iciency." All this reinforces the statement
which opens this chapter: The conception of education as a social
process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind
of society we have in mind. These considerations pave the way for our
second conclusion. One of the fundamental problems of education in and
for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a
wider social aim. The earlier cosmopolitan and "humanitarian" conception
suffered both from vagueness and from lack of definite organs of
execution and agencies of administration. In Europe, in the Continental
states particularly, the new idea of the importance of education for
human welfare and progress was captured by national interests and
harnessed to do a work whose social aim was definitely narrow and
exclusive. The social aim of education and its national aim were
identified, and the result was a marked obscuring of the meaning of a
social aim.

This confusion corresponds to the existing situation of human
intercourse. On the one hand, science, commerce, and art transcend
national boundaries. They are largely international in quality and
method. They involve interdependencies and cooperation among the peoples
inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea of national
sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the
present time. Each nation lives in a state of suppressed hostility and
incipient war with its neighbors. Each is supposed to be the supreme
judge of its own interests, and it is assumed as matter of course that
each has interests which are exclusively its own. To question this is
to question the very idea of national sovereignty which is assumed to
be basic to political practice and political science. This contradiction
(for it is nothing less) between the wider sphere of associated and
mutually helpful social life and the narrower sphere of exclusive and
hence potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts of educational
theory a clearer conception of the meaning of "social" as a function
and test of education than has yet been attained. Is it possible for an
educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet the full
social ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained, and
corrupted? Internally, the question has to face the tendencies, due to
present economic conditions, which split society into classes some
of which are made merely tools for the high