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baffling mysteries of daily life. To feel one's self once more at one with the spiritual forces of the universe brings peace and strength. There is, therefore, in every act of worship something akin to what Aristotle called the " katharsis of the feelings". This explains why the repetition of ritual and even the presentation of conventional orthodox doctrines are satisfying. The appeal is not so much to the intellect as to the emotions and it is the emotions that provide the dynamic of life.

The function of the church that is usually thrust most into the foreground is that of moral and spiritual leadership. Here, however, we face serious problems. There can be no real leadership without teaching. Indeed the command in the beginning was, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations". There can be no effective teaching without intellectual freedom and loyalty to the truth. It was the great Teacher who said, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free". Here, it must be frankly confessed, we find possible conflict with the other rôle of the church as the conserver of values and the bitter antagonist of the heretic or the innovator. The future influence of the church depends to no small degree upon how she succeeds in uniting these two elements. Heretofore the tendency has been to make the rôle of teacher subordinate to that of the conserver of values. Teaching has been largely the imparting of a fixed and authoritative body of truth. Can the church of the future succeed in adopting the scientist's ideal of truth without sacrificing her cherished rôle as the conserver of values? Will she be able to place loyalty to the truth above mere authority? We cannot bring ourselves to believe that Plato's dictum, "Let us follow the argument whithersoever it leads us" is inherently opposed to the demand of the human heart for a "Thus saith the Lord".

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Books: CALHOUN, A. W.: A Social History of the American Family, Vol. 3, Ch. 13. "The Attitude of the Church." CUNNINGHAM, W.: Christianity and Politics, 1915; EUCKEN, R.: Can We still be Christians? 1914; FIGGIS, J. N.: Civilization at the Cross Roads, 1912; GARROD, H. W.: The Religion of all Good Men, 1906; HENSON, H. H.: Moral Discipline in the Christian Church, 1905; RAUSCHENBUSCH, W. Christianity and the Social Crisis, 1907; SMITH, G. B.: Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, 1913; TYRRELL, GEORGE: Mediævalism, 1908; WINCHESTER, B. S.: Religious Education and Democracy, 1917.

2. Articles: ANDERSON, K. C.: "Why not Face the Facts?" Hibbert Journal, Vol. 4, pp. 845 ff.; BaTTEN: "The Church as the Maker of Conscience." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, pp. 611 ff.; ELLWOOD: "The Social Function of Religion." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 19, pp. 289 ff.; HOBEN: "American Democracy and the Modern Church." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 21, pp. 458 ff., Vol. 22, pp. 489 ff.; JACKS, L. P.: "The Church and the World." Hibbert Journal, Vol. 5, pp. 1 ff.; LOVEJOY, A. O.: "Religious Transition and Ethical Awakening in America." Hibbert Journal, Vol. 6, pp. 500 ff. MECKLIN, J. M.: "The Passing of the Saint." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 24, pp. 353 ff.; STEWARDSON, L. C.: "Effect of the Clerical Office upon Character." International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 4, pp. 430 ff.; TAYLOR, G.: The Social Function of the Church." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 5, pp. 305 ff.; VEBLEN, T.: "Christian Morals and the Competitive System." International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 20, pp. 168 ff.; WILSON, W. W.: 'The Church and the Rural Community." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 16, pp. 668 ff. (discussion).

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CHAPTER XVI

THE SCHOOL AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

§ 1. THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL

EDUCATION viewed from the social point of view includes all those disciplinary forces by which the group makes sure that the individual shares in its purposes and interests. Education from the individual point of view is the unfolding of capacities and powers through the instrumentalities offered by the group. Both the individual and social conceptions of education are but phases of what Professor Dewey has called the process of "continuous self-renewal " peculiar to society as well as to all living and growing things. There are, then, two elements in the educational process, the social environment together with its preëstablished norms of conduct to which the individual must adjust himself and the individual's instinctive capacities that are shaped by this process of adjustment.

It follows, therefore, that society as a whole is the great educator. This is especially true in primitive society where education is unconscious for the most part, consisting of a "non-progressive adjustment" to fixed customs, taboos, and a traditional way of life. But even in advanced civilization the school and all the purposeful agencies of modern education never supplant this subtle and unconscious educative effect of the environment. Our most fundamental conceptions of value are arrived at, for the most part, without conscious reflection. We cannot recall when they took shape in our minds. They have been taken for granted. We have simply absorbed them from the pervasive texture of the human relationships that have enmeshed us from infancy. Their finality is to be found in just this unquestioning attitude we have always sustained toward them; they appear to belong to the eternal order of

things. There is, therefore, a very real sense in which the social conscience, which includes this heritage of ethical norms builded unconsciously into the structure of men's characters, is a far more effective moral educator than the school can ever hope to be.

The school arose as a necessary means of maintaining group continuity. For as human culture increased and the gap between child and adult widened it became necessary to create a special institution for the maintenance of the process of "continuous self-renewal " so necessary to the group. Herein lies the rôle of the school as a social institution. The school functioned as an instrument of social control at first through the transmission of a body of ideals and practices. That is to say, the earlier school did not control the masses of men directly. It gave to a select group a certain training that enabled them to direct the lives of their more ignorant fellows. With the expansion and democratization of the school, education is no longer restricted to the favored few, though there goes hand in hand with the effort to democratize knowledge a selective process by which even a democracy seeks to assure to itself efficient leadership. Furthermore, the school is being stressed, especially since the rise of big business, as an instrument for attaining economic mastery. Nations are beginning to recognize what an effective agency they have in the school for assuring material prosperity and the conquest of foreign markets. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, there has arisen in modern democracy a growing appreciation of the school as the chosen instrument of a progressive community in its efforts for reform. We have now to ask how the school gained this position of honor and influence in American democracy.

§ 2. THE COLONIAL SCHOOL

Those who are fond of visualizing in diagrammatic form any process, and their number is not small, can picture to themselves an unbroken line stretching from 1636, the date of the founding of Harvard, to the present and this will represent

the college. Parallel with this line is a second, beginning slightly earlier than 1636 and extending down to the middle of the eighteenth century after which it begins to waver and disappear; this is the colonial grammar school, the feeder of the colonial college. Starting about the time the grammar school begins to disappear, becoming more clearly defined towards the end of the eighteenth century and reaching well into the third quarter of the nineteenth century when it also begins to waver and disappear is a third line corresponding to the academy, the typical American educational institution of the middle or transitional period. Still a fourth line starts during the second quarter of the last century and grows ever more vigorous as the line of the academy fades out and this is the line that represents the rise and growth of the high school, the most typical educational institution of modern American democracy. If we add to this the rise of the great unified state systems of the middle and far West after the civil war and the differentiation of the college from the university or graduate school signalized in the founding of Johns Hopkins in 1877 we have a fairly complete bird's-eye view of our educational history.

It will be seen that American educational history falls into three periods, the colonial from 1636 to 1783, the transitional from 1783 to 1876, and the present. The schools of the colonial period were imitations of English models. Such men as John Cotton, Ezekiel Cheever, Roger Williams, and others simply reproduced as best they could the schools in which they had received their training. Harvard was but the reproduction of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Both grammar school and college were dominated by the religious interest. Among the first " rules and precepts" of Harvard we find the following: "Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, TO KNOW GOD AND JESUS CHRIST WHICH IS ETERNAL LIFE". In fact, the earlier college was but a necessary instrument for carrying out the ideal of a theocratic and aristocratic society in which every problem, domestic, political, as well as

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