“The church? You mean that building over there, I suppose? That isn’t a church—not in the sense you mean. It’s our meeting place. You see, since your time churches have come to be used so much for meetings that when our architecture group came to plan an assembly hall it was quite natural for them to choose the ecclesiastical style. Anyway, I understand it’s a return to their original purpose....”
“But,” I said, “this school is just like the world outside!”
“Except,” he said, “in one particular. In the world outside we still have certain vestiges of class privilege and exploitation—considerably toned down from their former asperities, but still recognizable as relics of capitalism. In the school we have play, production and exchange as they would exist in the outside world if these things were to be done and managed wholly with the intention of making better and wiser and happier citizens. The difference, of course, is simply that one is run with an educational and the other with a productive intention.”
“The difference seems to me,” I remarked, “that your school is really democratic and your adult world isn’t quite.”
“That is one way of putting it,” he conceded.
“And I should think,” I said warmly, “that after going to these schools, your people would want the rest of the world run on exactly the same plan.”
“It does rather have that effect,” he admitted cautiously. “In fact, the Educational party, as it is called, is very rapidly rising into power. Since you are unfamiliar with our politics, I should explain that the Educational party was formed, after the unfortunate events of 1925, by the amalgamation of the United Engineers, the O. G. U., and the Farmers’ League. Its chief figure is the sainted Madame Goldman, the organizer of the Women’s Battalion in the First Colonial War....”
“What surprises me,” I interrupted, “is that your conservatives—”
“Tut! we have no conservatives—they call themselves Moderates.”
“I am surprised, then, that your Moderates allow such schools to exist! Of course they will revolutionize any society in which they are!”