The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular governmentFollett, Mary Parker
Science
The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular government
Follett, Mary Parker
Democracy; Political participation; Social psychology; State, The
THE training for the new democracy must be from the cradle—through
nursery, school and play, and on and on through every activity of our
life. Citizenship is not to be learned in good government classes or
current events courses or lessons in civics. It is to be acquired only
through those modes of living and acting which shall teach us how to
grow the social consciousness. This should be the object of all day
school education, of all night school education, of all our supervised
recreation, of all our family life, of our club life, of our civic life.
When we change our ideas of the relation of the individual to society,
our whole system of education changes. What we want to teach is
interdependence, that efficiency waits on discipline, that discipline is
obedience to the whole of which I am a part. Discipline has been a word
long connected with school life—when we know how to teach _social_
discipline, then we shall know how to “teach school.”
The object of education is to fit children into the life of the
community.[146] Every coöperative method conceivable, therefore, must be
used in our schools for this end. It is at school that children should
begin to learn group initiative, group responsibility—in other words
social functioning. The group process must be learnt by practice. We
should therefore teach subjects which require a working together, we
should have group recitations, group investigations, and a gradual plan
of self-government. Every child must be shown his place in the life that
builds and his relation to all others who are building. All the little
daily and hourly experiences of his interrelations must be constantly
interpreted to him. Individual competition must, of course, disappear.
All must see that the test of success is ability to work with others,
not to surpass others.
Group work is, indeed, being introduced into our more progressive
schools. Manual training, especially when the object made is large
enough to require the work of two or more, cooking classes, school
papers, printing classes etc., give opportunity for organization into
groups with the essential advantage of the group: coördinated effort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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