The Reconstructed School | Page 2

can act

in concert, they must think in concert, and, to do this, they must acquire
the ability to think toward common goals. If, to illustrate, all nations
should come to think toward the goal of democracy, there would ensue
a closer sympathy among them, and, in time, modifications of their
forms of government would come about as a natural result of their
unity of thinking. Again, if all nations of the world should set up the
quality of courage as one of the objectives of their thinking they would
be drawn closer together in their feelings and in their conduct. If the
parents and teachers of all these nations should strive to exorcise fear in
the training of children, this purpose would constitute a bond of
sympathy among them and they would be encouraged by the reflection
that this high purpose was animating parents and teachers the world
around. Courage, of course, is of the spirit and typifies many spiritual
qualities that characterize civilization of high grade. It is quite
conceivable that these qualities of the spirit may become the goals of
thinking in all lands. Thus the nations would be brought into a relation
of closer harmony. Had a score of boys shared the experience of the lad
who grew into the likeness of the Great Stone Face, their differences
and disparities would have disappeared in the zeal of a common
purpose and they would have become a unified organization in thinking
toward the same goal.
We cannot hope to achieve the brotherhood of man until the nations of
the world have directed their thinking toward the same goals. What
these goals shall be must be determined by competent leadership
through the process of education. When we think in unison we are
taken out of ourselves and become merged in the spirit of the goal
toward which we are thinking. If we were to agree upon courage as one
of the spiritual qualities that should characterize all nations and
organize all educational forces for the development of this quality, we
should find the nations coming closer to one another with this quality
as a common possession. Courage gives freedom, and in this freedom
the nations would touch spiritual elbows and would thus become
spiritual confederates and comrades. By generating and developing this
and other spiritual qualities the nations would become merged and
unity of feeling and actions would surely ensue. Since love is the
greatest thing in the world, this quality may well be made the major

goal toward which the thinking of all nations shall be directed. When
all peoples come to think and yearn toward this goal, hatred and strife
will be banished and peace and righteousness will be enthroned in the
hearts of men. When there has been developed in all the nations of the
earth an ardent love for the true, the beautiful, and the good, civilization
will step up to a higher level and we shall see the dawn of unity.
We who are indulging in dreams of the brotherhood of man must
enlarge our concept of society before we can hope to have our dreams
come true. It is a far cry from society as a strictly American affair to
society as a world affair. The teaching of our schools has had a distinct
tendency to restrict our notion of society to that within our own
national boundaries. In this we convict ourselves of provincialism.
Society is far larger than America, or China, or Russia, or all the
islands of the sea in combination. It may entail some straining at the
mental leash to win this concept of society, but it must be won as a
condition precedent to a fair and just estimate of what the function of
education really is and what it is of which the schoolhouse must be an
exponent. Society must be thought of as including all nations, tribes,
and tongues. In our thinking, the word "society" must suggest the hut
that nestles on the mountain-side as well as the palace that fronts the
stately boulevard. It must suggest the cape that indents the sea as well
as the vast plain that stretches out from river to river. And it must
suggest the toiler at his task, the employer at his desk, the man of
leisure in his home, the voyager on the ocean, the soldier in the ranks,
the child at his lessons, and the mother crooning her baby to sleep.
We descant volubly upon the subjects of citizenship and civilization but,
as yet, have achieved no adequate definition of either of the terms upon
which we expatiate so fluently. Our books teem with admonitions to
train for citizenship in order that we may attain civilization of better
quality. But, in all this, we imply American citizenship and