sary
functions of public education will be the regulation of the motives
and feelings which are contained in this sentiment.

Patriotism is first of all to be considered, then, as a phase of the
social life as a whole, rather than as an unique emotion or a special
variety of loyalty. It is a way in which the sum of tendencies that
enter into the social life become fixated upon certain qualities of
the environment, or upon certain objects. Patriotism will best be
understood in a practical way by observing its objects. Patriotism is
a total mood; country is a total object. But the mood of patriotism
expresses varied desires, and the object of patriotism is a highly
complex and variable object. In being loyal to or devoted to country
in the sense which we usually mean when we say one is patriotic, we
are devoted to at least the following objects: 1) physical country as
home; 2) the ways, customs, standards and beliefs of the country; 3)
the group of people constituting the nation; and here race, social
solidarity, ideal constructions of an united people having common
purposes and possessions enter; 4) leaders; 5) country as an
historical entity having rights and interests--a living being having
experiences, ideals and characteristics. The educational problem is of
course the regulation of the attachment of the individuals of a nation
to these objects. In one sense this educational problem of patriotism
is nothing less than that of developing social consciousness itself.
It is precisely the task of fostering or creating in the child the
basis of all loyalty. Given a loyal mind in the child and a normal
environment, we need to be concerned but little about the causes and
the groups upon which that loyalty will expend itself, for the
conditions are all present for forming an attachment to every natural
group. Considered generically and psychologically there is no
patriotism, we say, marked off from everything else, and there is no
one object that excites patriotic loyalty. All educational influences
that strengthen attachment to home, all social feeling, devotion to
the ways of any group and obedience to its standards, respect for all
law and authority, all appreciation of historic relations, help to
develop patriotism, merely because country, in these aspects, is an
omnipresent object to which the feelings thus engendered will
automatically become to some extent attached.

The first task in the teaching of patriotism (firs