Community Civics and Rural Life

by Arthur William Dunn

3. The consequent necessity for cooperation (team work);

4. Government as a means of securing teamwork for the common good. These ideas are set up in the first few chapters and exemplified in the remaining chapters. They are easily grasped by young citizens when DEMONSTRATED by reference to their own observation and experience, which the text and the accompanying topics seek as far as possible to compel. The last few chapters contain an analysis of our governmental mechanism which seeks to answer the question, How far does our government provide the organization, the leadership, and the control over leadership necessary to secure the teamwork which the preceding chapters have shown to be essential?

The present volume is larger than The Community and the Citizen. The author believes that this is an advantage, especially for pupils in communities where supplementary materials are not so easily available. The increased length is due chiefly to the liberal incorporation of concrete illustrative and explanatory matter. Young students need larger textbooks, provided the additional matter clothes the skeleton with living flesh.

Whether based on this textbook or some other, however, community civics cannot be successfully taught if it is made primarily a textbook study. The word "demonstration" has been used advisedly in the paragraphs above as applied to the ideas to be taught. The text sets up ideas, interprets and exemplifies them; but "demonstration" can be made only as the pupils draw upon their own observation and experience. Hence, numerous SUGGESTIVE topics are interspersed throughout to divert attention from the text and to direct it to the actualities of the pupils' experience. Even the topics should not be followed literally in every case, but should be diversified to meet the needs and opportunities of the occasion. But to "omit" such studies as suggested by the topics is to negate the value of community civics.

The successful teacher will seek to extend the pupil's opportunity to participate in group activities both within the school and in the community outside, and will make the fullest possible use of such activities both as a means of demonstrating the operation of the fundamental principles of civic life, and as a means of cultivating "habits, ideals, and attitudes." "Training for citizenship through service" is an essential factor in community civics.

"Community civics" has now been quite definitely assigned to the junior high school grades (see Report of Committee on Social Studies, Bulletin, 1916, No. 28, U.S. Bureau of Education). While the tendency is toward continuous civics instruction in all of these grades, practice still varies greatly. The present text has been written in recognition of this variation and is, in the author's judgment, adapt able to any of the grades in question. If community civics is placed below the ninth grade, however, the author would suggest its distribution over both seventh and eighth grades. An outline suggesting a vital coordination between the civics and the history of these grades, and of particular service in the seventh grade, is given in United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1919, No. 50, Part 3 (a report on Civic Education for the Schools of Memphis, Tenn.).

It may be added that community civics in the junior high school grades will be vastly more effective if it is preceded in the six elementary grades by some such course as that outlined in Citizenship in School and Out (Dunn and Harris, published by D.C. Heath & Company). See also Lessons in Civics for the Six Elementary Grades of City Schools, by Hannah Margaret Harris (Bulletin, 1920, No. 18, U.S. Bureau of Education).

A list of "Readings" is appended to each of the following chapters. While it is not expected that pupils in the grades for which the book is intended will do a great deal of reading outside of the text, an abundance of illustrative material is desirable and much more easily available, even for rural schools, than is often appreciated. Let the pupils USE THEIR GOVERNMENT, in this connection, as freely as possible. A very large part of the references given are to government publications, many of which can be obtained free of cost directly from the departments issuing them, and all of which can be had for a nominal cost from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Useful publications of the state government and of state institutions can usually be had for the asking. In ordering from the Superintendent of Documents the money must be sent in advance (stamps are not accepted). Lists of publications with the prices may be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, or from the several Departments of the Government.

Frequent reference is made to Lessons in Community and National Life. These are issued in three pamphlets (Series A, B, and C) by the United States Bureau of Education, at 15 cents per pamphlet. They contain a large amount of illustrative material. A very few books are referred to in certain chapters because of their especial value when obtainable. Among these are two collections of patriotic selections valuable because of their emphasis upon national ideals—Long's American Patriotic Prose (D.C. Heath & Company), and Foerster and Pierson's American Ideals (Houghton Mifflin Company). Other similar collections will be found useful.

The illustrations of the book, with comparatively few exceptions, are from photographs furnished by various departments of the United States Government.