification of it all, if it be under our control at all, we can only say that through industry we realize an abundant and enriched life.

The good and evil of work put upon us some of the most perplexing of our problems. Industry, we say, is the way to the rich and the abundant life. It makes life more complex. The relations of life are multiplied by it. It represents and it achieves man's conquest over nature. It puts force into his hands. It has its ideal side and its romance. It gives scope to pure motives of creativeness. But the industrial life has also its dark side. It has created the city with all its good and its evil. It has created great nations, but see what the added populations consist of. It brings on the old age of nations.

It stands for struggle that is often fruitless and unproductive. It engenders moods and arouses interests and powers that lead to wars and revolutions. It fosters sordid interests, and has made almost universal the necessity of an excess of toil in order barely to live.

The great majority of workers do not live in their work, because they produce nothing that is in itself satisfying. The spirit remains outside their daily life. Life is divided into a period of toil without deep interest and motive, and play which may be only a narcotic to kill the sense of monotony and fatigue. Individuals have specialized at the expense of a whole life. Men have been exploited and used like material things. Bergson says that by industry man has increased his physical capacities, but now it is likely that his soul will become mechanized rather than that his soul will become great like his new body. Industry, worst of all, has become an end in itself, rather than a means to higher ends. To live, on the one hand, to gain wealth on the other, men give all there is in them to toil.

We saw all this before the war, but one important result of the war has been that we now see that this industrial life which has so rapidly created new inst.i.tutions, and which grips the world almost like a physical law, is not in all its ways so fixed and inevitable as we had perhaps thought. In regard to the industrial life, more than in any other department of life, we see new and radical thought, and the possibility of conscious effects, although it must be admitted that some of the proposed changes may well cause apprehension.

We had hoped, even before the war, to see industry and art become gradually more closely related, and to see industry become more socialized. Its physical hards.h.i.+ps were to some extent already being ameliorated. We hoped to separate the great industrial interests from politics, and to curb the powers industry has that make it a trouble producer in the world. But now, after the war, we see possibilities of more fundamental changes in the industrial order than these improvements implied. Our thoughts now touch upon the whole theory of the industrial life. We see that by a coordinated effort and common understanding which it is no longer chimerical to hope for, the conditions of the industrial life might be very different. In the first place we are convinced that the world could produce vastly more and could use its products with far greater economy than now. We see that much greater return for less labor could be gained. Even the desires themselves upon which many of the evils of industrialism are based have shown themselves to be controllable. It is no longer idle to believe that the restraint and cooperation necessary to eliminate most of the poverty from the world are possible to be attained. The isolation of the individual worker, which has made his struggle so hard, seems about to be relieved to some extent at least. We even hope for permanently better relations between the capitalist and the laborer, and to see some of the evils of compet.i.tion, even the industrial compet.i.tion among nations, lessened.

Although the interest here is in the relations of industry to education, rather than in the practical changes pending in the industrial world, we must think of the two as related. Changes that take place in political and industrial conditions will be likely to be temporary and ineffectual unless they are supported by changes in the field of education. The reformer and the educator must work together.

Noyes says that the most fundamental change that has occurred during the war has been the world-wide a.s.sertion of public control of industry by the government. Perkins says that centralization is the order of the day, and that the government now properly takes on many functions that once belonged to the states, and that this process of centralization naturally extends to international relations. Smith speaks of the growing interdependence of government and industry which will especially give security to investment in productive enterprises.

Hesse says that there must be national team work in all industries, and that in a democracy everything that autocracy can accomplish must be repeated, but upon a basis of voluntary cooperation. In France it has been proposed by Alfa.s.sa that there shall be established a department of national economy, to bring about a closer cooperation than there has been in the past among private interests, and to centralize industry. Wehle thinks that in America, even before the war, industrial concentration was leading to political concentration and that the states were losing their relative political importance.

The grappling of states individually with large industrial problems is now, he says, at an end. Dillon has expressed the view that England ought to adopt industrial compulsion. Clementel, the French minister of commerce, thinks France ought to subst.i.tute for liberty without restraint in the industrial field, liberty organized and restricted.

There can be no doubt that the world is thoroughly awake to the need of more effectual cooperation in industry, and it is natural that the first thoughts should turn to government control as the simplest and readiest method of securing it. When we examine these suggestions about the coordination and centralization of industries it becomes evident that most writers have been strongly influenced by Germany's remarkable success, both in peace and war, under the system of governmental control of industries. The manner in which the German government turned all the country into one great industrial plant has appealed to the imagination, and many writers see in centralization under the control of government the means of curing most of the evils of industrialism. There are many proposals, all the way from the plan to introduce cabinet ministers with limited power to have oversight over industry to the total abolishment of the capitalistic system and all the rights of property. Many of course, while still believing in concentration and cooperation, cling to the system of private and individual owners.h.i.+p, and believe that the best results will be obtained in the end without any radical change in the relations between government and industry, and without resorting to any socialistic reform.

Another phase of the problem of industry in which we may expect to see great changes in the future concerns the status of labor and its relation to capital. The rising of the laboring cla.s.s is certainly the greatest internal result of the war. Here again the question is whether the changes will take place by cooperation or by compulsion--either on the part of government or of some organized cla.s.s. Will labor and capital continue to be antagonistic, or will they find common interest; or will the only solution be again some radical change involving change of government or abrogation entirely of our present system of owners.h.i.+p? That the position of labor has become stronger as a result of the war no one can doubt. Perkins says we are just entering upon a period of copartners.h.i.+p, when the tool-user will be part tool-owner, and capital and labor will share more equally in the profits. Increase in wages will not be the remedy, but only profit sharing. Others think the same; they see that the laborer's discontent is not all a protest against his hard physical conditions. He wants more social equality, more equality of status in the industrial world. He objects not so much to what the capitalist has as to what he is.

There has no more illuminating doc.u.ment come out of the war than the report on reconstruction made by a subcommittee of the British Labor Party. This report calls for a universal minimum wage; complete state insurance of the workers against unemployment; democratic control of industries; thorough partic.i.p.ation by the workers in such control on the basis of common owners.h.i.+p of the means of production; equitable sharing of the proceeds by all who engage in production; state owners.h.i.+p of the nation's land; immediate nationalization of railroads, mines, electric power, ca.n.a.ls, harbors, roads and telegraph; continued governmental control of s.h.i.+pping, woolen, leather, clothing, boots and shoes, milling, baking, butchering, and other industries; a system of taxation on incomes to pay off the national debt, without affecting the living of those who labor.

Although such a doc.u.ment as this could hardly up to the present time have been produced by American workmen, since here political doctrines of socialism have never obtained a strong hold upon the laboring cla.s.ses, in England these radical demands are nothing surprising. They have the support at many points of so keen a thinker as Russell.

Russell does not, it is true, believe that Marxian socialism is the solution of the problem of capital and labor, but he does believe in the state owners.h.i.+p of all land, that the state therefore should be the primary recipient of all rents, that a trade or industry must be recognized as a unity for the purposes of government, with some kind of home rule such as syndicalism aims at securing. Industrial democracy, as planned in the cooperative movement, or some form of syndicalism, appears to him to be the most promising line of advance.

That such demands and proposals as these are significant signs of the times can hardly be doubted. That from now the status of the workman will be changed and changed in directions more satisfactory to the workman we may accept as one of the chief results of the war.

Politically the laborer is prepared to a.s.sert his independence. Both his social and his industrial status are likely to be improved. He will be better safeguarded against unemployment. Wages in the old form and the old tradition that the worker has no contract with his employer will, in all probability, be less generally acceptable. Work, if these new conditions are realized, will mean more to the worker.

His own interests and the purposes of his work will be more harmoniously related. The individual made more secure in his work, protected more by law and partic.i.p.ating more in the affairs of business and government, will have a sense of playing a more dignified part in the social economy. Conceal as we may the inferiority of the laborer's position under the pretenses of democracy and liberty and equality, this inferiority of position exists and the inequality that prevails in democratic society is certainly one of the fertile sources of evil in the world to-day. We have still to see to what extent the workman, his lot ameliorated in many ways, and his position changed, will himself become a new and different man, and thus make the world itself a different place in which to live. All that is thus suggested we have a right at least to hope for now. If it is also worked for with intelligence and good will, why should it not come to pa.s.s?

The third idea which is beginning to make great changes in the whole field of the industrial life and throughout all the practical life is the _idea of economy_. This means that in many ways questions of the values, the purposes, and the ways and means of what is done in the world are being sharply examined. Labor has been uncritical of its purposes, and lavish and wasteful of its energies, however watchful it may have been of its rights. Production has been governed too much by desire, too little by careful consideration of need. Distribution has been carelessly conducted, allowing large losses of time and material.

Consumption has been quite as careless as the rest, and has been thoroughly selfish as well. The war has changed many of our ideas.

Thrift has become a word with a new meaning. We see what industry at its worst might do in the world, and on the other hand what wise control of all the motives and processes that enter into labor and all the economic life might accomplish.

Some of these changes are coming from readjustment in the coordination of industrial processes themselves. We hear much of standardization and stabilization. An economic technique and the control of fluctuating conditions might do much to increase the efficiency of industry in every way. This idea of the application of scientific procedure to life we see extending to the control of the energies of the human factor. We have already spoken of guarantees that affect the spirit and the morale of labor. We hear of the prevention of unemployment, the removal of the bugbear of "losing the job." Most advance of all is being made in the application of the principles of mental and physical hygiene and of scientific management to the actual details of movement and the whole process of expenditure of energy, counting costs in terms of time and energy, in much the same way as all the items of value that enter into production are estimated. Some writers, for example Gilbreth, see in this movement a great advance.

It is a way of giving equal opportunity to all. Economy becomes a factor in freedom, since it helps to eliminate the drudgery and depression of toil.

Plainly, then, economy or thrift has a much wider meaning than mere saving. It is many-sided, and the study of economy in the use of essentials is but a part of it. The war has, of course, emphasized this, and this idea of saving has served the purpose of awakening an interest in the whole theory and purpose of work. There is a better understanding of values, and of the difference between the essential and the unessential, and we see that not all labor that commands pay is useful labor. Many things that the public knew but little about before are becoming better understood. Industry, finance, business, taxes, transportation, have all to some extent become popular subjects. The present high cost of living raises questions in the theory of the economic aspect of life that have compelled the attention of the public. The theory of money, interest, savings, foreign investments, the place of gold in the world's economy is carried a step further and is popularly more extended. We hear all sorts of proposals about the production, the distribution and the consumption of goods, which are intended to make living easier and less expensive. Increased production of staples and more direct route from producer to consumer are urged upon all, and the economists have many suggestions for increasing our prosperity: while financiers try to direct to the best purpose our investments at home and abroad.

Fisher attacks the whole theory of costs at what he believes its root, suggesting a plan of "stabilizing the dollar itself" by using the index numbers of standard articles as units of value, and regulating the weight of gold in the dollar according to the fluctuations of these. All these plans, hasty and narrowly conceived as many of them seem to be, are of interest and have value, for they indicate a serious determination to solve the fundamental problems of the practical life.

Any educational theory that could hope to deal adequately with the needs and the impending changes in the industrial situation of to-day must take into consideration the basic facts both of the individual and the social life. Teaching of industry and all attempts to teach vocation must be seen by all now to be but a small part of education with reference to the industrial life. We must do much more fundamental things than these. We must plan far ahead and seek to lay a firm foundation for the idea of cooperation which appears to be the leading thought of industrialism to-day. Every individual, we should say, ought to be educated in the fundamentals of labor, so that he may understand for himself what labor means. Finally the idea of thrift in all its implications must be made a part of the educational program.

All this may seem too ideal and impracticable to think of in connection with industrial education, but if we consider industry and industrialism as the center of our whole civilization, as it appears to be now, what less ideal educational foundation will be sufficient as preparation for and control of the industrial life? No teaching of trades, we a.s.sert, will be enough. We shall need to apply, in industrial education or in an educational plan that takes industry into account, all the methods of teaching: those that employ industry itself, but also art, erudition, and play.

It is first with industrialism as a world condition that education is concerned. Industrialism has been, as all must recognize, too individualistic. It has motives and moods and products, and it grows in social conditions, that are full of danger for society.

Industrialism lacks a soul, as Bergson would say. Yet it is a movement that sweeps on with almost irresistible force. Its most characteristic product is not what it turns out in shops, but city life itself. Many would agree with Russell in saying that all the great cities are centers of deterioration in the life of their nations. Education, then, must undertake to control industrialism. This does not mean, necessarily, that it must try to check it, but that the motives in individual and social life that produce industrialism must in some way be under the control of educational forces.

First of all it seems certain that no political arrangement, and no change taking place entirely within the industrial system itself, and no simple and direct educational procedure will give us control over the forces of industrialism. It is mainly by preventing the city spirit or mood from developing too fast and thus engulfing the children of the nation that we can introduce a conscious factor strong enough to hold industrial development within bounds. This means, we must earnestly demand, turning back the flow of life from country to city by educating all children in the environment of the country. This would have a double effect upon the industrialism of the day. _It would break up the present inevitable inheritance by the city child of all the ideals and moods of the city, and it would give opportunity for training in the activities that are basic to all industry, which alone, in our view, can give to industry a solid and normal foundation._ By such effects, in such a general way, upon the children of an industrial nation, we might reasonably hope to prevent the evil effects upon our national life from the fatigue, the routine, and the deadening of the spirit which even under improved conditions cannot be overcome in an industrial life that is left to its monotonous grind and its morbid excitements and exaggerations.

Another work that education must in the end do for the industrial life is to infuse into it an ideal and a purpose. Industry is too individualistic, we say. It works for a living, for power, from necessity. It lacks through and through as yet the spirit of free and intelligent cooperation for common and remote ends. Cooperation in the industrial world, we have seen reason to believe, is likely to be the great word of the future. It is precisely the work of education to make the future of industry an expression of free activity, to make it democratic, and to such an extent, we might hope, that socialism, whether as a governmental interference or as a cla.s.s system, would not be necessary--or possible. In trying to give industrialism an ideal, we must presumably go back to elemental mental processes. We must, in the beginning, present the world's work dramatically to the child. We must give work interest, and it is certainly one of the chief purposes of that nondescript subject we call geography thus to give the child a deep appreciation of the world as a world of men and women engaged in work. We must show industry as a world-wide purpose, not as something essentially individual and compet.i.tive. We must show it as an adventure on the part of man in which he goes forth to seek conquest over the physical world; we must think of it as a means to an end, of fulfilling purposes not all of which perhaps can as yet be foreseen, but which certainly can be no mere satisfaction of the individual's desires of the day. This is what we mean by putting a soul into industry. Soul means purpose--purpose which includes more than the desires of the individual, and in which the interests of the world as a whole are involved. Industry that has thus a purpose, and that is imbued with a spirit of freedom takes its place among the psychic forces and becomes a part of the mechanism of mental evolution. It is this idealism of industry, toward the production of which we must turn every educational resource, that must offset its materialism. This is, in part, the work of the aesthetic experiences, the dramatic presentation of the day's work to the child; but art can of course work only upon the soil of experience; the child must see the world teeming with human activity, but he must observe it in a detached way, rather than as a partic.i.p.ant in its realism and its dull and its unwholesome moods. Then we shall have a content upon which the aesthetic motives can work. In this idealized industrial experience, we try to make visible the real motives which in the future must dominate the world's work.

All this may seem too general and too ideal, but if we do not begin with broad plans, and if we do not take a far look ahead, we shall fail now at a vital point of the social development of man. The result at which we aim is _the socialisation of the motives of industry_. We make work voluntary by bringing into it persuasively and insidiously deep motives and interests which represent social purposes and ideals.

Given these motives and the beginning of a change from the relatively more individualistic to the relatively more social spirit in industry, the actual means of cooperation would not be far to seek. Work would become by its own inner development under such conditions, something different from an unwilling service of the individual, a compulsory service to family or state. Everything we can do to give to children and to all workers an intelligent appreciation of the social meaning and purpose of work is both industrial training and an education in basic social relations. This socialization of the moods of work and the founding of them upon the necessary experiences, is as important as anything education is at the present time called upon to do. Given this foundation, precisely the form industrial education, in the ordinary sense, shall take, seems to be of secondary importance.

Turning now to another phase of the industrial problem on its educational side, one cannot escape the conviction that the rising tide of the powers of labor presents urgent problems to the educator.

The common man, as we call him, is to take a greater part in the affairs of business and state, and the education of the common man with reference to the especial capacity, as worker, in which he seeks this new position, becomes highly important. This education of the people with specific reference to work is of course something more than teaching vocation. Education, indeed, with any explicit attention to labor itself, whether in its industrial or its political implications, is but a part of the educational problem. All education for the democratic life is involved in it. The whole problem of specialization comes up, and indeed all questions of social education in one form or another.

Specialization, in particular, can no longer be treated with the indifference that has so far characterized our industrial education.

The ideal of fitting the boy for work is as nave in one way as that of our generalized education is in another. _If the war has taught us anything beyond a doubt, it is that specialization must never be such a differentiation as shall infringe upon the common ground of human nature._ We must take this into consideration in all our vocational training. We must preserve an ident.i.ty in all the fundamental experiences. In a democracy this appears to be wholly necessary, and to outweigh all considerations of efficiency. The individual must be kept whole and generic, so that each individual is an epitome, so to speak, of the virtues and the ideals of the nation. The humanity of the man must be first, and his special function secondary. This does not imply that we must not give to all children individual and vocational training. All must be directed towards life work. We may even carry vocational training further than it has been extended anywhere as yet, but we must see that industry occupies the right place in the school, and in all educational processes. It is neither the whole method and purpose of the school, nor something simply added to the curriculum. It is a phase of the life of the school, both in its active and its receptive states. The child must live in an atmosphere in which both present and future usefulness are a.s.sumed and provided for. The idea of a life of work must be made early an accepted plan of the child, and it must be one of the entirely general tasks of the school to see that the tendency of the child in the school is toward occupation. Occupation must in fact be made to grow naturally out of the life the child leads in the school.

All those disharmonies in our industrial countries such as the prevalent discord between working and capitalistic cla.s.ses seem, we have said, to be social rather than economic in nature. Social education, then, is the main cure for them, if we wish to attack them at their root. The motives of pride and the sense of inferiority have to be dealt with in a practical manner. We sometimes quite overlook the importance of habitual moods or states of feeling in society and in the school. These moods are powers which motivate conduct. Any form of education in which the poorer and less favored are given an opportunity to acquire the experiences, and through these the moods, that especially distinguish the more favored cla.s.s, strikes at the general disparity in society which takes form in such antagonisms as that between capital and labor. It is not difference in degree but difference in kind of experience that appears to separate the cla.s.ses from one another. The difference seems to lie in those parts of life which are sometimes believed to be the unessentials and which indeed our whole educational policy a.s.sumes apparently to be trivial. _The fundamental differences between the poor and the rich, the favored and the common people, is in the sphere of the aesthetic._ Distinction of manner and an environment rich in aesthetic qualities are the main advantages of the few, as compared with the many. Social experience is what is most needed by the many, but of course this experience can never be gained by making the educational inst.i.tutions merely democratic, and especially social experience cannot be gained in a school in which all situations are studiously avoided in which really significant social relations are likely to be experienced. We gain no social experience in the nave and the highly special activities of the school which for the most part is arranged in such a way as to exclude organized social relations. This is a process in which such leveling as there is tends to be downward, whereas what we need is for all the truly aristocratic elements in our national life to have an opportunity to propagate themselves and to extend to the many. Leaving aside the need of a differently organized social life in the school, we might say that there is hardly a greater need in democratic countries now than that of recruiting the rank and file of teachers from a socially superior cla.s.s. These socially favored individuals have given themselves loyally to the service of country in a time of war, for two if no more of their deepest motives have been appealed to--the dramatic interest and the spirit of _n.o.blesse oblige_. There are duties in times of peace which are quite as important, but which as yet appeal to no strong motive, and have not even been presented in the form of obligation. Once these common tasks were made to appear a part of the fulfillment of duty to country, the way to finding deep satisfaction in them might be opened. Social and dramatic elements would be introduced as a matter of course.

Another need throughout our whole effort to educate all in and for a life of work, one which has appealed to many writers in recent years, is the need of making all the experience of work more creative or more free and animated or joyous in mood. _This means, again, that in all industrial education the mood must be social and the form aesthetic or dramatic._ Social values must be felt through social activity, and the sense of worth in labor and of value of the product which is felt in the social mood must be enhanced by the dramatic form of the activity and the artistic quality of the product. This is also the condition for creative activity. Some writers apparently now see in this need of making the activity of all those who work more creative, more free and more joyous the crucial problem of education and of social adjustment.

This is Russell's constant theme. Helen Marot in "Creative Industry"

says that our problem is to develop an industrial system that shall stimulate and satisfy the native impulse for creative production. It is difficult to see how, by any other educational process than one which is essentially aesthetic and social, we can make much headway toward changing the conception of work from the now prevalent one of a means of making a living, more or less under compulsion, to that of a voluntary social act done both for its utility from the standpoint of the individual and also because of its social value, and performed to some extent, however humble the work, in the spirit of the creative artist.

For the adult generation that now works (and for how many generations to come we do not know), we cannot hope to make ideal conditions. Work will still be work, with its evil implications, as toil without complete inner satisfaction, and without sufficiently free motives.

But the direction in which practical changes should be made seems clear. There must still be a lessening of the hours of routine labor, until there are perhaps no longer more than six or five devoted to vocation. The remainder of life is not for idleness but must be in part productive or the lessened hours of routine will not be possible.

There must be possibility of both practical and recreational activities outside the regular day's work, as well as for educational work, all of these in part at least publicly provided for. This activity may serve many purposes and accomplish a variety of results.

As educational it ought to open up new opportunities; it must fulfill the desire for creative activity; it must be a socializing power; it must lead to an appreciation of the nature and value of skill and efficiency; it must introduce all to the higher world of art and the intellectual life. Above all it must impress deeply the truth that growth in the normal life is never ended.

The third phase of industrial education which is to be emphasized now is the teaching of what we have called _thrift_. This idea of thrift, for pedagogical purposes, is equivalent to the broad principle that purposes in this world are achieved by the expenditure of force--by the control of energies which are not unlimited in amount as now controlled and which are subject to definite laws. Since objects which are to be secured by the expenditure of energy differ in value it is a part of this education in thrift, indeed an important and necessary part, to give to all such knowledge and powers of appreciation as will enable them to recognize that which is essential, and to give the essential and the unessential their proper places in the whole economy of life.

It will never be right of course to inspire a parsimonious spirit in regard either to goods or to energies. Life itself and all its energies must be given freely; material goods must not be evaluated too minutely. The miserly life is not what we wish to teach. Still there is a wise att.i.tude toward all material things and toward all values which recognizes goods as means to ends, which places true values high and demands economy in the use of all things that must be conserved in order to attain them.

It must be a part of the work of physiology, which thus branches out into psychology, to teach to all the efficient use of human energies.

These energies are the precious things in the world; they must be valued and respected as the source of all efficiency. The idea of economy of movement, from this standpoint, has an important place in all motor or industrial or manual training. Processes must be regarded as definite series of acts in which we may approach perfection. Technique in motor operations is not to be regarded lightly as a mere finish applied to useful acts. It is the expression of an ideal of efficiency and economy. Children recognize the value of technique in games; its wider and more practical application needs to be impressed.

In the same way knowledge of the precise values and uses of material things ought to be imparted. The war has had the effect of showing all of us the values of materials and the relations of materials to one another. It has given us a sense of the great powers of natural wealth, and also of its limitations and the weak points that exist now in our economy. The war has proved to us how closely related the things we use lavishly and wastefully may be to the most ideal possessions. It has shown that the production, the distribution and the use of wealth of all kinds are parts of the accomplishment of the main purposes of life and that all these things belong to the sphere of _duty_; and that no individual can escape obligations in regard to economy.

Education, therefore, must lay foundations both for an understanding of economy and for the practice of it. First of all, every individual, we may a.s.sume, ought to have some experience in the production of the elementary forms of material goods, and in the conversion of them into higher values and in their conservation. We looked carefully to some of these activities as a war measure. It is hardly less necessary in times of peace. We should teach these things, not simply because the practice of them is educational, but because the practice of them is useful, and is a necessary service, on the part of every individual, to the world. Adding to the world's store of goods and consciousness of the need of doing this directly or indirectly should be regarded as a fundamental duty and habit. To establish both the habit and the sense of duty, we may suppose, a stage is necessary in which the individual's contribution shall be direct and tangible. Hence the value of those educational activities that deal with foods and their conservation.

On a little higher plane, and in a little different way we can apply the same thoughts to the whole cycle of material things. The distribution of wealth is of course in part a technical and a theoretical problem. It is also a practical and a general one. All at least ought to be judges of the waste that now goes on in the industrial life because the "middleman" has occupied such a place of vantage in the economic order. In teaching occupation and in all preparation for vocation ought we not to take this into consideration?