Our Schools in War Time—and AfterDean, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis)
History
Our Schools in War Time—and After
Dean, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis)
Education -- United States; World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Schools
Not of all persons will be required the same duty. What one is,
that shall one give. Society will learn of every man and woman what
these gifts may be. Some day it will be expected that every able
person will report himself, at determined occasions, for definite
service, without pay, in one or more of the following privileges,
and other privileges, under orderly management and recognized
public authority:
1. To clean up the earth and to keep it sweet,--streets, roads,
paths, byways, vacant lots, stream banks, woods, fields, and all
open, or public, properties and public works. The clean-up days now
becoming popular are the beginnings. Of course this does not mean
that the work of street-cleaning departments and the like is to
be taken over or interfered with; but there are times for special
house cleaning. If every person felt it devolving on him to help in
keeping the earth decent, he would be likely to exercise a proper
restraint in befouling it; and as charity begins at home, so should
his restraint begin on his own premises, even extending to the
parts out of sight of the public.
2. To take part in the construction of halls and premises for
community activities.
3. To aid in the making of beautiful and public places
accessible and to protect them. Every community with a rural
environment, and practically every small city, has a near-by area
that could be reserved and opened by coöperative action of the
people,--days set aside when paths should be made, bridges built,
retreats discovered, trees and streams put in shape, insects
destroyed. Such reservations are not really public until the people
volunteer to help in them.
The farther places, the real backgrounds of the race, will
some day be opened as well as reserved, and made of much use to
very many people besides casual visitors and sight-seers. We shall
learn how to project whole counties and cities, and even larger
units, into the making and keeping of them in a way that is not
yet visioned. This can be accomplished as easily as armies can be
sent into the field, but it will require a type of organization at
which we have not yet arrived. It will be worth while to develop
public-service armies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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