ROADTOWN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL LIFE
An ideal social life is one in which people can be together when they
wish to be together, and alone when they wish to be alone. The better
the transportation facilities, the more nearly of attainment is such a
condition. The Roadtowners in all thickly-populated sections will be
within commuting distance of nearby cities and the attractions of these
centers will be open to them. But such social life, even for those
who live in the city, is sadly deficient. City people have theaters,
libraries, churches and crowds, but they do not have neighbors with
common interests. The Roadtowners who get the food at the same kitchen,
and hear the same band play, and sell their products coöperatively,
and promenade on the same endless roof garden, and send their children
to the same instructors, are going to get acquainted if they so
desire. The entire Roadtown will be in connection by the loud speaking
telephone, and folks can call on each other on a stormy night without
so much as getting out of their comfortable rockers, but, for that
matter, while there will be more to keep a Roadtowner at home, there
will be less to keep him from going away from home when he wants to. If
anyone is lonesome in Roadtown, it is simply because he has no friends,
and if he has no friends, it can scarcely be anyone’s fault but his own.
But the social life of Roadtown will not be limited to city trips
and neighborly calls. The Roadtown will have coöperative amusement
centers, just as it will have coöperative kitchens and stores. At
spots where the Roadtown crosses streams or passes the mountains or
the sea shore and at certain distances apart, amusement parks will be
located. Here will be the athletic grounds, swimming pools, gymnasiums
and the means of entertainment common and uncommon to like resorts. At
more frequent intervals in the Roadtown, and so distributed as to give
picturesque variety to the house line will be museums, art galleries,
theaters, lecture halls and dance halls. All such features that are
supported by the corporation must, of course, be open to all residents.
Organizations that are not for the benefit of the majority of the
inhabitants will be supported by their adherents. The halls of the
association will be open to all meetings, religious or otherwise, where
nonconflicting dates can be arranged.
The Roadtown will offer opportunity for the revival of athletics upon a
scale unheard of since the Olympian games of ancient Greece.
_Roadtown Athletics._
The Roadtown community, because of the spirit of coöperation and
mutuality which will pervade all phases of life, will extend into
mature years the institutional patriotism which forms such a large part
of modern school and college life. Under such conditions we may expect
to see developed a grand series of meets in all manner of competitive
arts and sports. The winners of the local meets or exhibitions will
again compete at the grand athletic and art centers.
The Roadtown will bring the opportunity to indulge in the sports and
recreations much nearer the life of the whole people than in the
present civilization.
There is no reason why every boy, big and little, should not attend the
ball games and athletic meets on the home field as well as the grand
finale in which his team participates.
Transportation will cost him nothing, the ball ground will be owned by
the community and the hours of Roadtown labor will be set by the will
of the worker and not by the greed of the capitalist’s purse.
_Education for Old as Well as Young._
Roadtown education will apply to all ages of both sexes. The whole
living scheme of Roadtown will be a vast school. The modern school,
a place where we send our children to be herded in immense droves
under the care of girls who use the teaching profession as a makeshift
until an opportunity of marriage arrives, is far from perfection as a
means of child development. The disciplinarian system of education
which crushes out individuality and molds all children in the
industrial-political virtue of being bossed, is likely to vanish as a
population is freed from economic slavery.
Roadtown will provide instruction for those who wish to learn and
citizenship prizes and privileges will go to the educated, and
compulsory education and graded schools in time will have no excuse
for existence. These are striking statements and I am simply calling
attention to the change that I believe will come about naturally and
unresisted.
The Roadtown will have to pay county taxes, but on account of its 1,000
population to the mile will influence the location of these schools in
Roadtown. At first the use of the present public school methods must
necessarily be employed; gradually as the Roadtown gains influence and
better teachers are secured the educational system can be adapted more
closely to Roadtown life.
In the first place, the Roadtown home will be an enlightened one. The
Roadtown library will be a book store house, not a reading-room. If
the citizen wants a book or magazine he telephones the library and in
a few minutes the book is delivered to him by mechanical carrier. The
kind of free library we have to-day requires ten cents car fare and
much time to get a book.
There will be a library of telegraphone records, which do not have to
be duplicated for every household, but one set at a central office will
suffice, where one girl can run a complicated programme of music and
lectures for many homes.
_Eyes to be Used Less and Ears More._
Excessive reading is hard on the eyes and it lacks much of the
efficiency that auditory methods have of conveying ideas. Our education
has been entirely too much from the printed page and too little from
the use of the ear. The Roadtown dictograph and telegraphone will
change all this. The child who has not yet learned the letters can be
taught to speak German and told stories of nature and history. And
in all this education the parent will learn along with the child and
become fascinated by such a wonderful process. The significance of
this telegraphone and dictograph will never be appreciated until we
have it in operation. The telegraphone is not a cheap instrument to
build, but when operated on a large scale will be extremely economical
for each family. From a programme announced in advance a choice may be
had from a hundred pieces kept playing at once. More than one wire can
lead to each house if desired. The family may be in the drawing-room,
listening to grand opera or a lecture on philosophy, and Jimmy may be
upstairs, tucked in bed with ear muffs clapped over his curls, being
put to sleep by Sinbad the Sailor or the Twenty-third Psalm, according
to his mother’s idea of child psychology.
Outside of the visual and auditory library in the home, the second
great new feature in Roadtown education will be the home work of the
child’s parents. In work room and garden the child will learn what the
world is for. About the most pitiable thing imaginable is a child whose
parents do not believe in child labor. I do not mean the killing of
children in mines and mills, but the child labor such as you see on
the wholesome farm, where the child does his part along with the rest
of the family.
The present system of keeping a child from all work until his body and
mind are formed and then plunging him into industrial life is only
exceeded in folly and cruelty by the child slavery system commonly
known as “child labor.” “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,”
but all school and play and no work makes Jack a jackass.
The Roadtown child will learn his parent’s occupation, and his uncle’s
and aunt’s occupation, and his neighbor’s occupation, and will have
more ability to take care of himself when he is ten years old than the
present city-bred college man of twenty.
But the community as a whole has some claim on the child’s life and
the child’s future as well as the parents--a fact that all intelligent
parents will recognize. For this reason instruction outside the family
is desirable and will be arranged by the Roadtown public school system.
The occupation of housekeeping having been eliminated, the
kindergarten teaching force of Roadtown will be composed of women of
mature minds, many of whom will have borne children and are therefore
equipped with actual experience in caring for them.
With the entire population to select from more real or natural-born
teachers will be found than under the present régime, where most
married women are limited in occupation to family food manufacturer and
household drudge.
_Mothers for Public School Teachers._
To these instructors the children will go at hours as arranged for.
One woman will take little tots into her home to amuse and care for
them while their mothers are away or at work. Another will instruct the
children in mathematics. The man skilled in botany will instruct groups
of children in his garden, and the chemist and mineralogist in their
laboratories. Instead of grade schools we will have child universities;
instead of college degrees there will be citizenship examinations,
with rewards of positions of trust in Roadtown management. Instead of
college young folks and old fogy old folks there will be an industrial
university and universal athletics and sports. The Roadtown school
system will be the most versatile imaginable. It will develop the
greatest geniuses the world has ever known and save the most money.
Pounding literature into the head of a natural born mechanic is both
economic and mental waste. The universal query in Roadtown will not be
what does he know, but what can he do.
Physical education will be fully as much a matter of public concern
in Roadtown as mental education. It ought to be, for disease is
contagious, ignorance is not. The Roadtown child will play in the open
country like farm boys. He will be brown and sturdy and fall out of
trees and go swimming in the creek, but he will not be a wild animal,
or a pet to be taken out and aired by the nurse--distinguishable from
the poodle only by the absence of the chain.
_Lowest Death Rate in History._
The Roadtown death rate will be the lowest in the history of the world.
Roadtown will give the freedom to choose from the work and play of
city and country, the exercise and rest, which is necessary to the
development of a good physique. The Roadtowner will eat pure food,
drink pure water, breathe pure air. His bedding and clothes will be
aired and when necessary fumigated. His laundry will be disinfected.
His house will be made germ proof. The result will be that consumption
and typhoid and pneumonia will disappear with the first generation.
A few diseases which are transmitted by contact and the occasional
cripples that are born so will persist, but sickness and premature
death in Roadtown will be so rare as to cause wonder. Dissipation and
the use of patent medicines and narcotic drugs cannot be prevented,
but with co-operative industrial organization and no one profiting by
the trade, these and other health-destroying fakes will have far less
chance to grow or even survive.
The public utilities of Roadtown will include hospitals and nurseries.
Public sanitary officers will supervise and consult with residents.
Private physicians will be available if there be any demand for them,
and when a doctor is wanted he will be able to come quickly. For the
liniment and bandage for a cut thumb, a speedier service than the
monorail will be available, for the telephone and the mechanical
carrier will be brought into play. No one in Roadtown can live more
than two or three minutes from the drug store.
With all the coöperative utilities and mechanical perfections that
Roadtown offers there is a very natural tendency to associate the
essentials of home life with certain forms and locations of houses that
our experience connects with the best home life we have known rather
than to get down to the real causes and principles involved.
Much of our present sense of house architecture is indeed destined to
be quite lost, for the Roadtowner enters his home from above or below,
and the pleasurable emotions aroused by the view of one’s cottage as he
comes up the walk must be attached to other sensations. But home is a
place for companionship as distinct from the swirl of business and the
jostle of the crowds; nor is all companionship necessarily human. A
lawn to keep and some chickens and garden to care for are far closer to
the essence of home than the gable on one’s cottage.
In the first place the Roadtown will be freer from noise than either
city or village. There will be no lumbering vehicles and no tramp
of either horse or man upon unshielded pavement. All stairs, roof
promenade, hallway and monorail platform will be matted; while the
noiselessness of the transportation service is one of the fundamental
conceptions of Roadtown. There is no clanking furnace in the Roadtown
dwelling. There is no common dumb-waiter through which one receives
unwelcome knowledge of his neighbor’s business. That the sound will not
enter from the roof above or the open windows of one’s neighbor’s was
explained in a previous chapter. To be spied upon by one’s neighbors is
even more objectionable than to be overheard. In this respect Roadtown
is superior to any type of dwelling yet devised, for in all other forms
of residence the windows of the house look out upon the street. The
Roadtown passersby are above and below and no one may look into the
windows unless he is in a private garden. This unique arrangement gives
the Roadtown home a sense of privacy and a freedom in the use of light
and air now known only upon isolated farms.
The actual nearness of strangers to the Roadtown homes is of no
concern, since one has no knowledge of their presence. That we meet
them upon the roof promenade or at the monorail station is certainly
not an objection.
The Roadtown inhabitants rent of the community, not of a private
individual. Such a lease will be permanent as long as the lessee
pays the rent and does not offend the rules of the commonwealth.
Sales for taxes and arrest for the breaking of the civil law are
present limitations to individual liberty, from which the principles
of Roadtown departs not one iota, but simply extends it in keeping
with the greater number of common projects in which the community is
interested.
_A Home in the Truest Sense._
The only further sense that attaches to the idea of home is as a
protection from the poverty of old age. A plan whereby the Roadtown
corporation will give permanent rent to a person who has paid a
sufficient sum into the corporation treasury may be developed
co-operatively by the tenants. But a place to live in is only half
insurance against poverty of old age, and we can hardly doubt that a
community trained in coöperation, as the Roadtown community will be
trained, will not only ultimately insure its aged inhabitants’ rent but
a sufficient sum to keep them in decent comfort. The first generation
will never quite forget the egoistic pleasure that is derived from our
present forms of deeds for houses and lands, but the sentiment of home
ownership as we now know it will die with the generation.
The individual pleasure of house construction will be lost in Roadtown,
just as we have already lost the pleasure of vehicle construction.
The man who argues that people will not live in Roadtown because they
cannot build and own their own homes is a lineal descendant of the man
who said they would not ride on railroads for similar reasons. The
Roadtown inhabitant will simply transfer his sentiments and put his
individuality into other arts. The builder of a modern private railroad
car furnishes trucks and couplings which will enable him to be carried
by engines and over rails used in common.
Carriages, railroads, automobiles, in their time, were at first opposed
by the artists of the day.
The Roadtown now looks like a Chinese wall--when it is realized it will
look like a Roadtown, and Roadtown will mean comfort, contentment and
prosperity, and new sentiment and new art will replace the old.