Democracy
In a recent book H.G. Wells says that education has lost its way. Whether we give assent to this statement or not, it must be admitted that it is a direct challenge to the school, the home, the pulpit, the press, to government, and to society. If education has indeed lost its way, the responsibility rests with these educational agencies. If education has lost its way, these agencies must unite in a benevolent conspiracy to help it find it again. The war has brought these agencies into much closer fellowship and they are now working in greater harmony than ever before. This is due to the fact that they are working to a common end, that they are animated by a common purpose. The war is producing many readjustments and a new scale of values. Many things that were once considered majors are now thought of as minors, and the work of reconstruction has only just begun. Civilization is now in the throes of a re-birth and people are awakening from their complacency and thinking out toward the big things of life. They are lifting their gaze above and beyond party, and creed, and racial ties, and territorial boundaries, and fixing it upon their big common interests. More and more has their thinking been focused upon democracy, until this has become a watchword throughout the world. About this focal point people’s thoughts are rallying day by day, and their community of feeling and thinking is leading to community of action.
Primarily, democracy is a spiritual impulse, the quintessence of the Golden Rule. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” and this spiritual quality inevitably precedes and conditions democracy in its outward manifestations. Feeling, thinking, willing, doing—these are the stages in the law of life. The Golden Rule in action has its inception in the love of man for his fellow-man. The action is but the visible fruitage of the invisible spiritual impulse. The soldier in the trench, the sailor on the ship, the nurse in the hospital, the worker in the factory, and the official at his desk, all exemplify this principle. The outward manifestations of the inward impulse, democracy, are many and varied, and the demands of the war greatly increased both the number and variety. People essayed tasks that, a few years ago, would have seemed impossible; nor did they demean themselves in so doing. The production and conservation of food has become a national enterprise that has enlisted the active coöperation of men, women, and children of all classes, creeds, and conditions. Rich and poor joined in the work of war gardens, thinking all the while not only of their own larders but quite as much of their friends across the sea. And while they helped win the war, they were winning their own souls, for they were yielding obedience to a spiritual impulse and not a mere animal desire. Thus Americans and the people of other lands, like children at school, are learning the lesson of democracy. Moreover, they are now appalled at the wastage of former years and at the cheapness of many of the things that once held their interest.
In this process of achieving an access of democracy it holds true that “There is no impression without expression.” Each reaction of the spirit tends to groove the impression into a habit, and this process has had a thousand exemplifications before our eyes since the opening of the war. People who were only mildly inoculated with the democratic spirit at first became surcharged with this spirit because of their many reactions. They have been obeying the behests of spiritual impulse, working in war gardens, eliminating luxuries, purchasing bonds, contributing to benevolent enterprises, until democracy is their ruling passion. Every effort a man puts forth in the interest of humanity has a reflex influence upon his inner self and he experiences a spiritual expansion. So it has come to pass that men and women are doing two, three, or ten times the amount of work they did in the past and doing it better. Their aroused and enlarged spiritual impulses are the enginery that is driving their minds and bodies forward into virgin territory, into new and larger enterprises, and thus into a wider, deeper realization of their own capabilities. So the leaven of democracy is working through difficulties of surpassing obduracy and resolving situations that seemed, in the past, to be beyond human achievement. And of democracy it may be said, as of Dame Rumor of old, “She grows strong by motion and gains power by going. Small at first through fear, she presently raises herself into the air, she walks upon the ground and lifts her head among the clouds.” On the side of democracy, at any rate, it would seem that education is beginning to find its way again.
In the thinking of most people democracy is a form of government; but primarily it is not this at all. Rather it is a spiritual attitude. The form of government is an outward manifestation of the inward feeling. Our ancestors held democracy hidden in their hearts as they crossed the ocean long before it became visible as a form of government. The form of government was inevitable, seeing that they possessed the feeling of democracy, and that they were journeying to land in obedience to the dictates of this feeling. In education for democracy the form of government is an after-consideration; that will come as a natural sequence. The chief thing is to inoculate the spirits of people with a feeling for democracy. This germ will grow out into a form of government because of the unity of feeling and consequent thinking. When this spiritual attitude is generated, not only does the form of government follow, but people meet upon the plane of a common purpose and give expression to their inner selves in like movements. They come to realize that, in a large way, each one is his brother’s keeper. They are drawn together in closer sympathy and good-will; artificial barriers disappear; and they all become interested in the common good. Their interests, purposes, and activities become unified, and life becomes better and richer. Actuated by a common impulse, they exemplify what Kipling says in his Sons of Martha:
Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that,
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.
As Dr. Henry van Dyke well says, “It is the silent ideal in the hearts of the people which molds character and guides action.”
It will be admitted without qualification that the school, when well administered, constitutes a force that a altogether favorable to the development of the spirit of democracy, and no one will deny that democracy is a worthy goal toward which the activities of the school should be directed. It is easy to see just how geography, for instance, may be made a means to this end. The members of the class represent many conditions of society, but in the study of geography they unite in a common enterprise and have interests in common. Thus their spirits merge and, for the time, they become unified in a common quest. They become coordinates and confederates in this quest of geography, and the spirit of democracy expands in an atmosphere so favorable to growth. These pupils may differ in race, in creed, or in color, but these differences are submerged in the zeal of a common purpose. Lines of demarcation are obliterated and they are drawn together because of their thinking and feeling in unison. The caste system does not thrive in the geography class and snobbery languishes. The pupils have the same books, the same assignments, the same teacher, and share alike in all the privileges and pleasures which the class provides. Their grades are given on merit, with no semblance of discrimination. In short, they achieve the democratic attitude of spirit by means of the study of geography.
If the teacher holds democracy in mind, all the while, as the goal of endeavor, she will find abundant opportunities to inculcate and develop the democratic ideal. By tactful suggestion she directs the activities of the children into channels that lead to unity of purpose. Where help is needed, she arranges that help may be forthcoming. Where sympathy will prove a solace, sympathy will be given, for sympathy grows spontaneously in a democratic atmosphere. Books, pictures, and flowers come forth as if by magic to bear their kindly messages and to render their appointed service. By the subtle alchemy of her very presence, the teacher who is deeply imbued with the spirit of democracy fuses the spirits of her pupils and causes them to blend in the pursuit of truth. Thus she brings it to pass that the spirit of democracy dominates the school and each pupil comes to feel a sense of responsibility for the well-being of all the others. So the school achieves the goal of democracy by means of the studies pursued, and the pupils come to experience the altruism, the impulse to serve, and the centrifugal urge of the democratic spirit.