THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION 477 



and harsh criticisms of the defects of our educational 

 system. What is much more important, the fact has tremen- 

 dous implications as to the future influence of education. It 

 justifies hopes which otherwise might seem to be extravagant 

 dreams. 



From these considerations there emerges a rough defini- 

 tion of education, but one, it is hoped, adequate for our pur- 

 pose. Education consists of all the influences which operate 

 during the hfe of an individual to form and transform his atti- 

 tudes and dispositions, whether of thought, behef or conduct. 

 This statement, made from the side of the individual, has a 

 counterpart in social and collective terms. So considered, 

 education consists of all the agencies and instrumentalities by 

 which society, through forming the mind and behavior of 

 individuals, transmits its own cultural attainments and 

 prepares the way for its own improvement. As already noted, 

 the educative influences are of two kinds, the relatively 

 informal, and those that operate through schools as a 

 formal medium. Schools have not existed at most more than 

 a few thousand years of the hundred of thousands of human 

 history; while, if we contract the entire span to the measure 

 of a day, public and universal schooling occupies hardly 

 more than a moment of that day. The latter feature is that 

 most characteristic of our time, and to its influence, actual 

 and potential, the discussion will now be directed. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE 



Under the first heading may well be put the increas- 

 ing importance attached to those distinctive capacities that 

 constitute individuality, the powers and interests that mark 

 off one person from another. As we have already noted, educa- 

 tion until comparatively recently was a class education. This 

 fact meant that in practice the kind of education received was 

 decided chiefly by the status in the social and economic scale 

 of the families from which children came. Individuality was 

 submerged in status. It was a virtue for persons to be content 

 with the station In which It had pleased God to place them. 

 Because there was no little opportunity for individuals to put 

 into action the capacities that they possessed, they were 



