Cities and towns; Social psychology; Sociology; Sociology, Urban
The interactions which take place among the members of a community so
constituted are immediate and unreflecting. Intercourse is carried on
largely within the region of instinct and feeling. Social control
arises, for the most part spontaneously, in direct response to personal
influences and public sentiment. It is the result of a personal
accommodation, rather than the formulation of a rational and abstract
principle.
_The church, the school, and the family._—In a great city, where the
population is unstable, where parents and children are employed out of
the house and often in distant parts of the city, where thousands of
people live side by side for years without so much as a bowing
acquaintance, these intimate relationships of the primary group are
weakened and the moral order which rested upon them is gradually
dissolved.
Under the disintegrating influences of city life most of our traditional
institutions, the church, the school, and the family, have been greatly
modified. The school, for example, has taken over some of the functions
of the family. It is around the public school and its solicitude for the
moral and physical welfare of the children that something like a new
neighborhood and community spirit tends to get itself organized.
The church, on the other hand, which has lost much of its influence
since the printed page has so largely taken the place of the pulpit in
the interpretation of life, seems at present to be in process of
readjustment to the new conditions.
It is important that the church, the school, and the family should be
studied from the point of view of this readjustment to the conditions
of city life.
What changes have taken place in recent years in the family
sentiments? in the attitudes of husbands toward wives? of wives toward
husbands? of children toward parents, etc.?
What do the records of the juvenile and morals courts indicate in
regard to this matter?
In what regions of social life have the mores on the subject of the
family life changed most?
To what extent have these changes taken place in response to the
influences of the city environment?
Similarly, investigations might be carried on with reference to the
school and the church. Here, too, there is a changed attitude and
changed policy in response to a changed environment. This is important
because it is, in the last analysis, upon these institutions in which
the immediate and vital interests of life find a corporate expression
that social organization ultimately rests.
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