THE NEW STATE
By Mary Parker Follett

Appendix:
The Training For The New Democracy

THE training for the new democracy must be from the cradle --
through nursery, school and play, and on and on through every
activity of our life. Citizenship is not to be learned in good
government classes or current events courses or lessons in civics.
It is to be acquired only through those modes of living and acting
which shall teach us how to grow the social consciousness. This
should be the object of all day school education, of all night
school education, of all our supervised recreation, of all our
family life, of our club life, of our civic life.

  When we change our ideas of the relation of the individual to
society, our whole system of education changes. What we want to
teach is interdependence, that efficiency waits on discipline, that
discipline is obedience to the whole of which I am a part.
Discipline has been a word long connected with school life -- when
we know how to teach _social_ discipline, then we shall know how to
"teach school."

  The object of education is to fit children into the life of the
community [1]. Every cooperative method conceivable, therefore,
must be used in our schools for this end. It is at school that
children should begin to learn group initiative, group
responsibility -- in other words social functioning. The group
process must be learnt by practice. We should therefore teach
subjects which require a working together, we should have group
recitations, group investigations, and a gradual plan of
self-government.  Every child must be shown his place in the life
that builds and his relation to all others who are building. All
the little daily and hourly experiences of his interrelations must
be constantly interpreted to him. Individual competition must, of
course, disappear. All must see that the test of success is ability
to work with others, not to surpass others.

     1. The western states feel that they are training members of
     society and not individuals and that is why it seems proper to
     them to take public money to found state universities.

  Group work is, indeed, being introduced into our more progressive
schools. Manual training, especially when the object made is large
enough to require the work of two or more, cooking classes, school
papers, printing classes etc., give opportunity for organization
into groups with the essential advantage of the group: coordinated
effort.

  Moreover, we should have, and are beginning to have, group
recitations. A recitation should not be to test the pupil but to
create something. Every pupil should be made to feel that his point
of view is slightly different from any one's else, and that,
therefore, he has something to contribute. He is not to "recite"
something which the teacher knows already; he is to contribute not
only to the ideas of his fellow-pupils but also to those of his
teacher. And this is not impossible even for the youngest. Once
when I was in Paris I made the acquaintance of little Michael, a
charming English boy of five, who upon being taken to the Louvre by
his mother and asked what he thought of the Mona Lisa, replied,
with a most pathetic expression, "I don't think she looks as if she
liked little boys."  That was certainly a contribution to Mona Lisa
criticism.

  But after the child has been taught in his group recitation to
contribute his own point of view, he must immediately be shown that
he cannot over-insist upon it; he must be taught that it is only a
part of the truth, that he should be eager for all the other points
of view, that all together they can find a point of view which no
one could work out alone. In other words we can teach collective
thinking through group recitations.

  A group recitation may give each pupil the feeling that a whole
is being created: (1) by different points of view being brought out
and discussed, and (2) by every one contributing something
different: one will do some extra reading, one will bring clippings
from newspapers and periodicals, one will take his camera to the
Art Museum and take pictures of the casts. Thus we get life, and
the lesson of life, into that hour. Thus may we learn the
obligation and the joy of "belonging," not only when our school
goes to play some other school, but in every recitation hour of the
day. The old idea was that no one should help another in a
recitation; the new idea is that every one is to help every one
else. The kind of competition you have in a group recitation is
whether you have added as much as any one else. You now feel
responsible not only for your contribution but that the recitation
as a whole should be a worthy thing. Such an aim will overcome much
of the present class-room indifference.

  Many more of the regular school activities could be arranged on
a group basis than is now thought possible -- investigation for
instance. This is a big word, but the youngest children sent out to
the woods in spring are being taught "original research."

  Again, every good teacher teaches her pupils to "assemble" his
different thoughts, shows them that a single thought is not useful,
but only as it is connected with others. The modern teacher is like
the modern curator who thinks the group significance of a
particular classification more important than the significance of
each isolated piece. The modern teacher does not wish his pupils'
minds to be like an old-fashioned museum -- a hodge-podge of
isolated facts -- but a useful workshop.

  Again, to learn genuine discussion should be considered an
essential part of our education. Every child must be trained to
meet the clash of difference -- difference of opinion, difference
of interest -- which life brings. In some universities professors
are putting aside one hour a week for a discussion hour. This
should be done in all colleges and schools, and then it should be
seen to that it is genuine discussion that takes place in that
hour.

  Moreover, in many schools supervised playground and gymnasium
activities are being established, athletic clubs encouraged,
choruses and dramatic leagues developed, not only because of their
value from the health or art point of view, but because they teach
the social lesson.

  The question of self-government in the schools is too complicated
a subject and has met with too many difficulties, notwithstanding
its brilliant successes, to take up here, but undoubtedly some
amount of self-control can be given to certain groups, and in the
upper grades to whole schools, and when this can be done no
training for democracy is equal to the practice of democracy.

  The aim is to create such a mental atmosphere for children that
it is natural for them to wish to take their part, to make them
understand that citizenship is not obeying the laws nor voting, nor
even being President [1], but that all the visions of their highest
moments, all the aspirations of their spiritual nature can be
satisfied through their common life, that only thus do we get
"practical politics."

     1. A little girl I know said, "Mother, if women get the vote,
     shall I have to be President?"

  In our industrial schools it is obviously easier to carry further
the teaching of coordinated effort than in the regular day schools.

  Our evening schools must adopt the methods of the more
progressive day schools, and must, as they are doing in many cases,
add to the usual activities of evening schools.

  The most conscious and deliberate preparation for citizenship is
given by the "School Centres" now being established all over the
United States. The School Centre movement is a movement to mold the
future, to direct evolution instead of trusting to evolution.  The
subject of this book has been the necessity for community
organization, but the ability to meet this necessity implies that
we know how to do that most difficult thing in the world -- work
with other people: that we are ready to sacrifice individual
interests to the general good, that we have a fully developed sense
of responsibility, that we are trained in initiative and action.
But this is not true. If the School Centres are to fill an
important place in neighborhood life, they must not only give an
opportunity for the development of neighborhood consciousness and
neighborhood organization, but they must train up young people to
be ready for neighborhood organization. We who believe in the
School Centre as one of the most effective means we have for
reconstructing city life believe that the School Centre can furnish
this training. We hear everywhere of the corruption of American
municipal politics, but why should the next generation do any
better than the present unless we are training our young men and
women to a proper understanding of the meaning of good citizenship
and the sense of their own responsibility?  The need of democracy
to-day is a trained citizenship.  We must deliberately train for
citizenship as for music, art or trade.  The School Centres are, in
fact, both the prophecy of the new democracy and a method of its
fulfillment. They provide an opportunity for its expression, and at
the same time give to men and women the opportunity for the
training needed to bring it to its highest expression.

  The training in the School Centres consists of: group activities,
various forms of civic clubs and classes, and practice in
self-government.

  First, we have in the Centres those activities which require
working together, such as dramatic and choral clubs, orchestras and
bands, civic and debating clubs, folk-dancing and team-games. We
want choral unions and orchestras, to be sure, because they will
enrich the community life at the same time that they emphasize the
neighborhood bond, we want civic and debating clubs because we all
need enlightenment on the subjects taken up in these clubs, but the
primary reason for choosing such activities is that they are group
activities where each learns to identify himself with a social
whole. This is the first lesson for all practical life. Take two
young men in business. One says of his firm, "_They_ are doing so
and so": his attitude is that the business is a complete whole,
without him, to which he may indeed be ministering in some degree.
Another young man who has been a few weeks with an old-established
firm says "_We_ have done so and so for years," "_Our_ policy is so
and so." You perhaps smile but you know that he possesses one of
the chief requirements for rising.

  In our group the centre of consciousness is transferred from our
private to our associate life.  Thus through our group activities
does neighborhood life become a preparation for neighborhood life;
thus does it prepare us for the pouring out of strength and strain
and effort in the common cause.

  Then the consciousness of the solidarity of the group leads
directly to a sense of responsibility, responsibility in a group
and for a group. Sooner or later every one in a democracy must ask
himself, what am I worth to society?  Our effort in the Centres is
to help the birth of that moment. This is the social lesson: for
people to understand that their every act, their work, their
home-life, the kind of recreation they demand, the kind of
newspapers they read, the bearing of their children, the bringing
up of their children -- that all these so-called private acts
create the city in which they live. It is not just when we vote, or
meet together in political groups, or when we take part in some
charitable or philanthropic or social scheme, that we are
performing our duty to society. Every single act of our life should
be looked at as a social act.

  Moreover, we learn responsibility for our group as well as to our
group. We used to think, "I must do right no matter what anyone
else does." Now we know how little that exhausts our duty; we must
feel an equally keen responsibility for our whole group.

  These then are the lessons which we hope group activities will
teach -- solidarity, responsibility and initiative, -- how to take
one's place worthily in a self-directed, self-governing community.

  In the first year of one of our Boston Centres, the people of a
certain nationality asked if they might meet regularly at the
Centre. At their first meeting, however, they broke up without
accomplishing anything, without even deciding to meet again, simply
because those present had never learned how to do things with other
people. Each man seemed a little island by himself. They explained
to me the fact that they made no plans for further meeting by
saying that they found they did not know parliamentary law, and
some of them must learn parliamentary law before they could
organize. I did not feel, however, that that was the real reason.
I was sure it was because they had never been accustomed to do
things in groups -- they had probably never belonged to a
basketball team or a dramatic club -- and we have to learn the
trick of association as we have to learn anything else.

  But the Centres prepare for citizenship not only by group
activities but also by direct civic teaching. This takes the form
not only of lectures, classes in citizenship, but also of societies
like the "junior city councils" or the "legislatures" where
municipal and state questions are discussed, and young men's and
young women's civic clubs. And it must be remembered that the chief
value of these clubs is not the information acquired, not even the
interest aroused, but the lesson learned of genuine discussion with
all the advantages therefrom [1].

     1. See pp.208-212.

  But I have written as if it were our young people who were to be
educated by the group activities of the Centres, as if the young
people were to have the training for democracy and the older people
the exercise of democracy. Nothing could be further from my
thoughts. The training for democracy can never cease while we
exercise democracy. We older ones need it exactly as much as the
younger ones. That education is a continuous process is a truism.
It does not end with graduation day; it does not end when "life"
begins. Life and education must never be separated. We must have
more life in our universities, more education in our life. 
Chesterton says of H. G. Wells, "One can lie awake nights and hear
him grow." That it might be said of all of us! We need education
all the time and we all need education. The "ignorant vote" does
not (or should not) mean the vote of the ignorant, we get an
ignorant vote very often from educated people; an ignorant vote
means ignorance of some particular subject.

  A successful business man said to me the other day, "I graduated
from college with honors, but all I learned there has done me
little good directly. What I got out of college was an attitude
towards life: that life was a matter of constantly learning, that
my education had began and was going on as long as I lived." Then
he went on to say, "This is the attitude I want somehow to get into
my factory. Boys and girls come to me with the idea, 'School is
over, learning is behind me, now work begins.' This is all wrong.
I am now planning a school in connection with my factory, not
primarily on account of what they will learn in the school, but in
order to make them see that their life of steady learning is just
beginning and that their whole career depends on their getting this
attitude." Now this is what we want the Centres to do for people:
to help them acquire the attitude of learning, to make them see
that education is for life, that it is as valuable for adults as
for young people.

  We have many forms of adult education: extension courses,
continuation and night schools, correspondence schools, courses in
settlements, Young Men's Christian Associations etc. And yet all
these take a very small per cent of our adult population. Where are
people to get this necessary education? Our present form of
industry does not give enough. Tending a machine all day is not
conducive to thought [1];  a man thus employed gets to rely
entirely on his foreman. The man who lets his foreman do his
thinking for him all day tends to need a political boss at night.
We must somehow counteract the paralyzing effect of the methods of
modern industry.  In the School Centre we have an opportunity for
adult education in the only forms in which many people, tired out
with the day's work, can take it: discussion, recreation, group
activities and self-governing clubs.  The enormous value of that
rapidly spreading movement, the forum movement, and its connection
with the School Centres, there is space here only to mention.

     1. Also men have less opportunity for discussion at work than
     formerly.

  Many people, however, even if not the majority, are eager and
hungry for what one man spoke to me of as "real education."
University extension work is spreading rapidly and in many cases
adapting itself marvelously to local needs; a much closer
connection could be made between the opportunities of the
university and the training of the citizen for his proposed
increased activity in the state by having university extension work
a recognized part of the School Centre, so that every one, the
farmer or the humblest workman, might know that even although he
cannot give all his time to college life, he may have the advantage
of its training. In the School Centre should be opportunity for the
study of social and economic conditions, the work of constitutional
conventions, the European situation and our relation to it, the
South American situation and our relation to it, etc. etc.

  Moreover, we must remember when we say we all need more
education, that even if we could be "entirely" educated, so to
speak, at any one minute, the next minute life would have set new
lessons for us. The world is learning all the time about health,
food values, care of children etc. All that science discovers must
be spread. Adult education means largely the assimilation of new
ideas; from this point of view no one can deny its necessity.

  I have said that the Centres prepare for citizenship through
group activities, through civic clubs and classes and through
actual practice in self-government.  The Centres may be a real
training in self-government, a real opportunity for the development
of those qualities upon which genuine self-direction depends, by
every club or group being self-governed, and the whole Centre
self-directed and self-controlled by means of delegates elected
from each club meeting regularly in a Central Council. If we want
a nation which shall be really self-governed not just nominally
self-governed, we must train up our young people in the ways of
self-direction.

  Moreover, the development of responsibility and self-direction
will be the most effective means of raising standards. We are
hearing a great deal just now of regulated recreation, regulated
dance halls etc. We must give regulation a secondary place. There
is something better than this which ought to be the aim of all
recreation leaders, that is, to educate our young people to want
higher standards by interpreting their own experience to them and
by getting them to think in tern of cause and effect. You can force
a moral code on people from above yet this will change them very
little, but by a system of self-governing clubs with leaders who
know how to lead, we can make real progress in educating people to
higher standards. This is true of athletic games as well as of
dances.  We find, indeed, that it is true of all parts of our
Centre work. Through the stormy paths of club election of officers,
I have seen leaders often guide their young men to an understanding
of honest politics. It is usually easier, it is true, to do _for_
people, it is easier to "regulate" their lives, but it is not the
way to bring the results we wish. We need education, not
regulation.

  Self-government in the Centres then means not only the election
of officers and the making of a constitution, but a real management
of club and Centre affairs, the opportunity to take initiative, to
make choices and decisions, to take responsibility. The test of our
success in the Centres will always be how far we are developing the
self-shaping instinct. But we must remember that we have not given
self-government by allowing the members of a club to record their
votes. Many people think a neighborhood association or club is
self-governing if a question is put to them and every one votes
upon it. But if a club is to be really self-governed it must first
learn collective thinking. This is not a process which can be
hurried, it will take time and that time must not be grudged.
Collective thinking must be reverenced as an act of creation. The
time spent in evolving the group spirit is time spent in creating
the dynamic force of our civilization.

  Moreover each Centre should be begun, directed and supported (as
far as possible) by the adult people of a community acting together
for that end. A Centre should not be an undertaking begun by the
School Committee and run by the School Committee, but each Centre
should be organized by local initiative, to serve local needs,
through methods chosen by the people of a district to suit that
particular district. The ideal School Centre is a Community Centre.
A group of citizens asks for the use of a schoolhouse after school
hours, with heat, light, janitor, and a director to make the
necessary connection between the local undertaking and the city
department. Then that group of citizens is responsible for the
Centre: for things worth while being done in the schoolhouse, and
for the support of the activities undertaken.  By the time such a
School Centre is organized by such an association of citizens,
neighbors will have become acquainted with one another in a more
vital way than before, and they will have begun to learn how to
think and to act together as a neighborhood unit.

  We are coming to a more general realization of this. In the
municipal buildings in the parks of Chicago, the people are not
given free lectures, free moving pictures, free music, free dances
etc.; they are invited to develop their own activities. To the
Recreation Centres of New York, operated by the Board of Education,
are being added the Community Centres controlled by local boards of
neighbors. In Boston we have under the School Committee a
department of "The Extended Use of School Buildings," and the aim
is to get the people of each district to plan, carry out and
supervise what civic, educational and recreational activities they
wish in the schoolhouses.

  A Chicago minister said the other day that the south side of
Chicago was the only part of the city where interest in civic
problems and community welfare could be aroused, and this he said
was because of the South Park's work in field houses, clubrooms and
gymnasiums for the last ten or twelve years.

  When the chairman of the Agricultural Council of Defense of
Virginia asked a citizen of a certain county what he thought the
prospects were of being able to rouse the people in his county in
regard to an increased food production, the prompt reply was, "On
the north side of the county we shall have no trouble because we
have several Community Leagues there, hut on the south side it will
be a hard job."

  The School or Community Centre is the real continuation school of
America, the true university of true democracy.
