OUR rate of progress, then, and the degree in which we actualize the perfect democracy, depend upon our understanding that man has the power of creating, and that he gets this power through his capacity to join with others to form a real whole, a living group. Let us see, therefore, what signs are visible to-day of the group principle at work.
First, our whole idea of education is rapidly changing. The chief aim of education now is to fit the child into the life of the community; we do not think of his “individual” development except as contributing to that. Or it would be nearer the truth to say that we recognize that his individual development is essentially just that. The method of accomplishing this is chiefly through (1) the introduction of group class-room work in the place of individual recitations, (2) the addition of vocational subjects to the curriculum and the establishment of vocational schools, and (3) the organizing of vocational guidance departments and placement bureaus in connection with the public schools.
In many of the large cities of the United States the public schools have a vocational guidance department, and it is not considered that the schools have done their duty by the child until they have helped him to choose his life occupation, have trained him in some degree for it, and have actually found him a job, that is, fitted him into the community. It is becoming gradually accepted that this is a function of the state, and several of our states are considering the appropriation of funds for the carrying on of such departments.[[36]]
The further idea of education as a continuous process, that it stops neither at 14 nor 21 nor 60, that a man should be related to his community not only through services rendered and benefits received but by a steady process of preparation for his social and civic life, will be discussed later.[[37]]
The chief object of medical social service is to put people into harmonious and fruitful relation, not only because illness has temporarily withdrawn certain people from the community, but because it is often some lack of adaptation which has caused the illness.
Our different immigration theories show clearly the growth of the community idea. First came the idea of amalgamation: our primary duty to all people coming to America was to assimilate them as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. Then people reacted against the melting-pot theory and said, “No, we want all the Italians have to offer, all the Syrians can give us; the richness of these different civilizations must not be engulfed in ours.” So separate colonies were advocated, separate organizations were encouraged. Many articles were written and speeches made to spread this thought. But now a third idea is emerging—the community idea. We do not want Swedes and Poles to be lost in an undifferentiated whole, but equally we do not want all the evils of the separatist method; we are trying to get an articulated whole. We want all these different peoples to be part of a true community—giving all they have to give and receiving equally. Only by a mutual permeation of ideals shall we enrich their lives and they ours.
Again our present treatment of crime shows the community principle in two ways: (1) the idea of community responsibility for crime is spreading rapidly; (2) we are fast outgrowing the idea of punishing criminals merely, our object is to fit them into society.
First, the growing idea of community responsibility for crime. We read in an account of the new penology that “Crime in the last analysis is not to be overcome after arrest but before,” that crime will be abolished by a change of environment and that “environment is transformed by child labor laws and the protection of children, by housing laws and improved sanitation, by the prevention of tuberculosis and other diseases, by health-giving recreational facilities, by security of employment, by insurance against the fatalities of industry and the financial burdens of death and disease, by suitable vocational training, by all that adds to the content of human life and gives us higher and keener motives to self-control, strenuous exertion and thrift.” We of course do not exonerate the individual from responsibility, but it must be shared by the whole society in which he lives.
Secondly, the old idea of justice was punishment, a relic of personal revenge; this punishment took the form of confinement, of keeping the man outside society. The new idea is exactly the opposite: it is to join him to society by finding out just what part he is best fitted to play in society and training him for it. A former Commissioner of Corrections in New York told me that a number of people, including several judges, were looking forward to the time very soon being ripe for making the “punishment” of a crime the doing some piece of social service in order to fit the criminal into the social order. One man who had shown in his crime marked organizing ability had been sent to oversee the reclaiming of some large tracts of abandoned farm land, and this had worked so well that a number of judges wished to try similar experiments.
Thus criminals are coming to be shown that their crime has not been against individuals but against society, that it has divorced them from their community and that the object of their imprisonment is that they may learn how to unite themselves to their community. The colony system means that they must learn to live in a community by living in a community. This is the object of Mr. William George’s “Social Sanitarium,” where the men are to live in a graded series of farm villages, govern themselves, support themselves and also their families as far as possible, and pass from “village” to “village” on their way towards the society from which their crime has separated them.