"SCHOOL" CUSTOM
We may now summarise and tabulate our comparison of Town and
School,[10] and on the schema (p.75) it will be seen [Page: 76]
that each element of the second is printed in the position of a
mirror-reflection of the first. This gives but the merest outline, which
is ready, however, to be applied in various ways and filled up
accordingly. A step towards this is made in the next and fuller version
of the scheme (p. 77). It will be noted in this that the lower
portion of the diagram, that of School, is more fully filled up than is
the upper. This is partly for clearness, but partly also to suggest that
main elements in the origins of natural sciences and geography, of
economics and social science, are not always so clearly realised as they
might be. The preceding diagram, elaborating that of Place, Work, Folk
(p. 75), however, at once suggests these. Other features of the
scheme will appear on inspection; and the reader will find it of
interest and suggestiveness to prepare a blank schedule and fill it up
for himself.
[10] For the sake of brevity, an entire chapter has been omitted,
discussing the manifold origins of distinct governing classes, whether
arising from the Folk, or superimposed upon them from without, in short,
of the contrast of what we may broadly call patricians and plebeians,
which so constantly appears through history, and in the present also.
These modes of origin are all in association respectively with Place,
Work, and Family, or some of the various interactions of these. Origin
and situation, migration, individual or general, with its conflict of
races, may be indicated among the first group of factors; technical
efficiency and its organising power among the second; individual
qualities and family stocks among the third, as also military and
administrative aptitude, and the institutional privileges which so
readily arise from them. Nor need we here discuss the rise of
institutions, so fully dealt with by sociological writers. Enough for
the present then, if institutions and social classes be taken as we find
them.
These two forms of the same diagram, the simple and the more developed,
thus suggest comparison with the scheme previously outlined, that of
People, Affairs, Places (p. 68), and is now more easily reconciled
with this; the greater prominence popularly given to People and Affairs
being expressed upon the present geographic and evolutionary scheme by
the ascending position and more emphatic printing (or by viewing the
diagram as a transparency from the opposite side of the leaf).
In the column of People, the deepening of custom into morals is
indicated. Emphasis is also placed upon the development of law in
connection with the rise of governing classes, and its tendency to
dominate the standards previously taken as morals--in fact, that
tendency of moral law to become static law, a process of which history
is full.
GOVERNING
=========
=========
CLASSES
=======
=======
^
|
FAMILY TYPES
============
----------------------------------------------
INDUSTRIES
==========
----------
----------------------------------------------
(FOLK-PLACE)
REGION (WORK PLACE) ------------
====== ------------ (TOWN)
| ======
|
V
--------------------------------------------
|
V
SURVEY ("SCHOOL")
====== ==========
!--LANDSCAPE (CRAFT-TRADITION)
-----------------
(FOLK-LORE)
?--TERRITORY -----------
|
|
V
---------------------------------------------
|
V
[NATURAL [APPLIED [SOCIAL
-------- ======== =======
SCIENCES] SCIENCES] SCIENCES]
--------- ========= =========
|
|
V
-------------------------------------------
| CUSTOMS
V -------
MORALS
======
GEOGRAPHY ECONOMICS ------
--------- ========= &
LAWS
====
====
In the present as in the past, we may also note upon the scheme the
different lines of Place, Work and Folk on which respectively develop
the natural sciences, the applied or [Page: 78] technical sciences, and
finally the social sciences, and the generalising of these respectively.
Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its literal
and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that
aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural
sciences--but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they
really are, each a _geolysis_--so these sciences or geolyses, again, are
tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of
the evolution of the cosmos.
Again, in the column of School, corresponding to Work, we have the
evolution of craft knowledge into the applied sciences, an historic
process which specialist men of science and their public are alike apt
to overlook, but which is none the less vitally important. For we cannot
really understand, say Pasteur, save primarily as a thinking peasant; or
Lister and his antiseptic surgery better than as the shepherd, with his
tar-box by his side; or Kelvin or any other electrician, as the thinking
smith, and so on. The old story of geometry, as "_ars metrike_," and of
its origin from land-surveying, for which the Egyptian hieroglyph is
said to be that of "rope stretching," in fact, applies far more fully
than most realise, and the history of every science, of course already
thus partially written, will bear a far fuller application of this
principle. In short, the self-taught man, who is ever the most fertile
discoverer, is made in the true and fundamental school--that of
experience.
The need of abbreviating the recapitulation of this, however, sooner or
later develops the school in the pedagogic sense, and its many
achievements, its many failures in accomplishing this, might here be
more fully analysed.
Still more evident is this process in the column of Folk. From the
mother's knee and the dame's school of the smallest folk-place, the
townlet or hamlet, _ton_ or home, up to the royal and priestly school of
the law of ancient capitals, or from the "humanities" of a mediaeval
university to the "Ecole de Droit" of a modern metropolis, the series of
essential evolutionary stages may be set down. Or in our everyday
present, [Page: 79] the rise of schools of all kinds, primary,
secondary, higher up to the current movement towards university
colleges, and from these to civic and regional universities, might again
be traced. The municipalisation of education is thus in fact expressed,
and so on.
Leaving the schools in the main to speak for themselves of their
advancing and incipient uses, a word may be said upon the present lines.
As a first and obvious application of this mode of geographic study of
cities appears the criticism, and; when possible, the amendment of the
city's plan, the monotonous rectangularity of the American city, and the
petty irregularity more common in our own, being alike uneconomic and
inartistic because ungeographic, irrational because irregional. With the
improvement of communications, the physicist's point of view thus
introduced--that of the economy of the energies of the community--is
only beginning; the economy of fuel, the limitation of smoke and fogs
being symptoms of this and pointing to a more economic organisation of
industrial activities generally. But this next carries with it the
improved efficiency of the producers themselves, with whom, however, the
standpoint changes from the mere economisation of physical energies to
the higher economy of organic evolution. The convention of traditional
economics, that the productive capacity of the actual labourer is the
sole concern of his science, thus gives place to what is at once the
original conception of economics and the evolutionist one, viz., that
the success of industry is ultimately measured neither by its return in
wealth of the capitalist nor in money wages of the labourer, nor even by
both put together, but in the results of industry upon the concrete
environment, the family budget, the home, and the corresponding state of
development of the family--its deterioration or progress. The
organisation of industrial groups or of representative institutions
found conducive to the well-being and progress of these prime civic
units, the families, may now be traced into its highest outcome in city
government. The method of analysis and graphic statement thus outlined
may be shown to be even capable of useful application towards the
statement of the best [Page: 80] arguments of both progressive and
moderate parties in city politics.
Passing from Politics to Culture. Culture, the needs of this also become
clearer; each community developing a similar general series of culture
institutions, from the simplest presentation of its geography,
landscape and architecture, to the complex development of industrial,
technical and scientific instruction; and for provision also for the
institutions of custom and ethic in school, law, and church. Just as
place, occupation, and family are intimately connected in the practical
world, so their respective culture institutions must more and more be
viewed as a whole. Civic improvers will find their ideals more
realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social
development of which all the departments of action and thought are in
organic relation, be it of health or disease. The view of theoretic
civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied
sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social
survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed
in many cities being begun.