Abstract
SOME two thousand representatives of parents and teachers in the United States recently met at Cincinnati to discuss “The Purposes of Education in American Democracy” under the four heads: self-realization, human relationships, economic efficiency and civic responsibility. The proceedings culminated with a remarkable address by the president of the University of Wisconsin. American education, he said, entrusted as it has been to local inspiration, leadership and control, with emphasis on individual rights and individual liberty and but little sense of national responsibility, has for generations taught values which no longer conduce to a proper understanding of a world infested everywhere by a highly organized and efficient system of vilification and ridicule of the whole theory and method of democracy. The dictators are cultivating a common interest and a new goal; telling the masses that to save one's life one must lose it in devotion to a common social ideal. How can this be countered in a society split into groups which are at war with each other on political, social and economic fronts? Only by engendering an overriding devotion to what it whole-heartedly believes to be a worthier common social ideal. “Only a dynamic democracy can cope with a fact-facing fascism.” The need is urgent. Only a conscious educational programme can produce the requisite sense of common purpose and common sacrifice, active, steady and constant. It “calls first of all for an understanding of democracy as a way of life and a nourishing of the underlying values upon which society depends for its existence. . . .Education must face this issue or lose its liberty and its opportunity”. The address is reported in the July issue of School Life, the official organ of the Office of Education.
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Education to Meet the Challenge to Democracy. Nature 144, 408–409 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144408c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144408c0