Community Civics and Rural Life | Page 6

lists made by other members of your class? Compare your other columns with those of your classmates. Which wants seem to keep you busiest?
Which do you think is most important? Why? Discuss this question in class. Do you all agree in regard to this point?
If any of the activities in your list are for the purpose of earning money, tell for what you expect to spend the money. Show how the things you expect to buy with your money will help to satisfy your other five wants.
For which of these six wants do you spend the most time in providing? your father? your mother? If there is a difference in the three answers, why is it?
Do you have difficulty in classifying any of the things you do, or that you see others do, under any of the six heads? Make note of these things and, as your study proceeds, see if the difficulty of classification is removed.
Suppose a boy is a BULLY: what wants does he satisfy by his bullying conduct? Suppose a boy or a girl is ambitious to become a LEADER, either among present companions or later in social life, business, or politics: under which head or heads would you place this ambition?
A boy wants to enlist in the army, or a girl as an army nurse: do these wants come under any of the six heads?
Would you, after your discussion of these topics, add any other group or kind of wants to the six mentioned? If so, what would you call it?
Every one wants HAPPINESS. Why is it not necessary to make a special group under this head?
Make a list of things done in your home to provide for each of the six wants.
What is done in your school to provide for the want for health? for beauty? for association with others? for the religious want? Has your school work any relation to your desire to make a living? Is it the business of the school to provide for all these things as well as for the want for knowledge?
Make a list of a few things done in your community outside of the home and school to provide for each of the six wants.
Think of something in which your entire community is deeply interested, such as the improvement of the roads, or the building of a new high school, or a county fair, and explain what wants it provides for.
What wants do the following things provide for: rural mail delivery; weather reports; a corn club (or a similar club); a school garden; a library; the telephone; a hospital; a parent- teacher association?
THE PURPOSE OF DEMOCRACY
We may often hear our common purposes as communities or as a nation stated in different terms than those suggested in the paragraphs above. For example, Franklin K. Lane, the Secretary of the Interior during the war, said, "Our national purpose is to transmute days of dreary work into happier lives--for ourselves first and for all others in their time." Again, President Wilson said that our purpose in entering the world war was to help "make the world safe for democracy." Although these two statements read differently, they mean very much the same thing; and they both refer in general terms to the things this chapter discusses in more familiar and express terms. For "happier lives" can only result from a more complete satisfaction of our common wants. Our own happiness comes from the satisfaction of our own wants AND FROM HELPING TO SATISFY THE WANTS OF OTHERS. And "democracy" means, in part, that the COMMON WANTS OF ALL shall be properly provided for.
In the Declaration of Independence we read:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
OUR UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
The statement that "all men are created equal" has troubled many people when they have thought of the obvious inequalities that exist in natural ability and opportunity. But whatever inequalities may exist, people are absolutely equal in their RIGHT to satisfy the wants described in this chapter. These are the "unalienable rights" which the Declaration of Independence sums up in the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That community is best to live in that most nearly provides equal opportunity for all its citizens to enjoy these rights. From the Declaration of Independence to the present day, our great national purpose has been to increase this opportunity, even though at times we have apparently not been conscious of it, and even though we have fallen short of its fulfillment. One of the chief objects of our study is to find out how our communities are seeking to accomplish this purpose.
"The Declaration of Independence did not mention