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[pg 191] 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[pg 192] 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[pg 193] 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[pg 194] 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[pg 195] 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!”
[pg 196]“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,[pg 197] 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[pg 198] 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.”...
i venture to quote only one sentence:
“mankind needs more poets.”
