The Ladies' home journal . e way and in the same place is democracy. We haveseen enough of that in Germany and Italy. Cooping up athousand youngsters in a building and having them move toa master clock is not necessarily education of the masses;it may be just the opposite. In fact, it seems a good prepa-ration of youth for the dictator principle. The war, I amafraid, has conditioned us all to accept massing: as citizenswe line up for soap, for the movies, for medical care;pack ourselves into trains and into restaurants, and evenjam the beaches; not to mention the millions of formersoldiers who
The Ladies' home journal . e way and in the same place is democracy. We haveseen enough of that in Germany and Italy. Cooping up athousand youngsters in a building and having them move toa master clock is not necessarily education of the masses;it may be just the opposite. In fact, it seems a good prepa-ration of youth for the dictator principle. The war, I amafraid, has conditioned us all to accept massing: as citizenswe line up for soap, for the movies, for medical care;pack ourselves into trains and into restaurants, and evenjam the beaches; not to mention the millions of formersoldiers who have learned to wait interminably in queuesfor everything, however private and personal. Our tol-erance for this sort of thing may lead us to believe thateducation, too, can proceed like a bomber mission, or cal-isthenics, or the assembly line. Regimentation is thedeadly foe of real education. Yet herding—educatorseuphemistically call it administering the program —seems to be the very essence of modern schooling. ^Jll. iplrnoms. This marshaling of youth to tlic routine of dock hourand to quantitative credits sometimes finely evaluatedto an eighth of a unit, according to the length of a periodthe number of periods a week, the number of meetings ayear-has become the accei^ted order of all schoolsEven the principal of an uncrowded small schoolthough some of his schoolrooms may stand idle is proudof the efficiency of his schedule, which, in miniature isexactly like a large-city system. But education musthave some leisure, continued quiet and solitude I donot imply that group living is not essential to an educa-tion; much education must be done in groups, and attimes, in large groups, to inculcate such attitudes as co-operation and such qualities as leadership. But under administrative herding even promotion degenerates intoa mere device for sm(xjthly handling masses from gradeto grade. Besides, many excellent ways of teaching,well known by teachers for fifty years, are seldom
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