Community Civics and Rural Life | Page 2

the first "civics" textbook to include such "sociological" material. So far as that book is concerned, at least, the "sociological" material was included PRIMARILY to afford a viewpoint from which the better to interpret GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENSHIP. This point seems often to be missed, with the result that in some schools we find a more or less vitalized "social study" labelled "community civics," FOLLOWED BY a formal study of government that shows no obvious, organic relation to the earlier study. Whatever else "community civics" may accomplish, one of its foremost aims should be TO MAKE GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING THAT OF THE NATION, MEAN SOMETHING TO THE YOUNG CITIZEN. In the present book the author has endeavored to keep this aim prominent in the mind of the teacher. It is hoped that the organic relation of the last few chapters, which deal explicitly with governmental mechanism and operation, to the earlier chapters will be obvious.
The underlying, vitalizing features of community civics may be summed up as:
1. THE DEMONSTRATION TO THE YOUNG CITIZEN, BY REFERENCE TO HIS OWN OBSERVATION AND EXPERIENCE, OF THE MEANING OF HIS COMMUNITY LIFE (LOCAL AND NATIONAL), AND OF GOVERNMENT IN ITS RELATION TO THAT LIFE;
2. THE CULTIVATION OF CERTAIN HABITS, IDEALS, AND ATTITUDES ESSENTIAL TO EFFECTIVE PARTICIPATION IN THAT LIFE THROUGH GOVERNMENT AND OTHERWISE.
The aim of the following text is to fix in the pupil's consciousness a few essential ideas, which will help to determine his ideals and attitudes, by a judicious USE of facts, which will thereby be more readily remembered and understood. "The most important element of success in community life ... is TEAM WORK; and team work depends, first of all, UPON A COMMON PURPOSE". The controlling ideas throughout the following chapters are:
1. The common purposes in our community life;
2. Our interdependence in attaining these common purposes;
3. The consequent necessity for cooperation (team work);
4. Government as a means of securing teamwork for the common good. These ideas are set up in the first few chapters and exemplified in the remaining chapters. They are easily grasped by young citizens when DEMONSTRATED by reference to their own observation and experience, which the text and the accompanying topics seek as far as possible to compel. The last few chapters contain an analysis of our governmental mechanism which seeks to answer the question, How far does our government provide the organization, the leadership, and the control over leadership necessary to secure the teamwork which the preceding chapters have shown to be essential?
The present volume is larger than The Community and the Citizen. The author believes that this is an advantage, especially for pupils in communities where supplementary materials are not so easily available. The increased length is due chiefly to the liberal incorporation of concrete illustrative and explanatory matter. Young students need larger textbooks, provided the additional matter clothes the skeleton with living flesh.
Whether based on this textbook or some other, however, community civics cannot be successfully taught if it is made primarily a textbook study. The word "demonstration" has been used advisedly in the paragraphs above as applied to the ideas to be taught. The text sets up ideas, interprets and exemplifies them; but "demonstration" can be made only as the pupils draw upon their own observation and experience. Hence, numerous SUGGESTIVE topics are interspersed throughout to divert attention from the text and to direct it to the actualities of the pupils' experience. Even the topics should not be followed literally in every case, but should be diversified to meet the needs and opportunities of the occasion. But to "omit" such studies as suggested by the topics is to negate the value of community civics.
The successful teacher will seek to extend the pupil's opportunity to participate in group activities both within the school and in the community outside, and will make the fullest possible use of such activities both as a means of demonstrating the operation of the fundamental principles of civic life, and as a means of cultivating "habits, ideals, and attitudes." "Training for citizenship through service" is an essential factor in community civics.
"Community civics" has now been quite definitely assigned to the junior high school grades (see Report of Committee on Social Studies, Bulletin, 1916, No. 28, U.S. Bureau of Education). While the tendency is toward continuous civics instruction in all of these grades, practice still varies greatly. The present text has been written in recognition of this variation and is, in the author's judgment, adapt able to any of the grades in question. If community civics is placed below the ninth grade, however, the author would suggest its distribution over both seventh and eighth grades. An outline suggesting a vital coordination between the civics and the history of these grades, and of particular service in the seventh grade, is given in United States Bureau of