EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES
292. =The Schools of the City.=--An important function of city
government and of other institutions is the education of the people
who make their home in the city or come to it to broaden their
culture. The city provides for its young people as the country
community does, by locating school-buildings within convenient reach
of the people of every district, but on a much larger and usually a
more efficient scale. Better trained teachers, better grading, a more
modern equipment and well-proved methods give an advantage in
education to the city child, though there are drawbacks in overcrowded
buildings and narrow yards for play. The opportunities for social
education are broader in the city, for the child comes into contact
with many types of people, with a great variety of social
institutions, and with all sorts of activities. It is these
advantages, together with the higher institutions for study, that
attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of students to the prominent
social centres. The colleges and universities, the normal schools, the
music and art institutes and lecture systems are numerous and attract
correspondingly.
293. =The Press as an Educator.=--The institutions directly concerned
with instruction are supplemented by other educational agencies. Among
these is the press. The press is an institution that exerts a mighty
force upon every department of the city's life. It is at the same time
a business enterprise and a social institution. It is a public
misfortune that the newspaper, the magazine, and the book publishing
house is a private business undertaking, and often stands for class,
party, or sectarian interests before those of the whole of society.
There is always a temptation to sacrifice principle to policy, to
publish distorted or half-true statements from selfish interest, and
to prostitute influence to individuals or groups that care little for
the public welfare. The publication of a statement or narrative of a
crime or other misdemeanor tends by suggestion to the imitation of the
wrong by others; it is a well-known fact that a sensational story of
suicide or murder is likely to provoke others in the same manner. It
is a grave question whether the realistic fiction so much in vogue and
published in such quantities is not a baneful text-book on modern
society. But when it chooses the press becomes an instrument of
immense value to the public. It can turn the light of publicity on
dark and dirty places. It can and does provide a means of wise
utterance on questions of the day. It keeps a record of the good as
well as the evil that is done. It is a means of communication between
local groups everywhere, for it publishes what everybody wants to know
about everybody else. It introduces the antipodes to each other, and
makes it possible for far-sundered groups to unite even
internationally for a good cause. As the railroad binds together
portions of a continent, so the press links the minds of human beings.
294. =A Metropolitan Newspaper.=--Take a metropolitan newspaper and
see how it reflects the current life of society. Economic interests of
buyer and seller are exploited in the advertising columns. In no other
way could a merchant so persuasively hawk his wares or a purchaser
learn so readily about the market. The wholesaler and jobber find
their interests attended to in special columns provided particularly
for them. Financial interests are cared for by stock-exchange
quotations, news items, and advertisements. All kinds of social
concerns are taken care of in the news columns, items collected at
great expense from the four quarters of the globe. Gatherings for a
great variety of purposes are recorded. Educational and religious
interests are given space, as well as sports and amusements; last
Sunday's sermon jostles the latest scandal on Monday morning; weather
probabilities and shipping news have their corners, as well as the
fashion department and the cartoon. The newspaper is a moving picture
of the world.
295. =The Value of the Press.=--The most valuable service rendered by
the press is its education of the public mind, so that public opinion
may register itself in intelligent action. It provides a forum for the
discussion of issues that divide sects and parties, and helps to
preserve religious freedom and popular government. Except that it is
so frequently trammelled in uttering itself frankly on important
public questions, it gives an indication of the trend of sentiment and
so makes possible a forecast of future public action. The very variety
of printed publications, from the sensational daily sheet to the
published proceedings of a learned society, insures a healthy
interchange of ideas that helps to level social inequalities and
promotes a mutual understanding among all groups and grades of
society. The cheapened process of book publication on a large scale,
and the investment of large sums of money in the publishing business,
with its mechanics of sale management as well as printing, has made
possible an enormous output of literature on all subjects and has
widened the range of general information in possession of the public.
The whole system of modern life would be impossible without the press.
296. =The Library and the Museum.=--In spite of the efficient methods
used for selling the output of the press, large numbers of books would
be little read were it not for the collections of books that are
available to the public, either free or at small cost. The public
library is an educative agency that serves its constituency as
faithfully as the school and the press. Its presence for use is one of
the advantages that the city has over the country, though the public
library has been extended far within one or two decades. The child
goes from home to school and widens the circle of his acquaintances in
the community; through the daily newspaper the adult gets into touch
with a far wider environment, reaching even across the oceans; in the
library any person, without respect to age, color, or condition, if
only he possess the key of literacy to unlock knowledge, can travel to
the utmost limits of continents and seas, can dig with the geologist
below the surface, or soar with the astronomer beyond the limits of
aviation, can hob-nob with ancient worthies or sit at the feet of the
latest novelist or philosopher, and can learn how to rule empires from
as good text-books as kings or patriarchs possess.
What the library does for intellectual satisfaction the museum and
art-gallery do for æsthetic appreciation. They make their appeal to
the love of beauty in form, color, or weave, and call out oftentimes
the best efforts of an individual's own genius. Often the gift of one
or more public-spirited citizens, they register a disposition to serve
society that is sometimes as useful as charity. Philanthropy that
uplifts the mind of the recipient is as desirable as benevolence that
plans bodily relief; the soul that is filled has as much cause to
bless its minister as the stomach that is relieved of hunger. The
picture-galleries of Europe, the tapestries, the metal and wood work,
the engravings, and the frescoes, are the precious legacy of the past
to the present, not easily reproduced, but serving as a continual
incentive to modern production. They set in motion spiritual forces
that uplift and expand the human mind and spur it to future
achievement.
297. =Music and the Drama.=--Music and the drama have a similar
stimulating and refining influence when they are not debauched by a
sordid commercialism. They strengthen the noblest impulses, stir the
blood to worthy deeds by their rhythmic or pictorial influence, unite
individual hearts in worship or play, throb in unison with the
sentiments that through all time have swayed human life. Often they
have catered to the lower instincts, and have served for cheap
amusement or entertainment not worth while, but concert-hall and
theatre alike are capable of an educative work that can hardly be
equalled elsewhere. When in combination they appeal to both eye and
ear, they provide avenues for intellectual understanding and activity
that neither school nor press can parallel. Recent mechanical
inventions, such as automatic musical instruments and moving pictures,
have added greatly to the range and effectiveness of music and the
drama, but they only intensify and popularize the appeal to the
senses. It is to be remembered that individual and social stimuli must
be varied enough to touch men at all points and call out a response
from every faculty of their nature. These arts, therefore, that make
life real and socialize it and cheer men and women on their way, play
a vital part in the education of society and deserve as serious
consideration as the other educational agencies and institutions that
find a place in the social economy of the community. Numerous amateur
musical and dramatic societies testify to the interest of the people
in these refined arts.
298. =The Need of Social Centres.=--Books and pictures, music and the
drama are so many mild stimulants to those who use and appreciate
them, but there are large numbers of people who rarely read anything
but the newspaper, and who attend only cheap entertainments. These
people need a spur to high thoughts and noble action, but they do not
move in the world of culture. They need a stronger stimulant, the tang
of virile debate about questions that touch closely their daily
concerns, discussions in which they can share if they feel disposed.
In large circles of the city's population there is a lack of
facilities for such public discussion, and for that reason the people
fall back on the prejudices of the newspapers for the formation of
their opinions on public questions. Disputes sometimes wax warm in the
saloon about the merits of a pugilist or baseball-player; questions of
the rights of labor are aired in the talk of the trade-union
headquarters; but the vital issues of city, state, and nation, and the
underlying principles that are at stake find few avenues to the minds
of the mass of the people. In the country the town meeting or the
gathering at the district schoolhouse provides an occasional
opportunity, or the grange meeting supplies a forum for its members,
but even there the rank and file of the people do not talk over large
questions often enough. In the city the need is great.
299. =The City Neighborhood.=--It is well understood that large cities
have most of their public buildings and business structures in one
quarter, and their residences in another; also that the character of
the residential districts varies according to the wealth and culture
of their inhabitants or the nationality and occupation to which they
belong. The city is a coalition of semidetached groups, each of which
has a unity of its own. The necessities of work draw all the people
together down-town along the lines of streets and railways; now and
then the different classes are shaken together in elevators and
subways; but when they are free to follow their own volition they flow
apart. Those who are on terms of intimacy live in a neighboring
street; the grocer from whom they buy is at the corner; the school
where their children go is within a few blocks; the theatre they
patronize or the church they attend is not far away; the physician
they employ lives in the neighborhood. Except the few who get about
easily in their own conveyances and have a wide acquaintance, city
dwellers have all but their business interests in the district in
which they live, and which is seldom over a square mile in extent.
Some municipalities are coming to see that each district is a
neighborhood in itself and needs all the democratic institutions of a
neighborhood. Among these belongs the assembly hall for free speech.
It may well become a centre for a variety of social purposes, but it
is fundamentally important that it provide a forum for public
discussion. As the rich man has his club where he may meet the
globetrotter or the leader of public affairs distinguished in his own
country, and as the woman's club of high-minded women has its own
lecturers and celebrities of all kinds, so the working man and his
wife have a right to come into contact with stimulating personalities
who will talk to them and to whom they can talk back.
300. =Forum for Public Discussion.=--Such democratic gatherings fall
into two classes. There is the public lecture or address, after which
an opportunity for questions and public discussion is given, and there
is the neighborhood forum or town meeting, at which a question of
general interest is taken up and debated in regular parliamentary
fashion. In a number of cities both plans have been adopted. On a
Sunday afternoon or evening, or at a convenient time on another
evening of the week, a popular speaker addresses the audience on a
theme of social interest, after it has been entertained for a half
hour with music; following the address a brief intermission allows for
relaxation, and then for an hour the question goes to the house, and
free discussion takes place under the direction of the leader of the
meeting. Sometimes series of this sort are supplied by churches or
other social organizations; in that case many of the speakers are
clergymen, and in some forums the topics are connected with religious
or strictly moral interests; but even then the discussion is on the
broad plane of the common concerns of humanity, and there is a zest to
the occasion that the ordinary religious gathering does not inspire.
The second plan is modelled after the old-fashioned town meeting that
was transplanted from the mother country to New England, and has
spread to other parts of the United States. It is a gathering of all
who wish to discuss freely some question that interests them all, and
it is more strictly co-operative than the first plan, for there is no
one speaker to contribute the main part of the debate, but each may
make his own contribution, and by the power of his own persuasion win
for his argument the decision of the meeting. Besides stimulating the
interest of those who take part, such a debate is a most effective
educator of the public mind in matters of social weal.
READING REFERENCES
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 228-253.
KING: _Social Aspects of Education_, pages 65-97, 264-290.
WARD: _The Social Center_, pages 212-251.
WOLFE: _The Lodging House Problem_, pages 109-114.
_Addresses and Proceedings of the National Education Association,
1905_, pages 644-650, "Music as a Factor in Culture."