DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC EDUCATION

WHEN England was in the process of adopting universal suffrage, Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, is said to have remarked, "Now we must educate our masters." So everywhere, the approach toward government of the people, by the people, for the people, has made more imperative the need for universal education. As early as 1642 the principle of public responsibility for education was established in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. It later became one of the foremost articles of democratic faith, urged especially by Thomas Jefferson as a necessary basis for the development of democratic government. It was apparent even in simpler times, when our political institutions were in the making, that unless universal suffrage is accompanied by sincere and intelligent discussion of public questions it is an empty form. As public questions become constantly more complex and far-reaching and public leadership becomes more dependent on public opinion, the need of a broad and effective education for the entire people becomes more urgent.

The intelligence needed for citizenship in a democracy is doubtless of no single type or kind, nor is it wholly measurable by any standard test as yet devised. It is, rather, a form of general understanding. Effective citizenship requires also a composite of attitudes, ideals, habits, and abilities, which far outranges a merely intellectual attainment. True education in a democracy be

comes, then, a matter of selection and adaptation to all types of mind. It becomes also a matter of training in judgment, devotion, tolerance, and vision.

These statements imply problems in the organization and conduct of schools which are complex and difficult in the extreme. The schools must help to develop for democracy the human resources of our population. They must recognize limitations in native endowment and help to avoid the democratic tendency to level downward. They must lend themselves to the "redistribution of human talent" for the good of all. Equal opportunity is chiefly a matter of education, or at least it can hardly be secured except through education publicly provided; yet the school must recognize individual differences and tell the truth about individual promise and individual achievement. The school must be at once an open gate of opportunity, a training ground for the common duties of citizenship, and an agency in the selection of those best fitted to lead.

The essays in this section present the problem of education from the standpoint of the nation, and show how vast a labor is involved in the development of education for democracy.

EDUCATING THE NATION

FRANK E. SPAULDING

I

Or the many impressive revelations of the great World War, none was more impressive than that of the supreme importance of education. In Russia and Prussia the whole world witnessed the dire disaster resulting, in the one case, from the lack of universal education, in the other, from misdirected or false education. And both the strength and the weakness of our own country have been easily traceable to the excellencies and the deficiencies respectively of our educational provisions and efforts.

Now is the time to take stock of these impressive revelations; to look into the demands and the opportunities of the future. Now is the time for America to set earnestly about the reorganization and development of her whole school undertaking, that the shortcomings of the past may be promptly corrected, that preparation may be rapidly made to meet the larger opportunities and to bear the heavier responsibilities that are confronting us.

Let us try to sketch in broad outlines merely the outstanding characteristics of an educational programme, indeed a minimum programme, such as is immediately needed in these United States. The programme I am about to present is based on fundamental ideals and principles not inconsistent with those that must control the programme of education of any nation that may hope to become a worthy member of a world league of nations;

and, in the absence of any such effective league, it is a programme of national independence and security.

This programme consists of two parts: first, a brief statement of the objectives of American education for the immediate future; and, second, an outline of the general plans and means calculated to realize these objectives. It need scarcely be remarked that this programme in neither of its parts is a creation out of hand; it is rather, for the most part, a formulation of the objectives that the most advanced practice in American education has already more or less clearly and confidently set for itself, and a systematic presentation of plans and means that experience has shown to be necessary for the realization of these objectives.

The simple, practical, but exalted demand of the British Labor Party for a programme of education which shall "bring effectively within the reach, not only of every boy and girl, but also of every adult citizen, all the training, physical, mental, and moral, literary, technical, and scientific, of which he is capable," sets an educational objective none too advanced for America. Indeed, there will be those to claim, not only that we have long had such an objective, but that we are realizing it.

The mere mention, however, of the scores of thousands of totally illiterate, and the hundreds of thousands of practically illiterate young men sent overseas to fight for justice and intelligent democracy is sufficient evidence that the very first steps, even, in such a lofty objective, have not been approximately realized in America as a whole. The contemplation of this evidence, in the light of the most superficial knowledge of the conditions out of which it has grown, must convince anyone that America generally has never seriously intended that all Americans should know how to read and write even, which is assuredly the first step in bringing "effectively within . . . reach