new is about to be realized in education,
it might seem natural to begin to think about changes from the
standpoint and in the terms of the old chapters and topics. We might
ask what this or that subject of the curriculum means or must produce
that it did not mean and did not produce before; or we might consider
the old and the new requirements in the education of the feelings, the
will, the intellect; or we might take any other of the educational
categories as a basis for a discussion of the philosophy of the
school. These programs, however, do not seem to be very inspiring.
Would it not be better now to try to distinguish the main fields of
life and the main interests in regard to which new questions and new
needs have arisen, and see what changes in our educational thought are
really demanded by them? On such a plan, internationalism itself would
first demand attention, and indeed most of all. In a sense all
questions about education must now be considered with reference to
internationalism in some way. Then there are the problems already
raised during the war and widely discussed, about the teaching of
patriotism. Patriotism becomes a new educational problem, a chapter in
our theory of education, in which we become conscious of ourselves in
a new way, and are aware of our larger field and changed conditions.
There are questions, too, about the teaching of the lessons of the
war, what we shall think about war in general as a good or an evil,
how we shall conceive peace and its values. Changes are taking place
in government, and in our ideas of government, and governments are
being put to new tests. Political education can hardly fail to be now
one of our most serious concerns. Democracy appears to be our great
word; the control and education of the democratic forces and the
democratic spirit becomes an urgent need. Industry acquires new
meanings; we must take up again all the theory of industrial
education, for we have seen of late that industry contains
possibilities of evil we did not before understand. Social problems
arise in changed forms. The new world-idea or world-consciousness
becomes an educational problem of the social life. Class difference
can never again be ignored as it has been in the past in the schools.
Moral, religious and aesthetic education seems to have a different
place in the school, just to the extent that all life has become more
serious on account of the war. These demands made upon the deep