Community Servants
The basis for good citizenship having been laid through habit-formation in the civic virtues, the next step is for the children to learn how these virtues are being embodied in the people round about them who are serving them and their families. The baker, the milkman, the grocer, the dressmaker, the shoemaker, the carpenter, the plumber, the painter, the physician, the druggist, the nurse—these are the community servants who come closest to the life-experience of the children.
How dependent each member of a community—especially an urban community—is on all the rest, and how important it is that each shall contribute what he can to the community’s welfare, are illustrated by the stories of the Duwell family. Here a typical though somewhat ideal American family is shown in its everyday relations, as a constant recipient of the services rendered by those community agents who supply the fundamental need of food, clothing, shelter, and medical attendance. The children in the class will learn, with the Duwell children, both the actual services that are rendered and the family’s complete dependence on those services. Moreover, they will acquire the splendid working ideals of interdependence and coöperation. And, finally, they will discover that the adult citizens who are rendering them these services are embodying the very civic virtues in which they themselves have been so carefully trained.