The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of HistoryPartridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Philosophy
The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of History
Partridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Education; History -- Philosophy; War
It is the impending internationalism, or the idea of internationalism
now so vividly put before us all, that most incites new thought about
education, and about all the means of controlling the ideas and
feelings of the people. We hear much about _re_construction and
_re_adjustment, and these terms obviously imply the old ways and the
old institutions. But internationalism is something new, having many
possibilities; it means new relations among peoples; it opens up new
practical fields and new phases of sociology and economics. It is
because of this new phase of the social life and social consciousness
of man, we might suppose, that education is most likely to be affected
in its foundations, so that no mere readjustment will be enough. A new
politics and a new science of nations appear, and we cannot fail to
see that there is at the present time something decidedly lacking in
education; that there is a larger life perhaps for which our present
ways of educating children would not sufficiently prepare, and that to
prepare for this larger life something more would be needed than an
added subject in the curriculum. This is because internationalism is
not simply more of something we have already; it is a turn in the
road, and a turn which, it can hardly be denied, will finally affect
all institutions. If internationalism has come to stay, it will need,
and it must have, powerful support from all educational forces. It
will need something more than support; education must produce creative
habits of mind, which shall make and nourish new relations in the
world, and it must make people intelligent, so that they can
understand what the new and larger relations mean and what must be
accomplished by them.
A casual observation of the educational situation might indicate that
education is limited in two ways, so far as being a means of meeting
our present needs is concerned. _It is lacking in power_; it treats
children and youths still in a fragmentary way, and the process of
learning is somewhat detached from the totality of living. There is a
lack of richness of content, and a lack of responsiveness in the
school to the stirring life outside the school. If we may say that
history now turns a new page, and that society stands at a change of
tide, education is also in a peculiar and interesting position. The
school may, from now on, if our view of it be at all just, be expected
to do one of two things: it may settle down to a relatively successful
work, in a limited sphere of usefulness, training children well,
especially fitting them to enter into our present social order; or, on
the other hand, the school may now become a much greater power, and
may seize hold upon fundamental things in life and society under the
stimulus of new conditions--find a way to a deeper philosophy, a more
consistent theory, attain a more exalted mood and higher purpose, and
become a far more potent factor in civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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