The New Ideal in Education | Page 4

The Hague is still an office without business. Nobel's prize was given also to some German professors who are responsible for the new pedagogy in Germany.
MOTHERS, PATRIOTS, AND PRIESTS.
These three can be the best possible supporters or the worst enemies of your educational scheme. Mothers by nature adore their children and excite their individualism. Patriots try to engage the whole heart and imagination of a child for its own country. Priests are asking the whole sympathy of a child for their creed and their church. To be individualistic, to be a patriot and a believer are the quite natural gifts of a healthy person. But maternal love exaggerates very often the individualism of a child and makes it egotistic and selfish; exclusively cultivated patriotism degenerates into chauvinism; and exclusive church education makes a bigot. These three kinds of people (alas! the majority), egotists, chauvinists and bigots, will be against an international scheme of education. But you must say to the sensible mothers: The international education of your child will not kill its individuality, but, on the contrary, will use it to the best advantage for mankind and for itself. You are an enemy of your son if you educate him to be an egotist and egoist. In egotism and egoism one has the worst company in this life, the company which leads to pessimism and disgust of life.
You must say to the sensible patriots: International education approves of patriotic as of a natural inclination; only the new education intends to make a window in every fatherland so that the child may see its neighbours and stretch its hand to greet them.
And you must say to the sensible priests: The international board of education will let every child go to its own church and learn the catechism from its own parish priest; but it will be brought in touch with the children of different creeds, and it will pray with them upon the general ground of all the creeds.
THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF EDUCATION.
1. It shall consist of the representatives of all the boards of education in the world.
2. The members of the board shall officially represent their own country.
3. The board will be supported materially by the respective Governments, and it will dispose of a great fortune from private legacies. For all the philanthropists and peacemakers and peace wishers will support such an institution rather than any other in the world.
4. The authority of this board shall be equal to the authority of an international political congress.
5. Its duty will be to control education all over the world, banishing or restricting individualism, egotism, chauvinism and bigotism, and promoting by all means panhumanism by developing the mind for collective work, mutual help, personal goodness and humbleness and social greatness.
TO BRING CHILDREN OF THE WORLD CLOSER TOGETHER.
Let them meet as often as possible; I mean the children from England and the children from Serbia, the children from Russia and the children from France. So they will know about each other that they all are human beings, and that they all can smile in friendliness on each other. Let them travel to each other's country; I mean the children from Germany and the children from Italy, the children from Japan and those from Scandinavia. Let them see how every spot on earth is wonderful in its way, and how worthy of love, of patriotism. When will the railway companies and ship companies say: Let the children come to us? When will they arrange the best trains, better than the royal trains, the most commodious and decorated with flowers and flags of different nations and with one special flag of the Children World Union? When the moment comes that the wonderful modern communication begins to help the children to meet each other and to pay visits to each other, at that moment the invention of steam and electricity will justify itself. In transferring the troops and facilitating crime it does net justify itself. Let the word communication be not only for the sake of crime and for the sake of bread; let it be for the sake of peace and of souls.
Let them sing together, everyone in his own tongue; I mean the children from the East and West and North and South. You should have been the other day in the Mansion House when the English and Serbian boys met together, and have listened to the English singing the Serbian and the Serbian singing the English National Anthems, and you would have been fascinated by the sweet revelation of the future world.
Let the children from the East and West and South and North, pray together. Why not? Bring them, thousands of them, to a mountain, upon which our ancestors prayed, and let them at sunset kneel down and sing some common prayer that they