Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/665

 EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 649

So the first requirement in social education is to get children to live together in a vital way, in order that they may come to understand one another, and respect each other's rights. Learn- ing maxims about human nature or ethical conduct or right or duty or brotherly love will be of little avail without a vast amount of significant social experience. Many adults have good theories about social relations, but their practice is very bad; they have not had enough of vital give-and-take relations with their fellows to be disciplined into decent behavior. The "only child" is usually very poorly prepared for the best sort of social life, because he has not been molded into social form at the hands of his fel- lows. Hard knocks are essential to the most effective learning in social matters. The child must learn, not so much by being told it as by discovering it experientially, that on the whole it pays to play the game fair. We are beginning today, it seems, to appreciate the soundness of these principles, for we are devising ways of bringing children together under wholesome influences, and helping them to gain meaningful social experience. The good, old-fashioned method of isolation is passing such a method as Dickens spent himself in trying to get abolished.

The situation in the ordinary public school, however, is still far from what we could wish. The typical school is modeled on the static plan. Children learn their lessons and recite them, largely in isolation. Spatial nearness does not imply social experi- ence. Children may sit in adjoining seats, and not come to know one another, except in external appearance, or learn how to give and to receive aid of genuine merit. Children must work together, not simply sit near each other. The idea is at least partially realized in the kindergarten. But the kindergarten attempts too much in too abstruse a way. The young child's social training should be concerned wholly with his immediate relations with his parents, brothers and sisters, and playmates. He should not be lectured to about social conduct in the abstract, or about his responsibility to humanity in general.

The playground, rightly conducted, furnishes an excellent opportunity for social training. It affords children a chance to come into vital contact with one another, where the lesson of