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
Self-government in the Centres then means not only the election of
officers and the making of a constitution, but a real management of club
and Centre affairs, the opportunity to take initiative, to make choices
and decisions, to take responsibility. The test of our success in the
Centres will always be how far we are developing the self-shaping
instinct. But we must remember that we have not given self-government by
allowing the members of a club to record their votes. Many people think
a neighborhood association or club is self-governing if a question is
put to them and every one votes upon it. But if a club is to be really
self-governed it must first learn collective thinking. This is not a
process which can be hurried, it will take time and that time must not
be grudged. Collective thinking must be reverenced as an act of
creation. The time spent in evolving the group spirit is time spent in
creating the dynamic force of our civilization.
Moreover each Centre should be begun, directed and supported (as far as
possible) by the adult people of a community acting together for that
end. A Centre should not be an undertaking begun by the School Committee
and run by the School Committee, but each Centre should be organized by
local initiative, to serve local needs, through methods chosen by the
people of a district to suit that particular district. The ideal School
Centre is a Community Centre. A group of citizens asks for the use of a
schoolhouse after school hours, with heat, light, janitor, and a
director to make the necessary connection between the local undertaking
and the city department. Then that group of citizens is responsible for
the Centre: for things worth while being done in the schoolhouse, and
for the support of the activities undertaken. By the time such a School
Centre is organized by such an association of citizens, neighbors will
have become acquainted with one another in a more vital way than before,
and they will have begun to learn how to think and to act together as a
neighborhood unit.
We are coming to a more general realization of this. In the municipal
buildings in the parks of Chicago, the people are not given free
lectures, free moving pictures, free music, free dances etc.; they are
invited to develop their own activities. To the Recreation Centres of
New York, operated by the Board of Education, are being added the
Community Centres controlled by local boards of neighbors. In Boston we
have under the School Committee a department of “The Extended Use of
School Buildings,” and the aim is to get the people of each district to
plan, carry out and supervise what civic, educational and recreational
activities they wish in the schoolhouses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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