x PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD 



to our problems we are consciously exercising the initiative, the 

 free choice, that is our birthright. We accept cheerfully the re' 

 sponsibility for our decisions. 



"Surely education for life must follow life," says New York 

 State's Report on the Regents' Inquiry, 1 "and the educational 

 program, through the secondary school at least, should endeavor 

 to rise above the artificial academic departmentalisation which 

 has characterized it in the past, and strive for a broad arid life' 

 like plan of study and growth." This same report anticipates the 

 appearance of such a project as the AMERICAN WAY series 

 when it refers to "the cooperative effort set in motion by edu' 

 cators to develop new and up'to-date materials which furnish 

 the broad picture because they start with the common affairs of 

 life, are scientifically accurate because they come from the joint 

 efforts of specialists, and are readable because they are put into 

 words by those who are skilled in writing for the intended 

 users." It proposes further: "First, we must abandon the notion 

 that education consists merely in learning facts. If it did, we 

 should all be less and less "educated' in proportion as the amount 

 of knowledge is advanced. Education consists rather of the ac 

 quisition of broad understanding, the development of skill in 

 associative thinking and generalization, the training in the reten' 

 tion and use of pertinent bits of experience and truth, and the 

 cultivation of a rational, scientific, and ethical approach to the 

 world and to life." 



Each volume of the AMERICAN WAY series is a self 'contained 

 whole; each contributes to an understanding of the functioning 

 of institutions in a democracy. For schools which prefer to or 

 ganize their social studies programs around individual basic 

 texts, any one of the AMERICAN WAY titles may serve as the 

 core of a semester's work. For those with curricula calling for 

 individual research and extensive reading, all the volumes will 



1 Luther Halsey Gulick. Education for American Life. A New Program for the 

 State of New York. The McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1938. Pp. 29-31. 



