Page:The new ideal in education - an address given before the League of the Empire on July 16th, 1916 (IA newidealineducat00veliiala).djvu/18

 An International Board of Education should control the programmes of education of all countries. It should watch that one principle prevails in every educational programme, i.e., the principle of Panhumanism. It should not interfere as to the form of education, no, far from that, but look to the unity of the principle of education upon the whole globe. It should carefully avoid all the watchwords which make for separations and wars, like "Germany, Germany over all!" The child must love its own country, but it must know also that its country is not the thing over all other things. It must be taught that God and mankind are something which stands above its country.

It should control not only the governmental programmes of education, but it should also watch the mothers, patriots and priests. It should try to have these three world-powers not for the enemies but for the allies and missionaries of a higher, and a panhuman education.

There are three stages of the Christian European education:—

1. Compulsory obedience. This was in the Middle Ages when men were compelled to do the common work by the authority of the church and nobility.

2. The experiment with Individualism. This has been since the Renaissance, especially since Rousseau—a personality put as the centre and aim of education, the abhorrence of every compulsion whatsoever.

3. Voluntary Obedience. It is the education of tomorrow. It is a stage where all men will see their mission in their collective work, and therefore voluntarily enchain themselves into the panhuman organism, plunging their imaginative, pointlike personalities into a big and mystic personality of mankind.

The Voluntary Obedience will mean a voluntary slavery. We are going to be slaves again, but not by royal or papal