Education in the use of wealth must now be regarded as a part of moral education. In America we have ignored the necessity of thrift, and the idea of thrift has certainly had no part in education. The proper use of everything we produce or own is a fundamental part of conduct, and it ought to be a persistent theme in education. We have now the interest and incentive that have come from the war, we say, for we have felt, if only remotely, what poverty means, and we have seen that no amount of natural wealth and no degree of civilization can wholly insure us against famine and disaster. We need throughout our national life now, again, something like the old New England conscience in the uses of things, applied in a different way, of course, and now made more effectual by our broader science. The encouragement of this spirit will perhaps make the difference in the end between having a world seriously engaged in progressive tasks with its material forces well in hand, and a world which in all its practical affairs, large and small, is operated according to the principle or the lack of principle of a laissez faire attitude throughout life. Saving in a good cause, and with a clear conscience and determined purpose, is one of the elements of the higher life and is far removed from miserliness. It is a principle of adaptation of means to ends, and that any school which trains this power is reaching fundamental principles of the practical life needs hardly to be said.
The higher uses and appreciation of wealth which we are wont to call plain living and high thinking, the moral idea of philanthropy, the æsthetic values and hygienic implications of the right kind of simplicity must not be omitted from the educational idea of thrift. To impart something of the spirit of restraint and generosity, and to make the child feel what living simply, and with definite purpose, and making means serve one's real ends in life imply, to teach the joys of the higher uses of common things, is no mean achievement. But can we indeed do these things which after all have their main virtue in being general and social, and a part of a program? All we can say is that if we are to have a better order, and if we think education has any place in it, economy in its broadest sense, but economy also as applied to the details of daily life must also have a place in it. It is both fatuous and insincere to talk about good things to come, and not be willing to pay the price in labor and in sacrifice necessary to obtain them honestly. Especially when the price of these things is in itself no demand for the sacrificing of any real good, but quite to the contrary is a summons to a more joyous life, we should be glad to pay it.
CHAPTER IX[ToC]
NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS
The social problems of education that have arisen because of our new world relations and new internal conditions in our own country are of course only special phases of social education as a whole, and social education cannot indeed be separated sharply from other educational questions. There are, however, new demands and new evidences, and new points of view from which we see social education (or better, education in its social aspects), in a somewhat new and different light, as compared with our ideas of the school in the days before the war. We have discussed some of these social problems. Now we must consider them both in their general significance, and also in their more specifically pedagogical aspects.
There appear to be two things that social education needs especially to do now: create and sustain a firmer unity at home—a wider and deeper loyalty on the part of the individual to all the causes and to all the groups to which he is attached; and to make our world-consciousness a more productive state of mind. It is perhaps because such educational proposals as these are generally left in the form of ideals and things hoped for in a distant future, and are not examined to see whether they may be made definite programs, and are legitimate demands to be made now, that we are likely to regard all suggestions of this nature as impracticable. And yet the production of morale at home and a social consciousness adequate for our new relations abroad seems to be a proper demand to make even upon the school. In part, of course, and perhaps largely, the need is first of all for practical relations, but we must consider educationally also the fundamental and creative factors of the psychic process itself which must in the end sustain the relations that we have established at such cost and shall now begin to elaborate as practical functions.
The greatest work of social education to-day is to infuse into all the social relations a new and more ardent spirit. It is the elevation of the social moods to a more productive level, we might say, that is wanted. Æsthetic elements, imagination, and the harmonizing of individual and social motives are needed. War has shown us the possibilities of exalted social moods; what we ought to do now is to consider how we may make our morale of peace equal in efficiency and in power to our war morale. This is in great part a problem of social education.