Bourne, The Teaching of History and Civics in the Elementary and the Secondary School.
Charles Morley, 1897.
II
INDIRECT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP
After all is said and done the ideal training for citizenship in the schools depends more upon the wisdom engendered in the pupil than upon the direct study of civics. If the spirits of men and women are set in a right direction they will reach out for knowledge as for hid treasure. "Wisdom is more moving than any motion; she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness[[1]]."
It happens also in natural sequence that the spirit developed in a school will lead to the construction of institutions in connection with school life calculated to secure its adequate expression.
Elementary schools, however, are much handicapped in this way. If it comes about that work other than educational or recreative is forbidden to children during the years of attendance at school, and also that the period of school life is lengthened, there will be opportunity for the development of games on a self-governing basis. Elementary school children have a large measure of initiative; all they need is a real chance to exercise it. They would willingly make their schools real centres of child life. Many children at present have little else than narrow tenements and the streets, out of which influences arise which war continually against the social influences of the school.