By way of epilogue, let us be Utopian, after the fashion of Plato and
H. G. Wells. Let me, as a returned traveller from the not-too-distant
future, picture for you concretely the vaster implications of education
in, say, the year 1947, as illustrated by the public school in the
village of Pershing, N. Y.
* * * * *
“But which is the school-building?” I asked my guide.
He laughed. “I am surprised at you,” he said. “Surprised that you
should ask such a question!”
“Why?” I demanded innocently.
“Because,” he said, “in the files of our historical research
department I once came across a faded copy of a quaint old war-time
publication called the _Liberator_.[4] It attracted my attention
because it appeared to have been edited by a grizzled old fire-eater
whom I recently met, Major General Eastman, the head of our War
College. In those days, it seems, he thought he was a pacifist. Time’s
changes!”
“Ah, yes--General Eastman. I remember him well,” I said. “But what has
that got to do with--”
“In that curious little magazine was an article on education. It was
signed by you. Don’t you remember what you wrote? Didn’t you believe
what you said? Or didn’t you fully realize that you were living in a
time when prophecies come true? You ask me where the school-building
is. Why, there isn’t any school-building.”
We were standing in the midst of a little park, about the size
of a large city block, bordered by a theatre, a restaurant, an
office-building, several handsome factory buildings of the newer and
more cheerful style, a library, a newspaper plant, and a church.
My companion pointed to one of the buildings. “That,” he said, “is the
children’s theatre. There they present their own plays and pageants. In
connection with the work there they learn singing and dancing, scene
painting, and costume. Of course they also learn about plays--I suppose
from your primitive point of view you would say that we conduct a
course in dramatic literature. But all those antique phrases of early
educational practice have passed out of use. We would say that the
children are learning to develop their creative impulses. We consider
our theatre very important in that respect. It is the beginning of
everything.
“Next in importance, perhaps, are those factories. They include a
carpenter shop, a pottery, and a machine shop. Here is made everything
which is used throughout the school. And there is the power house
which furnishes the electric current for the whole establishment.
You understand, of course, that the boys and girls get a complete
theoretical as well as practical grasp of the facts they are
dealing with--there is no neglect of what I suppose you would call
book-learning, here.
“Over there is the textile and garment factory, which designs and makes
the costumes for the plays and pageants. You will not be surprised to
learn that the garment-makers at any given period are the most active
supporters of the propaganda for an outdoor theatre. It would give them
a chance to do more costumes!...
“Yes, we have politics here. The question of an outdoor theatre is
being agitated very warmly just now. The pupils have complete control
of the school budget of expenditure. There is only so much money to
spend each year, you see, at present, though there is a movement on
foot to make the institution self-supporting; but I’m afraid that will
depend on the political situation. Ultimately, of course, we expect to
put the whole of industry under the Department of Education.... But I’m
afraid that’s going too deeply into a situation you could hardly be
expected to understand.
“At any rate to return to our school, the opposition to the outdoor
theatre is from the scientific groups, who want an enlargement of
their laboratories.... The architectural and building groups are
neutral--they are working on plans for both projects, and all they
want is that the question should be settled one way or the other at
once, so they can go to work. There will be a meeting tonight, at
which a preliminary vote will be taken. Yes, our politics are quite
old-fashioned--Greek, in fact.
“The shops? They are managed by shop committees of the workers.
Distribution of products to the various groups which use them is
effected through a distributing bureau, which has charge of the
book-keeping and so forth. There has been a change in distribution
recently, however. At first the shops merely made what was ordered
by the various groups, and requisitions were the medium of exchange.
But the shops became experimental and enterprising, and produced what
they liked on the chance of its being wanted. This made a show-place
necessary, and as for various reasons ordinary money became the medium
of exchange, the show-place became a kind of department store. Then
some of the groups decided to use part of their subsidy in advertising
in the school newspaper and magazines. They are working out some very
interesting principles in their advertising, too, as you will find.
They have to tell the truth....
“There is the printing establishment. No, the paper and the magazines
are not self-supporting--though the school advertising helps. They’re
subsidized. We quite believe in that.
“And there--you can get a glimpse of the greenhouses and gardens.
Botany and so forth.... The library is the centre of the research
groups. History, sociology, economics--finding out what and why. Very
informal and very earnest, as you’ll find.... The groups? Oh, the time
one stays in each group varies with the individual. But every one likes
to be able to boast quietly of an M. P.--that means a ‘masterpiece’ in
the old mediaeval sense; a piece of work that shows you’ve passed the
apprentice stage--in a reasonable number of departments. Some Admirable
Crichtons go in for an M. P. in everything!...
“The restaurant--that’s quite important. The cooking groups give a
grand dinner every little while, and everybody goes and dines quite
in state, with dancing afterward. We learn the best of bourgeois
manners--makes it _quite_ impossible to distinguish an immigrant’s
child from the scions of our old families. The result is that the
best families are discarding their manners in order to retain their
distinction! Very amusing....
“The church? You mean that building over there, I suppose? That isn’t
a church--not in the sense you mean. It’s our meeting place. You see,
since your time churches have come to be used so much for meetings
that when our architecture group came to plan an assembly hall it was
quite natural for them to choose the ecclesiastical style. Anyway, I
understand it’s a return to their original purpose....”
“But,” I said, “this school is just like the world outside!”
“Except,” he said, “in one particular. In the world outside we still
have certain vestiges of class privilege and exploitation--considerably
toned down from their former asperities, but still recognizable as
relics of capitalism. In the school we have play, production and
exchange as they would exist in the outside world if these things were
to be done and managed wholly with the intention of making better
and wiser and happier citizens. The difference, of course, is simply
that one is run with an educational and the other with a productive
intention.”
“The difference seems to me,” I remarked, “that your school is really
democratic and your adult world isn’t quite.”
“That is one way of putting it,” he conceded.
“And I should think,” I said warmly, “that after going to these
schools, your people would want the rest of the world run on exactly
the same plan.”
“It does rather have that effect,” he admitted cautiously. “In fact,
the Educational party, as it is called, is very rapidly rising into
power. Since you are unfamiliar with our politics, I should explain
that the Educational party was formed, after the unfortunate events of
1925, by the amalgamation of the United Engineers, the O. G. U., and
the Farmers’ League. Its chief figure is the sainted Madame Goldman,
the organizer of the Women’s Battalion in the First Colonial War....”
“What surprises me,” I interrupted, “is that your conservatives--”
“Tut! we have no conservatives--they call themselves Moderates.”
“I am surprised, then, that your Moderates allow such schools to exist!
Of course they will revolutionize any society in which they are!”
“Well,” said my companion, “but what could they do? Once you begin
making schools _for_ the children, you start out on the principle that
education is learning how to live--and you end here.”
I pondered this. “Not necessarily,” I said at last. “You might have
ended with schools in which the children of the poor were taught how to
be efficient wage-slaves.”
“Ah, yes,” said my friend, “but they smashed that attempt away back in
1924.”
“Did they? I’m very glad to hear it!” I cried.... “By the bye, how much
do these schools cost--all over the country?”
“Less per year than we spent per day on the Second Colonial War.... But
this is enough of description. You shall see for yourself. Come!” he
said.
We started toward the theatre.
“Play,” he was saying, “is according to our ideas more fundamental and
more important in life than work. Consequently the theatre--”
But what he said about the theatre would take us far from anything
which we are now accustomed to consider education. It involves no less
a heresy than the calm assumption that the artist type is the highest
human type, and that the chief service which education can perform for
the future is the deliberate cultivation of the faculty of “creative
dreaming.”...