Political education

“ If this be true, and popular opinion is to supersede the wisdom of the experts, if the people are really to have power, and be competent critics of good government, or merely to become good material in the hands of [262] constructive statesmanship, education must include or be essentially political education. ”

“ The people must be educated for democracy, but also made competent to create democracy.
Of course everything we do in the school, the intention of the school to represent what is best in civilization, and to be a center in which creative forces come together has some reference to education for the democratic life, but there are also more definite and more specifically political things to be taught. ”

“ So, then, as the idea of our government demands the education of all, the amount of education must depend on the same three variables mentioned before; it must be as good as it is possible for them to afford. The democratic state has never done its political and educational duty, until it affords every man a chance to obtain the greatest amount of education which the attainment of mankind renders it possible for the nation, in its actual circumstances, to command, and the man's nature and disposition render it possible for him to take. ”

“ But this knowledge is only to be obtained by the application of the methods of investigation adopted in physical researches to the investigation of the phenomena of society. Hence, I confess, I should like to see one addition made to the excellent scheme of education propounded for the College, in the shape of provision for the teaching of Sociology. For though we are all agreed that party politics are to have no place in the instruction of the College; yet in this country, practically governed as it is now by universal suffrage, every man who does his duty must exercise political functions. ”

“ Within the forms of your constitution there has grown up this organization of professional politicians, altogether uncontemplated at the outset, which has become in large measure the ruling power.
But will not education and the diffusion of political knowledge fit men for free institutions? ”

“ I question whether one-quarter of what we call the men educated by the colleges, and in active life—the better education of the two—would be able, arrogating to themselves as they do a far greater political and civil capacity, to state the grounds of civil rights and responsibilities, to mark out the limits, to vindicate the advantages, and to analyze the bases on which these rest, as we have just had it done. ”

“ With general primary education up to a point necessary for the intelligent exercise of the suffrage, one may have hopes for the continuance and development of a democratic republic. On this account primary education should be made free: it is part of our political system ”

“ Education and Democracy.—No matter where one may go, in any part of the world, it will be found that political democracy and public education tend to keep pace with each other. In despotisms one will rarely find a system of universal, free, public education ”

“ Few profounder remarks have ever been made about politics, than one which was made by an eminent American, a citizen of the Great Republic: "We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education."
All sane persons in England rejoice, as one subject after another passes out of politics, and becomes the common property of both political parties. ”

“ Norwick, 441 U.S. 68, 76-77, 99 S.Ct. 1589, 1594, 60 L.Ed.2d 49 (1979) , we echoed the essence of this statement of the objectives of public education as the “inculcat [ion of] fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system.” ”

“ The many languages of political experience multiply once more in the new languages of political awareness. Where values were the final goal of politics, the value of the political experience itself became a subject of concern. Many political projects were pursued at this self-reflective level: conceiving new forms of human cooperation and political organization, advancement of ideas concerning education, prejudices, emancipation, and law. ”

“ The movements towards democracy which have mastered all the other political tendencies of our day are not older than the middle of the last century; and that is just the age of the now ascendant movement toward systematic popular education. ”

“ In fact, education has entered with beneficent effect into political life with the more power, in proportion as it has become a common and not a special endowment, and the enfranchisement of education, if I may use the term, is rather a democratic than an aristocratic trait. Education, high education even, is more respected and counts for more in a democracy than under the older systems. ”

“ When the people had finally settled their political and commercial future by the War of 1812-14, and had built up a national consciousness on a democratic basis in the years immediately following, and the Nation at last possessed the energy, the money, and the interest for doing so, they finally turned their energies toward the creation of a democratic system of public schools. ”

“ So in modern times men have often felt that the only political measure worth having—the only one which would produce any certain or lasting effect, was a measure of national education. And in our own more than in any previous age the necessity has been recognized of restoring the ever-increasing confusion of law to simplicity and common-sense. ”

“ Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials. ”

“ Democratic rule requires that the average citizen be an active, instructed and intelligent ruler of his country and therefore the success of democracy depends upon the education of the people along two principal lines—first, political knowledge ”

“ And the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high. Every extension of education promotes it, because education brings people under common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of communication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another. ”

“ Provision must be made for thorough training that will direct the labor which produces the fruits of the earth. Thus to broaden the scope of liberal education it must be divested of all aristocratic limitations and rendered sufficiently democratic to meet the wants of the sons of toil. ”

“ This, then, is the great office of education in this republic: it is to insure the durability and success of democratic government by guiding and moderating with knowledge and high sentiment that discussion which has to grapple with the great problems of the present and the future, which has to reform and to preserve, and which alone can lead the people through all the clash of opinions and interests to a peaceable understanding and harmonious action. ”

“ Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step in insuring this more social society. It was plainly seen that economic and political limitations were ultimately dependent upon limitations of thought and feeling. ”

“ Instruction in civics should aim to train the mind, to develop political intelligence, to awaken civic consciousness, to interest the pupil in civic duty, and to prepare him, through instruction and practice, for its exercise. The scope of the subject should include actual government as found in the local unit, the State, and the nation, with so much of the history of government as is needed to explain present institutions and conditions. Enough of the theory of government should be given to establish an orderly arrangement of the subject matter in the pupil’s mind. ”

“ He advances principles which, at first sight, seem to be quite true; for instance: "Public School Education is necessary for our republican form of government, for the very life of the Republic." "It is an admitted axiom, that our form of government, more than all others, depends on the intelligence of the people." "The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republic form of government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. ”

“ And with intelligence to understand the true interests of the republic, and to judge correctly of public men and public measures, they will be proof against the arts of ambitious demagogues, and extensively free from party violence. They will cling to the constitution of their country, as the ark of their safety, and the charter of their hopes.
Education is not only moving onward in the United States, but it is also assuming a more promising aspect in other parts of the world. ”

“ The first duty of government, and the surest evidence of good government, is the encouragement of education. A general diffusion of knowledge is a precursor and protector of republican institutions, and in it we must confide as the conservative power that will watch over our liberties and guard them against fraud, intrigue, corruption, and violence. I consider the system of our common schools as the palladium of our freedom, for no reasonable apprehension can be entertained of its subversion as long as the great body of the people are enlightened by education. ”

“ Will a democracy proclaiming equality of opportunity as its ideal require an education which unites from the beginning of the child's school life, and for all pupils of the school, learning and social application, ideas and practice, work and recognition of the meaning of what is done? ”

“ If the teaching had the smallest effect in promoting its object, it would compromise not only the utility and even existence of the government education, but perhaps the safety of the government itself. ”

“ In any of the possibilities I can foresee, our greatest need is the clearest understanding of what democracy means, the most patient rational articulation of its principles. And I do not mean that this should be a rare secret, possessed by the favored few who have written books on the subject. I mean it should belong to the masses whom democracy educates—certainly all those who enjoy the opportunities of college education. ”

“ But, by the admirable adjustment of the administrative powers of the Order, into degrees, sub-degrees and departments of degrees and sub-degrees, the leaders were enabled to give to each adventurer in quest of the hidden mysteries of the so-called impartial maxims of genuine Democracy—that Democracy which boasts of having permeated through every fibre and artery of our political, commercial and social systems, a comfortable and genial sphere in which he was left to operate upon his good behavior. ”

“ With the development of democratic government there has everywhere been a softening of old laws, the growth of humanitarianism, the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, important legislation as to labor, a previously unknown attention to the poor and the dependents of society, a vast extension of educational advantages, and the taking over of education from the Church by the State and the erection of the school into an important institution for the preservation and advancement of the national welfare. ”

“ This is an ideal: but it has not been felt by many that a democratic social order must see to it that the public education institutions shall be thoroughly democratic in all their parts—in methods, in processes, in atmosphere, in actual results, as well as in ideals; and that this democratizing of our educational institutions is the most fundamental problem of democracy. ”

“ The question of the expediency of any form of State Education is, in fact, a question of those higher politics which lie above the region in which Tories, Whigs, and Radicals "delight to bark and bite." ”

“ There are two essential educational problems of democracy that have especial reference to the political aspects of it. The first is to teach universally in as practical a manner as possible the materials out of which political wisdom may be derived. ”

“ To dream, therefore, in that time, of an educational system, state-administered, state-supported, compulsory, and hence democratic; a system serving the varying need of all individuals, yet aiming in the education of each at a socially valuable result ”

“ We want organization of the educational system, with each unit cooperating with the next higher, but if education is to solve the problem of democracy and furnish moral leadership for American life, we want each unit to be free, first of all, to serve its own constituency to the best of its power. ”

“ If the primary purpose of democracy is thus, not immediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, on the other hand, democracy rests, for its safety and progress, on the ever better education of the citizen. Under the older forms of human society, laws may be passed and executed that are far in advance of public opinion. ”

“ The government in each of these commonwealths is doing everything possible to further the cause of education, and the tendency is to treat education as peculiarly a function of government and to make it, where the government acts, non- sectarian, obligatory, and free—a cardinal doctrine of our own great democracy, to which we are committed by every principle of sound Americanism. ”