XXVI. Education in 1947 A. D.
BY way of epilogue, let us be Utopian, after the fashion of Plato and H. G. Wells. Let me, as a returned traveller from the not-too-distant future, picture for you concretely the vaster implications of education in, say, the year 1947, as illustrated by the public school in the village of Pershing, N. Y.
“But which is the school-building?” I asked my guide.
He laughed. “I am surprised at you,” he said. “Surprised that you should ask such a question!”
“Why?” I demanded innocently.
“Because,” he said, “in the files of our historical research department I once came across a faded copy of a quaint old war-time publication called the Liberator.[4] It attracted my attention because it appeared to have been edited by a grizzled old fire-eater whom I recently met, Major General Eastman, the head of our War College. In those days, it seems, he thought he was a pacifist. Time’s changes!”
“Ah, yes—General Eastman. I remember him well,” I said. “But what has that got to do with—”
“In that curious little magazine was an article on education. It was signed by you. Don’t you remember what you wrote? Didn’t you believe what you said? Or didn’t you fully realize that you were living in a time when prophecies come true? You ask me where the school-building is. Why, there isn’t any school-building.”