Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/499

 SOCIAL CONTROL 483

But the newer policy in this matter has not been shaped wholly by self-interest. Humanitarian sentiment is certainly a factor in the perfecting of schools, and socialism comes in at the end of the century- to push on what democracy started. Contending in the social mind with the motives of utility is the generous ideal of an education at the public expense aiming at a free and harmonious personal development for all. For this old Greek vision is, in a way, the only solution of the difficulty of our time. The old societies dreaded change. So they sought to run each generation into conventional molds, and were wor- ried if any traces of individuality still remained. Our western societies, on the other hand, have embraced the idea of progress and made it a part of their tradition. In the faith that the present will be surpassed they would prepare their youth to initiate, or at least welcome, progress. Hence they have thrown away their rigid molds. For them, as for the Athenians, there remains no satisfying ideal of education save the fullest devel- opment, in body and spirit, of every child within the state.

Nevertheless, we should go very far wrong to suppose that the systematic employment of instruction for the purposes of control has, in any wise, been neglected in modern educational policies. Amid the stress of new aims — political, civic, ideal — the strictly practical object of promoting morality and order by means of teaching has not been thrust aside or forgotten. The avowal that free education is an economical system of police sounds rather brutal in this smooth-spoken age. It shocks the public and chills teachers. But now and then the cat is let out of the bag. Swift declared that "all nations have agreed in the necessity of a strict education which consisted in the observance of moral duties." Burke regarded a religious education as "the cheap defense of nations." Napoleon said frankly: "It is

the basis of sovereignty has changed all that. N'o deeper conviction pervades the people of the United States and of France, who are the most aggressive exponents of democracy, than that the preservation of liberty under the law, and of the institu- tions that are our precious possession and proud heritage, depends upon the intelli- gence of the whole people. It is on this unshakable foundation that the argument for public education at public expense reallyrests." — N. M. Butler, T/te Afeaniug of Education, pp. 108-9.