Though children and youth may learn these laws by heart and understand
and agree to the fine statements by which they are expounded and make
through them a detailed promise to obey the laws of "right living" by
which alone the citizenship of our country may serve its best
interests--that in itself could not make all citizens what they should
be. It is, however, a lesson of the past that youth needs some outward
and visible sign of its "coming of age." Now, as in the past, youth
needs some form of consecration to high ideals. It needs some ceremony
that shall fix the lessons of patriotism, of social responsibility and
of community service, and stir to noble purpose. The education that
begins in the home is not finished by any college graduation or even
by vocational training for a useful career. Its great "Commencement"
is that which ushers the young man, and now also the young woman, into
conscious and responsible relationship to the body politic. This
Commencement should have its solemn and beautiful ritual and should be
made the great event of all young life.
QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE
1. What changes in legislation and in law enforcement is the
entrance of women into the electorate likely to effect?
2. Should the State be more and more charged with responsibility
for care of the weak, the defective, the delinquent, dependent,
and sick, the out-of-work, the aged, and those heavily burdened
by parentage of young children, and if so, how can society
escape a tendency to remove from individuals and from the
family that sense of personal responsibility upon which the
best things in our inherited social order have been built?
3. Should women voters particularly address themselves to
increasing public welfare provisions or should they try to
solve difficult problems of adjustment between public and
private effort for the common good? If both, how can they
adjust effort to party politics on the one side, and to
independent use of the power of the vote on the other side?
4. When volunteer organizations of charity, correction, and
education transfer their work to official boards and legal
provisions, that work, experience shows, sometimes is lowered
in standards and loses in efficiency. How can voting women
prevent this? How can a new class of voters, hitherto specially
interested in getting things desired done by others, best help
others to do things through their own political action?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account