NOVEMBER: "ABOVE ALL NATIONS IS HUMANITY" DECEMBER: INTERDEPENDENCE OF NATIONS JANUARY: JUSTICE AND HONOR BETWEEN NATIONS . 347 INTRODUCTION I HAVE great pleasure in writing the introduction to this course in citizenship. It has been prepared by teachers who know, much better than I do, the capacity of the child, during the eight years from six to fourteen, to take in the ideas that this course seeks to inculcate. In this respect it is a practical work. The reputation and experience of its authors insure this. I have been given the privilege of reading many of the chapters of the book and of examining with care a synopsis of its contents and its general plan of arrangement. These justify my expressing an opinion in regard to it from the standpoint of one who is profoundly impressed with the necessity for stirring in the heart of the child patriotism and an ambition to do effective public service as a citizen. In the early years, the lessons given are simple, with the intention of promoting kindness to one's fellows and to animals, and helpfulness at home and in school, and are well calculated to neutralize the natural tendency in the child to selfishness. The chapter on manners struck me as admirably adapted to remedy a growing evil among children trained in American homes and in American schools. The danger of the coming generation is a lack of respect for authority and a lack of sense of obligation to observe the rights and the comfort of others. Cardinal Newman said that a gentleman was one who gave another no unnecessary pain. I am sorry to say that with the lax home discipline and the undue prominence and demoralizing importance that we give to the wishes and whims of our children, it is of the highest importance to refresh the curriculum of our primary schools with instruction, iterated and reiterated, upon this very important part of a child's character, which cannot but seriously affect the future man or woman. We hope and believe that there is a wide improvement in the increase of the fraternal spirit and of the social sense. Nowhere can this progress be clinched for the next generation so well as in our primary and intermediate schools. There is no necessary connection between democracy and rudeness and slouchy conduct and manner. There is no necessary connection between democracy among adults and in government and a lack of discipline in our schools. There is no necessary causal connection between an abolition of privilege, caste and class, and bad manners. The strikes among school-children that we have noted in the public press in various important cities are a most discouraging sign of the kind of discipline that these children have had at home and in the schools. It is just such an evil that this course in citizenship will help to remedy. When we reach the higher grades of the course, an examination of the poems and stories used, and the methods adopted, to arouse patriotism in the boys and girls, strongly commends them. Of course, a child cannot be given a proper preparation for good citizenship unless love of country is implanted in his heart. In great national stress, when we were in a civil war or when we had a foreign war, there was no trouble in working on the imagination of the children and making them feel the thrill of patriotic emotion; but in times of peace this must be done in other ways. The struggles, courage, self-sacrifice, and heroism of our ancestors as pioneers in winning the East and the West, and in the Revolution, in the War of 1812, and in the Civil War, are all legitimate instrumentalities with which first to awaken the interest of the child in the story, and then to give his country a personality, for which a concrete affection is thus inspired in him. I am glad to observe, too, that in a number of the chapters there is brought home to the child the necessity for siding with, sympathizing with, and actively aiding, officials charged with the execution of the law. In the Anglo-Saxon idea of government there was a sense of personal responsibility on the part of the private individual for the proper conduct of government and of identity with it. The part that a jury took in the administration of justice in the English law was a significant illustration and enforcement of this personal responsibility. In continental monarchical forms of government, however, the state was an entity different from the people, and the ordinary subject had the view that the government should have agents to enforce the law and that he need have no anxiety or care in regard to it. There are lessons in this book, which if absorbed by the child - and they are simple enough, it seems to me, for him to absorb them will certainly fix in his mind the identity of his interest with that of the government. Then there is a most wholesome course on our duty to welcome to this country, as a refuge, the poor and congested peoples of other countries, who will show their appreciation of the opportunities given them by becoming law-abiding, patriotic citizens and contributing, in their sturdy industry, prudential virtues, and civic activity, to the general welfare. |