98 THE SCHOOL 



more than one country at the present time we can watch, within the 

 compass of what is technically a single school system, a conflict 

 between the dominantly individualistic and the dominantly national- 

 izing aim. 



Now may we not say that each of these six motives may reasonably 

 be expected to persist, though with different degrees of intensity, 

 according to circumstances, throughout the course of educational 

 development of a great people? Is it not expedient to take account 

 of each of them and, with due guarantees for national unity, to permit 

 each of them to have its influence and to find its characteristic 

 expression? 



As against this view and its administrative implications, it may 

 be urged that the essential thing is to secure at any cost national 

 unity of means as a practically homogeneous school system. But, 

 while fully admitting the indispensable importance of national unity, 

 I would raise the doubt whether after all national unity in any true 

 and permanent sense is to be secured by the elimination of differences 

 in the educational traditions through which the rising generation is 

 permitted to pass. National unity is the outcome of a complex 

 variety of causes and is not the mechanical outcome of a school 

 system. To believe that school-teaching by itself can secure it is 

 an exaggeration of the actual power of the school. To eliminate, 

 in pursuance of such a belief, fruitful varieties of school tradition 

 seems likely to cause an educational injury which would far exceed 

 any benefit that might reasonably be expected to follow from the 

 administrative convenience of greater uniformity. 



The ground upon which I would chiefly support this view (and in 

 advancing it I readily admit that in certain circumstances it may be 

 necessary to suspend educational freedom as an act of political 

 necessity) is that in the case of great numbers of children the moraliz- 

 ing, character-forming, and socializing influences of a school are most 

 effective in their operation when the school is intimately associated 

 with the life and tradition of some homogeneous social group. As 

 illustrations of this point I would cite the Little Schools of Port 

 Royal, and the schools connected with the Society of Friends. 

 It seems to me to be the true interest of the nation to recognize the 

 educational possibilities of these various group-connections, and 

 instead of attempting to give an educational monopoly to a uniform 

 system of state institutions, to permit a part of the work of national 

 education to be done through different social groups, provided that 

 the efficiency of their work is periodically tested by methods of in- 

 spection approved by the state. In some cases the municipality or 

 township would form such a group. In other cases the unit would 

 be a group of families or of individuals, voluntarily united on a 

 basis of intellectual or religious agreement. 



