First World War Centennial

LECTURE V

THE NEW MIND: THE EDU­CATIONAL CHALLENGE

LECTURE V

THE NEW MIND: THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE

IN our attempt to define the new mind needed for the new age, we turn now from the field of the political, economic and social changes required to the demands made upon education. What can education do to overcome the perils of the new age? What can education do to insure that the great values of this critical time shall be carried fully over into that new civilization which we seek? At every stage in the facing of the perils of our time—evil inheritances from the war, dis­illusionment, reaction, revolution—better edu­cation is manifestly required. How else shall we share in that new fight for freedom and for a more thoroughgoing democracy, in those enormous constructive efforts demanded, in the impending economic changes? At every stage in the needed incarnation of the great values of our time, too, there is the same neces­sity for an education that shall match the great tasks and opportunities revealed. The need and opportunity, then, are prodigious. Can the educational forces measure up to that need and to that opportunity?

In these last two chapters, dealing with the educational and with the moral and religious challenge of our times, while all that will be said will be presented in the full light of our consideration of the perils and values of the new age, there will probably be a certain gain in simplicity, directness and interest, in not at­tempting detailed comparisons between the different parts of our discussion.

What, then, are some of the demonstrations of the war and of after-the-war conditions that particularly concern educators? And what are some of the consequent demands made upon education to-day?

I

The Power of Education

First of all, the world has probably never seen such a demonstration of the power of education, as in Germany's preparation for her war for world domination. Here was a people virtually made over in fifty years, its standards and ideals reversed. The immoral philosophy of the State as above all moral obligations and the materialistic interpretation of the survival of the fittest had been drilled into the whole nation from kindergarten to university, until it permeated all their life, and they responded as a unit with the same formula, the same gesture, the same emotion. This proof of the stupendous power of education was most im­pressive, and is a distinct challenge to Amer­ican educators to note what tremendous changes can be wrought by education even within limited periods.

At the same time it is solemn warning; not only because it shows how completely educa­tion may be prostituted to evil ends, but also because it reveals so clearly a false conception of the aim of education. The uniformity of result itself betrays the presence and working of a kind of monstrous machine. Education cannot be safely made into mere propaganda, whether for good or evil ends. To regard the pupil simply as means to some ulterior end is itself desecration. His own liberty, his own initiative, his own personality, his own truth to his unique individuality are to be sacredly re­spected. A uniform result, therefore, in edu­cation is itself an evil. As Russell puts it:

If the children themselves were considered, ed­ucation would not aim at making them belong to this party or that, but at enabling them to choose intelligently between the parties; it would aim at making them able to think, not at making them think what their teachers think. Education as a political weapon could not exist if we respected the rights of children.

Germany therefore has two lessons upon education to teach the nations: the power of education and the constant danger of the prosti­tution of education by using it as propaganda.

II

The Value of Education

The crisis of the war and its consequences throw also into relief the indispensable value of education, not simply for the advantage of the individual in competitive struggle, but for the whole good of the race.

In the first place, the war brought out the selfish advantage of education for the indi­vidual himself. College education proved up as an aid to promotion. The extensive educa­tional plans of the Government in the demobili­zation period brought home to many thousands of men the need and gain of further study. And there is no doubt that higher education gained distinctly in prestige during the war. College attendance is increasing, and the care­ful statistics of President Hughes make it seem most likely that it will increase even beyond the capacity of established institutions to meet it. A larger opportunity than the colleges have ever had is now before them. They need to make ready for it by careful forecast and planning. It is the business of American edu­cation to make the most of this generally deep­ened conviction of the value of education.

But even this more selfish side of the value of education—which too often engrosses our attention—is not simply selfish. Education proves to be for the advantage of the indi­vidual commonly because in some way it en­ables him to render a larger service to the community.

But—quite beyond that—there are many things in these after-the-war days that give a great new emphasis to the indispensable value of education for the whole good of the race.

First of all, in these days of unexampled co­operation, we cannot forget that human co­operation, even in its simplest forms, requires some degree of education, and the education must increase as the cooperative task grows in size and complexity.

It is not by accident either that the world­wide trend toward democracy is so uniformly accompanied with the diffusion of education. For democracy as self-government requires for its very existence some education. Even the simpler problems of democracy require judg­ment as to ends to be set, and as to means adapted to those ends. And once again, as the democracy develops, education must develop with it.

We have seen also, in our analysis of this new age in which we are, how inevitably and at multiplied points great constructive world tasks confront us, appalling in their extent and complexity. Good intentions will not solve them. They require the farthest reach of scientific mastery, and the disciplined educa­tion that makes that possible.

On the other hand, knowledge done will not solve any of our greatest problems. When, for example, we think of those larger and more significant goals of social activity, which men are more and more cherishing as alone ade­quate, the indispensable value of education for the production of thoughtful, unselfish, signifi­cant personalities is plain.

Take, for example, that pregnant paragraph of Professor Ward's on the trend of progress, based on a wide comparative study of social programs, already quoted in part, and feel again the imperative demands of such goals for the completest education on the ideal side:

It is increasingly apparent that the new order both in plan and in experiment is forming around certain definite principles. Men everywhere are seeking for a larger measure of equality and for the realization of fraternity in universal service to each other. They are more and more deter­mined to make the social machinery an efficient means to the highest ends of human living. It is becoming manifest that the development of per­sonality is to supersede the acquisition of goods as the goal of social activity and that the fullest development of personality is to be found in the effort to realize the solidarity of the human family.

Surely this critical time can leave us in no doubt as to the indispensable value of educa­tion, and the vastly increased significance of its tasks to-day.

III

The Comparative Failure of Our Education on the Ideal Side

The war was a time of testing for our whole civilization. It tested the adequacy of our edu­cation. Scientific technical education seems to have borne the test very well. College educa­tion, as a training for efficient adaptation to varied situations, seems also, as we have seen, to have fairly proved out. The number of soldiers, on the other hand, who could not read or write English and had but the most meager training made it clear that education had not yet conquered the problem of illiteracy. But I fear that the most serious defect in our edu­cation, which the war brought out, was the comparative failure of our education on the ideal side. The very able British Committee on the Army and Religion, in their careful study of religious conditions in the British Army, assert that nothing was more clear in all their findings than the appalling ignorance on the part of the masses of the British sol­diers of the essentials of religion and of Chris­tianity. Vague superstitions and negations made up far too large a part of their religious ideas. There is evidence which makes one think that much the same thing would have to be said concerning great numbers of our Amer­ican soldiers. [Cf. Religion Among American Men, The Committee on the War and the Re­ligious Outlook, pp. 14 ff.] Indeed one is often struck with the profound ignorance of essential Christianity on the part of many highly trained men even at home. The ease with which many members of flourishing Christian churches, too, are swept into shallow religious fads and into what at best are ex­travagant one-sided emphases is evidence of a similar lack of any thorough religious ground­ing. Fortunately the Christian spirit is often more pervasive than Christian ideas.

But this dire failure in religious education—for that I fear it must be called—suggests a similar comparative failure on the entire ideal side of our education. For the interests of re­ligion were more specifically brought out through the churches, than the finer aspects of education were, either directly through the schools, or through other agencies. Both the experience with soldiers in classes in the mean­ing of the war and the outcomes that ought to follow, and the wide-spread reaction from the war since—in an epidemic of restlessness, lack of initiative, lack of sense of responsibility, and selfish pleasure-seeking—indicate pretty clearly that for great multitudes the more ideal in­terests in education had not been deeply grounded or largely taken on. Clear insight, for example, into the aims of the war, into the meaning of democracy, into the great ethical principles of the social consciousness,—to say nothing of aesthetic appreciation—was too gen­erally lacking.

Now this comparative failure—under the great test of war—of our education on its ideal side is of vital concern; for it touches the whole deeper life of the people, and their fitness for a great forward step. It not only calls for great new emphases in education but challenges our whole educational process, and compels us to ask whether something is not fundamentally at fault in our present educational aims, spirit and method. And these all we need to ex­amine in the light of the present world-situa­tion, though all three are closely interrelated.

IV

The End of Education

In the first place, what should be the end of education? What light have these critical times to throw upon it? There is need of some careful, discriminating thinking here, for we are all too prone to regard education as some kind of propaganda, as an opportunity to train the race into our ideas and ideals.

To begin with, it is too late to forget that education must have both an individual and a social goal, in harmony with one another, and with the laws of human development, personal and social.

1. We may appeal confidently to the guid­ing principle in our whole discussion—the supreme ethical and religious principle of rever­ence for personality, the deep-going sense of the priceless value and inviolable sacredness of every person—to give us our ruling educa­tional ideal, and to help us to solve the really difficult paradox of a true education. For the principle of reverence for personality involves inevitably both respect for one's own person­ality, and respect for the liberty and personality of others. It is at the base, therefore, as self-respect, of a true individualism, and, as respect for others, of a true socialism. It combines thus both "mental and spiritual fellowship among men," and "mental and spiritual inde­pendence on the part of the individual"—to use Herrmann's most suggestive paradoxical summary of the moral law.

Our principle suggests, thus, both the indi­vidual and the social goal in education; for the individual goal, the full development of a free, independent but reverent personality; and for the social goal, a developed society of such personalities. And each goal is necessary to the other, and cannot be dissociated from it.

2. On the individual side, education looks to the full development of a certain kind of person whom we have described as free and in­dependent but reverent. He might be char­acterized perhaps by the single word reverent, or by the single word thoughtful, taking that word in its full sweep. For the thoughtful man is a thinking man, discerning the laws of life, seeing things in proportion, a considerate man, and a man of inner integrity, intellectual and spiritual.

This whole principle of reverence is so fundamentally spiritual that there is gain in bringing forward at this point the precise moral and religious characteristics of that new mind for which the crisis of this new age calls. Jesus defined that new mind with singular fidelity in the Beatitudes. The men, He said, who were to be salt and light for the new age, were those characterized by these qualities: the humility of the open mind, penitence, self-con­trol at its highest, the earnest pursuit of char­acter, sympathy with men, reverence toward men, promoting peace among men, sacrificing for men. These qualities are none of them dominating or enslaving. They are all rever­ent. They are all indispensable to a fine society. They are the basic personal and social qualities upon which every new age must build. They constitute a true ideal for moral and re­ligious education to attain.

3. On the social side, education looks to that society of developed free, independent, reverent personalities which is the goal of all human progress. Here a true education may be said to be furnishing the conditions for fruitful and thoroughgoing cooperation. It may be said, also, to be answering the un­conscious questions of growing youth to the race: What are you trying to do? How far have you got? Where can I help? In other words, education may be here conceived as bringing the individual, as I have elsewhere said, to a personal sharing in the great intel­lectual and spiritual achievements of the race: the scientific spirit and method, the historical spirit, the philosophic mind, aesthetic apprecia­tion, the social consciousness with its great ethical implications, and religious discernment and commitment.

Here again, as in the Beatitudes, to which these racial spiritual achievements are strangely akin, the emphasis is all on the qualitative spirit, upon a kind of person, not upon the dogmatic content of certain views. These qualities do not call anywhere for the dominat­ing, enslaving attitude in education. On the contrary, they will be best taught where they are best embodied, where the reverent spirit is most manifest.

4. But, it will be said: Are we not bound to teach the truth to our pupils? Undoubtedly. There are great essential and inspiring truths about the world and men and God involved in this whole theory and process of education. Our guiding principle itself implies a great truth concerning human nature. And we should try to help our pupils to the truth in all realms. But this does not justify the dominat­ing, over-riding, dogmatic attitude in teaching. The parallel between the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of duty is at this point very close. The true father must say, as Patterson DuBois puts it: not, "I will conquer that child what­ever it may cost him"; but, "I will help that child to conquer himself, whatever it may cost me." So in trying to bring another into the truth, one must remember—what Christ so constantly had in mind—that neither truth nor goodness can be laid on another from without. Truth must be earned. The dogmatic method, therefore, from the start, is in danger of sub­stituting a false process for a true one, even when one is most certain concerning the full truth of his own view. That, I fear, is what we have too often done in education.

But more than this is to be remembered in this pursuit of the truth. Both the scientific spirit and the first Beatitude make the humble open mind the first condition of coming into the truth. Now that humble open mind must be retained by the teacher as well as by the pupil, for truth's own sake. The teacher comes to the child with humility and faith, try­ing reverently to make possible that new ray of light on the truth which absolute fidelity to the individuality of this soul may bring. Even for the sake of those truths and views about which the dogmatist is most concerned, there­fore, if he looks for growth at all, he must keep the completely reverent spirit.

In this question of the pursuit of truth, there is still another aspect to be borne in mind. Truth, it was long ago said, needs only an open field. Truth comes to be, that is, not by men keeping silent about it, but by every man bear­ing honest testimony to that measure of truth it has been given him to see, though with clear and tolerant consciousness that others have much to teach him. There is in this attitude a true combination of self-respect and respect for others. On the other hand, it is also true that in the relation of teacher and pupil, as in the relation of parent and child, there must be great care that the older and maturer person­ality should not over-ride the younger and less mature personality. Still, if that condition is fulfilled, the teacher may not only rightfully enough at the right time—which will be after the pupil has had his own unhurried oppor­tunity to reach a conclusion of his own—bear his testimony to the truth in the matter under discussion; but also may be said to owe that testimony to the pupil, as one element in the complete data on which the pupil must finally act.

A chief reason, we may be sure, for the com­parative failure of our education on the ideal side, is to be found in our failure to see the true end in education; in our failure in the reverent spirit, and so in our willingness to substitute a short, false dogmatic method for a true and reverent one. There is no cheap and easy and lazy way to achieve education on the ideal side. It has spiritual conditions. It is comparatively easy to get from a pupil external and conventional conformity. To get a gen­uine inner life of his own is another matter.

V

The Spirit of Education

So closely interwoven are the end, the spirit, and the method of education, that, in the dis­cussion of the ends of education, I have neces­sarily anticipated much that also indicates the spirit and the method of education.

As to the spirit of education, it has been al­ready clearly implied that the whole conception and process of education must be permeated through and through with the spirit of rever­ence for personality,—one's own, and that of others. And respect for others includes dis­tinct respect both for the liberty of others and for the sanctity of their personality. The true teacher, therefore, will abhor the spirit of the boss at any point, will leave large scope for free action, and will know that the one holy ex­istence in the world is a person. And with the Christ, he will stand outside the door of the heart, to knock. He will not force the door. It is refreshing to find so beautiful an expres­sion of this indispensable spirit of reverence, which is so seldom rightly valued, as Bertrand Russell gives:

The man who has reverence will not think it his duty to "mould" the young. He feels in all that lives, but especially in human beings, and most of all in children, something sacred, indefi­nable; unlimited, something individual and strangely precious, the growing principle of life, an embodied fragment of the dumb striving of the world. In the presence of a child he feels an unaccountable humility—a humility not easily defensible on any rational ground, and yet some­how nearer to wisdom than the easy self-con­fidence of many parents and teachers. The out­ward helplessness of the child and the appeal of dependence make him conscious of the responsi­bility of a trust. His imagination shows him what the child may become, for good or evil, how its impulses may be developed or thwarted, how its hopes must be dimmed and the life in it grow less living, how its trust will be bruised and its quick desires replaced by brooding will. All this gives him a longing to help the child in its own battle; he would equip and strengthen it, not for some outside end proposed by the State or by any other impersonal authority, but for the ends which the child's own spirit is obscurely seeking. The man who feels this can wield the authority of an educator without infringing the principle of liberty.

And a spirit like that is peculiarly needed just now in all our education. The seeming fractiousness of the younger generation may unconsciously reflect this need. For as our claim on life becomes more and more not sim­ply a demand for possessions but for creative worth-while activities and reverent and re­warding personal relations; and as our concep­tion of the goal of human progress, thus, has taken on largeness and significance, and has tended in these critical years to shape itself, as we have seen, in terms of a developed society of reverent personalities;—so the education which is to understand and guide these new aspirations of the race must be instinct with

the supreme principle of reverence for the person.

VI

The Method of Education

1. What shall be the method of the educe­tion which is to guide these large new aims of men? Perhaps it cannot be stated more suc­cinctly or more accurately than in that para­doxical summary of Herrmann's of the moral law—"mental and spiritual fellowship among men; mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual." This is precisely the way in which all that is best in human life goes forward. It is the one great method of all growing values.

It is indeed Christ's own fundamental method: the contagion of the good life, on the one hand; the insistence on the essential sound­ness of the individual life, on the other. For, on the one hand, the men of the new mind de­fined in the Beatitudes were to be the salt that keeps the earth's life sound; the light that en­lightens the world's darkness; the leaven to leaven the whole lump of humanity; the seed of the new living kingdom of men. This is the method of the contagion of the good life, of mental and spiritual fellowship among men. On the other hand, the salt must not have lost its saltness; the light must not have gone out; the leaven must not be spoiled; the seed must not be a dead seed. This is the insistence on the steady soundness of the individual life used, on "mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual" It is in exact conformity to this principle that Christ is nowhere satisfied that men should take truth or life on externally, from without, or simply on authority,—even His own. He knows that, in very deed, truth and life cannot so come to any one. He insists, therefore, that men shall see for themselves and decide for themselves,—shall come into insights, de­cisions, convictions, ideals, hopes, that are truly their own;—that they shall have person­ally shared in His thought and life.

This, too, is the method by which scientific discoveries alone get their full fruition. The original discoverer, for example, of the Roent­gen ray, shares his discovery with all other workers in his field—the method of fellow­ship. But if that fellowship is to produce any results, there must be not merely routine repe­tition of the discoverer's work, but honest in­dependent investigation, alert for new phe­nomena and relations—the method of inde­pendence. Only so will there be real verifica­tion, and real extension of the original dis­covery.

It is in the same fashion that there comes that personal sharing in those great intellectual and spiritual achievements of the race—the scientific spirit and method, the historical spirit, he philosophic mind, aesthetic appreciation, the social consciousness with its great ethical im­plications; and religious discernment and com­mitment—in which we saw education might be said to consist.

In fact, this is the one method of any worth­while society among men. The individual needs fellowship with others at every point, to supplement the meagerness of his own view­point, his own limited experience. On the other hand, that fellowship will have nothing to give if there is not mental and spiritual in­dependence on the part of the individuals com­posing the fellowship. It is hardly open to doubt, I suspect, that in American education we have not sufficiently stressed the independ­ence side.

In every department and field of education, in its every aspect, this, then, is the essential method—mental and spiritual fellowship and mental and spiritual independence. It will help keep sound and vital everything we attempt in education. The effectiveness of the method lies in this, that it admits no sham or pretense at any point. It seeks absolute reality.

2. What more needs to be said concerning the method of education grows right out of the laws of human nature. The pupil's develop­ment must be in line with the fundamental laws of his own being, and his education, thus, be in truth a vital process, simply a kind of hasten­ing of what comes from normal living itself. For education ought to be just that—hastened living.

What is most essential here is suggested by what I have elsewhere called the four great practical inferences from modern psychology: the complexity of life; the unity of man's nature; the central importance of will and action; and the concreteness of the real, leading to emphasis on the personal. From the first inference comes the necessity of a store of per­manent and valuable interests—one of the great ends of education—and of realizing that life is completely interrelated in all its parts and cannot be sharply divided off nor summed up in short and simple formulas; but rather has its constant paradoxes which we cannot safely ignore. It is this complexity which Lecky has in mind in his Map of Life, and which he calls "the importance of compromise in prac­tical life." It is this upon which James is in­sisting also when he calls for "the reinstate­ment of the vague and inarticulate to its proper place in our mental life." The second great inference contends that we must keep con­stantly in mind the unity of man's nature, and recognizes that we cannot tear ourselves down at one point and leave the rest of our life un­affected. affected. It demands that all sides of man's nature are to be taken into account. It sug­gests, too, the importance of remembering the mutual influence of body and mind. The third great inference, the central importance of will and action, indicates that work—adequate ex­pressive activity—is one of the greatest means to character, influence and happiness alike; as the mood of work—the objective, self-forget­ful mood—is a prime condition of the finest living. The fourth inference gives a like em­phasis to personal association as the greatest of all means for largeness of life, and to re­spect for personality, including self-respect and respect for others, as the supreme condition.

The proper fulfilment of the function of edu­cation, then, requires as its great means, first, a life sufficiently complex to give acquaintance with the great fundamental facts of the world, and to call out the entire man; second, the com­pletest possible expressive activity on the part of the student; and third, personal association with broad and wise and noble lives. And the corresponding spirit demanded in education must be, first, broad and catholic in both senses—as responding to a wide range of interests, and looking to the all-round development of the individual; second, objective rather than self-centered and introspective; and third, imbued with the fundamental convictions of the social consciousness. These are always the greatest and the alone indispensable means and condi­tions in a complete education, and they contain in themselves the great sources of character, of happiness, and of social efficiency. The supreme opportunity, in other words, that edu­cation should offer is opportunity to use one's full powers in a wisely chosen complex envi­ronment, in association with the best—and all this in an atmosphere, catholic in its interests, objective in spirit and method, and demo­cratic, unselfish and finely reverent in its per­sonal relations.

Education is inevitably impoverished if it fails to take account of the rich complexity of life, of the intertwined unity of man's nature, of the demand of the whole nature of man for expressive activity, of the fact that he is made, in every fiber of his being, body and soul, for personal relations. Now it is impossible to believe, in view of such a revelation of the nature of men, that the narrow economic theory of human progress and human happi­ness that makes man's one great desire posses­sion of things is justified. No wonder that Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction is largely a rebellion against this "possessive" theory of human life. No wonder that he says: "To me, the chief thing to be learnt through the war has been a certain view of the springs of human action, what they are, and what we may legitimately hope that they will become."

VII

Other Needed Emphases in Education

Assuming, now, what has been said as to the power, value, end, spirit, and method of edu­cation, what other emphases are needed in edu­cation to-day? They can be only suggested.

1. A crucial time of testing like the Great War suggests at once that we must at least make certain that there is no sham, no pretense, no mere going through the motions in any part of our education, but absolute reality. At the very best, our task is overwhelming. There must be no toy tools.

2. In the second place, if they are not to play with their task, educational institutions must have greatly increased resources, espe­cially for salaries for teachers. The present high cost of living only accentuates here a constant need. For of the teacher it must be said, not only that the labourer is worthy of his hire, but also that he is worthy to choose for himself his own lines of self-sacrifice, and not have them forced upon him. In a democracy, especially, it is also desirable that besides strong state educational institutions there should be strong independent institutions as well, to in­sure variety and wholesome rivalry, and also to emphasize the ideal aspects of education in a way hardly possible to the state. But com­parison with the great wealth of state-sup­ported institutions becomes daily more and more difficult. If the values of the inde­pendent institutions are as important as men have professed to believe, there is no cheap and easy way out. Great resources must be made available. This is a part of the signifi­cance of the educational aspect of the Inter-Church World Movement, and of other great educational campaigns.

In the meantime, in the interests of honest service, where an institution finds its work growing beyond its resources, limitation in the number of students may well be suggested.

3. To be sure that our education is fitting closely into the needy life of our time, it is particularly important now that education should furnish in a kind of ideal form the con­ditions of a full normal life, in line with the psychological laws already considered.

This would call for various particulars, in addition to the larger considerations already covered:—the physical and psychological study

THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE l6l

of each pupil, to save from needless handicaps and to give a guidance scientifically based; an intelligent comprehensive physical educational program, with emphasis on out-of-door sports and mass athletics, free from professionalism and commercialism; and, fitting into this, a constructive recreation program as a legitimate and needed part of the educational process. War statistics at this point are impressive.

The vital and practical relations of all sub­jects taught ought also to be brought out, even in liberal education; not primarily at all for vocational ends, though they are important, but to see the subject in its setting in the real world; to insure a better grasp of it. And to induce that intensive mastery that is more likely to obtain where the vocational ends are in mind. In reference to all practical sub­jects, it deserves emphasis, too, that it is not the subject of a course which determines whether it may be legitimately included in liberal training, but the way in which it is taught. Even the most practical subject can be handled in such broad, scientific and thoroughgoing fashion as to make it indubi­tably cultural in its effect. In any case, the closer relation to concrete life is likely to help keep our education real at every point. There is often an artificialness about academic life that is a direct hindrance, rather than help, to a genuine education. The student's common de­sire to separate responsibility from freedom is an illustration; as is also his frequent conspicu­ous waste of opportunity. It is cause for con­gratulation that the pressure of numbers upon our higher institutions of learning is likely to help to crowd out the idler from the privileges he abuses.

As to industrial education, there is real force in this labour declaration:

It is also important that the industrial educa­tion which is being fostered and developed should have for its purpose not so much training for efficiency in industry as training for life in an industrial society. A full understanding must be had of those principles and activities that are the foundation of all productive efforts. Children should not only become familiar with tools and materials, but they should also receive a thorough knowledge of the principles of human control, of force and matter underlying our industrial rela­tions and sciences. The danger that certain commercial and industrial interests may domi­nate the character of education must be averted by insisting that the workers shall have equal representation on all boards of education or com­mittees having control over vocational studies and training.

4. The severe lessons of the great war press upon education, too, in unexampled fashion the necessity of a training against the materialistic possessive valuations of life, with their inevitable tragedy for both individual and nation; as well as for a training against the deification of force and the intoxication of power, and the consequent desire to play the tyrant. The very spirit of genuine education will almost unconsciously guard against these perils.

5. Positively, the present world crisis lays upon education the task of training, as never before, for a reverent and more thoroughgoing democracy. The very principle of reverence for personality, made supreme in education, should itself insure such training, for it makes the school itself in the whole spirit of it a rational ethical democracy in which it can never be forgotten that self-government neces­sarily involves self-discipline.

6. It is not too much to say that every one of the larger aspects of the war—as we have earlier reviewed them—makes clear the neces­sity of the international mind for every nation and for every citizen of the nation that means to count intelligently and with full value in the life of the world. One of the great les­sons of the war, for example, was the exten­sion of the moral law from individuals to nations. That means that selfish isolation, the refusal to take other nations into our thoughts and plans and cooperative endeavour, is as damnable and damning in a nation as in an in­dividual. The education to-day that does not teach men world-vision, world-feeling, and how to think in world-terms, is recreant to the trust given it in this age.

7. Once more, the comparative failure of our education on the ideal side makes unmis­takable the dire need of definite, discriminating but tolerant moral and religious education. We must learn, as never before, how to bring men to insights, convictions, ideals, decisions and hopes, which are no imitations or echoes of others, but their very own. I need not say more at this point. Two other needed educa­tional emphases are so distinctly moral and religious that, with this, they belong rather to the discussion of the moral and religious chal­lenge of the new age, but need to be mentioned here, as most important educational tasks for this generation.

8. That our civilization was so near to collapse in this world-war meant, we need to remember, that the spiritual roots of our civilization were shallowly grounded, its Chris­tianizing too superficial. We cannot run away from the great constructive spiritual task thus arising. All the ideal interests of the race are at stake. And a great share of this responsi­bility rests upon education.

9. Once more, and above all, it concerns American educators that they should not fail to meet the challenge of the greatest ideal achievement of the war: the rare idealism with which America came into the war; the sense of the supremacy of the intangible values; co­operation on an unheard-of scale; the well-nigh universal spirit of sacrifice; and the new revelation of common men. These, as we saw, are great enduring racial achievements and great possible permanent spiritual assets, and therefore a perpetual challenge to American educators themselves to incarnate these values, and to help all American citizens to carry them over into the time and tasks of peace. For these great ideal achievements constitute an enduring ground of appeal in education, in­estimably precious and powerful. These are our permanent trust and resource. Has edu­cation on the ideal side ever had a greater opportunity?