Democracy and Education | Page 4

some species die out, forms better adapted to utilize the
obstacles against which they struggled in vain come into being.
Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to
the needs of living organisms.
We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms -- as a physical thing.
But we use the word "Life" to denote the whole range of experience,
individual and racial. When we see a book called the Life of Lincoln
we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We
look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early
surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the
chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and
achievements; of the individual's hopes, tastes, joys and sufferings. In
precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of the
Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs,
institutions, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and occupations.
We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to
it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of
continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical
existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation of beliefs,
ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The continuity of any
experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact.
Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of
life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a
modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without
language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit
who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes

away. Yet the life of the group goes on.
The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the
constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of
education. On one hand, there is the contrast between the immaturity of
the new-born members of the group -- its future sole representatives --
and the maturity of the adult members who possess the knowledge and
customs of the group. On the other hand, there is the necessity that
these immature members be not merely physically preserved in
adequate numbers, but that they be initiated into the interests, purposes,
information, skill, and practices of the mature members: otherwise the
group will cease its characteristic life. Even in a savage tribe, the
achievements of adults are far beyond what the immature members
would be capable of if left to themselves. With the growth of
civilization, the gap between the original capacities of the immature
and the standards and customs of the elders increases. Mere physical
growing up, mere mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not
suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the
taking of thoughtful pains are required. Beings who are born not only
unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social
group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested.
Education, and education alone, spans the gap.
Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as
biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of
habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.
Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards,
opinions, from those members of society who are passing out of the
group life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive.
If the members who compose a society lived on continuously, they
might educate the new-born members, but it would be a task directed
by personal interest rather than social need. Now it is a work of
necessity.
If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious
that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of
its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at
once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as
some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices
the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not

automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough
transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into
barbarism and then into savagery. In fact, the human young are so
immature that if they were left to themselves without the guidance and
succor of others, they could not acquire the rudimentary abilities
necessary for physical existence. The young of human beings compare
so poorly in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower
animals, that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to
be acquired