The Reconstructed School | Page 6

the bizarre, the gaudy, and the
superficial still make a strong appeal to us. We are quite happy to wear
paste diamonds, provided only that they sparkle. So long have we been
substituting the fictitious for the genuine that we have contracted the
habit of loose, fictitious thinking. So much does the show element
appeal to us that we incline to parade even our troubles. Simplicity and

sincerity, whether in dress, in speech, or in conduct, have so long been
foreign to our daily living and thinking that we incline to style these
qualities as old-fogyish.
A hundred or more young men came to a certain city to enlist for the
war. As they marched out through the railway station they rent the air
with whooping and yells and other manifestations of boisterous
conduct. These young fellows may have hearts of gold, but their real
manhood was overlaid with a veneer of rudeness that could not
commend them to the admiration of cultivated persons. Inside the
station was another group of young men in khaki who were quiet,
dignified, and decorous. The contrast between the two groups was most
striking, and the bystanders were led to wonder whether it requires a
world-war to teach our young men manners and whether the schools
and homes have abdicated in favor of the cantonment in the teaching of
deportment. In the schools and the homes that are to be in our good
land we may well hope that decorum will be emphasized and magnified;
for decorum is evermore the fruitage of intellectuality and genuine
culture.
As a nation, we have been prodigal of our resources and, especially, of
our time. We have failed to regard our leisure hours as a liability but,
like the lotus eaters, have dallied in the realm of pleasure. Like children
at play, we have gone on our pleasure-seeking ways all heedless of the
clock, and, when misfortune came and necessity arose, many of us
were unwilling and more of us unable to engage in the work of
production. In some localities legislation was invoked to urge us
toward the fields and gardens. We have shown ourselves a wasteful
people, and in the wake of our wastefulness have followed a dismal
train of disasters, cold, hunger, and many another form of distress.
Deplore and repent of our prodigality as we may, the effects abide to
remind us of our decline from the high plane of industry, frugality, and
conservation of leisure. Nor can we hope to avert a repetition of this
crisis unless education comes in to guide our minds and hands aright.
Again, we have been wont to estimate men by what they have rather
than by what they are, and to regard as of value only such things as are

quoted in the markets. Wall Street takes precedence over the university
and to the millionaire we accord the front seat even in some of our
churches. We accept the widow's mite but do not inscribe her name
upon the roll of honor. We give money prizes for work in our schools
and thus strive to commercialize the things of the mind and of the spirit.
We have laid waste our forests, impoverished our fields, and defiled
our landscapes to stimulate increased activity in our clearing-houses.
Like Jason of old, we have wandered far in quest of the golden fleece.
We welcome the rainbow, not for its beauty but for the bag of gold at
its end. We seek to scale the heights of Olympus by stairways of gold,
fondly nursing the conceit that, once we have scaled these heights, we
shall be equal to the gods.
To indulge in even such a brief review of some of the weak places and
defections of society is not an agreeable task, but diagnosis must
necessarily precede the application of remedies. If we are to reconstruct
education in order to effect a reconstruction of society we must know
our problem in advance, that we may proceed in a rational way.
Reconstruction cannot be made permanently effective by haphazard
methods. We must visualize clearly the objectives of our endeavors in
order to obviate wrong methods and futility. We must have the whole
matter laid bare before our eyes or we shall not get on in the work of
reconstruction. It were more agreeable to dwell upon our achievements,
and they are many, but the process of reconstruction has to do with the
affected parts. These must be our special care, these the realm for our
kindly surgery and the arts of healing. We need to become acutely
conscious that the present will become the past and that there will be a
new present which will take on the same qualities that now characterize
our present. We need to feel that the future will