Social education

“ In home and in school the emphasis in education should be upon social rather than economic values, on the significance of social relationships and the opportunities of social intercourse in the home and the community, on the personal and social advantages of intellectual culture, on the importance of moral progress in the elimination of drunkenness, sexualism, poverty, crime, and war, if there is to be future social development, and on the value of such social institutions as the home, the school, the church, and the state as agencies for individual happiness and group progress. ”

“ Among the applied sciences, sociology is especially closely related to education, for education is not simply the art of developing the powers and capacities of the individual; it is rather the fitting of individuals for efficient membership, for proper functioning, in social life. On its individual side, education should initiate the individual into the social life and fit him for social service. It should create the good citizen. On the social or public side, education should be the chief means of social progress. ”

“ Whatever the subject-matter, its arrangement and presentation should be so ordered as to inspire and enable the child to make a willing and worthy contribution to the life of his community. But the social emphasis in education, if it is to be true to itself and indeed to the general history of mankind, must define society in wider terms than that of the immediate community. ”

“ If I interpret aright the present-day educational thought, the dominant motive in it all is social in character. That is to say, in all of our plans for the education of children we keep them in mind as future members of society, acting with one another and all working together for the common good and for the betterment of the race. ”

“ It is these fundamental and common activities and interests and sympathies that ought to be the chief concern of social education, or perhaps we had better say that all our educational processes ought so to be socialized as to broaden sympathies and make activities common. Education must constantly strive to make the common background of our national life more firm and strong. More important to-day than any further education in the direction of specialization of life in America is the securing of a strong cohesion throughout society by means of common interests and moods. ”

“ The educational system that is familiar is individualistic in type because it emphasizes individual achievement, and is based on the conviction that individual success is of greatest consequence in life. There is increasing demand for a socialized education which will have as its foundation a body of sociological information that will teach individuals their social relations, a fund of ideas that will be bequeathed from generation to generation as the finest heritage, and a system of social ethics that will produce a conviction of social obligation. ”

“ The social education which is most important of all has been incidental or omitted altogether. Public opinion needs to be educated to the point of understanding that all three types of training are imperatively needed. ”

“ Without these occupations, which are essentially social life—that is human life—civilization can not go on. The result is a sort of social education by necessity, since every one must learn to adapt himself to other individuals and to whole communities. ”

“ CHAPTER XV EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS As has just been said, the ultimate reliance in all social reform or social reconstruction must be upon the education of the individual. Social organization can never be more complex or of a higher type than the individual character and intelligence of the members of the group warrants. At any given stage of society, therefore, the intelligence and moral character of its individual members limits social organization. Only by raising the intelligence and character of the individual members of society can a higher type of social life permanently result. ”

“ How is he to reconcile his own individual rights with his social obligations? These are fundamental questions that deserve careful answer, and that must be made a part of the school curriculum if the community is to enjoy social health. It matters little how such subjects are named in any course of study, but it is essential that the principles of social living should be taught under some title.
A second principle of education is that it should be vocational. The school children, after graduation, must make their own way in the world. ”

“ We must have a socialized education if our present complex civilization is to endure. Social problems touch education on every side, and, on the other hand, education must bear upon every social problem. It is evident, therefore, that sociology has a very great bearing upon the problems of education; and the teacher who comes to his task equipped with a knowledge of social conditions and of the laws and principles of social organization and evolution will find a significance and meaning in his work which he could hardly otherwise find. ”

“ Education as the agency of social control. There is enormous power in the habits of approval or disapproval to which we have, in our early days, been subjected by our parents, teachers, and companions. It is through education, in the broadest sense, that the young come to learn, and hence to practice, those actions which are socially approved, and by the same token to avoid those acts which are socially condemned. Through formal education the adult members of a society impress upon the plastic minds of the immature those habits of thought and action which are currently recognized as desirable. ”

“ Interest in community welfare, an interest that is intellectual and practical, as well as emotional—an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress, and in carrying these principles into execution—is the moral habit to which all the special school habits must be related if they are to be animated by the breath of life. ”

“ We have already had occasion to point out that education is the method by which society inculcates in its younger members habits which are regarded as socially beneficial. In its broadest sense the whole social environment is an individual's education. And it is an education chiefly through experience with other people, discovering what they will and will not tolerate, what they will cherish and what they will condemn. ”

“ The importance to the family and to the state of the elements of education which are aimed at reinstating standards of skill and recognition of superior ability in the industrial field, by the school, can not, therefore, be overestimated.
Education a Social Process.—These elements are attempts to socialize education. We say that education is a process in the development of human personality. So it is, but it is also a process by which individuals are fitted for serviceableness to the group life. ”

“ Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds
of societies, a criterion for educational criticism and construction implies a particular social ideal. The two points selected by which to measure the worth of a form of social life are the extent in which the interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the fullness and freedom with which it interacts with other groups. ”

“ But, we are told, the public-school system educates the people more rapidly than private education could possibly do—educates a greater number in a given time. Does that settle the question? Does the quality of education, do the moral influences accompanying it, count for nothing? Whether would it be better to give five hundred an education destitute of moralizing and idealizing influences, or three hundred an education penetrated by those influences, trusting to the action of the smaller number to promote social order and harmony? ”

“ All this implies that the older idea that education can be given regardless of content is, from the social point of view, a great mistake. Social knowledge is necessary, as we have just said, for efficient social service, and a socialized education can have no other end than social service. ”

“ A curriculum which acknowledges the social responsibilities of education must present situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living together, and where observation and information are calculated to develop social insight and interest.
Summary.—The subject matter of education consists primarily of the meanings which supply content to existing social life. The continuity of social life means that many of these meanings are contributed to present activity by past collective experience. As social life grows more complex, these factors increase in number and import. ”

“ Just so far as the system of education is defective, is insufficient to meet social needs, in so far may we expect the production of individuals who are socially maladjusted, as shown in pauperism, defectiveness, and crime.
Education is, then, the great means of controlling habit and character in complex social groups, and as such it is the chief means to which society must look for all substantial social progress. It is the instrument by which human nature may be apparently indefinitely modified, and hence, also, the instrument by which society may be perfected. ”

“ Education of this sort is not the practice of families only, but also of great social organizations whose chief educational function consists in putting a strong hand on every new-comer, in order to fit him, in the most iron-bound fashion, into existing forms. It is the attenuation, pulverization and [169] assimilation of the individual in a social body, be it theocratic, communistic, or simply bureaucratic and routinary. Looked at from without, a like system seems the ideal of simplicity in education. ”

“ We also speak of rearing, raising, bringing up—words which express the difference of level which education aims to cover. Etymologically, the word education means just a process of leading or bringing up. When we have the outcome of the process in mind, we speak of education as shaping, forming, molding activity—that is, a shaping into the standard form of social activity. In this chapter we are concerned with the general features of the way in which a social group brings up its immature members into its own social form. ”

“ This is due to the fact that we so often think of adult social activities as the only ones that are worth while, forgetting that for the child the important thing is social activity now and in his society, that the only way to prepare for adult social effectiveness is to secure social efficiency on the part of the child.
These questions still remain: how can we, through education, produce the individual who, because of social sympathy, [5] knowledge, and activity, will tend to advance the welfare of all; and what kinds of education meet the demands of the aim which we have set up. ”

“ It is a misnomer to call the volume ‘Educational sociology.’ The treatment is not focused upon education, whether curriculum, methods, or administration. There is no treatment of sociological phenomena, relations, or principles in such a way as to show how types of education have been produced, how schools and society in general are interrelated, or what kind of education is dictated by present-day social conditions. ”

“ but the habit of looking at life as a social relation--an affair of society--did no good. It cultivated a weakness which needed no cultivation. If it had helped to make men of the world, or give the manners and instincts of any profession--such as temper, patience, courtesy, or a faculty of profiting by the social defects of opponents--it would have been education better worth having than mathematics or languages; but so far as it helped to make anything, it helped only to make the college standard permanent through life. ”

“ The purpose of education, he said, was to prepare men to live properly in organized society, and hence the chief aim in education was not conventional fitness, natural development, mere knowledge, nor personal mental power, but personal character and social morality. This being the case, the educator should analyze the interests and occupations and social responsibilities of men as they are grouped in organized society, and, from such analyses, deduce the means and the method of instruction. ”

“ For purposes of simplification we have spoken in the earlier chapters somewhat as if the education of the immature which fills them with the spirit of the social group to which they belong, were a sort of catching up of the child with the aptitudes and resources of the adult group. In static societies, societies which make the maintenance of established custom their measure of value, this conception applies in the main. ”

“ Natural Education as Training for Life
Still another turn is given to the discussion by an emphasis on the social demands of later life. As society is constituted, individual differences are sure to play a large part in determining success or failure. Furthermore, society as constituted in its commercial organizations accepts without hesitation the principle of division of labor. Why should not the school be like society? Why should not the school be a miniature world with all the different types of life that will later become real to the pupils? ”