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The subject of social class takes us as close as any other to the very core of democratic values. Nondemocratic societies essentially are ones in which people are separated into distinct strata, and the classical conception of democracy emerges from the attempt to organize a society of equals, free from the privileges or stigmas of "superior" and "inferior" rank. The American Dream has centered about the creation of this commonwealth of equals, without the levels of prestige that divided men from one another in the older and more traditional societies. Foreign observers of the American experiment, such as de Tocqueville in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as more recent ones, have been particularly impressed by the degree to which this dream has been realized in American life. In no other respect does our society seem to have succeeded so well in demonstrating the possibilities of respecting the dignity of all men.

On the other hand, there are many evidences in American life that rank and privilege are still with us, and that the pure vision of democratic equality has not been fully realized. Moreover, the idea of equality, on reflection, turns out not to be a simple one, so that the meaning of the democratic social ideal needs to be examined and defined. Are we a classless society, and if so, in what sense or senses? If we are not, ought we to work for the elimination of classes? What does it mean to say that people in a democracy are equal or should be equal? Can status and rank be abandoned, and should they be? These are questions that can be approached only through a careful analysis of the nature and uses of classification.

We begin with a look at the general meaning of classification. A "class" is any collection of things sharing some common property or set of properties. Classifying has two main purposes. First, it is the basis for all understanding of the world. Our experience becomes intelligible only through the formation of concepts, and concepts are kinds or classes of things. All cognition and recognition take place against the background of earlier experience organized conceptually. By means of classification we avoid the frustrating confusion of experience as a mass of disparate and separate items.

The second chief purpose of classifying is to facilitate control of things. When similar items are grouped together, they may be handled alike, within the sphere of relevance of the qualities defining the class. Thus, the classification of books by subject and by author in a library makes it possible to manage even a very large collection without confusion. Without such organization one could scarcely ever find any desired volume. Again, the classification of rocks according to certain types enables engineers to carry out mining or building operations with maximum safety and efficiency. Similarly, knowledge of kinds of foods is the basis for dietary control.

Of particular interest for our present discussion of social class are the ways in which the activity of classifying applies to people. First, it is possible to distinguish an inclusive class of entities called "persons." This is the species man. To be a person is to possess certain essential qualities and capacities which do not belong to any things in the nonhuman world. Persons share with some nonpersons such qualities as being mammals, animals, and living things. On the other hand, they are a special group in respect to such features as rational capacity, imagination, memory, foresight, language, and the ability to create and transmit culture.

This unity of all persons within the bounds of a single inclusive class is a fundamental fact for democracy. It is one basis for human equality. All persons are at least equal with respect to those qualities by which they are distinguished from all nonpersons. The special capacities of man -- the glory of his knowledge, art, and invention, the wonder of his powers for sympathy, love, and reverence, as well as the tragedy of their perversion for selfish ends -- have for centuries been faithfully acknowledged and appropriately celebrated through arts, letters, philosophy, and religion. In the past century, however, under the influence of evolutionary theory, the kinship of man with the animals has been more strongly emphasized. Nevertheless, the classical humanistic tradition, with its emphasis on the common distinctive qualities of man, provides stronger support for the democratic ideal of human equality than does evolutionary naturalism, with its concern for the continuity of man with the lower forms of life.

The problems of social class derive not from this classifying of men with the animals but from dividing the inclusive class of persons into subclasses. Human beings may be grouped according to any number of indices of similarity. Some of the features commonly used for classifying people are as follows: ( 1 ) Physical characteristics -- sex, age, height, weight, color (of hair, eyes, or skin), blood type, body build, medical history. ( 2 ) Intellectual factors -- "Intelligence Quotient," aptitude (mathematical, verbal, manual, etc.), achievement level in various special fields of study, area of specialization, academic grades and ranks, educational level reached, memory, imagination, abstractive and logical ability. (3) Emotional, social, and moral traits -- degree of aggressiveness, initiative, maturity, self-understanding and self-acceptance, extraversion or introversion, neurotic or psychotic conditions, confidence, poise, friendliness, adaptability, selfishness or unselfishness. (4) Occupation --owner, executive, professional, clerical, manual, unemployed, plus various individual occupational classes and subclasses. (5) Residence -- nation, state, city or town, district, or street, whether presently or by origin. (6) Affiliations -- religious, political, civic, professional, social. (7) Economic income, assets, and sources of each. (8) Marital status. (9) Ancestry. (10) Citizenship.

Why do we classify people? For the same reason that we group together other entities: for intellectual simplification and greater efficiency in management and control. It is more economical of thought and effort to deal with many people in the same manner than to devise a new scheme of idea and action for each person separately. When people are classified, they are necessarily regarded as things rather than as persons. A person is a unique individual. As a member of a collection he loses his concrete wholeness and is dealt with as an abstraction. Classification is a way of considering people impersonally and partially rather than in their singular completeness.

Class designations are a prime instrument of social regulation. In stratified societies each person is tagged with a class designation which fixes his place in the social structure. This allocation process serves to maintain social stability. Everyone is expected to know his proper place and to stay in it. Complex systems of ritual and symbol are evolved to make visible and vivid the class lines which separate one group from another.

The extreme form of tight and exclusive class structure is the system of caste, in which each person is permanently fixed from birth in a particular group. Various bases may be used for determining class characteristics -- for example, color or occupation. The essential point is that each person must assume the caste to which his parents belong. He cannot by any decision or act of his own change his caste, and his activities in every department of life -- particularly in such matters as marriage, eating, and education -- are governed by caste regulations. The caste system is the ultimate form of undemocratic use of classification, throwing into sharp relief the relation of class to the preservation of social order.

A society organized along sharp class lines tends to be static. Its members are concerned more with maintaining it as it is than with risking experiment or modification. The social structure is closed, and the pattern of organization is regarded as complete and sacrosanct. It is generally believed that the laws, customs, and rituals by which the particular system is defined are written into the nature of things, and that the social structure is but a true reflection of the innate qualities of human nature in its several kinds.

Systems of human classification tend to be self-perpetuating and self-confirming. Persons who are initially grouped together according to some particular feature come to be treated as interchangeable units and thus are driven into identification with each other and into similar patterns of life which extend the range of likenesses. Class distinctions are converted in this manner into real divisions between people, with far more comprehensive significance than the particular differences in traits or functions by which they are defined. Aspects of persons that should have relatively superficial descriptive meaning are at length interpreted as basic qualities defining exclusive subspecies of humanity. "Executive," "laborer," "Catholic," "Southern Baptist," "Jew," "Democrat," "Republican," "Socialist," for example, are proper designations of occupational, religious, or political affiliation, but may under undemocratic pressures become class symbols which divide people into comprehensive separate groups for other than occupational, religious, or political purposes.

In this self-confirming propensity of the class structure, education plays a major part. Each new generation is instructed in the ways of the group. The young are initiated into the customs that have come to characterize the particular classes into which they are born. In this manner it comes to appear as though group characteristics are part of the very substance of personality. By their powerful educative effect class divisions are perpetuated and class lines are hardened, unless deliberate countervailing democratic influences are brought to bear. It is in this regard that universal free public education is so essential. It was pointed out in the last chapter that schooling is an extension of the educative function of the family and that parents should be at liberty to send their children to nonpublic schools. Such schools often develop along class lines, thus accentuating the existing cleavages among people. For this reason it is important for a democracy to have a strong public school system, and parents who cherish democratic ideals do well to send their children to schools, either public or independent, in which traditional class distinctions are minimized.

Regardless of whether a school is public or nonpublic, there are ever-present pressures for education to be conducted along class lines. Education is costly, and one of the ways of keeping expenses down is to put students into classes and to treat them as far as possible alike. Large classes and standardized lessons are much more economical than individual instruction. Furthermore, it is easy for teachers to fall into the attitude that their task is to fashion young people after the pattern of some ideal model. The idea of a standard set of virtues and accomplishments by which all should be measured is a class idea. Teaching in accordance with it presupposes manipulation and control of persons to shape them for membership in a collection of some particular character.

Class assignment in education may be determined in any of a number of ways. The most common determinant is chronological age. According to this method of classification, all students of a given age or age range are treated alike educationally, even though they may differ widely in the characteristics that are relevant to learning -- as age is not. Another common mode of grouping is by some measure of intellectual aptitude or achievement. Such homogeneous ability grouping in schools is urged on behalf of increased learning efficiency. It has the defect of emphasizing only one kind of learning and of tending to create broad prestige rankings along intellectual lines. Pupils may further be put into classes on the basis of prospective occupation or occupation type, as in the European multiple-track system, in which at a certain age -- say, twelve -- pupils are separated into "industrial" or "vocational," "business" or "commercial," and "academic" or "college preparatory" segments. In some schools, chiefly nonpublic ones, the sexes are segregated, and in other schools racial and religious factors are crucial in deciding which students will be taught together.

Regardless of the criteria used for class placement, the purpose of such grouping is either to enable the teacher to manage the students more effectively or to use the school to sustain class distinctions recognized in the society of which the school is an agency. Whenever pupils are organized into classes and treated as classes, the tendency is always toward uniformity and conformity, toward externally imposed and defined discipline and order. Freedom and individuality, experimentation and creativity are not fostered by education in which class membership is regarded as important.

How do democratic commitments modify these undemocratic structures and tendencies in a class society? One answer has been that of revolutionary transformation, in which established orders of society are challenged and overthrown, and traditional modes of grouping people are discarded. The feudal aristocracies of the Middle Ages were one by one overturned by the forces of modern political, economic, and religious life. In communism and the new nationalisms of the present century established orders are being upset at an unparalleled rate, in the name of democracy. Whenever such revolutionary overturning of the traditional classes occurs, arbitrary traditional restrictions on individual human activity are removed, and great new resources of personal energy are released.

Despite the apparent gains for democracy through such revolutionary movements, the concomitant or eventual losses may be substantial. Anarchy and chaos may follow the destruction of the traditional social orders. Civilization is a balanced design of customs, principles, and expectations woven into the fabric of social institutions. When these established orders are all at once demolished, the injury to civilized values may be fatal. Furthermore, since no society can endure or make progress without some determinate structure and graded authority, new class distinctions quickly arise to take the place of those abolished by the revolution. They may be as rigid and exclusive as the ones they displace -- though the relative rankings and the membership are usually quite different. The communist movement is a dramatic illustration of the present point. Although Marxist theory teaches the establishment of a classless society through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat, in actual practice the self-styled "Peoples’ Democracies" contain well-defined new classes.

The revolutionary approach to the democratization of the social order is characteristic of the democracy of desire. Attention is focused on the disparities in rank and privilege among various classes in traditional societies and upon the changes necessary to secure a larger share for the disadvantaged. Antagonism, conflict, and social tension and disorder are increased, and new class divisions are generated to counteract the destructive conflict. Manipulatory techniques are used in order to force people into the patterns that the new dominant groups prescribe. The manipulators represent themselves as true friends of the people, as "liberal" and "democratic," and as opposed to "authoritarian reactionaries," but all the while they are destroying the people and denying their freedom. Finally, the interest philosophy entails a general destruction of qualitative standards. Distinctions are obliterated in the name of democratic criticism of traditional classes, and a pall of mediocrity descends over the whole culture.

The democracy of desire cannot provide a satisfactory basis for the criticism of undemocratic forms of social class, for it is infected by the same subpersonal assumptions which render these modes of human classification offensive. For a true perspective on social class we must turn to the democracy of worth. Here the criterion for judgment is right instead of interest. Qualitative distinctions are recognized, and the value of classification as a means of embodying them is acknowledged. Orders of rank, of authority, and even of honor are necessary to social well-being. All civilized life depends on the process of ordering, and wherever there are designations of position or office within society there will inevitably be classes.

To admit the principle of classification is not to deny the need for democratic criticism of actual social class arrangements. Social classes are often unjust, and the order of society is in need of reconstruction, according to principles of right and not of class interest. The fundamental democratic principle for social class is that the orders and distinctions of society should be based upon the contribution made by a person to the good of society and not upon personal privilege. Status should be determined by function rather than by accident of birth or fortune or by success in the struggle for prestige. If one’s personal capabilities and accomplishments fit him for important positions of leadership, he should be accorded the rank and the honor that symbolize the high value of his service. Classifying and ranking people is not inconsistent with democratic justice. Equity depends on a status system organized to objectify ideals of the social good. Ranking people is not in itself unjust. Injustice consists in ranking people incorrectly -- in according honor and status for the wrong reasons, that is, for causes other than contribution to the common weal.

But what of the fact earlier pointed out that classifying is an impersonal process and, hence, in tension with democratic ideals? How does that square with the foregoing affirmation of class in a democracy of worth? While classifying is socially necessary and can be just, in a democracy each person is regarded as a unique individual, valuable in himself and not on account of any class or rank labels attached to him for social purposes. The status of a person ought, then, to be regarded as belonging to the position he occupies in the social structure and not as inhering in him personally. There is a fundamental truth in the idea of democratic equality. As persons all men are absolutely equal, in the sense that each is a singular, incomparable, irreducible self. To this unique, free personhood any and all status and class designations, rankings, and groupings are irrelevant. All are moral equals, answerable only to the claims of conscience with respect to their faithfulness in their individual callings.

Classification is essential to manage the different functions that must be performed in a community of persons with different capabilities. It becomes a source of injustice only when employed beyond the sphere of functional relevance. For example, classifications by age, sex, occupation, and income are relevant to such practical matters as insurance rates, clothing, hours of work, and taxes, respectively. They do not warrant separating people into exclusive classes such as old and young, male and female, workers and managers, rich and poor, and dealing with the members of each class in the same fashion over a broad range of relationships. The key to democracy in classification is found in the twin principles of specificity and relative independence of descriptive designations. Specificity means that a particular label applied to a person is to be used solely to refer to the limited and specific functions to which it is pertinent; it is not to be spread out to become an umbrella concept coloring everything he is and does. Independence refers to the fact that most qualities and capacities are not dependent on one another. Place of residence, intelligence, and political affiliation, for example, have no necessary connection; from the nature of any one it is not possible to deduce what the others must be.

Democracy, in short, is consistent with functional classifications but not with social classes. For practical social purposes people may be grouped according to the relevant characteristics. This grouping applies not to persons as such but solely to the abstracted qualities concerned. Social classes segregate persons into groups. In contrast, classification is an intellectual device which facilitates the effective interdependence of persons. As such, it unites people instead of dividing them.

The democracy of worth makes for an open society. Its openness is a consequence of the way in which classification is used. In a closed society social classes are static and inflexible. In the open society classification is dynamic and fluid. As circumstances change and new social needs are presented, fresh analytical and administrative tools are invented and applied; people are classified and reclassified in ever new ways in response to the needs of the social situation. Furthermore, a closed society tends toward a unitary hierarchical system of classification, in that to each person one basic class designation is applied, and this designation fixes the person’s place in the rank order of society. An open society, on the other hand, is organized on the basis of functional pluralism, in which every person is classified in many different ways, each for a particular purpose, and in which no single general rank order is recognized. There are many orders of precedence and status with respect to the many types of relationships subsisting within the community, and each person is independently placed in each type in the relative position to which he is fitted. Finally, in the closed society a person cannot move from one class to another at all or only with great difficulty. In the open society, if a person’s qualities change, the classes to which he descriptively belongs also change.

These ideals of the democracy of worth in the field of social class have direct application to education. Not only should democratic class principles be taught as rational ideals, but by being put into practice in the conduct of education, their concrete meaning should be visibly demonstrated. While the need for economy dictates the use of classes for school instruction, the uniformist tendency of class instruction can be moderated by deliberately taking account of individual differences within classes. The class should as far as possible be treated as a unit only for certain purposes of administrative efficiency, such as the keeping of attendance and the assignment of space and facilities. In the most significant aspects of instruction the unique capacities and attainments of each pupil should be recognized. The democratic teacher also does not seek to fashion his students according to some preconceived pattern, stamping them with the mark of his class, but serves as a mediator and helper of each student along the path that seems right for him.

Tests and measurements should be used with great circumspection and not to mark off students into separate groups for all purposes. Every test (for example, of verbal aptitude, reading speed, arithmetical skill) should be understood as a measure of a particular set of competences and should not be employed beyond its field of pertinence. Above all, no single score (such as the "I.Q.") should be accepted as a basis for setting up a rank order of students. Competences are of many kinds and cannot be assessed by any one test. Studies have also shown that most of the common intelligence tests have a social class bias; the vocabulary and thought patterns used in them generally follow a middle class pattern, thus putting the socially and economically more privileged in a preferential position. From a democratic standpoint it is important to devise and use tests that do not have this class bias, and to compensate as far as possible for the distortion introduced by existing measures.

Academic grading systems, as generally used, have two major defects. First, they force the translation of quality into a numerical measure. But personal achievement cannot be judged quantitatively. There are judgments of style, of logical cogency, and of ethical purpose, for example, which cannot possibly be summed up in a single grade. Second, the grading system usually leads to comparisons between students and, thus, to competition for status rather than concern for learning as such. Ideally, in a democratic school, marks would be eliminated altogether. No attempt would be made to classify students or their productions by a single number or letter symbol. Evaluation rather would consist in as full and rounded a description as possible of the students’ abilities and accomplishments -- a discursive critical judgment such as would be made by a competent observer of a work of art, a sensitive and sympathetic biographer, or a seasoned and humane critic. Moreover, the standard of comparison would be not the performance of other students but the best available models of what is true and excellent. In this way the students would be invited to serve the good rather than compete for status, and they would be encouraged to be individuals and not conformists, since their work would be judged by a process of qualitative discrimination and not by simple ranking.

Since relative rankings do have a permanent and necessary place in every social system, some numerical measures of school accomplishment may still be desirable. When an employer is faced with the task of hiring a worker and must choose one person from among several candidates, he is forced to establish an order of preference -- that is, to sum up the many relevant competences in some sort of single numerical index of excellence. Since all social organization requires grades of authority and precedence, and since classification has a place in democratic society for functional discriminations, there is room also in democratic education for comparative grading of the type now common, insofar as the schools are called upon to supply some indices of competence for placement in the functional status system of society. The democratic ideal of unique qualitative judgment is in tension with the ranking requirements of organized society. Both kinds of evaluation have their place. However, it is desirable in schools to shift the weight strongly in the direction of individual discursive qualitative judgments and to reserve the numerical ranking solely for situations where competitive ratings are of the essence, as in scholarship allocation, honors citations, and certain job placement recommendations.

The undemocratic class bias in education extends even farther than the tests that automatically discriminate against students from the lower social and economic strata of society. Students from high status families are usually made to feel comfortable and welcome in school, by teachers and fellow students alike, simply because they are from families of good standing, while students from low status families are usually not shown such acceptance and approval. It is the proper business of the democratic school to serve as an influence against general social class stratification. Education has been and ought to continue to be the major agency for social mobility. Teachers should seek by every means to compensate for status factors imported by children from their families. Boys and girls from the less privileged homes should be given special attention and encouragement to make certain that their individual capabilities are brought to light and are not obscured by feelings of class inferiority. Children from high status families should be treated on their personal merits and should not be accorded special privileges because of their parents’ position in the community.

It is not easy for schoolteachers and administrators to swim against the stream of social custom by such measures, since they have their personal reputations, ambitions, and social status to consider, and since these are closely linked to the manner in which they treat the young people committed to their instruction. Nonetheless, educators who are true to their democratic mission must take deliberate means to counteract social class pressures and must learn to be self-critical in order that their own unconscious class prejudices may be brought to light and as far as possible eliminated. The ability of teachers to resist external social class demands is greatly enhanced by their own success in becoming professionally competent and organized along professional lines. As long as teachers are regarded (and regard themselves) as lay people who make their living by teaching, they cannot readily transcend the class structure in the conduct of their work.

On the other hand, when teachers possess the authority of qualified experts in learning and in the guidance of learning, and when they are organized into strong professional bodies which faithfully exercise responsibility for high professional standards, they can freely teach with sole regard to individual aptitude and need and without fear or favor in respect to social class. Parents, too, can help to counteract undemocratic social class attitudes by supporting the schools in their efforts in this respect, by acknowledging the professional independence and authority of teachers, and by arranging the external social relations of the family on the basis of worth and function without reference to social status.

Several features of the American school system reflect the struggle against social class without denying the need for functional classification. First, we have repudiated the principle of the fixed multipletrack system, according to which pupils are divided at a specified age into mutually exclusive groups with different educational and occupational destinations. We may classify secondary school students for functional purposes into such groups as "practical arts," "commercial," "general," and "college preparatory," but there is nothing to prevent students from later changing to another group which appears to fit better their abilities and occupational plans.

Second, the comprehensive high school has been devised to enable students with different curricular needs to study within the same educational community. Separate schools established along ostensibly functional lines (for example, "technical" and "academic") may turn out really to be social class schools which by totally segregating one group from the other accentuate social class cleavages. The comprehensive schools (and their counterparts in higher education, the comprehensive universities) recognize the necessity for educational differentiation but, by keeping the students together in some classes and in the student activities program, minimize social class divisions.

The tension between class and classification is nowhere more evident than in the continuing discussions over ability grouping versus mixed grouping in the schools. Placing students of similar ability together certainly makes for easier and more efficient instruction; the more able students do not need to wait for the slow ones to catch up, and the slow ones are not made to feel inadequate in comparison with the fast ones. But ability grouping also tends to separate students into self-conscious status groups. Furthermore, as pointed out earlier, there are many kinds of ability; no single measure of general competence suffices for the ranking of students. From a democratic standpoint, then, ability grouping should be used with care and restraint. Students with similar aptitudes and attainments in a specific subject may properly be grouped together for instruction in that subject, but general divisions into inferior and superior should be avoided.

Furthermore, just as comprehensive schools are desirable as a solvent of social class lines, so classes with students of differing abilities are valuable, provided the classes can be internally organized so as to let students proceed at their own pace, with enrichment through greater depth and scope of materials independently mastered by the most able students, and with special assistance by the teacher for the less able. It is also possible in mixed grouping for some of the brightest students to help instruct the less competent. Some schools are now experimenting at the elementary levels with an ungraded school, thus returning in some measure to the teaching patterns of the old-fashioned one-room school. With intelligent management it is possible for pupils of different capabilities to be taught together and to learn values in associated living not available from a stratified educational program.

A fourth feature of American schools aimed at the minimizing of social stratification is the system of guidance counseling. The purpose of this program is to make deliberate provision for the individual needs of the student in ways not possible in ordinary class instruction. In guidance, the student is ideally considered as a unique person, without reference to membership in any group or class. The counselor is in an unusually favorable position to be sensitive to class injustices of which individual students are victims and to open up opportunities for overcoming these inequities.

Finally, the provision of universal free public education is the most dramatic evidence of the American rejection of a class ideology. While freedom for private education is (and should be) recognized, the system of strong common schools has provided a major symbol of the essential unity of the American people and the most important means of insuring the social mobility which is the hallmark of an open society.

Turning now from questions of conscience in relationships with nature and with self, the present chapter and the next five will be concerned with conduct in relation to persons, beginning with the private face-to-face associations within the family, broadening out to the larger, more impersonal connections within the community and the nation, and concluding with problems of world responsibility.

The family is the fundamental social unit, and for its establishment sexual life exists. The importance of the family is in proportion to the dignity and worth accorded the individual person, for in the family new persons come into being and are cared for with unbounded concern for their well-being. In this activity of procreation and care for children the self-regarding and self-serving ways of the parents are to a large degree transformed into acts of self-giving and self-sacrifice. Thus, the family may be a source not only of human generation but also of regeneration, in which the usual gain-seeking attitudes are replaced by ones of self-forgetful dedication and joyful responsibility.

The family is the source and bulwark of democracy. The very idea of the boundless worth of the individual person can be truly and inwardly understood largely through the experience of the parent-child relationship. In the larger social community, in the affairs of business, and in civic life the notion of the infinite value of personality is a noble abstraction more than a living reality. Yet in the ordinary family the assurance of unconditional concern is an everyday actuality. Democracy as a comprehensive ideal of life is the extension beyond the family of the devoted care that good parents provide for their offspring. Any weakening of the family will accordingly be reflected in the decline of democracy generally, and a widespread belief in the importance and the stability of families will help to sustain democratic ideals in other spheres of life. Furthermore, the democracy that grows out of family experience is a democracy of worth, since it stems from loyalty to the good of the person and not from acquisitive impulses. It is based on willingness to sacrifice for the sake of others rather than only on satisfaction of one’s personal desires.

This natural democracy of worth in the family is the ground for the concern to educate the young. Parents are not content merely with begetting children and supplying them with the means of physical existence. Parents want to open the way for their children to grow in wisdom, grace, and honor through nourishment by the best fruits of civilization. Education is the attempt to fulfill the high hopes and fervent expectations which center around a child at his birth; it is the effort to make good the promise of a new life in its boundless potentiality.

These family-grounded ideals for the nurture of children are also the proper basis for education outside the family. Schools and other educational institutions should be regarded as extensions of the family and as instruments for accomplishing what parents intend for their children but for practical reasons cannot themselves perform. It is an error to regard the state as the primary agency of education and the family as simply the agency of procreation and support. The primacy of the family in education rests upon the spontaneous devotion of parents to their children -- a devotion that supplies a model for the relation between teacher and pupil and that is undermined when education is regarded as a direct responsibility of the state. It is for this reason that parents should be given the right to send their children to schools of their choice, provided certain minimal standards of safety and competency are satisfied, and should not be required to utilize state educational facilities.

The fundamental source of family degeneration is the insinuation of the way of desire into the pattern of family relationships. The parents may regard the child as a means to fulfill their own ends. Through their progeny they may seek to overcome a feeling of loneliness, emptiness, or uselessness. In return, they may try as far as possible to supply the child with what he desires. This reciprocity is in effect a commercial one: the parties to the transaction exchange benefits with one another on a quid pro quo basis.

Ideally, the parents’ devotion to their child should be unconditional in character. All traces of bargaining should be excluded. The child is not to be welcomed, accepted, and appropriately rewarded when he yields satisfaction to his parents, and rejected when he fails to produce as desired. He is to be accepted and cared for as a person, without regard to how well or how poorly he may live up to his parents’ expectations and hopes for him. He is not a marketable commodity, to be bought up or written off, and measured by price. He is a unique person to be loved for himself, without measure or calculation of benefits.

In its unconditional quality the love of parents for the child is to be like their love for one another. But the parent-child relationship differs from the parents’ relation to each other in this respect: while the parents entered into a joint covenant of mutual dedication, the parent-child relationship was established by the parents’ intention and action without any possibility of the child’s knowledge or consent. From this basic inequality in the establishment of the relationship stems the demand for a unilaterally unconditioned love of the parents for the child.

From this statement of the ideal of family love it should by no means be inferred that wants and satisfactions have no place in family life, nor that parents ought to make no demands upon their children. The fulfilling of desires is a happy consequence of good family life. Parents properly give innumerable satisfactions to each other and to their children, and children likewise please their parents. That this is so is a matter for gratitude. But to rejoice in the benefits of familial association is quite different from affirming a prudential basis for family life. Husband and wife enter into a covenant of loyalty from which it is hoped joy and happiness will continually spring, but which maintains whether or not these benefits actually accrue. Similarly, parents who take upon themselves responsibility for children may reasonably hope for the joys of affection returned and pride in healthy growth and worthy achievement, but the obligation to love and care for their young holds whether or not these legitimate desires are fulfilled.

In like manner, while it is right that parents should supply a child with things he wants, his wanting them ought not to be the reason for providing them. The parents’ prior consideration should always be the child’s need. If he desires what is right and good for him, that is cause for rejoicing; if he does not want it, then ways should be sought to lead him to a change of affection. This is the prime objective of the family’s educative effort: by loving persuasion and by example to engender habits of commitment to what is of worth, instead of living for self-gratification. Granted that no parents can claim full and true knowledge of what is for the benefit of the child, the obligation still rests with them to govern their action with respect to him in the light of their best understanding of his real needs. Since the child’s wants often provide clues to his needs, they should be hospitably considered and never discounted or rejected simply because they are objects of desire. The parents’ responsibility is always to evaluate the child’s requests and then to respond in the light of what appears to be right. Furthermore, as far as the child’s maturity permits, he should be included in the process of evaluation, so that decisions are not simply imposed arbitrarily from above, but can be recognized by him as issuing from intelligent love and as such may be accepted even in cases where they are not welcome. Such occasions of mutual engagement in the making and weighing of requests constitute the most decisive of all educative opportunities, whether within or beyond the family. For it is in these encounters of the parent with the child that the values by which one lives are most tellingly communicated, and that the most crucial of all lessons -- that of the primacy of loyalty to the good -- may most impressively be taught. It is through these events that the child can learn to distinguish between rejection and affectionate discipline and to prefer mature love to easy indulgence.

Even though the unconditional reciprocity which belongs to the relation between the parents because they have covenanted with one another does not pertain to the parent-child relationship, the child does owe full obedience to his parents during the time of his dependence upon them. This obligation is qualified only by the principle that parents may not make grossly unjust demands upon the child, on pain of interference by the state as guardian of basic human rights. The child’s obedience is not to be regarded as payment for benefits received from the parents; such an interpretation is ruled out by the unconditional nature of the parents’ commitment. The duty to obey is simply an ingredient in the concern for the well-being of the child and for his proper education. It is not in any way for the satisfaction or profit of the parents, to make life easier for them (though that may be a welcome by-product), or to gratify their appetite for command. A child can experience the meaning of secure love only through being dependent on persons who supply authoritative direction for his life.

Few doctrines in recent decades have been more injurious than the one that opposes the exercise of parental authority in the name of liberty and democracy. The eroding of the parents’ authority and the repudiation of the children’s obligation to obey has seriously contributed to the disintegration of the family and has undermined the education of the young in crucial respects. The trouble has come from a failure to distinguish between kinds of authority. Absolute, arbitrary, manipulative authority -- power over others -- is an evil thing; it belongs neither in the state nor in the family. But responsible authority, which derives from devotion to the good, is right and necessary, especially in the family. It is just this distinction that provides the basis for understanding why children owe obedience to their parents.

The foregoing principles of parent-child relationships -- concern by the parents for the needs of the child and the obligation of the child to obey the parents, within the context of intelligent and benevolent authority -- are the foundation for the right kind of education not only in homes but also in schools, which are established to aid and complete the family in its educative task. Teachers have a primary duty to serve their pupils and not to gratify themselves, whether by a sense of power over the lives of others, by the enjoyment of their students’ affection and respect, or by the intrinsic stimulus of interesting studies. Students, on the other hand, have the duty to render obedience to teachers within the limits of their recognized authority. Teachers ought to be given clear and unequivocal authority to conduct the work of education, and they should be afforded all necessary support, by parents and by school and civic officials, in making their authority effective. Finally, every effort must be made to insure that persons entrusted with the office of teacher will be selected with regard to their dedication to the authority of truth and right and not of arbitrary command.

Considerations of the nature of the family underlie the analysis of sex relationships generally. The basic principle of the position argued here is that the bearing and the rearing of children are the end and aim of sexuality, in the light of which all sexual activities should be appraised. Because parent-child relationships most naturally exemplify the way of devotion and obedience as opposed to that of self-gratification, the sexual relations that eventuate in procreation ought also to be founded in self-giving love and not in desire. Sex provides the crucial case of desire at odds with devotion.

The widely prevailing satisfaction philosophy has accorded sexual gratification a high place among the good things of life. To be regularly and fully satisfied in sexual experience is commonly accepted as an important human objective. The old-fashioned repression of sex is repudiated, and a new era of liberation is hailed. The stimulation of sexual appetite is a major aim of contemporary literary, dramatic, and pictorial productions, and the mass media are suffused with eroticism.

From this standpoint, the task of intelligence in relation to sex is not to master it or to control it in the way of earlier restrictive patterns of life, but to discover means of securing maximum sexual satisfaction for all people. In this new democracy of sexual desire the invention of efficient and inexpensive contraceptive devices and of improved drugs for the cure of venereal diseases is regarded as a signal advance toward the goal of the good life, for now it is possible to engage freely and widely in sexual intercourse with little fear of unwanted consequences, in the form of either offspring or infection.

When satisfaction is the criterion of good, the family is regarded essentially as a convenience and marriage as a means for sexual, economic, and social advantage. When the interests of the parties are no longer served by the marriage, the couple should be divorced, subject only to the requirement that due consideration be given to the care of any children resulting from the marriage. Even when the marriage is maintained, it is urged, extramarital sex relations ought to be countenanced, if discreetly engaged in, either in cases where for some reason the mate does not provide satisfaction or in any event for the added variety and richness of sexual enjoyments thereby provided.

The demand for full and free sexual satisfaction has been reinforced by certain reputedly scientific findings. From popular interpretations of Freud (in many respects incautious and one-sided) it has come to be widely believed that sexual impulses are the central factor in human existence, that social restraints on sex are the source of unhappiness and illness, and that uninhibited sexual experience is the basis for human felicity. Accordingly, sexual emancipation has assumed the character of a moral demand, and the imperatives of conventional sex morality have been condemned as contrary to human well-being.

More recently the studies of Alfred Kinsey and his associates on the sexual habits of contemporary Americans have shown how wide the gulf is between the persisting puritanic professions of respectable people and their average actual sexual behavior. The lesson usually drawn from these studies is that the outmoded pruderies of conventional middle-class sex ethics should be abandoned, and the liberties of sexual expression should be frankly, openly, and unashamedly accepted and enjoyed.

While it may readily be granted that certain hostile, fearful, and punitive attitudes toward sexual impulses will be harmful to personality, it does not follow that inhibition of sexual activity is intrinsically undesirable, or that a general relaxation of standards for sexual behavior is indicated. There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, that personal and social well-being is proportionate to the degree of sexual gratification enjoyed. In fact, it may be closer to the truth to say that the refinement and ennoblement of personality and the advancement of civilization are in proportion to the degree of discipline and control of sexual appetite. From this perspective, the modern assault on sex standards in the name of freedom (more properly called license) presents a major threat to individual and social welfare, for it justifies and confirms sensual satisfaction as the regulating principle of life.

Sexual appetite, powerful as it may be, is unlike the craving for food and drink, which must be satisfied if life is to continue. Satisfaction of sex urges can be denied temporarily or permanently without any impairment of the person, provided the purposes of restraint are understood and accepted. Given sufficiently significant purposes, renunciation of sexual satisfaction will, in fact, tend to heighten energies and intensify the zest for living. Restraint is not good simply in itself. It is not beneficial when it is externally imposed simply as a denial of desire. But when a person comes to see the ordering of sex impulse as a necessary means to serving a high good, the sacrifice of gratification can become a source of well-being. It is difficult for a person to sustain that vision in isolation. The practice of continence in a concupiscent society imposes great strain on the individual. We need to work out a set of social expectations and conventions in which the proper regulation of sexual activity will be assisted rather than made more difficult by being thrust largely on the individual, as it is at present.

It is possible that the re-establishment of loyalty to the right in every aspect of life could be greatly fostered by a fresh acceptance of the ideal of sexual purity. Perhaps sexual discipline is the test case for dedication to standards of worth in every domain of existence. Furthermore, since sex has to do with the creation of persons, whose individual worth is the basic principle of democracy, the health and vitality of democracy may be directly related to the prevailing state of conscience with regard to sex.

Some of the principles of sex and family life which follow for a democracy of worth may now be stated. These principles also indicate the standards to be used in sex education -- the basic ideals to be inculcated by explicit instruction in homes and at appropriate levels in schools, and even more essentially by the complex of accepted acts built into social and cultural patterns.

First, sexual activity should always be judged in relation to family ideals. The family is the end to which sexual relationships are a means. Sexuality is not an independent sphere, and sexual experience is not rightly regarded as an end in itself. The test of conscience for any sexual act is whether or not it is in accord with the central purpose of the family, which is to embody the ideal of individual worth through an unconditional covenant between husband and wife and unconditional commitment to children.

It follows, second, that sexual intercourse should take place only between husband and wife, and not outside of marriage. Extramarital sexual relationships undermine the family and betray the covenant of fidelity which ought to be established between marriage partners. The justification of premarital sex experimentation as a means of preparation for marriage and as a test of sexual compatibility for prospective mates is a rationalization for license and self-indulgence. Devoted couples can and should work out their sexual adjustments as a task of married life. Marriage should be a state of learning and growing together, in which the partners come together not in ignorance but in innocence, and participate in sexual discovery as a fresh and unique experience.

The limitation on sexual relationships to married couples extends beyond the complete act of intercourse to those forms of mutual sex stimulation that are a preparation for intercourse. The widespread practice of petting by persons who have no intention of marriage to each other is a consequence of the common acceptance of sexual relations as a means of satisfaction quite apart from family considerations. Since all physical intimacies between the sexes have sexual union as an implicit hope, intention, or inclination, they should be reserved solely for persons who have made a covenant of engagement to marry one another. Morally, petting is the equivalent of intercourse. It also contains an inherent psychological contradiction, in being at once an invitation to pleasure and a frustration of desire. Thus, it not only poisons the spring of sexual purity but also creates habits of sexual response which later make full surrender to a marriage partner more difficult to achieve. It is difficult for young people to refrain from petting in a society where this is generally accepted and practiced. To help them, the support and loving discipline of families is essential, and more especially of groups of families with similar standards, and of churches, schools, and other institutions with well-developed programs for more worthy modes of mutual association.

Fourth, within marriage sexual intercourse should be a means of procreation and of expressing the mutual devotion of husband and wife. It is no true and right marriage in which husband and wife consider themselves licensed to use each other for sexual purposes. Possession and use are subpersonal and wholly alien to the spirit of dedication upon which marriage should be founded. This does not mean that pleasure in sex has no place in marriage. Mutual enjoyment is important and legitimate, but only and always as a welcome concomitant of a relation established on sensitivity and consideration by each for the needs of the other.

One of the most serious of all contemporary problems is the limitation of population growth in order to establish a proper balance between human requirements and natural resources. The responsibility for population control rests with individual families, who should deliberately restrict their procreative activity. Family planning is important not only to help meet the general problem of natural resources but also to make it possible for each child born into the family to have the material and personal benefits he needs. In fact, as this latter concern is in most cases the only effective motive for limiting births, it is the best approach to the larger social problem.

Within the family, then, the question arises of how the number of children shall be controlled. There are three fundamentally different possible ways. The first way is to destroy what has been produced by conception, either by infanticide or by abortion. Infanticide is a form of murder and, as such, has been outlawed in all modern civilized societies. Since a fetus is a human being, deliberate abortion is also an unwarranted taking of life. Parents are in conscience bound to accept, protect, and nurture each life given to them, beginning with the moment of conception, at which time that life comes into being.

The second way of limiting family size is for husband and wife to refrain from sexual intercourse except for the express purpose of having children. By reserving the act of sexual union solely for procreation, intercourse gains extraordinary symbolic power. While those who wholeheartedly agree to live by this ideal do great honor to human personality and to the creative sources from which persons spring, the level of spiritual attainment and of personal discipline required to live in this manner is most unusual and probably beyond the capability of the average couple.

The third way of limiting offspring is to prevent conception from taking place. This approach permits the mutual enrichment of life through sexual union without each time assuming the responsibility for another child. Its justification is in the conviction that intercourse may rightly serve not only for procreation, but also independently as a means for husband and wife to express their love for each other.

There is no reason why contraception should not be humanely and sensitively practiced for the high purposes of family planning, social responsibility, and freedom for full and frequent sexual union. This does not mean that contraceptives make it unnecessary to discipline sexual desire. The governing principle of devotion to the marriage partner still holds, and full mutuality in the sexual relationship is still the aim. The value of contraception is simply that it enables the husband and wife to exercise parental and societal responsibility in controlling procreation without renouncing one of the most powerful means of communicating love.

A fifth basic principle is that all perversion and immaturity of sexual expression are to be avoided. The chief perversion is homosexuality, and the major form of immature sexuality is masturbation. These sexual practices are undesirable because they contradict the fundamental purpose of sexuality, which is the establishment of families and the raising of children. It is important that relationships within the family be such as to prevent the inversion of sexuality through fear or hatred of the opposite sex. Homosexual tendencies are chiefly a consequence of miseducation by parents who have failed to establish secure and loving associations with their children. Continued auto-erotic practices also reflect both inability to give oneself in a complementary way to others and a habit of seeking compensation in one’s own bodily feelings for the frustrations of interpersonal associations.

Sixth, marriage should be a singular and permanent relationship. Polygamy is excluded by the democratic ideal of uniqueness, of which sexual union is the consummatory symbol. Families with multiple wives or husbands render impossible the unconditional devotion which is the ideal in marriage. Law and custom have sustained this ideal in advanced civilized societies by prohibiting multiple mating. While it is thus not lawful to have more than one husband or wife at a time, divorce makes possible a kind of serial polygamy. Such serial mating is probably even more damaging to family life -- particularly to children -- than ordinary polygamy. The prevalence of divorce is directly related to the prevalence of the desire philosophy. When interest and satisfaction are taken as the standards for conduct, mates who cease to interest or satisfy each other seek to dissolve their relationship. By contrast, when marriage is founded upon unconditional commitment to the other person, the desires and pleasures of the partners are secondary considerations, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the objective reality of the abiding marriage covenant.

Marriage ought to be regarded as an opportunity for the making of a shared life, as a task to be undertaken with full acceptance of the inevitable pains and sorrows as well as the pleasures and joys. Many modern marriages run a downhill course from the high romance and ecstatic satisfaction of newly-weds, through the progressive frustrations and disappointments of people who measure one another by benefits received, to the divorce court. Marriage ought rather to begin with nothing except the promise of loyal devotion and then move through patient, constructive effort to progressively higher levels of mutual understanding and service.

To affirm the ideal of permanence in marriage is not the same as to argue the legal prohibition of divorce. It may frequently be better for a marriage to be dissolved than for mates to be forced by law or the pressure of custom to live together in a state of unholy hostility. Children in such households may suffer less from the insecurities incidental to breaking up the home than from the poisons of their parents’ mutual antagonism. The point of the present analysis is that divorce ought not to be accepted as a normal and proper practice, for the benefit of couples who no longer satisfy each other. It should be seen instead as a lamentable consequence of establishing marriages on the deceptive and ultimately disastrous basis of want satisfaction.

Seventh, if marriages are to be permanent and productive of humane values, marriage partners need to select one another not on the basis of romantic attraction and immediate sexual satisfaction, but out of regard for the long-term potentialities in the relationship for the creation of a worth-full shared life. The question prospective mates should ask is not: Can I find happiness with this other person? -- but: Can we learn together and do things for and with each other in such a way as to bring into being new lives through our union nurtured in mature love based on dedication to what is true and excellent?

The eighth and final point is that in a democracy of worth not everyone need feel obliged to marry. Some people do not have the vocation to establish a family. For certain persons other channels of devotion may be more important than marriage and incompatible with an unconditional commitment to husband or wife. For those who have a mission to teach, to serve the poor and sick, to engage in exacting research, or to undertake dangerous and lonely assignments, family responsibilities may be an impediment. Persons who shun marriage simply to remain free to please themselves are not to be honored, but those are to be honored who have adopted other forms of dedication in place of marriage, whether by deliberate intention, by force of circumstance, or because no person has appeared with whom they could wholeheartedly make an enduring covenant. In fact, those who remain unmarried in the service of the right have the special opportunity to manifest loving concern for others without the natural impetus provided by matrimonial or parental relationships.

We turn next to a second matter of conscience -- namely, the relation of persons to their own nature, to the concerns of health. Health is one of the fundamental human values, and the promotion of good health is one of the basic moral obligations. Health is wholeness, as the common etymology of the two words suggests. To be healed is to be made whole, to become a well-functioning unity of life. The moral obligation for the advancement of health thus rests upon the duty of becoming integral persons, with the human powers fully operating and cooperating in accord with their proper natures.

Health is an elemental good upon which all other goods depend. The pursuit of truth presupposes sound intelligence. The creative arts cannot thrive on illness. Work and play demand vigor of body and mind. Justice in families, in nations, and in the world as a whole can thrive only when the persons to be related to one another are soundly constituted. Just as mankind cannot continue civilized existence without regard for the resources of external nature, so are all the benefits and achievements of life grounded in personal health.

There are complex problems regarding standards of health and methods of treatment which belong within the province of professional medicine and are beyond the scope of lay inquiry and of ordinary education. One of the objectives of health education should be to develop confidence in the medical profession and reliance upon it rather than upon superstition, hearsay, hunches, or private experimentation for the treatment of illness. Well-informed people know the limits of their knowledge and are acquainted with the expert resources available for dealing with what is beyond their scope.

Nevertheless, it is also a proper aim of health education to advance the layman’s understanding of medicine. A person who comprehends the principles of medical treatment is able to cooperate with the physician more intelligently in carrying out curative measures. He is also likely to be able to identify significant symptoms and thereby to assist the doctor in making an early and correct diagnosis of illness. Knowledgeable laymen further act as a check on medical malpractice. When the curative arts are regarded as secret skills, to be jealously guarded from public scrutiny and communicated in esoteric language only to other members of the guild, the lay public has no protection against fraudulent or misinformed professional activities which the medical associations may fail to detect and control. While professional standards must be set and enforced largely by the profession itself, educated laymen can be of great assistance in keeping the quality of practice high.

From a democratic perspective, medical treatment should be given with the informed consent of the patient. Doctors ought not to render their services with a "take it or leave it" attitude but should assume the role of teachers in relation to their patients, instructing and persuading them in the ways and means to health. Professionals in medicine should be accorded high respect and should be granted status and rewards commensurate with their special contribution to human welfare. But in a democracy of worth they should not become an autonomous ruling body, a powerful new class of medical technocrats, subject to no limits in their self-determination. Medical practice ought to be guided solely by considerations of truth and right. When the motive of service yields to that of prestige and power, the fundamental security of people dependent upon the high quality of medical treatment is jeopardized.

What are some of the conditions and habits of life which engender personal wholeness? There are ten factors which may be regarded as appropriate in a program of general health education in a democracy of worth.

First, the healthful life manifests a proper balance between work and recreation. Relaxation should be harmoniously alternated with effort. The good life exhibits a rhythmic pattern. Gainful occupation and play are mutually supportive components in a unified life. A person whose occupation is sedentary needs active recreations. One whose job requires constant association with people may require contrasting times of quiet solitude. Those who labor with intellectual abstractions often benefit most from leisure-time activity in the field of arts and crafts.

The nature of both work and recreation should further be governed by the age, experience, and native capacities of the individual person. What is healthful to one person may be injurious to another or to the same person at a different period in life. Good health is a consequence of engaging in activities for which one is sufficiently mature, well-endowed by nature, and prepared by education. Constructive work and play provide a focus and an outlet for personal energies. A person is healthy when he is functioning according to his capacities. People disintegrate when they are idle or aimless, badly adapted to their occupations, or perfunctory at play.

The problem of proper balance between work and recreation is of special importance to young people and to elderly people. Persons in the middle years for the most part have established places in the occupational scheme. They feel useful, and their abilities are fully engaged, particularly when they have combined their work with complementary play activities. In youth and age, on the other hand, the feeling of not being wanted, of being superfluous and at loose ends, is common.

For the good health of all citizens, well-organized opportunities for both work and recreation should be provided for people of all ages. In a democracy no person should ever be considered unimportant, unprepared for living, or obsolete. The human career must no longer be segmented into successive life phases devoted to play, study, work, and leisure (retirement); instead, work and recreation must be permanent components in the balanced life, while study is a continual and life-long concomitant and an inspiration and resource for these activities.

Healthful living, secondly, depends upon safety. The good life from which wholeness results is one in which proper precautions against injury are habitually taken. Concern for safety is essential for the preservation of life itself, upon which the good life must rest. Safety education begins in the earliest days of the infant’s life, in the continual watchfulness of parents against any danger to the helpless child. As the child grows and his powers of action increase, he must be saved from an increasingly wide range of perils, of which he is at first unaware. He cannot be permitted to discover most of them for himself, for in many cases the learning experience would result in serious injury or death. Hence, there must be strong prohibitions and taboos in relation to water, fire, highways, electrical equipment, poisons, high places, and the like. Firm direction, and even physical punishment if necessary, are required to enforce the elemental lessons of safety. Still, parents and teachers should keep the teaching of safety realistic, avoiding the creation of fears and inhibitions that are out of proportion to the actual dangers.

One of the features of good vocational and recreational preparation is instruction in safety factors at work and play. Hazardous occupations should as far as possible be avoided. Insofar as they must be carried on by someone -- for example, mining and radiological work -- every available safeguard should be insisted on -- such as proper ventilation, lighting, and shielding. Even jobs that are not intrinsically dangerous may become so if safety devices are not conscientiously used. In the recreation field, expertness in sports reduces the likelihood of injury. One of the objectives of physical education is to develop skills that make it possible to play hard yet safely. Another goal is to develop the habit of scrupulously observing the rules of the game, since one of the main functions of rules is to keep play within the bounds of safety. More important than these matters of safety through skill and rule keeping is the ethical question of promoting and participating in forms of recreation that are unavoidably dangerous -- for example, football for very young boys or motorcycle racing at any age. It is always possible to choose sports that call forth all the courage and skill one possesses without exposure to needless risk of injury.

Because accidents still occur under even favorable safety conditions, a part of everyone’s education should be mastery of the essentials of first aid. Through an understanding of the elemental rules of treatment for the injured, damage may be minimized and subsequent medical care may be made more effective. A layman’s knowledge of such techniques as artificial respiration and bandaging wounds may make the difference between death and survival for an injured person.

Following upon the matter of safety is a contemporary health problem of the first magnitude -- namely, the proper use of motor vehicles. The automobile is a major hazard to life and limb in the modern world. Our whole way of life, including our patterns of working and residence, have been revolutionized by it. By their numbers, speed, and power, automobiles constitute an ominous environmental influence, an ever-present threat of violence. Under these circumstances the will and pleasure of the individual may not safely govern the use of motor vehicles; strict social regulations are necessary. Minimum standards of age, health, and skill for all drivers must be set and enforced. Juveniles who look upon driving as a sport must be kept off the road. People who are infirm by reason of illness or age and who do not have the alertness and reaction speed requisite to good driving should also not be licensed. Periodic tests of knowledge and skill ought to be required of all drivers. Automobile makers should be made legally responsible for the mechanical safety of their product, and all automobiles in use should be inspected regularly.

Provision should be made for driver training -- possibly as an adjunct to the school program -- to insure that every person has an opportunity to learn the right use of the automobile. Enforcement of traffic regulations should be managed by a sufficiently large and adequately compensated corps of traffic policemen, and penalties for the more serious offenses should be substantial --including permanent revocation of licenses of drivers who appear to be a persistent menace to the public safety.

A fourth health consideration is the practice of bodily exercise. As machines have lifted more and more of the burden of labor from men’s backs and hands, demands upon the human body have greatly declined. Transportation, too, no longer calls for physical effort. Walking and climbing have almost universally been replaced by riding. Many Americans will not even walk a few blocks when they have an automobile at their disposal. This multiplication of effort-saving mechanisms has ushered in a new era of physical ease. Freedom from necessary physical exertion has become a cardinal objective of the good life.

But man cannot with impunity ignore the claims of his body. During the eons of evolutionary development his physical structures came into being in response to the challenge of the environment. To remain healthy a person needs to make use of these bodily capacities. Since such efforts are generally no longer physically required, they have to be voluntarily assumed. It is the primary function of physical education to build habits of exercise that will serve throughout life to supply the need for healthful bodily exertion. Since health is wholeness, this goal cannot be reached by concentrating solely on physical activity. A human being always acts as a whole, never simply as a body or a mind. Hence, physical education should be devoted to the development of coordinated intellectual-social-physical activities which meaningfully engage the energies of the total person.

It is a symptom of our contemporary cultural disintegration that the "intellectual" phases of education have been so sharply separated from the "physical" ones, and that physical education has been so largely relegated by academic people to the "all brawn but no brains" category. In principle, physical education provides the best opportunity for the harmonious development of the entire person, through contests of skill in which intelligence, esthetic imagination, social sensitivity, and moral purpose are channeled through significant physical activity. The highest task for health education in a society devoted to excellence is to discover and introduce into the cultural stream modes of living that will fully employ bodily energies in ways that are at the same time consonant with the ideals of reason, qualitative judgment, and ethical concern.

Habits of cleanliness are a further goal for health education. The basic principles of personal hygiene should be taught by parents, and schools should reinforce this home instruction, especially by supplying the physiological and psychological grounds upon which the practice of cleanliness rests. It may be shown that by having due regard for cleanness of the body and of clothing one both helps guard against disease and does honor to other persons and to oneself. Being clean is not simply a physical good; acts of purification have a symbolic significance, too -- as many religious rites testify. But apart from the formal ceremonial aspect, being clean has an elevating effect on the entire person. It is an overt manifestation of devotion to the ideal of purity, a recognition of human transcendence of simple biological existence.

In teaching children to be clean, it is important not to inculcate attitudes of fear and disgust regarding bodily processes. There is evidence, for example, that toilet training based on repugnance for excretory products may result in psychological damage. Likewise, table training that is too early, too rigid, and too negative may induce permanently disabling attitudes. Being clean should not be a means of assuaging irrational guilt feelings. Compulsive, automatic scrupulousness is a sign of illness, not of health. A child should be encouraged by adult attitudes to accept himself and everything related to his body and issuing from it from whatever channel. Then in his own good time (which is usually not long) he will be able to reorganize his bodily activities so as to conform to established social customs.

The last point may be made in another way -- by asserting that a healthy concept of cleanliness is primarily positive rather than negative. Modern sanitation has emphasized the elimination of dirt and the killing of germs. We live in a sterilized civilization. The sanitized culture may also be a sterile culture. The ideal of personal purity is positive in emphasis. It is directed toward the disposition of material things (none of which are evil in themselves) so as to serve goodness most fully. It is aimed not at the total negation of a part of creation, but at the right ordering of created things within the whole economy of life.

A sixth factor contributing to good health is proper dietary habits. The relevant matters here are the kinds of food eaten, their quality and quantity, and the manner of eating them. As to kinds, one principle is that of balance. We possess considerable well-tested knowledge of nutrition, from which it is possible to plan meals so as to supply the substances needed for abundant health. This basic nutritional information should be regularly included in health instruction. Another principle is that of avoiding foods that impose special organic strains -- for example, fats for people whose bodies accumulate rather than use them or salted foods for people with certain circulatory maldispositions. A proper diet is not assured by following one’s fancy, responding to the inclinations of appetite and the momentary leadings of taste. The desire principle may be quite deceptive in decisions about food. It is usually the case that in the long run plain and superficially less appetizing foods are more healthful than rich and fancy ones. While food should be attractively prepared and appealing to the taste, the proper criterion for selection is not immediate hunger satisfaction but reliable knowledge of what is healthful.

Concerning the quality of food, the problem is to a large degree one of social organization and control. The pressures for efficient collection and distribution of foods in urban society and the demand for short cuts in food preparation in high-speed civilization have brought into being a vast food-processing industry. In the interests of efficiency and convenience the quality of many foods has been sacrificed. They have been excessively refined, with resulting loss of nutrient values. They have been mixed with preservatives, dyes, and softeners to make them keep longer, look better, and cook more quickly, but again with possible loss of nourishing quality and perhaps serious long-term detriment to health through the addition of toxic substances. Individuals should be educated to these dangers and encouraged to use foods that have not been ruined by processing. Consumers should organize and support cooperatives devoted to the production and distribution of high-quality foods, scientifically tested for nutritional value and for freedom from adulterants. In addition, citizens must be taught how to secure strong, well-staffed, and amply financed government agencies which are dedicated to the health of the people and serve them through a well-enforced body of pure food laws, a well-organized inspection and grading system, and a continuing broad program of research in nutrition and in food production and processing. As in so many other areas of life, prime concern for ease and profit in the matter of food supply has destructive consequences. The health of all the people requires the restoration of a principle of qualitative excellence as the controlling ideal of the food industry.

Regarding the quantity of food consumed, appetite considerations again ought not to govern. People in an economy of abundance have a special difficulty in that their wants are not disciplined by the scarcity of food. Most Americans eat too much. Overeating in many cases is a consequence of personal frustration and loss of meaning. People try to fill the void in their lives by consuming food. Failing to discover claims of enduring worth upon them, they seek refuge in immediate sense gratification. Excessive eating may also be an expression of the power urge in people who inwardly feel powerless, for nothing more clearly demonstrates mastery over things than does the act of devouring them. The healthy person -- one who is whole -- gratefully receives food (rather than grasps for it) as a welcome energy source for performing the acts of devotion in which his life is centered. He regards his body as an agency for the channeling of the materials of nourishment into the service of worthy ends. Such a person is not controlled by appetite; he harnesses appetite for the sake of high purposes. As a symbol of this subordination of desire, the ancient practice of periodic fasting has special value. That most well-fed moderns tend to feel deprived and anxious if circumstances force them to miss a meal is evidence of how subject they are to desire and how largely their feeding habits are governed by psychological craving. When the act of fasting is united with deliberate rededication to the good, it provides a clear reminder that goodness of life does not consist in obedience to the compulsions of organic existence.

Finally, in the manner of eating, the healthful way includes the avoidance of excessive haste, of much irregularity, and of emotionally tense situations. Food should be partaken with due respect for the functional characteristics of the human organism. The integral person accords the act of eating its rightful place in the whole scheme of life; he does not cheat it of its fair share of time, of its regular place in the ordering of existence, and of its portion in the gift of serenity. Here health and etiquette impinge on one another. Instruction in good table manners serves more than esthetic purposes, for good table etiquette preserves the sense of leisure and order and the relaxed atmosphere which are requisite to good health.

A seventh matter of considerable importance to health is the use of alcoholic beverages. A consideration of the marked effects alcohol consumption has on human behavior makes it evident that questions of conscience are at stake. Alcohol acts as a narcotic -- first, in suppressing the higher mental functions and then, as larger doses are taken, in reducing a person to the animal level and finally to unconscious vegetative immobility.

It can be argued that, ideally, alcoholic beverages should not be used at all, that any substance that renders a person less capable of functioning at the highest human level is not appropriate for human consumption. The contrary argument, in favor of some form of drinking, takes one or more of the following three lines: the religious, the social, or the psychological. Deep in the religious tradition is the custom of using alcohol as a symbol and a vehicle for divine inspiration. Drinking induces a transformation of feeling which removes one from the ordinary and everyday realm into a different world, in which the tensions and anxieties of living are dissolved and a sense of release is enjoyed. Such a total change in outlook is regarded as a glimpse into the life of ecstasy and bliss which is the consummation of the religious quest. Religious drinking generally takes place within the strict discipline of established ritual and hence usually does not go to the harmful excess of deep intoxication. Social drinking is also ritualistic in character, but without the other-worldly overtones of the religious act. The purpose of social drinking is to facilitate interpersonal association by releasing the inhibitions and defenses that commonly separate people from one another.

Both the religious and the secular-social uses of alcohol depend on its psychological effects, but they differ from purely psychological drinking in their emphasis on the objective forms and shared purposes of corporate life. Psychological drinking is a reflection of individual craving for satisfaction. A person who feels lonely, lost, and insecure may find temporary relief and release through the transfigured state of consciousness produced by alcohol. Such psychological drinking is a symptom of personal ill health and is at best not a cure but only a means of escape.

The prevalence of alcohol consumption may be connected with the pervasiveness of the pleasure principle in a democracy of desire. When wanting things is the motivation for conduct, persons are in a permanent state of frustration, because it is in the nature of things that all wants cannot be fulfilled. Alcohol provides a temporary refuge in a world where the barriers, hostilities, and denials of reality are dissolved. Such use of alcohol thus merely serves to render more tolerable a system of life that is unhealthy at the core.

Beverage alcohol is an important topic for health education in homes, schools, churches, and other social agencies. Basic information about the physiology and the psychology of drinking should be widely disseminated. Furthermore, the following five specific problems should be covered in education at the secondary level and beyond. First, the nature and treatment of alcoholism as an illness should be presented. The symptoms, diagnosis, and prognosis of the disease, as far as they are known, should be made clear, and its genetic, physiological, psychological, and moral factors should be analyzed. Second, the fatal connection between drinking and driving needs to be accented. In the automotive age public safety is incompatible with the general practice of alcohol consumption. The importance of heavy penalties and speedy judgment on those who drive while intoxicated must be made clear. Third, the economic aspects of drinking should be considered. Alcoholic beverages are expensive. They impose a heavy drain upon individual resources and family budgets and constitute an unproductive drag on the national economy. Reflection on the relative amounts spent for alcoholic beverages and for such items as education and medical care provides a sobering lesson in relative values. A fourth problem is liquor advertising, whose misleading and value-subverting nature should be made clear by viewing its claims in the light of established facts.

A fifth and most difficult set of problems is the social control of alcohol production and consumption. Even if one holds that the goal toward which society ought to move is the complete elimination of alcoholic beverages, the imposition of prohibition by law does not appear appropriate, as it subordinates values of freedom which take precedence over those of abstinence. Drinking that is a symptom of social and personal malady cannot be effectively eliminated directly; it can be eliminated only by the healing of personality through the exchange of the life of satisfaction for that of devotion. In the absence of this fundamental conversion, other means of control must be employed and should be taught to all citizens. These include licensing and inspection of all liquor producers and distributors, the curbing of the corruption, vice, and crime which tend to cluster about the liquor traffic, and restriction on the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors. Perhaps most important of all is the development of social customs and pressures against individual and solitary drinking for psychological relief and in favor of community rituals in which the need to belong and to celebrate the goodness of life can be constructively satisfied.

Concerning the next matter of health -- the use of tobacco --relatively little need be said. The problems associated with it are in some ways similar to those of alcohol use, but are as much less serious for immediate behavior as the psychophysical effects of smoking are less marked than those of drinking. For the long run, there is considerable evidence of a high correlation between the amount of smoking (chiefly of cigarettes) and the incidence of certain diseases, notably lung cancer and circulatory failures. In health education the injurious medical consequences of smoking should be made explicit, and the various problems of personal hygiene, fire safety, economic waste, and advertising deception connected with tobacco use should be discussed.

A ninth health concern of increasing gravity relates to the use of drugs. The medical profession is the primary guardian of the people’s health in the matter of drugs, for the questions at issue are generally technical and cannot be properly assessed by laymen. Nevertheless, there are broad ethical concerns which are beyond the range of technical competence alone to settle. Medicines are meant to be aids to healing, but there are dangers to health in relying too heavily upon them. No question arises in connection with medicines such as insulin, which supply a vital deficiency without which life cannot go on at all. But serious issue may be taken with the frequent and somewhat indiscriminate use of such drugs as antibiotics. At this point medical practitioners are not in full agreement. Since the body must marshal its own natural defenses if it is to fend off diseases effectively, antibiotics should perhaps be reserved for emergency situations in which the natural defenses are insufficient.

Everyone needs to be taught the right use of other drugs such as digestion aids, cathartics, reducing pills, stimulants, pain relievers, and tranquilizers. In general, our satisfaction-dominated philosophy of life has led to the overuse of these remedies. When a person has an unpleasant symptom, his impulse is to take a drug to make him comfortable. The proper course is to regard the symptom as a welcome warning signal and then to discover and set right the condition that caused it. More often than not the discomfort is a result of unhealthful ways of thinking and acting which need to be rectified. Thus, it is usually wise to avoid palliative drugs, which obscure the true state of health and delay the rectification of life that disease should prompt.

Certain drugs are so dangerous that their use must be rigidly confined to authorized medical treatment. Included are such habit-forming narcotics as opium, morphine, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Like alcohol, these drugs afford temporary escape into a transformed psychic world, in which the stresses and pains of ordinary life are obliterated. But unlike alcohol (except for alcoholics), these narcotics cannot be used regularly without progressive addiction and ultimately fatal consequences. The rise in narcotics addiction in recent years, particularly among young people, is in large measure a result of the prevalent decay of purpose, the loss of stable values, and the feelings of personal estrangement, loneliness, hopelessness, and meaninglessness which characterize the present age. Drugs admit one to a haven of light and life, the momentary grasp of which is preferred by the addict to the boredom of ordinary self-centered existence, despite the darkness and death which are the price of the fleeting ecstasy.

It is essential that young people be carefully instructed in the nature and effects of narcotics. They must also be helped to understand the measures required to maintain strict control of drug production and distribution, particularly in view of the incentives to delinquency, violence, and crime which unfortunately accompany general prohibition. There should, further, be diffusion of knowledge about possible ways of rehabilitating drug addicts and open discussion of the moral and social issues that must be settled when decisions as to treatment have to be made.

The tenth and last aspect of health education to be considered concerns mental health. As mentioned before, health is wholeness. Well-being of the body is not separate from that of the mind. A well person is unified, integral, organized for the full and free exercise of all his capacities. Organic disorders often have emotional and intellectual consequences, and many diseases of the body have their origins primarily in psychological disturbances. Many physicians state that a substantial proportion of the bodily complaints they are asked to cure are psychogenic in nature. Furthermore, recent discoveries have demonstrated the close relation between blood chemistry and endocrine balance on the one hand and emotional health on the other.

It follows that sickness is not to be overcome by piecemeal doctoring of separate parts or functions. Medical specialization is essential for the development and exercise of high technical skill, but it must be supplemented by the understanding of the person as a whole and comprehended within a unitary pattern of treatment. Good health is a by-product of complete, integral right living.

Mental health is peculiarly the province of education. In a sense this is its ultimate aim, for all of the other rightnesses of life are caught up in the sanity of sovereign mentality. Mental health means personal integrity -- the unification of bodily functions and emotional impulses through the power of true ideas and worthy purposes. Emotional well-being is not, as the advocates of a satisfaction philosophy suggest, a liberation of impulse for the uninhibited fulfillment of desires. It is the condition of disciplined security in the release of self for responsible dedication to the right. Whatever is done to educate a person to respond to excellence and to abandon futile and self-defeating self-seeking is a contribution to mental health and thus to the welfare of the person as a whole.

From the values of intelligence and creativity we turn to a consideration of conscience. This classification of values is somewhat arbitrary, to be sure. Our discussions of intelligence and creativity have repeatedly had reference to matters of conscience. Intellectual responsibility is a moral obligation. So also are the right use of the mass media of communication, the elevation of taste and manners, and the right choice of work and play. The several realms of value are interconnected and overlapping. The division into kinds merely emphasizes dominant features. Intelligence centers around the ideal of truth, creativity around qualitative excellence, and conscience around right conduct. In chapters 9 to 16 our attention will be focused on problems of ethical responsibility -- that is, on decisions concerning human relationships to the nonhuman world, to self, and to other persons. Consideration is now directed to the problem of the right uses of nature. What is man’s responsibility with respect to the natural world? What are the standards by which his relation to his physical and biological environment should be measured?

In no other respect have the changes in the human situation been more striking than in this matter of man’s relationship to the natural world. Until recent times human beings were forced to live a precarious existence in the face of the largely unpredictable and uncontrollable forces of nature. Wind, water, fire, wild beasts, insects, and disease kept man constantly on the defensive. Although he could to some degree carve out islands of security, he was always surrounded by the threat of destruction and faced with the certainty of frustration by the unruly elements. Through his understanding of natural processes, man has now learned how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes and how to protect himself against their destructive effects. Nature is regarded no longer as something merely to be accepted but as a world of resources to be discovered, understood, transformed, and put to use.

While this reversal in power position has had profound effects on the outward conditions of life, even more important for mankind is the revolution that has occurred in the human outlook. Man has risen from the position of nature’s slave to that of potential master. This change has appeared to be a most striking confirmation of man’s essential autonomy. No longer need mankind cower before its ancient enemies in the natural world. No more must men supplicate and propitiate the gods, the supposed custodians of the forces of nature. The new powers of prediction and control prove that man can determine his own destiny.

In one respect this growth in the power available to man has supported the democratic movement. The feeling of helplessness in the face of superior powers has been dispelled. Men do not now make a virtue of resignation to the circumstances of life. This sense of power is widely shared, for everyone in the new industrial society participates in the domination of nature. Even some who stand relatively low in the prestige ladder now lord it over nature, as they drive great machines which coerce the earth to do their bidding, or shape and twist tough metal as if it were putty, or with explosives obliterate any obstacle in the wink of an eye. Today "miracles" are performed by ordinary people, not just by a special class of men on special occasions.

At the same time the growth in human power has introduced some grave perils for democracy. The danger is that the new powers over nature will also be used to put men into subjection. The control of the natural environment carries with it the control of the human beings who depend upon that environment for their health and sustenance. The ability of men to order nature has increased the violence of tyranny and made the winning and preserving of democracy both more necessary and more difficult. Accordingly, the major problems of contemporary man are not how to understand and control physical nature, but how to maintain a just and stable social order and how to achieve self-understanding and personal integrity.

With respect to the latter problems, modern civilization has lost ground. People now seem, on the whole, less sure of the meaning of their lives and less skillful in their relationships to one another than people of many earlier times. Classical literature is rich and illuminating in its treatment of the inner life but is generally of little value for the understanding of the external world. The situation is just the opposite at the present day. By comparison with our brilliant knowledge of the world about us, our insight into ourselves seems paltry. We have become confident of our ability to deal effectively with nature and are impatient and discouraged at the meagerness of our success with ourselves. Today natural sciences and engineering ride high, attracting the largest funds and the most able personnel.

Not only has the successful management of nature diverted attention and effort from human problems and diminished man’s confidence in his ability to come to terms with himself and his neighbor. It has also exerted a profound influence on the way in which human affairs are approached. Before the modern age, self-mastery and social maturity were regarded as goals for free men struggling individually to win their souls. Now that the secrets of effectively dealing with the physical world have been discovered, it is widely assumed that man must be dealt with in the same manner as the world of nature. If invariant natural law, classification, and regulation have proved so successful in mastering nature, why not use the same tools on man? But to treat human beings as natural objects is to deny their essential characteristic of freedom. Under the technical approach to human problems people are regarded as things to be pushed and molded into conformity with the blueprint of the social planners. The current concept of "social engineering" reflects this mechanistic attitude toward human beings. Such an outlook is clearly antidemocratic.

The scientific study of man is neither futile nor immoral. We cannot hope to cure the ills of mankind without persistent and devoted scientific study of human beings. Such inquiry is not in itself undemocratic. On the contrary, it is one of the best hopes for democracy. What is undemocratic is the direct transfer of concepts and methods from the nonhuman world to the human world -- the reduction of the sciences of man to the sciences of nature. The success of the natural sciences in comparison with the study of man makes this transfer tempting. It is nonetheless mistaken. Men can be analyzed and managed as natural objects, but only at the cost of their essential humanity. The true sciences of man are based upon concepts and methods appropriate to their human subject matter. The crucial categories include ideas of freedom, intelligence, meaning, commitment, and obligation which have no parallel in the natural sciences. Appropriate to the human realm are the methods of democratic education, grounded in the ideal of persuasion of free persons in the light of an assumed commitment to truth and right. Man can gain more and more reliable knowledge about himself and his kind. This understanding ought not, however, to be applied mainly to control other persons, but to develop powers of self-control for the sake of the good. This is the goal of education in a moral democracy.

The growth of modern scientific civilization has brought both opportunities and perils for democracy: opportunities in the vast new resources made available to mankind, and perils in the increased power men can use against and over one another. These developments are all a consequence of education. The technical marvels of the modern age are dependent upon scientific knowledge, which has been gained by educated people. It is educated men and women who have unlocked the secrets of nature and enabled mankind to master its environment. The success of these efforts has in turn led to a transformation in education. In classical education the chief aim was the transmission of a valued cultural heritage. In the contemporary world this aim has been subordinated to that of managing, exploiting, and transforming the environment. The spirit of the old education was receptive, respectful, backward-looking; the spirit of the new is active, dominating, progressive.

Accordingly, the educational system makes far greater provision than ever before for scientific and technical studies. Given the complexity of our machine civilization, broad and thorough preparation is necessary in these fields. The control of natural forces is a continuing -- even a growing -- challenge; to meet it an increasing company of trained natural scientists and engineers will be required. Furthermore, the technical revolution has stimulated the growth of universal education. The new artificial environment belongs to everybody, and everybody needs to be taught to understand it and to use it well. The vast complex of man-made things among which and by which we live do not take care of themselves. They require maintenance, repair, and skillful management. Since all or nearly all members of society share in these responsibilities, universal education to a high level is essential for the security and progress of modern industrial civilization.

There is a correspondingly urgent need for more education in the social studies and in the humanistic disciplines. The social studies can provide the understanding requisite for creating a social system in which the abuse of the power released by machine technology may be minimized and in which these forces may be constructively employed for the general welfare. The special office of the humane studies in the present day is to sustain the sense of meaning in a dehumanized machine world. The humane studies are also of crucial importance for suggesting guiding ideals in a time of rapid cultural transformation resulting from new inventions. Scientific knowledge and technique are neutral with respect to values. Only disciplines in which attention is directed to the intrinsic goods of existence, rather than to facts and instrumentalities alone, can re-create the sense of direction lost in the dissolution of traditional culture.

In these times of need for both technical and humanistic education, the effectiveness of each is impaired by the divorce of the two from one another. In the atmosphere of competitiveness and defensiveness which accompanies a success-oriented philosophy of life, the several components of education have become separated into specialized disciplines. The result is a fragmentation of culture which is mirrored in the self-alienation and dis-integration of persons.

The office of modern education is to nurture humaneness within the new world generated by the progress of invention. It is not to produce two hostile camps -- of engineers and of men of letters -- who neither understand one another nor care to. The required unification of learning can be effected in four principal ways. First, the arts, literature, philosophy, and religious studies should address themselves to the world that now is, in all its technical complexity, and not only to the simpler world of the past. Machine culture is the context in which human beings now think and act. Painting and architecture, novels and plays, epistemological and theological systems, should take full account of the new things and ideas that scientific theory and engineering skill have brought into being. Humanists should acknowledge their membership in the contemporary world, seek to understand it in its own terms (which means making a serious effort to gain authentic scientific insight), assimilate its ideas into their world of composing, building, and analyzing, and assume responsibility for guiding the course of its further development.

Second, scientific specialists should recognize, celebrate, and try to communicate the humane values implicit in their own disciplines. Scientific investigation is motivated by ethical principles of a high order. The universal ideals of scientific truth manifest an advanced level of spiritual development. The history of science is a drama of faith, patience, devotion, and heroism comparable to what are usually accounted the great religious and moral movements of mankind. Technology and pure science are humanly significant, in themselves and not just in their tangible products.

Third, scientific research and education should be conducted with full consciousness of the broad consequences of discovery and invention -- for good and for ill. In view of the grave dangers that accompany the irresponsible use of power, the people who best understand the sources and uses of the forces they help to unlock have an obligation to work for the right employment and social control of natural energies. Science and engineering should never be taught as isolated specialties, wholly neutral to human welfare, but always with deep concern for their potential effect on the well-being of mankind.

The fourth means of effecting a union of scientific and humanistic learning is through the development of the social sciences. By definition the sciences of man combine the human with the scientific. Until recently those sciences have been marred by a slavish imitation of the methods and concepts of the physical sciences (as, for example, in behavioristic psychology). It is now being recognized that such reductive procedures yield a superficial understanding of man, and that new approaches are required, which take account of what is uniquely human. There is evidence of increasing dialogue between social scientists and workers in literature, the arts, philosophy, theology, and history. In due course mature social sciences will emerge as perhaps our most powerful link between the natural sciences and the humane disciplines.

The modern mastery of nature brings into high relief the central ethical problem of democracy, which is the theme of this book -- namely, the contrast between the democracy of desire and the democracy of worth. Control of natural forces as a result of scientific knowledge has greatly enhanced modern man’s sense of power. Since men now possess powers formerly ascribed to the gods, men have come to regard themselves as lords of creation. The drive for power -- individual or collective -- emerges as the basic human tendency. Anyone -- or almost anyone -- can have what he wants if he has enough "know-how." Contemporary man has great faith in technical progress; there are no human interests that he does not feel can eventually be satisfactorily provided for. In short, an assumption of many moderns is the potential omnipotence of mankind.

Implicit in this faith is confidence in education as a means to the desired consummation. For modern man, as Bacon said, knowledge is power -- not virtue or illumination. The more knowledge one acquires, the larger is his share in the command of natural forces to fulfill human wants. Hence, the striving for autonomy in this age of control is accompanied by pressures for more and more education, to supply the knowledge that enables man to subdue the earth.

Nor is human ambition satiated by the subjection of the earth. The new horizon, which first opened fully to view in 1957 with the launching of a man-made space satellite, is the mastery of the whole universe! Man now knows that he is not limited by the confines of this planet. He has not only inherited the earth; he has possessed it and is fast consuming it. Now his grasp reaches out toward the heavens. Quite literally he seeks new worlds to conquer. To be sure, the problems are enormous, and the progress to date is slight -- no man has yet traveled beyond the earth’s effective gravitational field. Still, plans are under way for creating the necessary vehicles and artificial environments for space travel and residence, vast resources of intelligence and materials are being expended on research and development in the field of space technology, and increasing numbers of able young people are being educated for future work in this field.

The magnificence of scientific achievements is beyond question, and the prospects for the future are no less brilliant. Nevertheless, the assumption of human autonomy and of man’s absolute sovereignty over earthly and cosmic nature is not warranted. Nature has not surrendered to man. The basis for modern technical progress is the knowledge built on the patient watching and listening for nature’s ways. Modern science came into being when men renounced their preconceptions, preferences, and prejudices and adopted the practice of painstaking and systematic observation and experiment.

Contemporary man’s power is thus a consequence of his willingness to follow and obey. The disciplines of science are rigorous. No person is fit for scientific work if he is interested only in commanding. The good scientist or engineer has a first loyalty to fact, and to that loyalty all considerations of power and interest are subordinate. The so-called mastery of nature in reality is nature’s victory over human ignorance and self-will. Man’s power is nature’s power released to him in consequence of his obedience to truth. Under these circumstances the fitting attitude is not arrogance, but a profound sense of humility and gratitude for the knowledge revealed and the powers entrusted to mankind.

Another aspect of nature’s check on unrestrained human demands is the fact of limitation in natural resources. For our brilliant exploitation of the earth the price exacted is present or eventual exhaustion and devastation of the natural estate. Human acquisitiveness invites nature’s eloquent rebuke.

In the democracy of worth, therefore, human dependence upon nature is duly acknowledged. Technical progress is not regarded as proof of human autonomy, but it is a reward for attending to the truth. Furthermore, care is taken to understand not only the sources of power but also the conditions for its continuing availability. Since earth is gratefully recognized as mankind’s home, it is important to give serious consideration to the natural conditions for human well-being and survival.

One requirement is the maintenance of a healthful physical environment. Industrial processes and motor vehicles have filled the atmosphere with noxious fumes. There is some evidence connecting the steep rise in lung cancer with this pollution of the air. Recently radioactive fallout from nuclear testing has introduced another and far more dangerous type of air poisoning. Ways must be found for ending this contamination of the atmosphere, even at the cost, if need be, of curtailing technical progress. Similar observations hold for water and soil. Industrial wastes, which are now dumped into rivers and seas or buried in the earth, make water and earth unfit for human use. Air, water, and soil are essential to human well-being and must not be used as receptacles for the excrescences of the industrial organism.

In addition to the healthfulness of the environment, attention should be given to its esthetic qualities. In our heedless lust for power we have disgracefully disfigured the earth. The landscape has been defaced by ugly buildings, both industrial and residential. The pleasant land has been overlaid with great swaths of concrete to accommodate vehicular traffic. Forests have been chopped down or burned, and wild animals hunted to extinction. To halt and reverse this destruction of natural beauty, not only must standards of individual taste be raised, but much stricter social controls must be exercised. Architectural planning should have regard for the preservation of natural beauty and not only for utility and economy in the structures themselves. Tight regulation of roadside signs and establishments should be instituted to remove the offenses to good taste and the barriers to the enjoyment of nature which present policies permit, with the happy exception of some of the newer expressways. The expansion of the highway system should be checked by the restoration (under government support) of efficient rapid transit systems. City planning should make ample provision for parks and trees, and federal and state parks and forests should be steadfastly maintained against all encroachments by commercial and utilitarian interests.

A considerable part of the esthetic interest of nature comes from the various forms of wild life. To save the birds, beasts, and fish from complete destruction, hunting and fishing have to be controlled by a system of limits and licenses. Aside from this requirement, there remains a question of conscience with regard to the killing of animals for sport. These activities feed the impulses toward autonomy and dominance which undermine true humanity. The death of the animals is loss enough, but it is not half so serious as the injury to personality that occurs in one who kills his own sense of reverence for life and his sense of kinship with living things below him in the order of creation.

A third requirement for the conscientious use of nature is to take due account of the limitations of natural resources. Up to now the people of the industrial nations of the world have lived as though the material bounty of the earth were inexhaustible. We have been profligate with our natural capital, squandering it with no concern for its limits. In this respect we have been guilty of a "plutocracy of the present," through grasping material privileges without taking account of the needs of future generations. Such a way of life is just as undemocratic as the forcible subjugation of the poor by the wealthy at any given epoch. Democratic justice as between generations requires the employment of the earth’s resources in such a way that they shall be conserved, restored, and replenished for continued use by our children and our children’s children.

To this end, the soil -- from which our nourishment comes -- must be carefully husbanded by the use of the many techniques now well understood by scientific farmers, such as proper drainage and irrigation, contour plowing, crop rotation, fertilization, and preservation of forests and grassland. The alarming drop in the water table must be arrested, by restricting the amounts of water available for industrial processes and pressing forward on the development of processes for removing salt from sea water and for the control of rainfall. Particular care must be given to the problem of mineral resources, which are rapidly being depleted, with no possibility of replenishment. Our present and expected rate of consumption of these materials spells the doom, in the not distant future, of industrial civilization as we know it. The only hope for continued existence is in the development of new processes that require little metal or in the discovery of means for artificially transmuting abundant elements into the scarcer ones. Finally, major consideration will have to be given to the limitations of the energy supply. Wood, water power, coal, oil, and gas are insufficient to provide for the world’s energy needs over any extended period. Uranium and other substances used in atomic fission processes are not in great abundance and are irreplaceable. The major hopes for continued energy abundance are in the invention of controlled atomic fusion processes and in the harnessing of solar power

This brief review of what must be done to establish right relationships between man and nature suggests something of the educational task. Young people must be acquainted with the facts about the earth, its resources, and the consequences of using them in various ways. This is primarily the function of the study of geography -- not mainly as a learning of place names, populations, and products and a drawing and reading of maps and charts, but as a responsible consideration of the earth as mankind’s home. The all-important problem of geography, properly taught, is how human beings can build and maintain just and enduring relationships with their natural environment. This is an ethical problem -- a question of conscience -- as well as a problem of fact and technique. Up to now the moral considerations have been absent or subordinate. Education in modern industrial society has been organized for maximum material production and consumption, on the premises that labor is scarce and that natural resources are boundless. Education for a just and enduring future civilization needs to be radically reconceived. Training for the heedless and profligate exploitation of materials, without regard to problems of waste, depletion, and contamination, must give way to teaching the responsible and circumspect use of man’s estate. In such education scientific knowledge and engineering skill will be taught not as means of making good the claims of the autonomous human will against nature, but as resources for the informed pursuit of the good.

The most crucial of all the problems connected with the uses of nature still remains -- namely, the question of population. The development of modern machine civilization is in part a consequence of the growth of population. Large-scale industry and the accumulation of wealth presuppose an abundant supply of labor and ample markets. The notable advances in invention in recent decades have been stimulated by the presence of a large and apparently insatiable mass of consumers. At the same time as the growing population, by creating demands for more of nature’s products, gives impetus to industry and commerce, it creates the problem of shortages and throws into clear relief the limitations of the earth.

The spectacular increase in population in modern times is itself a result of scientific and technical discovery. Through medical research the death rate has been dramatically reduced, and the average duration of life in industrialized nations has been greatly extended. Advances in machine power, applied to agriculture, manufacture, and transportation, have raised the general standard of living and made possible the support of a much larger total population than in earlier epochs.

Thus population and material progress have been mutually supportive. But now the swarming multitudes which cover the face of the earth and eagerly strive and compete for its bounty threaten to destroy man’s estate. They already tax it to near exhaustion, and yet the pressures and the demands increase without any sign of reversal.

With respect to this problem the issues of democracy are squarely joined. The individual will to procreate ought not to be the ruling factor. If it is, and population continues to mount, universal anguish and strife will result. War and starvation will reduce or altogether eliminate the human species. As the competition for a share of the world’s limited goods becomes more bitter, justice will vanish in the desperate struggle for survival, and tyrants and bureaucracies will arise to establish some order among the needy and fearful people.

The solution to the population problem lies in the assumption of ethical responsibility for the voluntary limitation of family size, for the sake of the welfare of all persons now living and yet to be born. Because the resources of the earth are finite, there will necessarily be population control of some kind. The human species cannot make demands on the world that are beyond its capacity to supply. Earth’s material limits stand as the final negation of all demands for total human sovereignty. The question is whether the control will be by the force of physical circumstance, by the violence of human strife, by the power of absolute rulers, or by the persuasions of dedicated intelligence.

The question of the use of contraceptive measures for birth control is relevant here, but comments on it will be reserved for Chapter 11. Suffice it to say at this point only that the ideal mode of population control in a democracy of worth is determined not by the maximizing of pleasure and the minimizing of burdensome consequences, but by positive consideration and concern for the well-being of other persons within and beyond the immediate family and even beyond the present generation.

The central role in the development of ethical democratic controls for population rests with education. The young must learn enough about man’s natural home and about his utilization of its resources to understand the conditions for permanent, secure, and healthful residence in it. They must also be taught the lesson of conscience that with respect to the uses of nature each person is his brother’s -- and his children’s and his children’s children’s -- keeper.

Ideally recreation is a bulwark of democracy, because in leisure-time pursuits it is possible for a person to choose his activity as a free individual. Work is generally more regulated and less subject to personal preference than recreation. Certainly it cannot be so readily discontinued or exchanged for another kind as can recreation. Generally one can engage in many different sorts of leisure activities, according to inclination and occasion. In this realm the individual is his own master; he is free to determine the use of his time as he will.

The values to be realized in recreation are not the same as in other forms of conduct. The usual contrast is made between work and recreation. The differences here are mainly twofold. First, work is more to be evaluated by reference to social purposes than is recreation; recreation is more purely individual in its relevance. Thus, the values of personal uniqueness and individual variability are particularly central in the life of leisure. It is in this domain that uniformity, conformity, repetition, and standardization are most effectively overcome and the true fruits of creativity are realized. Second, work and recreation differ in the duration of their respective purposes. Work is devoted to more enduring purposes than is play. Leisuretime activity is more frequently consummated within a brief span of time as compared with the years-long cumulative character of most work. A game is played, a picture is painted, or a garden is cultivated, and each activity is regarded by the amateur as a complete experience, rounded out within minutes, hours, or months, as the case may be, while for the worker -- in the parallel cases of professional player, artist, or farmer -- these achievements are but incidents within a continuous career. Recreation serves the special values of short-term consummation. These are the values that were analyzed in our discussion of esthetic excellence in Chapter 5. Recreation thus provides unique opportunities for both individual differentiation and esthetic creativity.

The development of modern machine technology in industrial society has wrought profound changes in the relationship between work and leisure, with correspondingly far-reaching effects on the values of civilization. Now that machines have taken so much of the burden of work off men’s shoulders, the time each person must devote to labor has dramatically decreased. Leisure time has moved from its former peripheral position in the economy of life to become a major fact of existence. Until recently, recreation for the ordinary person was relegated to the few marginal hours remaining after the long and heavy week’s work had been done, and to the occasional holiday. Because of machine power this condition no longer obtains. Of the 168 hours of the week, fewer than 40 -- less than 25 per cent -- are ordinarily claimed by a job. Leisure is thus no longer the privilege of a select few; science and invention have been a great support to democracy.

The average worker has been so far released from wearing toil that the privileges of "aristocrats" and "ordinary people" have been exchanged. Contemporary aristocrats -- the people with the best education and the greatest ability -- labor harder than ever at their increasingly complex tasks, while people with lesser endowments of energy and intelligence now have time to spare. The leisured gentlemen of former times are now too busy to cultivate their recreation properly, and those who have been relieved from toil and given the liberty of children of abundance do not usually have the traditions of civility and the habits of discrimination to enable them to use their free time wisely.

In this way recreation in advanced industrial societies has become a dominant mass phenomenon. Leisure-time pursuits are no longer marginal, nor is their style any longer set by a relatively small group of privileged people. Since recreation is a major preoccupation of the great majority of people, the nature of leisure-time activities profoundly affects the whole tone of cultural life. By and large that tone has been set by the pleasure principle. The average person associates recreation with freedom from responsibility, with having fun, with doing what one wants to do.

In view of the transformations in the human situation effected by technology, we may expect the role of leisure to be increasingly influential in modern society. Does this mean that civilization will be more and more dominated by the pleasure principle? Not necessarily. Recreation is not inevitably tied to the pursuit of satisfaction; there is no inherent conflict between recreation and loyalty to the good. Given the importance of recreation in modern culture, the central imperative is to cultivate forms of recreation that are in accord with standards of qualitative excellence. Only by so doing will leisure activities contribute to the strengthening of democracy.

We are now in a position to discuss the place of recreation in democratic education. Every person needs to be prepared not only for an occupation and for assuming the responsibilities of participation in civic life, but also for using his leisure time well. Hence, recreation is a proper educational concern, and the nurture of recreational capacities is a part of the teaching task.

This educational responsibility is by no means universally recognized. It is widely assumed that children do not need to be taught how to play, and that education should deal only with preparation for such long-term pursuits as vocation, family life, and citizenship. According to this assumption, recreation is what a child does on his own at those times when he is not being educated. Play time is "free time," to do with as one wishes, unconstrained by parents and teachers and without the directives and judgments of explicit education.

Conscientious parents and teachers are much concerned with how a child uses his play time. They know that he does not cease to learn when he is not being formally instructed. In fact, they are aware that he often learns much more from the experiences of play time than from classroom disciplines. Wise parents accordingly take pains to provide their young with healthful opportunities for recreation and to live in a physical and social environment that will afford a constructive play life.

The educative effect of recreation holds for adults as well as for, children. Every person continues to learn throughout life, both in his occupation and in his leisure pursuits. The special educational significance of the latter lies in the freedom they afford for self-direction, experimentation, and broadening of personal perspective and competence.

Granted that recreation is of educational import, the question remains of where it should be taught. In particular, should the schools leave the teaching of recreation to parents and to other social agencies specifically designed for that function, or should instruction for the right use of leisure be a part of the school curriculum? The position taken here is that both schools and other institutions and agencies should assume this responsibility. Opponents of this view point to the overburdening of school curriculums with the most diverse conglomeration of subjects, to the detriment of the "basic" intellectual studies. They point also to the rapid expansion of knowledge and technical skill required for effective living in the modern age, and they ask how the schools, with their limited share of the student’s time, can afford to spend any of it on instruction in recreation, which they believe he either does not need or can get outside of school.

These critics err in their estimate of the contemporary cultural situation, in their understanding of what recreation is, and in their appraisal of the relation between work and play. Recreation is no longer on the margins of life; it is a major factor, if not the major one, in determining the tone and temper of mass culture. Properly conceived, recreation is as serious and demanding as any work, and preparation for it calls for the highest level of intellectual discipline. Furthermore, recreation cannot without serious distortion of personality be compartmentalized as the advocates of "work only" schools recommend. Work and play are intimately intertwined, and the school in educating for one educates for the other also. Schools are for the education of integral persons, and while some specialization of responsibilities among social institutions is desirable, no such vital and inseparable aspect of learning as recreation should be eliminated from the program of the schools.

Recreation education is the common responsibility of many different agencies -- homes, schools, community service groups, clubs and other voluntary organizations, the mass media, adult education agencies, libraries, and even business organizations. This plurality of responsible agencies removes from the schools the necessity for actually providing the major share of recreational facilities. It does not, however, make any less imperative the inclusion of recreational concerns within the school curriculum, for it is in the program of formal education that meaning, perspective, and direction in leisure activity may best be taught.

The pleasure principle, which is commonly taken for granted as appropriate in recreation, has influenced the whole of educational practice. Many teachers believe that all learning should be "fun." They have adopted the "happiness" approach to teaching, avoiding anything unpleasant or painful either to themselves or to the students. The children are treated as playmates and pals; conflicts are minimized; and discipline, the exercise of authority, and, above all, punishment are shunned. The same principles have taken hold in many families, where sweetness and light and good times have been the primary objectives of family living.

The consequences of this primary pursuit of pleasure are a general lowering of standards, disrespect for authority, disorderliness, and loss of morale by teachers (or parents) and students alike. Enjoyment turns out in experience not to be a viable foundation for educational practice. It is a delusion that learning can be improved by making it pleasant. While such an approach may engage the interests of the students temporarily, it does them a long-term disservice by encouraging them in attitudes and habits that are ultimately life-destroying. Education cannot be securely founded on any such superficial and deceptive play philosophy. Whether it be pleasant or painful, it needs to rest on the enduring foundation of loyalty to the good. Even learning to play well is not always pleasant. The good player accepts the bitter with the sweet as ingredients in a good game. The disciplines of high recreation are as exacting as those of any vocation. Learning how to use leisure time well is a rigorous process demanding the highest level of devotion by teachers and students alike.

The increasing importance of leisure in modern society makes it appropriate that recreational considerations should assume major significance in education. There is every reason why the spirit of recreation should pervade the schools. But to affirm this is not to endorse the "fun" philosophy. A sound concept of recreation is rooted in value rather than in enjoyment. Education ought to be "creative" and `’re-creative" throughout. It ought to be suffused with the joy, exhilaration, expectation, and excitement which accompany a hard-fought contest for worthy ends. If modern man can learn to use his free time well, he will live well generally, for the employment of leisure is the measure of selfhood. Thus, when recreation is rightly conceived, it is a suitable major guiding concern for education as a whole.

These considerations constitute the justification for what is commonly called a "liberal education." A liberal education, literally and historically, means education for men of leisure -- men who are free to choose what they will do with their lives, men who are not slaves. Before the machine age liberal education was necessarily aristocratic, because only a few could enjoy sufficient leisure to make education for it necessary or desirable. With the general emancipation effected by technology, liberal education has become a democratic possibility. All persons are now entitled to leisure, and all are in need of education for the wise use of their freedom. To assert that modern education should be infused with the ideals of recreation is to affirm the centrality of liberal studies in the curriculum.

Traditional liberal education centered around classical literature. It required the mastery of the Greek and Latin languages and the study of the great works of Hellenic and Roman antiquity. Mathematics, which is actually another kind of language, was included among the subjects carried over from ancient times. Philosophy, history, poetry, and drama were also taught not as specialized departments of knowledge, but as components of the classical literary tradition. This study of the classics, which for generations had comprised the ideal of liberal education in Europe and America at least until the beginning of the twentieth century, provided men of leisure with a common body of language and thought and a set of symbols of distinction which set them apart from ordinary people. Furthermore, it furnished approved models of excellence, which served to inspire and direct successive generations of students toward the peaks of civilized achievement.

Within the present century this traditional concept of liberal education has been under heavy attack. Although some educators still cling to it with fervent tenacity, most regard it as out of keeping with the conditions and needs of modern industrial democracy. It is hardly cause for wonder that a curriculum designed for the privileged few m a largely agrarian society should prove unsuited to the needs of the new era of universal leisure in an industrialized society. The attack has frequently been directed at the idea of liberal education itself, apart from its classical form. The "useless" education for leisure, best represented by the traditional studies, has been despised because it supposedly does not increase one’s occupational efficiency. In the busy, striving age of progress, the study of the classics has seemed a luxury few could and none should afford. It has also been supposed that leisure would take care of itself, since it was regarded as requiring no positive attainment, but only the natural capacity for relaxation and pleasure.

This rejection of liberal education of any kind is unwarranted. Hopefully, we are not yet willing to write off the ideals of human freedom for the sake of productive efficiency. Nor can we ignore the urgent need for educating modern man to employ his leisure well. If classical liberal education will not suffice for today’s needs, what kind will? This is the question to which an answer is required if the authentic re-creative character of education is to be attained.

Liberal education for modern democracy should be developed in accord with the following six principles. First, it should remain true to the nature of recreation as devoted to intrinsic consummatory values. Liberal studies are to be prized in and for themselves and not for the sake of other purposes to which they may contribute. True humane learning -- the learning that sets men free -- is justified mainly by the intrinsic value of what is learned, not by its usefulness. It is not a tool for better adjustment, of whatever kind, but an opportunity for love and loyalty to what is recognized as excellent. In this respect ideal modern liberal education agrees with the allegedly useless classical education. Both are dedicated to intrinsic worth. This principle of value in and for itself is violated when what are termed liberal studies (and what may be so for other students) are pursued for the purpose of becoming a professional in liberal learning (as scholar and teacher). Many a student of the traditional liberal arts approaches them in just as utilitarian a fashion as the usual student in pharmacy or engineering approaches his studies, and much of the instruction in the liberal arts is in fact technical and occupational in character. True liberal learning requires no ulterior justification. It is to be loved first and used secondarily.

The second principle that should govern modern liberal education is the primacy of qualitative excellence. Like the first, this ideal is also shared with classical liberal learning. The new liberal education should remain classical in the sense that its materials are to be drawn from the high points of civilized achievement. What a person does as a free man -- in his leisure -- ought to be a source of elevation and inspiration, a means of re-creation, not an occasion for stagnation or degradation. Recreation should be measured by rigorous standards, not marked by a relaxation of standards, and the same rule applies to the liberal education by which a person is prepared for such activities. Thus, the curriculum of liberal studies is to be guided primarily by concern for high quality, not by considerations of student popularity and interest -- though these may be welcome by-products.

The following three principles distinguish the desirable new liberal education from the traditional liberal arts. The third ideal is that of progress. The old liberal education made use of a relatively fixed corpus of standard materials. It was assumed that these were of permanent worth and that no changes or improvements were necessary. The result was the neglect of important recent products of civilization and the loss of a sense of contemporary relevance. Liberal education should not be based upon a circumscribed canonical body of literature. It should be open to new developments and subject to continuous appraisal and revision in the light of the criteria of excellence. This is not to be taken as implying an automatic preference for the new over the old. Since the persistent civilizing power of a work is one of the signs of its worth, well-tested traditions have an edge over innovations. Liberal studies should not be antitraditional; they should not be partial to novelty and obvious contemporary relevance. The principle of progress simply means that the education of a free man should draw upon the resources of civilized excellence from all periods of history and should be fashioned with due regard to the profound changes taking place in the modern world.

Fourth, modern liberal studies ought to reflect the differences among human beings. Not only should there be progress; there should also be variety. Traditional liberal studies were the same for everybody. They provided a kind of lingua franca for the educated elite. In today’s pluralistic democracy no such uniformity is appropriate. People cannot be forced into a single common mold. There is no one uniform way of excellence. Differences in temperament and in native capacities make persons respond in different ways to the same situations, and indicate the need for educational provisions of considerable latitude. Particularly in an age where leisure is nearly everybody’s privilege, it is not to be expected that each will use his freedom in the same manner. If a standard course of liberal studies is provided under these conditions, many people will fail to find therein their own pathway to excellence and will lose the recreational preparation that a more varied program would have offered.

This need for variety can be met by a good modern liberal education because of a fifth principle which it satisfies -- namely, breadth of scope. In this respect modern liberal education differs most markedly from the traditional classical education. The older studies, as already suggested, were linguistic, literary, and mathematical. Modern liberal education is far broader. It includes the natural sciences, the social studies, and the fine arts, too. In fact, it has at length become evident that the content of a study is not what makes it "liberal" or otherwise, and that any subject of study can be included in a liberal education, provided it is treated in a liberal fashion. What does it mean to treat it in such a way? It means to deal with it in relation to its universal humane relevance; that is, as it pertains to the loyalties of men unconstrained by physical and social necessities.

From this point of view, liberal education may appropriately be concerned with anything in the whole range of human experience. Clearly the sciences are admirably suited for the growth of loyalty to truth as an intrinsic value and to the human communities that truth in its many formulations brings into being. Studies in such fields as law, education, and theology, which are commonly (and properly) thought of as vocational in orientation, may also be approached from the liberal standpoint as vehicles for devotion to civilized values. Even obviously practical skills like carpentry and welding can be taught liberally by exhibiting their manifold relationships within the fabric of civilization and by employing them as occasions for the deliberate celebration and embodiment of inherent excellence.

Classical liberal learning was more exclusively bookish than the modern type proposed here. It was more obviously "intellectual." But this should not be construed as approval for nonintellectual practical or manual activity within the scope of liberal education. Liberal learning must include intellectual apprehension, or it is not an activity befitting a free man -- that is, a person who guides his life in accordance with the inward persuasion of the good. Thus, an unlimited range of subjects are appropriate to liberal education, provided they are taught in a liberal manner. This breadth of scope is the basis for a program of liberal studies in a pluralistic democracy in which all the citizens are expected to participate.

The last of the six principles has to do with the organization of the curriculum. Classical liberal education was essentially general, because of its reliance upon literary works of broad human pertinence. Modern scholarship has become increasingly specialized along narrow departmental lines, and instruction has tended to follow the same pattern. At the present time much of what is called liberal education in the arts and sciences is organized as a collection of specialized studies. The requisite breadth of learning is supposed to be insured by the requirement for "distribution" of courses, to prevent a poorly balanced program. This type of curricular organization does not in fact usually achieve the aims of liberal learning. Specialized courses, which are conducted within the strict limits of a technical discipline, may be excellent preparation for the professional worker in that field; they are not likely to provide for the best use of leisure by the liberated modern man. The latter needs "general education" studies of a high order. These do not refer to those sterile and boring courses which teach many things in general and nothing in particular, nor to broad surveys which never go deeply into anything. "General education" here means studies that are carried out with primary concern for their universal human relevance and with due attention to those ideas of fundamental importance which span the gulfs between the specialized disciplines.

If modern liberal education is to provide for the nurture of free men, it must regain the ideal of generality which characterized the traditional liberal arts, but it must do so without sacrificing the variety and scope made possible by modern advances in knowledge. The curriculum should be organized in response to the need for integrity and depth of outlook rather than primarily to serve the purposes of professional academic scholars. Even specialized subjects that are not themselves interdisciplinary should, for purposes of general education, be related with other fields. Many -- if not most -- studies -- such as literature, philosophy, history, religion, geography, and anthropology (to name only some of them) -- by their very nature draw upon a variety of other fields of study and thus are particularly suited to general education, provided they are not ruined for that purpose by professional zeal to make them into precise, technical, exclusive disciplines -- as occurs even in such a naturally general field as literature, when its promoters restrict it to technical textual analysis.

Liberal studies ought not, of course, to comprise the whole of education. Provision should be made at all ages and levels for both vocational and recreational preparation. Even in the play-school activities of the very young, matters of vocational import, such as correct speech, are learned. At the other extreme, college and university education, even in the graduate and professional schools, should never completely exclude liberal-recreational studies. Furthermore, the two varieties of study can never -- and ought never -- be sharply separated from one another. They should interfuse with one another in a mutually supportive fashion. With skillful teaching it is often possible for the same course of study to be vocational for those students who need it to be and a liberal study for those who do not.

In fact, when concern for worth governs, the distinction largely vanishes between labor and leisure, occupation and recreation, and the respective kinds of education which prepare for each. Work that issues from devotion is no longer a slave’s burden, and play is no longer the pseudo liberty of one who seeks escape from himself and his condition. Both are forms of a free man’s service. Labor is performed in the same freedom of spirit as play is, and leisure is occupied in fulfilling the vocation to be a man.

In education for true liberty, whether in work or play, it thus appears that the spirit of liberal learning should prevail. Liberal education -- in contrast to vocational education, in the usual sense of that term -- is fundamental in that it is concerned with the ends of all living, toward which both labor and leisure are aimed. It opens the way to consummatory values, which contain the meanings and sustain the purposes of life. It provides for the understanding and perspective that yield the sense of wholeness, balance, and proportion to human existence. Under modern conditions, with changes occurring so rapidly that most specific occupational preparation becomes quickly out of date, it even appears that a fundamental liberal education is the best vocational education, for it develops the powers of imagination needed to meet new situations and the understanding of interrelationships required by life in an increasingly interdependent civilization. Hence, the recreative spirit may and should infuse and transform occupational effort, and the ideals of liberal learning become the measure of fundamental vocational study.

This view of recreation in a democracy of worth entails a transformation of our whole educational philosophy and practice. In the ultimate view education is re-creation. It is the process of reproducing high civilization in human personality. The fundamental presupposition in this view is that the activities by which persons are brought to true freedom issue from loyalty to what is true and right, which is the only sure and enduring source of creative energy. The home or the school that is founded on the re-creative idea is not partial to the easy and the pleasant path. It is profound and serious in spirit and purpose; it is exacting and disciplined in method and program. Its motive is not the desire for efficiency or for social control, but rather a glad response to the lure of perfection, from which true liberty springs.

Work is a third domain of creative activity. Broadly speaking, work is an art. The worker is an "artisan," a molder and maker of things. Good work requires skill in production, careful design, and excellence of form. It is criteria such as these that link the values of work with those of esthetic excellence and good manners within the general category of creative effort.

The evaluation of work in the economy of life is directly related to the general character of the social system. In particular, the development of democratic forms of social organization has profoundly affected the outlook on work. In the aristocratic society, labor is for slaves, not for free men. The mark of a gentleman is having leisure -- not having to work. Labor is regarded as degrading, as beneath the dignity of a man, as a burden to be borne by those who live under the command of others. However, this aristocratic denigration of work applies chiefly to manual labor, for the intellectual tasks of management, of government, of scholarship, and of artistic creation are regarded as quite appropriate for free men.

Democratic society repudiates the contrast of slave and free and thereby universalizes the responsibility for work. In principle no one is exempt from work, and no fixed classes of persons are assigned to the labor of hand and brain, respectively. Society is not expected to be stratified with respect to labor and leisure, for work is accepted as an intrinsic and universal component of the human situation.

The climax of the democratization of work has come about through machine technology, under which machines are used to perform most of what was formerly done by slaves, and much more besides. Machines have radically altered the nature of work, largely by eliminating man as a source of animal power and by reducing to a minimum the routine and repetitive types of work that men must perform. With the continued development of automatic machines, the proportion of jobs requiring intellectual rather than sheer physical effort is rapidly increasing, with the prospect that before long virtually all labor will be technical, managerial, or creative. Even complex intellectual processes are more and more being performed by machines, thus moving the requirements of labor still further in the direction of imaginative planning and evaluative judgment.

Thus, modern inventions have reinforced the democratization of society by obliterating the duality of manual labor and intellectual labor and by making it possible -- even necessary for the sake of efficiency -- for everyone to engage in the kinds of work reserved in aristocratic societies for gentlemen.

The universalizing of work has been an important factor in the growth of democratic education. Since work is everyone’s responsibility, means must be provided for preparing workers to do their jobs effectively. Furthermore, as the nature of the tasks needing to be done has become increasingly complex and as the intellectual factors in work have become dominant, the required duration and attainment level of education have sharply advanced. Hence, education in modern industrial society is strongly oriented toward occupational preparation. It follows that work and education are closely interrelated in contemporary culture. Prevailing attitudes toward work are reflected in educational programs and objectives, and educational ideals and practices have an influence on vocational life. The nature of democratic vocational values is accordingly of major importance to all who teach.

Contemporary vocational life mainly reflects the concerns of the acquisitive outlook characteristic of the democracy of desire, and education largely follows this pattern. According to this prevailing conception, work is regarded primarily as a means of getting what one wants. A person works in order to achieve, and achievement means reaching the goals one has set for himself, securing the goods and position he craves, fulfilling the ambitions he has entertained, satisfying the demands he has made on life. In short, the goal of work is success. The purpose of labor is to overcome obstacles to progress. One makes progress by "getting ahead" (of other people). According to this view, the harder a person works, the more he is likely to succeed. The more diligently and skillfully he does his job -- and, hence, the better his educational preparation for it -- the more he will be rewarded for his efforts.

Work is thus regarded as a price to be paid for subsequent satisfaction, beyond the work. The laborer "slaves" at his job in order to become "free" for enjoyment when the job is done. The goal is outside of and beyond the task, in the rewards that are due for accomplishment. Under undemocratic autocracies the workers labored by compulsion, without hope of real reward and hence without any opportunity for "success." In the democracy of desire, rewards are proportioned to productive achievement, so that the degree to which a person may satisfy his desires is directly related to his labor output.

The freedom-for-satisfaction which is secured by labor under this system is perfected by the money system. The worker is not rewarded by payment in specified goods and services but in money which can be exchanged for whatever is needed or desired. Money is the guarantee of liberty in the fulfillment of wants. It is the source of independence outside of work, the proof that beyond the job one is truly a free man and not a slave.

Money is the modern symbol of autonomy, of unrestrained self-determination. It is easy to understand, then, why the rewards sought for work are conceived in monetary terms. To labor for money is to secure the right to autonomy. Money is the assurance of having whatever the heart desires. In a democracy of desire, money is the absolute good, from which all blessings flow, precisely because it is neutral in respect to values: it contains no judgments of better or worse, no directions about right or wrong. It is the token of unconditional power, of unrestricted liberty. Money is the measure of success, for the meaning of success in such a society is having the power to command what one wants.

When want-satisfaction is thus dominant, work becomes of first importance, for it is the prime road to success. A person’s whole destiny depends upon getting a job that pays well. The ideal of character is the "productive personality," one who "gets things done," the "go-getter." Such a person need not be overtly aggressive, like the rugged individualists who dominated the American business scene in the late nineteenth century. Instead, he may follow the way of the "organization man," who merges his life into the corporate pattern. In either case the goal is the same -- namely, success in the job. The conditions of success may differ from one type of work to another or from era to era, but the achievement objectives are identical.

In the success-oriented society, education is completely vocationalized. All teaching and learning are justified in the light of their contribution to work. Education is the key to social mobility, via the ladder of occupational achievement. The prime motive for going to school, for doing well in studies, and for staying in school to the highest level possible is to secure a good job. This vocational emphasis affects not only the manifestly practical fields of study, such as the technical and professional disciplines, but even the "pure" liberal arts and sciences, which have commonly been represented as the studies appropriate for the nurture of the free man -- studies whose justification and worth lie solely in themselves and not in any extrinsic purposes. In our acquisitive society it is now the fashion to insist that there is nothing so practical as theory (thus defending the study of "pure" and apparently useless subjects), and that a broad humanistic education is really the best preparation for ambitious young people today because their work as executives will require a deep understanding of human motives and the capacity, gained from a wide cultural perspective, to adapt readily to the new circumstances of a dynamic civilization. Though there is doubtless much truth in these claims, their validity is not the point of present interest, which is rather the further evidence they provide of the pervasiveness of vocational criteria and motives in contemporary education.

Under the desire-dominated philosophy of work the hunger for rewards stimulates a vast outpouring of human energy. Enterprise flourishes. Eager and ambitious men, women, and children vie with one another for pre-eminence in production in order to secure a larger share of the rewards that accrue from these efforts. Meanwhile, work takes on the aspect of an unbearable burden. Dominated as it is by the limitless demands for rewards, after which others too, are grasping, work becomes an oppressive and destructive force in human life. Because of the strain and anxiety occasioned by it, the intrinsic satisfactions in labor are lost and the extrinsic satisfactions, which are supposed to be the reward of effort, are themselves spoiled by the ever-present consciousness of the human price being paid for them.

In order to justify the unpleasant and anxious exertions required in this competitive scheme, the worker searches for more intense kinds of satisfaction which will enable him to forget his burdens for a time and to prove to himself and to others that the struggle is worth while. He engages in acts of conspicuous consumption, of extravagant display, and of debauchery, which put even heavier pressure on him to earn enough to pay for them and at the same time drain him of the energy needed to compete successfully. The result is a vicious circle of alternating determined effort and frenetic grasping for enjoyment, both increasingly destructive of personal well-being.

Thus, man is reduced to the condition of slavery by the very work that is meant to liberate him. The harder he works for the liberty that is supposed to be its fruit, the more tightly the shackles are fastened upon him. This condition is a consequence of the unlimited nature of human wants. As long as the fulfillment of desire is the criterion of human good, mankind follows a path of certain futility, for each craving supplied leads only to a new and larger demand. Attainment of each goal opens up the vista of even more ambitious objectives to be reached. Success is an insatiable overlord. Linking work to want-satisfaction places an unbounded demand on the worker, thus committing him to abject servitude.

This overpowering compulsion to work under the desire philosophy is accompanied by a basic devaluation of labor. Work is regarded as the means to an end different and distinct from itself. One does the job for the sake of what comes after the day’s work. The monetary rewards are what count, and for their sake the burdens of labor are endured. Of course, if desires can be satisfied and rewards can be obtained without work, so much the better. Hence, alongside the emphasis on work appears a pervasive rejection of labor. A person works in order to get out of work. For many people the whole meaning of a job is contained in the promise of vacation with pay. Stenographers will sit for fifty weeks at their typewriters sustained by the prospect of two weeks in Bermuda. Teachers will endure nine months of torture in the classroom and six weeks of drudgery in summer school for the sake of a month in Europe or at a resort. Similarly, many workers are buoyed up during their years of labor by the thought of a happy retirement, while still others are spurred to extraordinary effort or are willing to undertake unusually hazardous or unpleasant assignments so as to make enough money to retire early. Unfortunately the dehumanizing effects of protracted, intense labor without intrinsic meaning generally render the worker incapable of enjoying the retirement freedom which he so eagerly anticipated.

Further evidence of the rejection of work is the multiplication of labor-saving devices in our advanced industrial society. There can be no question about the value of machines that make it unnecessary for men to serve as beasts of burden, greatly increase the efficiency of the craftsman, and release human beings for higher forms of activity. However, a host of modern gadgets, of which electric can openers and push-button automobile window lifts are typical, are not primarily functional but are toys for the amusement of people "who have everything," and are symbols of the repudiation of labor. Again, there is the curious self-contradiction of a society with ingenious and industrious people expending great productive efforts to avoid the necessity of expending efforts.

In still another direction the attitude toward work when the interest philosophy prevails is evident in the phenomena of criminality, particularly in the various forms of larceny. Graft, bribery, misappropriation of funds, forgery, and allied criminal acts are attempted short cuts to satisfaction. They are ways of getting what is desired without working for it. In recent years in the United States there has been a mounting number of thefts by "respectable" white-collar employees and officials as well as by the usual professional criminals. This is not surprising in a society so largely devoted as ours is to pecuniary gain and so ambivalent about work.

Less spectacular but safer are the many legitimate ways of getting something for little or nothing. Sinecures that pay well but make few demands are considered a great prize. Many a corporation or government official draws his salary but renders scarcely any services. Strong labor unions protect many men in positions that technical advances have rendered unnecessary and obsolete. Capping all these ways of winning without working are stock market and real estate speculation. For many people nothing better epitomizes the American Dream than the possibility of making a fortune simply by paper transactions without ever engaging in any real labor.

Phenomena such as those described above seem to require the following view of the relation between interest and effort: When the good is defined by reference to the pursuit of interests, work will be expended only when it is necessary to gain the desired ends. When desires can be attained without effort, no work will be done. Thus arises the attitude that the good life is a life without work, and that the measure of the value of existence is freedom from toil. This view is accompanied by the expectation that the benefits of civilization will continue to accrue, as gifts of nature, without any demand on the energies of men for their creation and maintenance. This is the situation so tellingly treated in Ortegay Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses. Modern man takes the products of civilization for granted, as if they were dropped from trees in a tropical paradise. He rejects the demand placed upon him continually to make and remake culture. He denies the need for unremitting effort by each generation to re-create the forms of life that lift mankind above the beast.

The consequences of this devaluing of work are twofold. First, men are afflicted with an oppressive feeling of boredom. The freshness and vigor of life are replaced by dispirited lassitude. The capacity for keen enjoyment departs, and one is beset by a sense of meaninglessness. One no longer feels needed or wanted. The stimulus of high purposes and exciting goals is gone, and one comes to regard himself as a worthless parasite.

The subjective woes are accompanied by objective ones. In the work-despising society, culture is imperiled. The hard-won institutions of civilization decay and disintegrate. Refinement lapses into grossness, and profundity fades into triviality. Standards deteriorate, and qualitative discriminations disappear. A pall of dull mediocrity hangs over the land.

Homes and schools are necessarily implicated in these conditions. Education cannot escape the ultimate effects of the acquisitive philosophy. With the growth of American industrial society in the nineteenth century, it became apparent that education was an important road to success. If young people were to rise above the level of their parents, they clearly needed the knowledge and skill that education could supply. Schools and colleges were established in great numbers, and more and more young people took advantage of this great new opportunity for upward movement on the ladder of success. It was hard work, but the rewards of educational achievement were great and worthy of the effort.

As education to ever higher levels became a general obligation, it assumed more and more the aspect of a burden rather than an opportunity. Students increasingly occupied themselves with finding ways of avoiding the tasks set for them, and teachers spent more and more energy in the disciplinary role of trying to keep the students on the job.

Partly to meet this unsatisfactory condition, a progressive movement in education was inaugurated. Its proponents sought to re-establish the vital connection between the student and the curriculum and thus to make the effort of learning meaningful, by relating studies to the student’s own actual life situations. This was in some respects an admirable and well-conceived direct attack on the problem of work devaluation. In the hands of skillful teachers the new methods of instruction, appealing to the active or latent concerns of the students, were the basis for outstanding educational achievement. The new philosophy above all provided a foundation for the continual reconstruction of the curriculum by removing it from its traditional position of static detachment and setting it into direct relationship with the changing interests and problems of human life.

Despite its merits, the new education proved to be corruptible. Why? The corruption came from emphasizing the child and forgetting the curriculum. The new theories provided no sufficient foundation for knowledge and values. The focus was on man as an intelligent social organism seeking to solve his problems and satisfy his wants. The true and the good were dislodged from their positions of independence, priority, and permanence and were subordinated to considerations of human interest and satisfaction. Success-oriented education in the long run leads to enslavement by work and to a countermove to reject work. This explains the curious phenomenon of "soft pedagogy" arising out of an educational philosophy aimed at stimulating serious effort by students. The concern for making studies interesting, useful, and relevant degenerated into the attempt to make students comfortable. The rigors of academic discipline were supplanted by painless studies which everyone could enjoy -- but which few were able to respect.

The widespread practice of academic dishonesty is a further reflection of the prevailing view of work. If results can be obtained without labor, no effort will be expended. If the desired grades and certificates can be secured by the short-cut route of cheating on papers and examinations, why undergo the pain of doing the work honestly? Recent surveys indicate that most students do not regard cheating as a serious offense, and that many accept it without difficulty as one of the tools of academic success.

It is instructive to reflect on the fact that the main challenge to the softness and triviality in the modern American curriculum has come as a result of communist successes. We have been frightened into re-examining our educational system by the spectacle of Soviet achievement in science and technology. The frenzy of our reaction is a symptom of our involvement in precisely the same success system that underlies the communists’ zeal. Despite its rejection of private property, communism is the extreme case of a gain-motivated social system. Ambition to succeed, the will to compete, and the pursuit of power are central to communist ideology. The autonomy of man (through collective organization) is the central article of communist faith. Communist will to work will eventually be dissolved in a sea of meaninglessness. Successors to the present generation of revolutionists will enjoy the affluence of the people’s paradise, they, too, will look upon work as something to be avoided, and they will at length also suffer the oppression of boredom in a world without values. Thus, though Americans may indeed need to reconstruct their educational system, it should not be done in the light of the communist model, whose central success principle is already at work undermining our own civilization.

Thus far our analysis of the democracy of desire as it bears upon work has concentrated on the resulting alternation between slavish effort and avoidance of labor. Two further consequences of this philosophy merit consideration: the obliteration of qualitative distinctions between kinds of work, and the atomization of the occupational structure. When the only important concern is the rewards of work, and when labor is regarded simply as a means to monetary gain, the nature of the occupation is of secondary importance. Work is work, and what one does is determined by the rewards offered. The choice of occupation is then governed largely by marketplace considerations. The fundamental questions are not: What will I contribute? What is the value of the service I will render? -- but: What inducements and privileges are provided? What are the salary and fringe benefits? What opportunities for advancement are offered?

When this system prevails, education is commandeered into the service of the work market. Curriculums are arranged in response to occupational demands. Schooling is regarded mainly as job preparation. If the biggest rewards are offered in business, then business schools and prebusiness courses thrive. If the current demand is for scientists and engineers, institutions and studies designed to equip them for this work are created. Consistent with the general pattern, qualitative distinctions and independent evaluations even in education are subordinated to criteria of demand.

The other consequence of the acquisitive philosophy is the atomizing of the occupational structure in modern industrial society. If gain is the criterion of value in work, efficiency --maximum results from minimum effort -- is the major consideration. This efficiency requires a high degree of occupational specialization. Each worker performs one kind of task, which he learns to accomplish with great speed and accuracy. The specialists must be directed and coordinated by managers whose job it is to maintain effective organization of the parts. In this kind of society essential qualities of human nature are sacrificed to productive efficiency (and to the consequent consumptive abundance ) . Human beings lose their full, many-sided humanity when they specialize too narrowly. They become things rather than persons when they are trained only to do a particular limited set of tasks according to a standard formula. They fail to rise to their stature as creative individuals when they are treated as interchangeable and replaceable parts in the social machine. By concentrating on one activity they miss the sense of the whole, which is a major source of the sense of meaning and purpose in work. Moreover, the development of a managerial hierarchy powerful enough to weld the specialist workers into an effective unity presents a threat to democratic freedom and engenders habits of mind that undermine the individual’s sense of civic responsibility.

The dominance of specialism is clearly evident in modern education. Success in scholarly production, like success in other kinds of work, requires high concentration of effort. Furthermore, the various occupational specialties depend upon training programs of a correspondingly narrow and intense character. Specialized scholars stand at the summit of academic prestige, and subject-matter compartmentalization characterizes the curriculum, even to some extent in the elementary schools. Academic generalists are regarded with pity, condescension, or contempt and usually find it possible to survive in the academic scramble only by redeeming their generality through affiliation with one of the specialized disciplines. Broadly humanistic studies suffer, while technical disciplines thrive.

In a democracy of worth, work is not a means to achieve desired benefits, but a response to the call of duty and a channel for devoted service. It is a way of fulfilling responsibilities and of creating and sustaining things of value. The obligation to work is universal, since responsibility for the right belongs to everyone alike. This universality of duty is the ground of the democratic character of work. Responsibility for the right is no respecter of persons, groups, or classes; none are exempt from its claims.

The measure of goodness is neither productivity nor the satisfaction of wants. It is qualitative, not quantitative. Since work measured by such standards is no longer subject to the command of boundless desires, the furious striving of the success-oriented society is absent. Instead, work is regarded as creative activity performed in obedience to the ideal of goodness. It is accepted in proper relation to other activities of life. It is not alternately grasped and rejected, as it is when desire governs. It is regarded in perspective and with a sense of proportion in the total economy of life. With this attitude, work is not a burden, but a creative opportunity. One is not a slave, subject to the tyranny of the drive for success, but a willing servant of the good.

More important still, labor done out of devotion to the good is justified not by extrinsic rewards but by the quality of the work itself. Thus it is a source of meaning. It has intrinsic value. It is accepted and welcomed as a significant and essential feature of life -- as a necessary ingredient of the human situation. When work is valued in itself and is seen as a means of expressing one’s loyalty to the good, it is welcomed rather than avoided. It is an occasion for rejoicing, for enthusiastic endeavor different in spirit from the feverish, anxious striving of the ambitious. There is no thought of resort to dishonest means to escape effort, no subterfuge, and no bypassing aimed at getting something for nothing, since the whole motive for work is not getting but giving, making, serving, creating.

In the democracy of worth a person works because he sees an opportunity to advance a good cause, to meet a real need. Life without work is viewed with aversion, and the right kind of work is embraced with thankfulness as a source of personal and social well-being. Constructive activity is essential to health of mind and body. Human beings are endowed with capacities that need to be employed; if they are not used, they atrophy, and personality deteriorates. The elemental necessity for work and its fundamental standard of rightness stem from this basic human requirement for the active exercise of native capabilities. Besides this personal need for life-giving activity, work is necessary for the preservation and advancement of civilization. Under the philosophy of worth each generation accepts its responsibility for making and remaking the culture. It is understood that the benefits of civilization do not come automatically from the cornucopia of nature but must be continually created and renewed by human effort.

While education in such a society contributes to the preparation of workers, the whole educational effort is not vocationalized. Preparation for an occupation is only one among several major objectives of the schools, and this goal is always pursued with due regard for the basic needs of human nature and of the good society. When the universal obligation to work is an unquestioned assumption, teachers and parents can require and expect serious work by children. Sustained labor is regarded not as an imposition to be avoided but as a normal and just component of human existence. Teachers and pupils do not judge the desirability of various studies and learning activities by the pleasure, comfort, or satisfaction they yield; their sole concern is for the contribution made to the development of right habits of thought and conduct. Young people readily learn to respect parents and teachers who respect them enough to make demands upon them commensurate with their ability and inspired by concern for truth and right. They cannot respect parents and teachers who either exercise arbitrary power over them or are guided primarily by their wants and wishes.

Human beings are made for hard work; they grow and thrive on its challenge and find zest in submitting faithfully to its yoke. Yet young people will not normally discover this without the sustained and patient insistence by adults that they expend effort in significant work. This is the obligation of home and school. The key to effectiveness in such adult leadership is the sincere appreciation by those who teach of the intrinsic worth of the work they ask their students to do. And this appreciation grows out of the teachers’ own loyalty and enthusiasm for the work to which they are called.

When values, instead of interests, are the governing consideration, discrimination among different kinds of work becomes important. People do not choose their jobs simply on the basis of money return; their first concern is the worth of the work, the contribution it makes to a significant life. Furthermore, the distribution of occupations within society is not determined simply by the pressures of the market. Instead, workers are apportioned to various jobs with due regard for both individual competences and the needs of the good society. Ideally the desirable distribution should be achieved through choice by individual workers, with maximum freedom to change from one position to another. To accomplish the ideal, this freedom must be accompanied by adequate information about personal capabilities and the needs of society, together with a widespread sense of individual responsibility for the good of all.

In attaining this goal, education plays an important part. One of the main tasks of the school is competent vocational guidance, which is governed primarily not by the principle of helping the student prepare for and get the position he wants, but by the objective of teaching students to know their own abilities and the nature of their society and persuading and inspiring them to devote their energies to the tasks that most urgently need to be done.

An obviously crucial question is: Which work is good, significant, and right, and which is not? No simple and direct answer to this question is possible. The response can only be an indirect one, to the effect that the goodness of work is measured by its contribution to personal and social excellence, the standards of which cover the whole range of human concerns. Thus, an occupation that makes use of intellectual powers consistently with the canons of true knowledge and dedicated inquiry is in that respect valuable, as compared with one that neglects, degrades, or misuses the gift of intelligence. Employment in the mass media is worthy if it is devoted to the publication of true, significant, and elevating materials; otherwise, it is not. Jobs that promote refined tastes and richness of esthetic life for the community are in that respect good. Similarly, work that conserves the resources of the earth, advances mental and physical health, sustains love and fidelity in family relations, minimizes arbitrary class and race distinctions, subserves the principles of economic and political justice and the cause of international cooperation, and as a true vocation becomes a service of worship: such work is, in these several respects, good.

Hence, proper vocational guidance requires a comprehensive set of value standards. It is not sufficient merely to appraise personal abilities and social demands and to find the best balance between the two. Human beings are capable of both good and evil conduct, and societies make both right and wrong demands. Occupational counseling is both a technical and an ethical enterprise, but the ethical aspect is the more fundamental of the two and the one more neglected in contemporary practice. Probably no other step a young person takes is as crucial for the total significance of his life as the choice of work, including the educational preparation necessary for it. In this decision the primary orientation toward giving or getting comes to the fore, and with it a host of consequences and applications in a great variety of more specific human concerns, as indicated in the preceding paragraph. Vocational advisement, if it is to be of real educational value, should consist not in one or a few interviews on entering or leaving school, but in a continuing dialogue between the student and his parents and teachers in all fields as well as with professional guidance officers. This dialogue should be regarded as the primary opportunity for teaching true democratic values, for in it the issues of what is really worthful and whether one shall live for satisfaction or for service become "existential"--personally decisive -- rather than merely theoretical and speculative. In the continuing discussion of vocation the student must face the questions: Who am I? Who shall I become? What shall I make of my life? A counselor can help a student to answer these questions if he believes there are values worthy of loyalty and if he has reflected long enough and deeply enough to arrive at some conviction as to what some of those values are.

One further consequence of orientation around values instead of around success is the moderation of specialization. Concern shifts from productive efficiency alone to the requirements of the good life. Specialization is regarded as a means for increasing the individual’s qualitative excellence of achievement and for making possible higher forms of cultural life through the organization of differentiated skills. The gains from differentiation are balanced against the need for wholeness and variety in the development of personality. Furthermore, while specialists in organization and management may properly be used, the whole responsibility for the coordination of work does not rest upon them. Every person needs to be conscious of his place within the social complex and aware of the relation between his special contribution and the services performed by others. He must then assume responsibility for the welfare of his organization and of the human commonwealth as a whole. This he can do only if he has both specialized skills and breadth of understanding.

In education this value orientation with respect to work results in emphasis on general studies that is, studies that are devoted to the growth of humane values and not simply to technical competence. General education is concerned with what a person needs to know and to become as a human being, not merely as a cog in the corporate mechanism. Generality does not preclude high concentration. It does preclude the narrow pursuit of knowledge and skill without concern for their relevance to the whole pattern of truth and right. Properly speaking, general education is not superficial, despite the contrary testimony of some efforts bearing that name. True generality is necessarily profound, because it involves a consideration of complex relationships, the discernment of fundamental relevancies, and the exhibition of value premises. Nor is general study, rightly conceived, only elementary and introductory in nature. It is by nature more advanced and reflects a higher level of cultural attainment than specialized disciplines, because it presupposes and goes beyond the particular competences to an analysis of their larger bearings and grounds for justification. Thus, in a democracy of worth the program of education is conceived not solely or mainly as preparation for successful pursuit of an occupation but as the gateway to a worthy life, in which work has its proper place within the larger vocation of being a civilized human being in a humane society.

The subject of manners is really a subdivision of the general subject of esthetics. Judgments about manners are made by applying the principles of esthetic excellence to the field of human relationships and personal conduct. Good manners are modes of behavior that are fitting and appropriate to a particular situation; bad manners are modes of behavior that are out of place in the same situation. The evaluation of fitness within a specific context is clearly an esthetic process.

At first it might seem that the study of manners is a matter of minor importance, hardly meriting treatment on a par with such major themes as intellectual life, work, and political organization. While there are books of etiquette which new brides and others may consult, manners are seldom the subject of serious social analysis by contemporary scholars. The study of manners is regarded not as a significant part of formal courses of instruction, but as entirely incidental to the program of most schools and colleges. What is there to study, it may be asked, when manners are nothing but arbitrary conventions, customs that have been developed largely as a result of historical accident? Surely there can be no truth or falsity, no right or wrong, about manners, no better or worse to call for analysis and to invite inquiry? Are not manners at the most a topic for anthropological description, and have not anthropologists shown that customs vary from society to society and from group to group in bewildering complexity, permitting no universal normative judgments?

Closer scrutiny suggests that manners are not as superficial as the viewpoint above would indicate, and that -- rightly received -- they are of great significance in democracy and education. Fundamentally manners are symbolic forms, which point to meanings beyond themselves. It is these meanings, not the forms of conduct in themselves, which are important, for they reflect the ideals and the spirit of a culture. Manners are a kind of language, a "language of the act," which often conveys meanings more effectively than can words. The crucial significance of linguistic skill is generally acknowledged. It clearly follows that the study of manners, one of the most powerful and commonly used kinds of language, is of considerable importance. Good manners express and help to conserve sound social values; bad manners manifest social decay and hasten the disintegration of civilization. No analysis of the good life and of the good society can be satisfactory without a consideration of the system of manners, which is an outward sign of inward spirit and purpose.

Manners ought, then, to be a subject of major concern in education. Instruction in manners and customs should be one of the essential parts of the curriculum. While homes are often particularly well fitted to provide such instruction, schools share in this responsibility, supplementing, correcting, and affording intellectual reinforcement for the teaching of manners in homes. In some cultures the principles of social conduct have been the chief subject of instruction in formal education. The best example is the long-enduring and highly stable classical Chinese civilization, where the Sages’ writings, which were the source books for instruction, dealt for the most part and in great detail with the behavior appropriate to various persons, positions, and situations. Consideration of examples such as this may help to dispel the prejudice against the study of manners within the formal curriculum, by showing that people in other well-developed and successful cultures have considered the refinement of interpersonal relationships the central objective of education.

The present unhappy condition of mankind is not unrelated to the neglect of education in manners. The makers of modern industrial civilization have been preoccupied with the conquest of nature and with the advancement of knowledge and not with the patient and exacting inculcation of right habits in human relationships. Compared to the inhabitants of certain other cultures and times, most people today, with all their knowledge and power, are unskilled in the fine arts of personal and interpersonal conduct. Moderns have largely failed to see that technical mastery and intellectual opulence are a curse instead of a blessing in the absence of a system of mature social relationships mediated by a thoroughly learned code of manners. The relative neglect of manners in contemporary education is evidence of the dominant concern for understanding and control as compared with the patient weaving and preservation of the social fabric.

The world is, of course, not to be saved from its present discords and estrangements by the teaching of certain codes of conduct. Manners are all too often regarded in this fashion, simply as external acts to be learned and automatically performed. The important factors are the personal attitudes and social meanings of which the manners are the outward signs. Proper education in manners consists of teaching right relationships through the act-language by which these relationships are symbolized.

From a democratic standpoint, manners and education in manners are likely to appear suspect because of their usual association with aristocratic societies. The term "manners’’ is commonly thought to refer to the etiquette of the drawing room and hence to have pertinence only to the "upper classes." In aristocratic societies ordinary people tend to be thought of as unrefined and as needing manners only when they enter into relationships with "high-class" people. There is ample reason for democratic suspicion of manners, since customary codes of behavior are by nature traditional and conservative. In the long struggle for human freedom and equality the status quo had to be challenged, and with it the system of symbolic acts which helped to sustain it. The commoners who pressed their claims against kings and nobles could hardly be expected to regard with favor the ceremonials that expressed their own subordination. The French revolutionists were notoriously unmannerly in relation to their royal opponents, and the various communist revolutions have made a clean sweep of feudalistic and capitalistic patterns of behavior.

The rejection of aristocracy, whether by a democracy, by communism, or by some other collectivist system, does not, however, entail opposition to manners as such, but only to aristocratic manners. Every society needs symbols that embody its shared values. Every culture requires a reasonably stable set of customary acts to express its corporate spirit. The decline and the neglect of manners -- the absence of any clear code of conduct -- are evidence of confusion about values and the loss of common ideals. When aristocracy gives way to some other stable social form, aristocratic manners are replaced by a system of symbolic acts that express the character of the new society. Fascists and communists have definite and striking ritual systems, which differ sharply from those of the older societies that they displaced.

Democracies, too, have behavior codes which express democratic intentions. The fact that there is relatively so little concern for manners in modern American society is not a consequence of democratic commitment but a sign of uncertainty and indecision concerning our values. Contemporary democratic culture is ceremonially impoverished. We do not possess a rich and secure tradition of symbolic acts which remind us of the faith we live by and which give body to the meanings we share.

What sort of manners do belong to a democratic society? What code of behavior should Americans teach their children? In answer, it should be granted at the outset that there is no one right pattern of manners for democracy. As indicated earlier, manners are a language. It is characteristic of language that many different symbolic systems can be used to express roughly the same world of meanings. To be sure, the meanings expressed by French, German, Japanese, Russian, and English are never identical; there is an inescapable element of untranslatability in every language. Still, this fact of linguistic singularity does not negate the general principle that there are many possible ways of symbolizing the same reality. In regard to the language of manners, it follows that there is no single code of customary conduct that expresses the democratic spirit. It is not the external act that should be the matter of concern, but the idea that it conveys.

Thus, there is room for endless invention and variation in the modes of behavior appropriate in a democracy. There is no fixed and inflexible code, deduced from democratic principles, which all who are faithful to democracy must observe and which should be taught in all homes and schools. Creative experimentation and individual or group variations in manners are in order, provided only that each pattern is designed to represent democratic meanings. Assuming that this proviso is satisfied, wide latitude in manner systems is desirable, because of the resulting greater interest and esthetic richness and the encouragement of freedom and individuality instead of sheer conformity.

Manners are not, then, simply arbitrary conventions, but are subject to normative judgments in the light of democratic ideals. If certain democratic values are presupposed, there will be corresponding appropriate ceremonial forms to express them. Furthermore, the manners characteristic of a democracy of desire will be quite different from those proper to a democracy of worth. In the former there is a constant tension between anarchistic individualism and collectivist pressures to conform, since the will and the wish are sovereign, and the basic problem is to effect a tolerable adjustment of competing wants. The two fundamental meanings to be represented in a democracy of desire are self-will and majority rule. The behavior appropriate to self-will is self-expression: doing what one wants to do, being emancipated from the restraints and represssions of old-fashioned times, acting the way one feels. The resulting "modern" manners appear to the adherents of more traditional views as "unmannerly" and the essence of rudeness.

Along with these manners of self-expression -- and limiting them -- are those that reflect majority rule. Their primary principle is "appearing to stay within the law," giving the impression of complying with the essential regulations for preserving public peace and order, looking innocent, not getting caught in an antisocial act. The function of such manners is opposite to the function of the manners of self-expression. They provide self-concealment instead of self-display. They signalize conformity to social demands -- not, however, for the sake of common values, but in order that one may be left free to pursue his own ways. Such manners are a shield against criticism and interference by others. They are a "shell" or a "front," behind which one can live his own life undisturbed.

In such a democracy, manners are instruments of egocentricity. They constitute an ingenious and endlessly various complex of acts that enable a person to do and to get the most of what he wants without letting his avarice show and without getting a reputation that will close off or diminish his supply of gratifications. They enable one to cheat in marriage, or on examinations, or in business, or on income taxes, all the while appearing to be a decent, patriotic, even God-fearing person who, like all sensible people, wants only his share of the good things of life and would never do any harm to anybody.

Quite different is the rationale for manners in a democracy of worth, where customs and ceremonies are designed to express commitment to universal humane values. They are an outward sign of inward devotion to what is true, just, and appropriate to each occasion. The approved actions are calculated neither to express nor to conceal persons, but to celebrate and dramatize what is good. Such behavior lends grace to a person, and in a sense it serves as a mantle of honor to redeem his own dishonor, but these benefits are incidental and derivative rather than the primary objectives of conduct. Manners are thus modes of service, instead of ways of taking advantage. They reflect the intention of giving, not of getting. They are symbols and instruments not of power but of appreciation, compassion, and concern.

In a democracy of worth the destruction of traditional social symbols, which has taken place so widely in modern society, would be halted. Meaningful customs cannot be created overnight, nor can their symbolic power be assured by fiat. Well-tested codes of conduct provide an important living link with the past. Respect for such customs is a vital source of social continuity, security, and even productivity.

However, this respect is not for tradition as such, but only as a proven hearer of values. Authentic democracy therefore requires not only a principle of cultural conservation but also of criticism of customary behavior. Inherited codes of conduct often stand in the way of needed improvements. They may have been appropriate under earlier social circumstances which the tide of events has drastically changed. Hence, new codes adequate to the new occasions of modern life must be devised, and ways must be invented for improving the process of creating meaningful social symbols. As suggested earlier, the mass media can play a decisive part in this process. Given the rapidly changing character of modern industrial civilization, it is also necessary to shift the emphasis in manners away from the external forms (which may have to be modified as the conditions of life shift) to the democratic meanings that they express.

To sum up: Modern young people need to be taught manners: not the code of the emancipated ego, nor the pattern of conformity to the will of the majority, but the action-language of democracy, with due respect for worthy traditions from the past and determined criticism of unworthy ones. Their instruction should emphasize, not the overt acts in themselves, since these may soon become obsolete, but the fundamental democratic principles and ideals which the acts serve to dramatize.

It is not feasible to offer here a detailed and comprehensive analysis of a system of manners expressing the values of democracy. It must suffice to give several illustrations of situations to which the question of appropriate conduct in a democracy of worth is relevant.

Consider first manners of speech. These are governed by the fundamental principles of consideration for the word and for other people and the will to create community by reciprocal communication. These root principles may be developed more specifically in such corollary principles as the following:

The speaker should have respect -- even reverence -- for the language he is privileged to use. The most important rule of manners in speech is to use language with regard for its proper dignity and worth, and not thoughtlessly, carelessly, or cheaply. Language bears the personality of the speaker, and when inferior words are spoken, personality is degraded, both in the one who utters them and in those who hear them. Speaking is properly an art, and spoken words ought to be the loving handiwork of an artist. No true artist creates objects that do not command his admiration and affection. So, too, should a person’s speaking be a creating and an offering of something worthy of high regard.

It is astonishing to hear even people of high achievement and excellent reputation use mean and foul language on many occasions, as though such effusions had no real significance, being mere sounds which are dispersed as soon as they are said. This habit actually reveals a basic disrespect for language and for the ideal values of which words are the vehicles. Human beings have a duty to respect words as bearers of life, and hence to use only words that symbolize what is true and right.

Speech should be ready but not continuous. It is desirable to be alert and sensitive to the need to engage in conversation. One should be able to talk freely and easily, without awkward pauses and agonized struggle for words. In general, silence is not golden -- at least not the empty silence where two or more people confronting one another lack either the ability or the concern to employ language to create a shared experience. On the other hand, there are occasions when silence between companions is desirable, when the uttering of words would break an unspeakable communion. Readiness in speech simply means the ability to speak easily when appropriate, and otherwise to remain silent. Compulsive talkers are not well mannered. Some people have the habit and feel the obligation to maintain a steady stream of conversation whenever they are not alone. Proper speech has a rhythmic quality, a pattern of ebb and flow, of refreshing pauses to consolidate ideas, to reflect on what has been said, and to prepare well for the next utterances. Continuous talking in any event is ruled out on the grounds of respect for language, since a steady stream of utterances can hardly be carefully enough considered and artfully enough fashioned to make it worthy of high regard. Language, like money under inflationary conditions, loses its value as a medium of exchange when issued in excessive quantity and without regard for the real assets underlying it.

Speech should be appropriate to the occasion. It is bad form to have a "line" which one recites with minor variations to all and sundry. Such speech is fostered by those who believe in self-expression as a major use of language. Good speaking manners manifest sensitivity and flexibility, so that what is said may be true and relevant to circumstances. This does not mean that the content of speech should be compromised in the interest of expediency, but simply that it should serve truth and right as they pertain to the particular event.

Talking should be with others and not to them or at them. It should be in the mode of dialogue, not monologue. This is true even of public speaking, where audible response from the audience is not possible. Address should still be in such a manner as to invite and expect response and not only reception and acceptance. Those who use language to express themselves -- rather than to communicate something of value to others -- are not concerned with either the situation in which they speak or the persons to whom they speak.

If true communication is to take place, it is evident that speech must occur in proper order. Each speaker must wait his turn. The proper order is not always or even usually one of regular sequence and of "equal time." Proper order depends upon the inner logic of the conversation and the potential contributions of the participants. To apprehend the right order is not easy. It requires awareness by each party of the developing pattern of the conversation as a whole and progressive evaluations of the place of each person in the common enterprise. Talking is an art, but not an art of the individual creator; it is a social art, requiring the ability to work with others in a cooperative creative venture.

Those for whom speech is a tool of desire can have scant concern for proper order. For them, the only propriety is that of adjusting to the strivings of others, so that each gets a reasonably satisfying share of self-assertion. Truly decorous conversation is founded on the assumption that the purpose of speaking is not to serve anyone’s interests but to bring to light the good and the true, that all may better cherish and serve it. With such a goal no one competes with others for a place in the conversation, nor rudely interrupts, nor despairs of "getting a word in edgewise." Each awaits the right time to speak, speaks in the light of the whole and for the sake of all, and defers to others when he senses that a fitting moment for their contribution has come.

Well-mannered speaking conforms to accepted conventions of linguistic usage. There are rules of grammar, syntax, and pronunciation which govern correct speech in a given time and society. To follow these conventions faithfully is evidence of respect both for language and for those to whom it is directed. Grammar is, as it were, the skeletal structure of speech. To violate it is to destroy the integrity and articulation of the symbolic system. Hence, careful instruction in proper grammatical forms should be an important constituent of the educational program.

These principles suggest some of the criteria for judging manners of speaking. Americans are particularly in need of giving heed to such ideals. As compared with some other peoples -- notably the English and the French -- Americans are flagrantly careless with words. To remedy this condition the art of conversation needs to be more assiduously and thoughtfully cultivated in homes and in schools. A greater concern and respect for elegance of style and for power in the spoken word should be encouraged. Fascination and delight are the appropriate attitudes toward the incalculably rich treasury of linguistic forms. One of the most serious losses in the modern activity-centered education, which to a considerable extent has taken the place of the classical linguistic curriculum, has been the decline in concern for refined speech. Words are the most powerful bearers of life and thought. Only if young people learn to employ language gracefully and with discrimination can they hope to enter into the full measure of their humane patrimony.

Next consider manners in eating. One should eat so as to show mastery over appetite rather than subservience to appetite. Man is like the lower animals in having to eat to live; he should not be like them in his manner of eating. All animals eat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, but in man these activities may be transformed into bearers of meaning. Through the power of reason they are suffused with significance. They take on a symbolic character. Man does not merely eat; he eats significantly.

In accordance with this principle, eating should be done in an orderly, controlled manner. One should not eat ravenously, devouring food in response to the imperious urgings of hunger, but with a restraint that indicates that the person, not the food, is in command of the situation. Moreover, the physical evidences of eating should be minimized.

While enjoyment of good food is certainly commendable, it is not good manners to rivet one’s attention upon the food, even when one is very hungry. The meal is ideally an occasion for communion with other people, and it is to this consummation that the activity of eating should be directed. Partaking of food provides signal opportunities to symbolize concern for the welfare of others, through offering food to one’s companions, sensitivity to their needs and feelings, and mutual enjoyment of the fruits of the earth. Thus, interest and attention ought to be concentrated not on what is being eaten, no matter how attractive it may be, but upon the people with whom the occasion is shared. Even when a person eats alone, he should practice centering his thoughts upon the relationships of worth which the energies of life support and not upon the food and drink themselves. Fascinated absorption with the process of ingestion is appropriate for the dog with his bone or the infant on the mother’s breast, but not for mature persons. Instruction in manners that sustain the habits of detachment, control, and social sensitivity in eating are part of the long and never-completed task of weaning.

One further application of the central principle is the rule that in general food should be handled by implements and not directly by hand or mouth. This practice is dictated in part by hygienic considerations, since the hands are used for many other purposes and may carry sources of infection. The more basic reason is that the use of tools -- a unique human capability -- helps to make eating a truly human activity. It lifts the human being from the animal level of direct contact with the objects of consumption. Knives, forks, and spoons permit greater finesse in the handling of food than is possible by tearing, grasping, or sucking. They also leave the hands free and clean for other distinctively human functions.

Good manners in play follow four main principles. Of first importance is fidelity to the rules of the game. Play is a mannered, disciplined human activity, in which success depends upon scrupulous adherence to various formal premises. Breaking the rules for one’s own gain or making one’s own rules is cause for exclusion from play. The first rule of the game is fair play, and the canons of fairness are predetermined by common agreement. The basic code of manners for any given game is thus contained in the definition or constitution of that game.

The second principle is enthusiasm, seriousness, wholeheartedness. It is bad manners to play perfunctorily, absentmindedly, or listlessly. If one cannot play with vigor and singlemindedness, he should not play at all. The whole point of a game is energetic pursuit of a short-range objective within the framework of a given set of rules. The spirit of play depends upon such concentration of effort. It is unfair to those with whom one plays to undertake the game in a distracted and divided frame of mind, for the spirit of the game is a consequence of the common dedication of the players to the pursuit at hand.

This enthusiasm for the playing should be coupled with an attitude of detachment about the results. One should play hard and with the aim of winning, but should also accept success and failure in competition with equally good grace. Good sportsmen take both gains and losses with equanimity, as part of the game. It is bad playing manners to react to losses with ill temper or dejection. For the true sportsman every contest is a new beginning: he carries no burdens of earlier defeat and wears no garlands of prior victory; he plays each game solely for itself, as if there were no other.

Good manners in play presuppose loyalty to partners and respect for opponents. In team play it is the effectiveness of the team, and not individual performance, that counts most. Thus, each player must learn to subordinate his personal ambition to the success of the organization of which he is a part. He must cultivate sensitivity to the reactions of the others and concern for the best utilization of their peculiar abilities. Respect for opponents is made manifest by evident appreciation of and admiration for their achievements and by scrupulous concern for fair play.

All of these principles of good manners in play comport best with a philosophy of life guided by devotion to worth, rather than with an acquisitive philosophy. The good player loses himself in the game. He is faithful to its rules and willingly submits to their yoke. While at play he is wholeheartedly dedicated to the activity in and for itself and for what it does for him. He is indifferent to success or failure, which so wholly dominate acquisitive pursuits, and he knows the secret of finding the good life through losing it in concern for comrades and in duly honoring competitors.

Finally, consider the manner of teacher-pupil relationships. In reaction against the authoritarian formalism of classical education, modern educational progressives have advocated a relationship of essential equality between teacher and student. They regard teachers as partners in inquiry with their students, the main difference being the greater experience of the former, because of which they can serve as "resource persons" in the learning process. The corresponding appropriate manners are those of friends and colleagues. This egalitarian position grows out of the view that knowledge is simply an instrument to serve human interests and that there are no criteria of value beyond those of human satisfaction. With such a view, the function of the teacher is to help the students solve their problems and meet their needs.

The manners appropriate for teachers and students in a democracy of worth are neither those of the classical authoritarian school, where it is presupposed that the schoolmaster knows the truth and is expected to inculcate it, nor those of the progressive school, which is built on the principle that truth is by definition what solves human problems. A school in a democracy of worth is founded on the premise that there are values of truth and right, not of human determination, to be sought and served, and that teachers, though never fully in possession of these values, are the appointed custodians and mediators of them to the young. The office of the teacher is therefore an exalted one, and the manners of teachers and students should fittingly symbolize that exaltation. The teacher should be regarded with honor and shown deference by his students, not because of any personal superiority or privilege, but as a mark of devotion to the matters of worth that he in his official capacity represents. The teacher should exercise authority and the students render obedience, never absolutely and unquestioningly, nor in the spirit of personal command and submission, but always with regard to evidence and for the sake of what is right.

The principles illustrated in the foregoing examples may be summarized and integrated by the statement of certain general ideals of character from which good manners spring. The most fundamental of these ideals is respect for other persons. The cardinal characteristic of a well-mannered person is respectfulness, to any and every other person under all circumstances. This respect cannot be based on what a person actually is or does, for many people are not really respectable most of the time, and nobody is really respectable all of the time. Democratic respect springs rather from devotion to the good of which every person is potentially capable. From this respect follows considerateness for the uniqueness and individuality of each person and concern that everyone be himself and not molded according to the will and desire of anyone else.

Good manners also depend on self-respect. Actually self-respect underlies respect for others, since one’s own being is the source of knowledge of personal worth and of human potentiality. One who has no faith or hope in and for himself cannot have a positive outlook on other people. A well-mannered person has the sense of dignity, the poise, and the confidence born of a vivid consciousness of his privilege in participating in the human venture. Bad manners are symptoms of an inability to accept oneself, resulting in various attempts either to escape existence ("crawling into one’s shell," getting lost in the crowd) or to prove one’s power and importance (self-assertion, exhibitionism, aggressiveness).

Respect for self and for others produces gentleness. People with good manners are "gentlefolk." Their relationships are based on persuasion rather than on force. They live as reasonable people, who appeal to the understanding and consent of free agents rather than to the sanctions of superior power. In aristocratic societies the gentleman is defined as a person of high social position, one born into the "right" family. Gentility in a democracy has nothing to do with social status, but depends only on the considerate, patient, tender, and reasonable quality of character. Every person in a democracy can and ought to become a gentleman.

Proper manners are evidence of refinement of character. A refined person is no longer crude; that is, he is no longer in the state of nature. He is not barbarous, but civilized. He has achieved rational control of brute impulses. He has finesse, is trained, has become disciplined. In the broadest sense, refinement is the fundamental goal of all education.

Another character trait implicit in good manners is modesty, or humility. This quality comes from knowing one’s own limitations and having a just appreciation of one’s place in the whole scheme of human relationships. The modest person avoids extravagance in speech and action. He has a sense of proportion and balance. Above all, he has a lively awareness of the significance of other persons and the ability to articulate his activities constructively with theirs.

Refinement and humility beget patience. The ill-mannered person cannot endure delay and frustration in satisfying his demands. He is stimulated by success, but dejected and irritated by failure. The well-mannered person seeks to understand a situation, with due consideration for the conflicting interests of others, and then endeavors to act in accordance with what is possible and just. He can suffer the defeat of his private plans because the meaning of his life is contained not in them but in his commitment to the good, which is neither made nor justified by him.

Obedience is a further character trait needed for appropriate conduct. Proper human relationships rest not only on respect for persons but also on respect for the orders of authority which differentiated social existence requires. In a democracy these structures are quite different from those in nondemocratic societies, but they are nonetheless essential, and willing, intelligent observance of them is requisite to right behavior. Good manners are incompatible with the spirit of autonomy. They grow from due recognition of necessary functional differences in a complex society and from acceptance of the just requirements of membership in it. Manners are the symbols of allegiance to the approved principles of the social establishment.

Obedience is not to be construed as including compliance with unjust social orders. Good manners are usually defined in relation to the existing conventions of society. From the standpoint of a democracy of worth this conception is inadmissible. Signifying loyalty to an unjust system, conventionally regarded as good manners, from a more fundamental view is bad manners. Concern for manners should never undermine necessary social criticism.

Finally, right manners are an expression of sincerity. They reveal the person. Perhaps the most widespread abuse of manners is their use as a shield to hide behind. It is commonly supposed that one of the main functions of social customs is to give people an acceptable appearance, regardless of the real person behind the appearance. Education in manners is then tantamount to teaching techniques of deception. Conduct that is designed merely to put up a good front is ill-mannered, no matter how correct it may be by conventional standards, for it is in effect a lie. Good manners are a true report of intended loyalties. This does not exclude manners that make a person appear better than he is. There is nothing wrong with "putting one’s best foot forward," provided it is really one’s own foot, and provided taking the step is a sign of a genuine commitment to become the person thus represented. Sincerity of manner is honesty in the disclosure of personal aspirations.

The preceding two chapters have been concerned with the value of intelligence -- first, with respect to the general principles of intellectual excellence and, second, with respect to the standards appropriate to mass communication. It has been argued that ideal democracy in the intellectual life rests upon the premise of universal truth to be discovered and shared, and that the proper aim of democratic education is to foster dedication to this truth.

In this and the next three chapters the major emphasis will be on the value of creativity. Intelligence is at issue in this aspect of life, too, but in a somewhat different fashion than in the aspects previously discussed. Now the center shifts from man the knower to man the maker, from the abstractions of rational discourse to the concrete products of his handiwork. But the thesis is still the same -- namely, that there are standards of worth by which these products can be evaluated and that a proper goal of human life is to engage in creative activity in loyalty to these standards. The criteria of excellence in this domain are not the same as those in the sphere of ordinary discursive knowledge -- though careful examination reveals an essential continuity between the processes of evaluation in the sciences and in the arts. Suitable criteria of worth in a work of art, for example, can be developed, but they are not the same as those that apply to mathematical propositions or to the generalizations of the natural sciences.

The discussion of standards for the mass media has already to some extent foreshadowed the forthcoming analysis, since the channels of mass communication are not restricted merely to the transmission of literal information. Their function is not only to convey knowledge but also to influence feelings and actions. They are, therefore, to be judged not simply by standards of truth in the usual sense, but by much broader criteria of qualitative worth. The public atmosphere -- the cultural tone -- created by books, magazines, television, and the other media, is generally even more important than the factual exactness of the information communicated.

How can goals for democracy and for democratic education in the domain of human creativity be formulated? Let us begin to answer this question by considering the difference between aristocratic and democratic views of esthetic experience. The aristocratic position is that refinement of taste is for an elite class of "gentlefolk"; in fact, it is regarded as a mark of status and belongs only to a select few. The great mass of "common" people are expected to be crude and simple, neither understanding nor caring for the "higher things." Furthermore, the select few are regarded by themselves and usually by others as the authorities in questions of taste and style.

Two assumptions are implicit in this aristocratic view. The first is that esthetic experience is a special, separable kind of human activity, and that esthetic judgments are relevant only to certain kinds of activity. For instance, making or listening to music, executing or viewing a landscape painting, or preparing or eating exotic foods would be considered appropriate occasions for esthetic evaluation, while ordinary pursuits like operating a lathe, feeding a baby, or painting a house would not. These special esthetic pursuits are customarily reserved for the aristocrats, and ordinary people are not expected to have the ability, the resources, or the presumption to engage in them. The second assumption is that esthetic experience belongs to man not as a human being but only as a member of a special social group. It is not integral to being a person, nor a part of everyone’s birthright, but simply an aspect of special privilege.

A democratic position rejects both of these aristocratic assumptions. First, from the democratic standpoint there is no experience that does not have its esthetic aspects or dimensions. Human activities may not be classified exclusively into esthetic and nonesthetic categories. Judgments of qualitative significance apply to the commonplace as well as to the unusual and to utilitarian as well as to leisure-time pursuits. In fact, in a democracy the ordinary events of existence are matters of particular esthetic interest and concern, simply because their quality has such widespread and continuous influence on the general level of individual and collective life. Second, from a democratic viewpoint the esthetic life belongs to every person as an essential part of his being. It is not an optional mode of existence but is integral to the human status.

These differences between aristocratic and democratic esthetic ideals have clear consequences for education. In an aristocracy, special disciplines are developed for the cultivation of taste. The "liberal arts" are regarded as studies for gentlemen, who have the freedom to enjoy things for their intrinsic perfection and without regard to practical utility. Aristocratic gentlemen and gentlewomen are also trained in arts of speech and behavior that serve to mark them as superior to ordinary people. They are taught high discrimination in food, clothing, and architecture, so that their style of life may comport with their status. The common people are educated to know their place and to perform the duties laid upon them by those who rule, without concern for elegance or distinction.

In democratic education, on the other hand, there is a pervasive concern for the quality of experience. All studies, whether "general" or "special," "liberal" or "vocational," "theoretical" or "practical," are subjects of esthetic concern. A major goal of teaching is theca elevation of life through the improvement of taste and the sharpening of discrimination in whatever one does. Furthermore, the opportunities to grow in this grace of life are a part of everyone’s education, and each person is held responsible for the quality of his thoughts and acts.

Esthetic experience in a democracy is not only a matter of universal concern; it is also a sustainer of the twin democratic ideals of individuality and freedom. Individuality in the full sense pertains to persons. It is more than particularity, which grains of sand and blades of grass also have. It is a depth of meaning, a qualitative richness, which marks the highest levels in the order of creation. Since esthetic experience is concerned with individuation, which is consummated in personality, it follows that esthetic excellence is an important goal for democracy. In an age of machine mass production of identical items, individuality is in danger. In pre-industrial society everything that was made bore the mark of the person who fashioned it and who thus confirmed and communicated himself in the thing. Today persons tend to be obscured and submerged by the impersonality of the identical things their machines have made. While there is no need to forgo the advantages of mass production, it is important that in other ways the realization of individuality through esthetic activity be fostered. In aristocratic societies it is only the elite who are allowed to be true individuals, and this privilege they make good by their esthetic pursuits, while the common people remain in collective anonymity. In a democracy it is the right and the privilege of every person to realize his full individuality, through the development of qualitative discrimination and construction.

Esthetic experience further reinforces democratic ideals in its emphasis on creative freedom. Art is making, producing, fashioning. When esthetic concern is felt, life as a whole is a work of art. Conduct is directed by considered design. Experience is fashioned in accord with standards of excellence of form or pattern. To live in this way is to live as a free man, for freedom is simply the exercise of deliberate choice. There is no "art of living" without freedom, and freedom is fulfilled through significant creative activity. In esthetic experience a person is liberated from the bondage of mere organic existence and becomes aware of himself as a spiritual being who is heir to and trustee for a whole world of meanings.

We come now to the question of esthetic standards. According to one view, characteristic of the democracy of desire, esthetic evaluations are nothing but indications of subjective feeling-states. There are no objective or universal criteria for esthetic excellence, and there is no way (or need) to resolve differences in opinion about esthetic values. The creative nature of esthetic activity, it is held, itself indicates that these values are made rather than discovered, and the fact that the creation is individual and free means that everyone in such matters is wholly autonomous.

Such a view destroys any basis for effective esthetic judgment. It amounts to an abandonment of the concept of qualitative excellence. Theca result is a thoroughgoing relativism which makes value judgments dependent on the accidents of circumstance and temperament. Evaluations can, of course, be made by statistical enumeration of preferences. It is characteristic of democracies of desire to make popularity the criterion of worth. Modern advertising depends heavily upon this fact.

In the mass society, where value is determined by popular appeal, the situation is in sharp contrast to the aristocratic societies, in which standards were set by a few connoisseurs, and in which the larger the number who approved of something, the lower was the value likely to be accorded it. The notion of determining values by popularity is unsatisfactory. At this point the aristocratic society was right. Judgments of excellence cannot be made by statistics, because quality is not a function of quantity.

In a democracy of worth, standards of esthetic excellence are presupposed. These standards are not regarded as fully known, nor must they be explicitly stated, but they are assumed to exist. All striving toward qualitative worth is founded on this assumption. All people and all forms of activity are regarded as subject to judgment by the standards of worth. The people are not the source and measure of values, as they are when popularity rules, but the people are themselves measured by these values.

The principle of worth further presupposes that esthetic experience is an act of discovery. From this standpoint, esthetic "creation" is seen as discovery through experimentation and through insight into hitherto unrealized possibilities. Creativity is not claimed in the radical sense of complete origination. New things are made and new things are done, but values are not arbitrarily given to them; rather, formerly unseen excellences are manifest in and through them. Thus, creativity does not necessarily imply autonomy. It does require active personal engagement in the exploration of possibilities for concrete embodiment of meanings. Human creation is not the invention of values, but the revelation of values by means of imaginatively constructed objects.

Serious esthetic education makes sense only when dedication to qualitative worth is acknowledged. If esthetic judgments are simply expressions of subjective feeling, there is no point in trying to change or develop tastes. Then the notion of improvement in taste has no meaning, for a liking simply is. It can be criticized only by a standard that transcends subjective preferences. Under the subjective view, esthetic education can, of course, serve two purposes. First, it can show ways of increasing the intensity and widening the range of personal enjoyments; and, second, it can assist in the socialization of tastes -- that is, in developing shared preferences and in helping individuals to adjust to prevailing social expectations.

In contrast, under a philosophy of worth the major purposes of esthetic education are: first, to enable individuals to respond to higher orders of qualitative significance and insight; and, second, to stimulate criticism of popular mediocrity and to discourage uncritical conformity to mass convention.

Up to now no indication has been given of precisely what constitutes esthetic excellence. In the nature of the case no general rule can be given, because each thing is judged in its concrete individuality. Nevertheless, some suggestions can be offered concerning the criteria that are appropriate for the evaluation of esthetic worth. Such criteria are the object of esthetic education, and they are guides for the discipline of individual creativity.

One standard is unity. A good book has some central theme which relates the various parts to one another. It is not simply a collection of unconnected episodes or isolated arguments. An excellent musical composition is more than an aggregate of separate sounds; there is a musical argument, so to speak, which runs as a thread upon which the individual notes are arranged. The rooms of a lovely building are organized according to some idea of the whole. Its architect had a single concept of the structure, which he then analyzed into component parts each of which would contribute to that concept. If he was a true artist, he did not merely adjoin space to space in a heterogeneous assemblage. Unity is an essential esthetic feature of any well-fashioned thing, whether it be a painting, a poem, a tree, a conversation, a meal, or a machine.

Affirming the ideal of unity is another way of asserting the concreteness of the esthetic mode of experience. Esthetic understanding is synoptic. It is synthetic, rather than analytic. Clearly, no synopsis or synthesis can be attained without an idea of the whole. There must be coherence among the parts, which is to say that the parts must be seen as differentiations from the whole and as contributory to the unified entity. In fact, the notion of a "thing" presupposes unity. A recognizable object has a definite form, or character. A formless mass, a heap of odds and ends, is literally nothing -- that is, no thing. So to be really something, to be worthy of notice and admiration, an entity must have unity of form, some organizing idea, plan, or purpose. This is the most fundamental measure of esthetic worth.

Significant esthetic unity is of a special kind. It is not the unity of sameness, but the unity of variety. There is obvious unity in the repetition of a single note, but that does not make it a beautiful musical composition. A canvas covered with one shade of paint has unity of a kind, but it could never be called a significant work of art. Esthetic unity is the organization of different parts into a single whole. It is the weaving together of a variety of contrasting strands into a consistent pattern. Mere sameness or repetitiveness lacks interest. A true esthetic object represents an imaginative achievement, resulting from the ability of the perceiving mind to discern relationships between separate and distinct things, so that together these many things constitute some greater single thing.

An esthetic object is a complex, a unity of contrasting elements. The whole is thus qualitatively different from the parts. It is the parts compounded into a new totality to which both the likenesses and the unlikenesses of the parts are essential. Without the likenesses there could be no ground of relatedness; without the unlikenesses there could be no new and higher levels of complexity, which are the source of esthetic interest and creative progress.

The need for both unity and variety could be illustrated by any number of examples from contemporary culture. Much modern painting fails to present any clear unity of idea; it appears to be an arbitrary, and sometimes even accidental, medley of colors and shapes. In contrast, popular music is often esthetically deficient in variety; a single simple theme or rhythmic pattern is repeated many times over with none of the elaboration and variation which lend interest to good music. On the other hand, modern "serious" music, like painting, frequently seems to have no thematic structure to give coherence to the whole. The main esthetic threat of machine civilization is the suppression of variety through the multiplication of identical mass-produced items. However, this tendency is counteracted by the virtually endless outpouring of new products by an inventive and affluent society.

The proper coordination of unity and variety constitutes harmony; that is, unity and variety are not separate qualities of an esthetic object, though each may separately be made the focus of analysis. Harmonization is the blending of different but mutually compatible elements into a whole. In a harmonious object the parts enhance rather than negate one another. Harmony must not, however, be interpreted as simple concordance. In music, dissonance is often a useful effect, which can be appreciated by those who have become accustomed to it, just as seasoning adds zest to food for those who have acquired the taste for it. Similarly, drama would lose its reason for being if conflict were eliminated. In fact, the main function of tragedy is to exhibit the inescapable and usually unresolvable conflicts which are the substance of the human predicament. So if harmony is a desirable esthetic quality, it cannot mean a serene, untroubled unity of the parts. It does mean that the elements are so organized that each contributes to, and does not detract from, the effect of the others.

Closely related to harmony is the ideal of balance, or proportion. Each component should be given its appropriate weight or importance in the whole. This is admittedly a vague conception, yet it is not without meaning. For example, a vase is commonly given symmetrical proportions around the central axis, while another kind of balance prevails vertically, such as an alternation of wide and narrow segments. Balance always presupposes some recognizable formal measure. In the case of symmetry, the measure is simple equality, but balance is obviously not necessarily symmetrical. It is determined by the character of the whole to which the constituent elements contribute. A building has balance in its design when the number and sizes of the rooms are in accordance with the purposes for which the structure is intended. A novel is well proportioned when the various episodes are related in such a way that the author’s story is told with greatest clarity and economy. Imbalance in anything is due to an excess or a deficiency of parts in relation to the plan of the whole.

Functionality is the next criterion to be considered. Judgment about balance or proportion rests upon the relation of design to objective. A well-designed object is one that functions effectively as it was intended to do. An excellent chair is one that is good for sitting in. A fine musical composition effectively conveys the intended musical idea. Functionality refers here not to practical utility -- though a functional object may well be useful -- but to the achievement in concrete reality of the purposed form. A properly functioning thing is one that carries out the idea implicit in making it. The form or idea may be "practical" or "impractical" from the standpoint of personal or social needs; this distinction is not relevant esthetically. What matters is how effectively the ideal is achieved by the artifact -- not in the sense of good craftsmanship, but in that of good design. Designing involves the imaginative exploration of possible ways of approaching a given objective; it is a task of experimentation and discovery.

While functionality refers to the performance of a design, another standard, finesse, refers to the execution of a design. Both of these aspects of esthetic excellence are closely akin in that in the absence of finesse even a well-designed thing cannot function in the manner appropriate to it. Finesse is refinement, finished-ness. It is produced by skilled craftsmanship, by the ability to control materials expertly. It depends upon long and intimate familiarity with the materials to be used and upon sustained practice in working with them. Finesse declines in a society where the demand for ease, pleasure, and quick results predominates. Skill in craftsmanship is attained only by arduous and protracted effort sustained by a concern for ideal values and dedication to the task of realizing them in material things -- that is, by a zeal for incarnating excellence.

Esthetic effect is a matter of perception of meaning. Quality is not mere surge of feeling. It is feeling united with form. A quality is a significant form -- that is, a form that signifies something. Esthetic meanings are not necessarily expressible in ordinary factual propositions. An object is esthetically meaningful when it has some deliberate plan or structure. It is meaningless when it has no discernible intelligible order. In a sense, of course, everything has some kind of order; even the most chaotic hodgepodge has a structure, albeit a very complicated and unusual one. Hence, meaningfulness must refer to the presence of certain reasonably simple patterns of organization. This consideration carries us back to the fundamental criteria of unity and diversity. The meaning of an object is the unity that relates the diverse parts within a complete whole. A meaningless array of things is a collection that has no perceptible system of coordination into one concrete entity.

Esthetic quality is said to have depth when the meaning of the perceived object is not immediately apparent to the unpracticed observer, and when the object is capable of yielding a succession of mutually enriching meanings. A painting has depth when it commands prolonged attention and rewards sustained, reflective scrutiny. A novel or a poem is deep when it bears frequent rereading, each time yielding insights not previously evident. The enduring treasures of civilization have this quality of depth. They remain from one generation to the next because they contain an abundance of meanings which give them freshness and vitality. By contrast, superficial objects are ones whose meaning is obvious and trivial, so that continued observation of them causes boredom. They demand no effort and evoke scant admiration or affection.

Though esthetic experience is not simply inchoate feeling, but structured perception, it still is founded in emotional response. Intensity is an essential quality of such a response. Clearly, esthetic worth is not simply proportionate to the degree of intensity; loud sounds are not necessarily better than soft ones, nor are bright colors preferable to pastels. Qualitative worth requires measured intensity -- that is, feeling appropriate to the occasion. Sometimes the indicated effect is a breathless calm -- a virtual suspension of animation; at other times a violent excitement is called for. The measure to be applied is the meaning of the perceived object. The observer’s feeling-state should accord with the meaning of the thing. Esthetic discipline is required to insure such accord. Seasoned qualitative perception comes from long practice in channeling emotions to correspond to the significance of the occasion.

The realization of measured intensity of feeling depends not only upon the sensitivity and emotional discipline of the percipient, but also upon the expressiveness of the esthetic object. Expressiveness is the power of conveying meaning. A poorly constructed object interposes barriers or distractions in the way of the intended and implied significance; the words and images employed, the details of design, are not all marshaled to produce a clear and unequivocal impression. Expressiveness is actually implicit in the ideas of balance and finesse. The separate term is used here because of its connection with feeling tone. An object that has been well designed and expertly constructed will express its meanings unambiguously and will evoke the appropriate feeling-response in the disciplined perceiver.

Art effects a transformation of nature. It has an ideal quality. The creative, constructive energies of the human spirit are employed in discovering and incarnating ideas not ordinarily found in things that have resulted from the nonhuman processes of nature. Even when natural things are observed, human imagination transforms them so as to emphasize certain ideal aspects. For esthetic imagination, the starry night sky is not simply a pattern of light spots on a dark background. It is a tapestry whose infinite varieties of meaning have been recited by poets, lovers, and scientists as long as men have turned their eyes upward and wondered. Thus, ideality appears in the esthetic interpretation of natural forms. But it is even more apparent in the humanly created forms -- in the artifacts of culture. Here qualitative worth is measured not by precision in imitating nature, but in the construction of things that will express the ideal more effectively than natural objects can.

It is this property of ideality that justifies the nonutilitarian view of esthetic worth. Esthetically valuable things may be practically useful, but they need not be. In fact, esthetic worth tends to have an inverse relation to practicality, since forms are ideal in the degree to which they transcend the necessary limitations, confusions, and compromises of ordinary life. The greatness of a work of art consists to a large extent in its power of revealing possibilities that could scarcely be fully realized in actuality. This is not primarily a question of the ideal in the sense of nobility or beauty -- though these are measures of worth, too. Ideally here refers to selection and simplification for expressive effect. Actual affairs are always muddied with irrelevancies and frustrating complications. A work of art aims at removing all of these, so that a clear, strong, consistent -- in this sense, ideal -- message is conveyed.

Another measure of esthetic value is honesty, integrity, or sincerity. A piece of work is sincere when there is agreement between what it appears to be and what it actually is; that is, when the meanings revealed through continued acquaintance with it are consistent with one another. A dishonest work is one that has a deceptive appearance, that leads one to a certain expectation and then yields something different. A building with a "false front" is insincere, because the appearance does not jibe with the inner form. A musical composition is dishonest when its meaning as a whole is incompatible with the meaning of certain parts. Honesty is integrity, or wholeness. Each, part must contribute to the purpose of the whole. It will not do to say that a work of art may be intended to represent chaos and disorder. That would be similar to saying that a sentence may represent nonsense: it may do so, but it is of no worth in discourse. So, any artifact has worth only as it embodies a unified idea -- as was pointed out in connection with the criteria of unity, variety, harmony, and balance. Sincerity is singleness of purpose, particularly as regards the concordance of external form with inner substance.

By the purity of an esthetic object one could mean its ideality, in the sense that no alien elements intrude into it, or one could mean its sincerity, in the sense that it reveals but one purpose. Neither of these entirely legitimate meanings is intended here. Purity is here synonymous with nobility or spiritual elevation. A pure or noble work evokes love and devotion in the beholder. An impure or ignoble thing stimulates greed and lust. There is doubtless some truth in the saying that to the pure all things are pure. Expectations do to some extent influence perceptions. Nevertheless, purity is not simply a subjective factor. There are things that feed the appetites and stimulate acquisitive activity, and these differ profoundly in kind from the things that evoke a self-giving response.

From the point of view here set forth, purity is the most important of all esthetic qualities, for it is the foundation of all value, including esthetic value. A drama or a painting that fosters unworthy desire undermines the very basis of whatever worth may be ascribed to it on other grounds (for example, unity, depth, or measured intensity), while a work of art that helps to release men from the bondage of self-interest serves to establish and confirm its value foundation. The most serious error in modern esthetics has been the general rejection of the ideal of purity or nobility on the ground of esthetic irrelevance. It has been held that the only esthetically relevant criteria are those of formal excellence, and not of spiritual quality. This position results from the failure to recognize the foundation of all value in the distinctive spiritual decision in favor of worth-serving instead of self-serving.

Sincerity is one kind of truthfulness -- namely, that in which the object is true to itself, or in which its full actuality is consistent with its initial and external appearance. Another kind of truthfulness refers not to the internal consistency of the object, but to its external relationships. A true work of art is coherent with other instances and modes of apprehending what is and what ought to be; that is to say, it illuminates the meaning of life. A false work is contrary to other evidences of fact and worth, and therefore it causes doubt and confusion in the beholder. A tragic drama is true insofar as it throws light on man’s basic predicament which springs from his freedom of choice. The more impressive and insightful the portrayal, the truer is the drama. It is more difficult to say what truthfulness in music means. Yet in this case, too, there may be an illumination of life. Music also has a message -- carries a meaning -- and this meaning either does or does not agree with corresponding meanings derived from other experiences.

The criterion of truthfulness may appear to deny the worth of fiction. It may also seem to contradict the notion of ideality, which makes a virtue out of departure from actuality. These negations would hold only if esthetic truth were limited to literal fact -- as it is not. Factual propositions are themselves only partial abstractions from the whole truth; they never tell the whole story about the things to which they refer. Esthetic truth is another kind of revelation of what is so, through symbolic forms other than those of literal fact. Fictional works may be profoundly true, provided their literal untruths are employed as vehicles for a symbolic revelation of truth. Similarly, though the idealizations of art do not represent things as they actually and naturally are, they vividly portray the true forms of actual things, by the use of emphasis and simplification, or they may afford a true vision of excellence such as actual things do not exhibit. Thus, fiction and idealization in excellent art are means for achieving greater truthfulness than would be possible through fidelity to literal fact.

The final standard is righteousness. Since values are interdependent, esthetic worth is connected with ethical rightness. Esthetic value is not in an independent realm, where its own criteria bear no relation to other measures of worth. Art is not for art’s sake, but for goodness’ sake. Hence, when loyalty to values is affirmed, the stereotypes of the artist as free of moral restraints (and as a better artist because of the absence of such inhibitions) and of morality as contrary to esthetic enjoyment are repudiated, and the congruence of esthetic excellence with moral goodness is asserted. A morality that restricts or cripples creativity is in that respect defective, and an esthetic that denies or subverts ethical standards is therein faulty.

The foregoing criteria suggest some of the general standards defining esthetic excellence. They do not exhaust the possibilities of qualitative measures. To a certain extent these criteria overlap, and there are others that could be substituted for some of them. These may nonetheless serve to define the nature of qualitative worth.

Qualities such as these are universal in the sense that anyone may apprehend them, given the requisite personal discipline and conditions of observation. In this respect esthetic excellence, like truth, is public. The sense of beauty and depth of perceptual meaning are not private, untestable, and unsharable emotions. They are qualities of experience which result from the given forms of things in relation to the structures of properly habituated personality.

Not only are these qualities potentially universal in being thus public and sharable. They are also universal in their spheres of application, as was pointed out earlier in showing the meaning of esthetic democracy. The products of the so-called "fine arts" are exclusively devoted to esthetic purposes, but they are not the sole objects of esthetic concern. Still, they do have a special and distinctive importance, which to some extent justifies the custom of setting them apart as esthetic objects par excellence. Music, drama, painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture, and the dance fulfill a representative function in culture. They serve as standard-bearers for esthetic values, with a minimum of complication by concern for nonesthetic purposes. Creations in the fine arts especially excel in the quality of ideality, which must often be subordinated in ordinary affairs. The ideal character of the fine arts should not result in isolation from other spheres of life, but should enable them to be of greater service in lifting the esthetic level of all experience. Thus, their unique qualities may sustain, rather than negate, the pervasiveness of democratic concern for quality.

The many so-called "useful arts," such as carpentry, machining, and cooking, differ from the fine arts only in the predominance of the practical purposes for which the products are designed. These purposes define the idea or form of the esthetic object or act in a somewhat more restricted fashion than is the case where the artist is free to follow his own imagination without limit. The line between the fine arts and the useful arts is actually not clear; and there is good reason for it not to be drawn sharply, given the democratic principle of comprehensive esthetic relevance. Some fields, such as landscape gardening, interior decorating, and fashion designing, could quite appropriately be classed as either "fine" or "useful" arts. The artist, the artisan, the craftsman -- all are concerned with embodying meanings in objects of sense.

Esthetic qualities are important even in scientific and technical fields, which are commonly regarded as the farthest removed from the arts. Good scientific theories are works of art. They harmonize a variety of facts within the compass of a unified conceptual structure. They, too, have meaning, depth, ideality, purity, and other attributes of qualitative worth. The common term "a beautiful theory" is thus quite apt. Applied science is an art, as the etymology of the word "technical" (from the Greek, techne, "an art") attests. The task of the engineer, for example, is to apply scientific knowledge to the creation of objects of use. In designing a material structure to perform most efficiently, the quality of functionality is especially important. In modern machine design, finesse -- which in this field would more suitably be called precision -- is also of crucial significance.

Among the scientific fields, mathematics has a particularly intimate connection with esthetic excellence. Mathematics is the science of form. It provides an exact and comprehensive treatment of such ideas as symmetry, rhythm, and function, which enter so largely into esthetic judgments. Moreover, mathematical systems, like scientific theories, are themselves esthetic creations of a high order.

Judgments of quality are pertinent also in the management of personal and corporate life. To be a civilized person is to conduct one’s life in accord with such principles of excellence as consistency, balance, variety, and functional efficacy. A "wise" person is one whose deeds measure up to these and other esthetic standards. Emotional maturity is judged by such criteria as sense of proportion, correspondence of feelings with reality, unity of purpose, and flexibility -- all of which are of an esthetic nature.

This range of esthetic concerns is emphasized because of what it means for education. Esthetic learning does not occur merely in the study of "art." It belongs prominently also in all of the so-called "academic" subjects, including science and mathematics, and in everything that is done in schools and homes for the development of manual, emotional, social, and civic grace, wisdom, and competence. The study of the traditional arts ought to epitomize and vivify the general esthetic goals that apply to all the affairs of life. These specifically esthetic disciplines may thus be saved from the exclusiveness and fastidiousness that have so commonly reduced their power of elevating the whole level of culture.

Of particular significance for education is the application of esthetic criteria to human personality itself. Teachers and parents are to some extent fashioners of children’s lives. Everything depends upon the models of worth that are used in the conduct of this work. The standards appropriate for education are precisely (though not exclusively) those that define esthetic excellence. Thus, the principles of esthetic value here discussed may serve not only as guides in creating and appreciating what are called "art objects" and as criteria of qualitative excellence in curricular matters outside of the arts, but as attributes of the good life and as a source of general educational aims.

The importance of the mass media lies in the fact that for the first time in human history the means exist for speedy total communication. The mass media provide the channels for full publicity. They constitute the basis for the rapid creation of a public, or of publics. This is the literal meaning of "publication." The mass media of communication must be of crucial significance for democracy. These techniques make it possible to define "the people" with new clarity, for they constitute an effective source of common experience. They greatly multiply the interconnections between individuals and among groups and correspondingly increase the need for conduct that takes account of other people. In nondemocratic forms of social organization the privileged ruling classes are protected by a curtain of privacy which shields their actions from general view. To be sure, mass communications may be used by tyrannical individuals or groups to increase deceptions and to compound injustices. But in the long run it would appear that these new media work in the direction of some sort of democracy, by making information available to everyone. This may not be ideal democracy, but it will be a form of social organization in which all the people must be reckoned with. Since under modern conditions the actions of all people in key positions of power and influence are thus likely to be known almost immediately by nearly everyone, these people cannot make decisions without reference to the reaction of the public. Hence the mass media produce a society in which all the people are at least tacitly consulted in the making of decisions of public consequence. In this sense they constitute an important democratizing force in the modern world.

It is not enough, however, that the mass media contribute to democracy. The crucial question is, what kind of democracy do they serve and promote? There is no doubt but that radio, television, newspapers, and all the other potent modern means of public-making create forms of association in which each person counts, in a way hitherto unknown. But to what end does he count? What is the animating spirit of those great new publics generated by the magic of the mechanical and electronic arts?

Three answers may be given to these questions. The first answer is that the mass media are tools for advancing the interests of those who control them. This concept of the purpose of mass communication is probably the one most widely held today -- though usually tacitly rather than explicitly. The channels of publicity, according to this view, are means of exerting influence, of getting people to believe and to act in ways the publicist desires. They are techniques for amplifying the power and range of the user’s words, so that he may (quite literally) have a greater voice in the conduct of human affairs. They are impersonal agencies for manipulating other people.

This first conception of the function of publicity is democratic only in the limited and perverse sense that the mass media create and influence whole publics, and that presumably every person is entitled to advance his interests in this way. But the publics thus created are not communities of free persons; they are masses of more or less identical psycho-physical objects pushed this way and that by the powerful purveyors of propaganda.

A second conception of the purpose of the mass media is, apparently at least, more benignly democratic than the first. This is the view that the function of the agencies of mass communication is to create and sustain a "popular culture." Now the goal is to serve the public’s interests, by supplying the people with what they want; it is not manipulation and control of the public by special interests. From this standpoint the people are consumers to be satisfied, rather than objects to be managed. There is always an author, an editor, or a performer who can represent every person and every kind of life, thus creating a great company of others who remind one that he is not alone and who give him assurance that what he does and approves is right. In this manner the powerful techniques of public-making have provided a major answer to the democratic demand for self-determination. While it is still not practicable for each person to do exactly what he wants, the mass media do contribute immeasurably to that self-justification which is the mainspring of the autonomous spirit. In this mass society every person -- a few misfits excepted -- can at last find public warrant for being or becoming whatever his heart desires.

Actually the craving for collective support for oneself is a sign of misgivings about one’s worth. Multiplication of this same self through mass identification does not produce personal strength, but only magnifies weakness. The pandering function of the mass media merely weakens human personality by fostering self-deception. The truth is that man is not and never can be really autonomous. He is not and never can be free to order existence to his heart’s desire. When he tries to do so, he is both resisted by the outward barriers to his asserted sovereignty and beset within by the sense of meaninglessness which comes from having no correspondence with the health-giving laws of life.

There is a close connection between the use of the mass media to advance special interests and their use to give the people what they want. When people live by the principle of want-satisfaction, they will employ any available means for acquiring the wanted objects. They will give honor, prestige, and power and will gladly subject themselves to those who will supply their cravings. In a society pervaded by the goals of consumption, those who seek power for themselves can also, by skillful psychological manipulation, create new wants, which they then proceed to satisfy, at a profit to themselves. A people whose highest goal is the freedom of personal gratification is thus most likely to be enslaved to those who produce and distribute the so-called "good things of life."

The third answer to the question about the purpose of the mass media and the nature of the publics created by them comes from affirming the democracy of worth instead of the democracy of desire. In this case the basic premise is that the organs of publicity exist to advance neither special interests nor public satisfaction, but solely the cause of excellence. Both those who publish and those who see or hear are committed to act and to judge in devotion to what is right and true. The process of communication is not simply a bipolar one between the publisher and his public, but is a triadic one involving also the controlling reality of truth, which transcends the participants and transforms the relationship between them.

The character of the mass media of communication and the purposes by which they are directed are, of course, of profound educational significance, chiefly because today they are among the most, if not the most, powerful and pervasive of all educational influences. Young people -- and older people, too -- are caught in an almost continual and inescapable barrage of sights and sounds from the various organs of publicity. Until recent years the average person had to seek out sources of information and entertainment. Now he has to seek refuge from their omnipresent importunity. Whether he wills it or not, every person is, as it were, bathed in a flood of symbols pouring in from the mass media -- music, news, sports, weather and market information. Onto the time-honored stimuli of the natural and social environments have been superimposed the more insistent stimuli of this new symbolic environment.

To a considerable extent the broadcasters and publishers are the leading educators of our day. It is they, perhaps more than schoolteachers and parents, who set the intellectual and moral tone of the society and suggest the values that shall govern the conduct of life. Perhaps the mass media are the real public schools -- the institutions in which the public is not only taught but brought into being as a public.

The public channels of communication are educationally important also because they provide a wealth of teaching materials and models for parents and teachers. The teacher is no longer one whose main function is to impart information, which is so abundantly available and attractively arranged in a variety of published forms. The function of teaching has become one of selection, evaluation, interpretation, application, and individual guidance. To put it another way, the mass media have shifted the emphasis in education from teaching to learning, because they offer at least the possibility of such rich resources of well-organized, authoritative, and cogent materials for learning that students need only the time and the incentive to learn. Again, this is to say that the most influential and important teachers, to some extent today and even more so tomorrow, are those who, speak and write for the mass media. Nonetheless a continuing and increasingly important task of ordinary teachers and parents will be to develop in young people the trained perception and critical judgment that will enable them to use published materials profitably and responsibly.

One further important link between education and the mass media is the fact that authors, broadcasters, advertisers, and others who speak through the public channels are nurtured in homes and schools. Thus, the traditional institutions of education may help to determine the character and the purposes of what is done via the newer agencies. In a healthy society the influences of homes and schools should complement and sustain those of the mass media, and vice versa, replacing the chaotic and frequently antagonistic relationships that now so largely prevail.

We turn now to a consideration of some of the principles that need to be observed if the mass media of communication are to contribute to a democracy of worth. As a preliminary to this analysis, however, it will be necessary to discuss the major antidemocratic consequences resulting from the use of these techniques. Along with the democratization of sorts inherent in the creation of comprehensive publics, there are also contrary, potentially undemocratic tendencies. These follow from the high cost of production in the mass media. Considerable equipment is required to print and market newspapers, books, and magazines, to make radio or television broadcasts, and to produce motion pictures. While per capita costs of mass-produced items are low, because of the large numbers of people involved, the cost per issue or per program is normally high. As a result, considerable concentrations of wealth and power are required by the mass media of communication. It is not possible for anyone who wishes to do so to create a public. The privilege of publication is limited to those who command the requisite resources of money and position.

These simple economic and political facts underlie the antidemocratic potentiality of the mass media. The ability of a relatively few already powerful people or organizations to exert still further pervasive influence introduces the possibility of tyranny and misuse of power in some respects even more devastating than that accomplished by physical compulsion. To hold the mind and imagination of a public in subjection is more injurious to their dignity as free persons than bodily restrictions would be.

These undemocratic tendencies and dangers can be counteracted. The mass media are not necessarily contrary to democracy. They can and should contribute to human freedom and justice in a democracy of worth. What is required is the public regulation of the mass media, by reference to standards of worth, in such a manner as to prevent their arbitrary employment for the advantage of private interests, either through deliberate manipulation or through giving the public what it thinks it wants.

The use of the mass media in a democracy of worth is based on four principles. The first principle is freedom of speech. If truth is to be known and right is to be done, there must be opportunity for exploration and for search, hence for diversity of beliefs and for the public expression of this diversity. The basic assumption of the free and open society is that no one can speak about the true and the right with final and full authority. There must be no official public view to which all are obliged to hold and from which no variance is to be permitted. It follows that the mass media should be organized so as to permit and encourage the creation of many publics. A single system of production and distribution, resulting in the making of a single public, would destroy the contrast and the variation that are the source of cultural enrichment and social progress. In other words, democracy should be pluralistic. A monolithic society, consisting of only one public, is a threat to truth and justice. Freedom of publication is a prerequisite for this necessary pluralism.

Freedom of speech is not, however, without its conditions and limitations; it is not absolute and unconditional. It is founded on the presumption of good faith in those who publish. It is one thing to defend plurality on the ground that no one can claim complete knowledge of the good and the true. It is something else to uphold it from the point of view of the demand for individual autonomy. To stand for freedom in the name of a truth that is beyond mortal reach is different from defending it for the sake of personal license. In this contrast lies the clue to what is meant by "good faith." Good faith is faith in the good. It is action predicated on loyalty to the good.

Thus, to the first principle must be added a second -- namely, the principle of regulation. It is in tension with the principle of freedom, of speech, not as total contradiction, but as partial limitation. It sets bounds to freedom. While plurality of published influences is desirable in order to allow for criticism and improvement, not any and every influence may be permitted. Any society needs some minimal standards which prescribe in broad terms the range of permissible public communications. Such definite judgments are necessary because even people who are committed to the good are never completely devoted to it. A society organized on the basis of dedication to excellence as an unargued presupposition is made up of people none of whom actually fulfills that ideal. There are also people in such societies who do not even nominally profess or assume any such allegiance to values and who pursue their autonomy, relying on the good faith of those who are dedicated to the right.

Whether the regulation shall be narrow or broad depends chiefly upon the degree to which the members of the society are actively and consciously devoted to the good. When such devotion is nominally assumed but is actually weak, it is necessary to set up stringent legalistic regulations which define within a narrow range the allowable forms of published and broadcast materials. When loyalty to the good is actually widespread and strong, social controls on what is communicated may be correspondingly relaxed.

Regulation of the mass media is not practiced solely in a democracy of worth. Such controls are also the main reliance of non-democratic social orders -- the means by which the techniques of public-making are reserved for the special purposes of those who hold the reins of power. Regulation is likewise essential in the democracy of desire, as the basis for insuring the social peace and cooperation necessary to satisfy the maximum number of interests. Though undemocratic societies, democracies of desire, and democracies of worth all must regulate the mass media, the nature and source of the regulations are different. In the first two, the controls are based on considerations of efficiency and expediency: in the one case for maintaining inequality of power; in the other, for distributing and equalizing power. In the third society the controls are based not on preservation or accommodation of interests, but entirely on value considerations -- on right, justice, and qualitative excellence.

Every society censors communications that would immediately en. danger the security and safety of the public. For example, use of the mass media to incite rebellion against the established government or the publication of military or diplomatic secrets are obviously inadmissible in any kind of society, on the grounds of corporate self-preservation. Other matters that would be repugnant to most people, such as gross misrepresentation of facts important to health and safety, or public displays of vicious and immoral conduct, would also normally be prohibited by law.

The question then arises of who should do the regulating. Ultimately the responsibility lies with the agencies of government. The courts may adjudicate complaints brought against publishers or broadcasters, legislatures may prescribe the limits within which freedom of speech is allowed, and other government agencies may exercise regulatory powers through the granting and withholding of licenses.

The extent to which such government control is required depends upon the degree to which regulation is privately and voluntarily effected. In a society where the people are widely committed to the right rather than to the advancement of their own interests and the satisfaction of their own desires, the censoring functions of government can be reserved for the occasional serious offender who escapes other controls. When voluntary private regulation is weak, strong government restrictions are required.

The producers of the mass media may regulate themselves through their own associations, both on an advisory basis and by invoking sanctions on those who stray beyond the bounds agreed upon. Individual producers may also regulate themselves, in the light of standards of excellence to which they have pledged their loyalty. Such self-control does not really belong under the principle of regulation at all, for it is simply the responsible exercise of freedom. This indicates that ideally freedom and regulation are not in any way opposed to each other. In fact, to be truly free is to regulate one’s conduct in accordance with the good. The principle of regulation is contrary to the principle of freedom only when freedom is taken in the sense of autonomy.

The distributors of the materials of mass communication are another important means of control. For example, subscription agents and booksellers can to some extent choose what they will and will not sell and to whom. Motion picture theaters can sometimes determine the films to be shown, and they can in certain cases restrict the viewing of films to appropriate persons (for example, to adults). Since television and radio programs, on the other hand, are open to everyone without limitation, it is necessary to maintain a more broadly applicable standard of public propriety than applies to the other forms of mass communication.

Finally, voluntary regulation of the mass media may be exercised by the receiving public as individuals and as groups. Voluntary associations such as churches and clubs may adopt their own standards of quality and may employ their own corporate disciplines to enforce the observance of these standards. Of special importance in this respect are families, in which books, newspapers, magazines, movies, and broadcasts may be chosen with reference to standards of worth considerably different from and higher than those generally prevailing. Family standards are continually subject to erosion from the inflow of debased materials from the mass media -- as in the brutality and immorality of many of the so-called "comic" books, the triviality, sensationalism, and distortion of most journalism, and the preoccupation with crime and violence in many television programs. It is the obligation of parents to maintain at least minimal standards in the home by appropriate regulation of the reading, listening, and viewing diets of their children.

Similarly, libraries and museums may regulate the quality of the materials acquired and the manner of their use by the public. Schools, too, play an important part in the selection of published materials, both in choosing what is used in regular instruction and in influencing students’ habits of seeing and listening.

The ultimate goal of control of the mass media is to educate the public in self-regulation -- to develop in all the people, whether producers or recipients, a reliable sense of what is worthy and what is not worthy of being made public. In this manner the principle of regulation supports and confirms the principle of freedom.

The third principle for the mass media in a democracy of worth is that of social support for excellence. In a democracy of desire or in an undemocratic system, where mass communications are used to advance the interests of individuals, of groups, or of the people as a whole, excellence is at best a by-product. There is no necessary relation between true worth and the satisfaction of wants. It is not often likely to be to the advantage of a newspaper publisher, for example, to print the whole truth or to present the most searching analyses of the news. Nor, apparently, can movie, radio, and television producers normally afford to offer a steady flow of high-level programs. Under these conditions, while materials of great worth may be produced, their appearance is fortuitous and sporadic and their tenure precarious. Furthermore, the very excellence of the offerings is compromised and tainted by their subordination to the interests they are used to serve.

The predominance of commercial support for the mass media in the United States is evidence that in this field a democracy of desire prevails. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and television are largely supported by the sale of advertising. Hence the nature of what is communicated is mainly determined by what will sell products. Each commercial sponsor tries to present whatever will please the most people among those who are in the market for his product. If he can make use of snob appeal to sell automobiles, washing machines, or beer, he may sponsor a symphony orchestra, but if a sordid murder drama would commend itself to a larger public, he will present that instead. Under this system there is no commitment to excellence as such, but only as it may happen to be a useful tool of product promotion.

By contrast, in a democracy of worth, excellence is the direct and primary aim, to which other considerations are subordinate. In such a society the means of mass communication are given direct social support for the publication and broadcasting of excellent materials. The money and the manpower are provided specifically to accomplish these beneficent purposes, which are of such great importance for public well-being. Thus, dependence upon organizations whose primary purposes are entirely other than public communication is avoided.

The principle of social support for excellence may be carried out by a number of different means. The most obvious way is for the government to operate its own general press, radio, and television services for the public good. This has not been done in the United States by the federal government, presumably because such activities are not included among the powers specifically assigned to it by the Constitution. However, some of the state and municipal governments have entered the broadcasting field in a small way. In many other countries government-controlled mass media are the rule. In some cases -- to public well-being have been made. In other cases the dangers to liberty in government-operated press and radio have become evident. This peril is most ominous when the government has a monopoly of the mass media. As pointed out earlier, democratic freedom depends on a plurality of public-making agencies. Even though the official media of communication may in principle be devoted to the good, those who operate them are never wise enough or good enough to be the exclusive architects of the public mind. Thus, while a case for government-supported mass media may be made, other independent agencies should coexist in the field with them, and safeguards should be provided in the system of government to insure that high professional standards prevail and that the media are used for the general good rather than for partisan advantage.

A second means of providing social support for excellence in the mass media is through private, nonprofit organizations devoted directly and exclusively to the mass production and distribution of high-quality communicated materials. Examples of such agencies are the noncommercial educational radio and television stations and certain nonprofit publishers and film makers.

Third, there are commercial mass media devoted to excellence and supported by direct consumer purchase of the materials produced rather than indirectly by the sale of unrelated advertised products. The highest-grade newspapers, magazines, and books are supported by a reading public dedicated to excellence. The success of such publishing enterprises depends upon a widely diffused will to truth and a widespread interest in significant cultural attainments. The plan of subscription television rests on the application of the same rationale to this newer medium of communication. Whatever its shortcomings in other respects, the idea has the great merit of establishing a direct relation between product and purchaser, thus creating the means of responding to a substantial demand for programs of consistently high quality.

Finally, the social support for excellence can be accomplished through the various institutions of formal education. As pointed out earlier, the mass media are now in fact, if not in name, the most powerful of all the agencies of education. Their function is to disseminate widely the resources of culture by means of words and images. This is also the primary function of schools. By long tradition the schools are deliberately responsive to the claims of truth and of other ideals of excellence. The mass media, as now organized, have no such generally acknowledged objective. This is understandable in a society organized on the basis of expediency, but not in one dedicated to the realization of values. In a democracy of worth mass media ought to be frankly regarded as agencies of education and should be made an integral part of the work of the institutions of education. The making public of information and even of entertainment is a natural and proper extension of the function of regular educational agencies.

A growing recognition of the educative role of the mass media may result in profound changes in both the schools and the agencies of mass communication. There is no reason, for example, why outstanding teachers cannot make valuable materials for learning at every level available by press, radio, and television to the public at large. With such public accessibility of the materials of instruction, the emphasis of teachers in school classrooms may shift considerably. Guidance, testing, and individual application can largely take the place of presentation of learning materials by the teacher. The primary function of most teachers should be to stimulate and channel the students’ dedication to make use of the abundant resources available through modern techniques of symbolic reproduction and distribution.

The great universities should become centers of public education in a new sense. They should not merely cherish their own intellectual life, serving only those who come to them for instruction. They should become major centers of mass communication, carrying on a continuous work of adult education of the public in the letters, sciences, and arts, by printed publications, by motion pictures, and by radio and television broadcasts. For this work they should receive the substantial material support that would be required to do the job at a high level of competence. In this way the institutions of education could admirably exemplify the principle of social support for excellence.

The fourth principle of democracy in mass communication is that of criticism, or of evaluative response by the receiving public. Only by criticism can the one-directional nature of mass communication be overcome.

Criticism may be accomplished in several ways. The first way is direct communication of the individual with the author, publisher, or producer. A relatively small number of thoughtful letters or conversations may have a significant influence on the quality of what is published. A second mode of criticism is the regular publication of reviews by expert critics. Evaluations by such reviewers have considerable effect upon the professional standing of authors and producers and in the formation of public opinion. They are particularly essential in a society devoted to values, to keep before the public a clear vision of ideal ends to be served and to show explicitly in what respects materials offered for public reception do or do not measure up to these standards. Third, criticism can be accomplished implicitly by the publication of material that acts as a countervailing influence. Fourth, indirect and inarticulate, but nevertheless effective, criticism may be effected by giving or withholding support for the agencies of mass communication. With commercial mass media supported by advertising, the individual consumer may respond by purchasing or not purchasing the advertiser’s products. This is obviously a cumbersome and certain mode of expressing evaluations. With government controlled media, criticism must take place through the regular political channels. In the case of mass media supported by private philanthropy or by the sale of materials to the public, criticism is exercised directly and powerfully on an economic basis.

It is with respect to the critical function that the pertinence of the institutions of education to the mass media of communication is perhaps most evident. Criticism is integral to the educative process. It is an essential feature of good practice in schools, colleges, and universities. When mass communication occurs under the auspices of nonschool agencies, criticism is an extrinsic function -- an activity carried on by interested outsiders who wish to have a part in determining the nature of what is made public. When the mass media are an arm of the schools, the critical function is intrinsic, since self-appraising, reflective activity is an essential feature of education. It is this self-evaluative function that makes the institutions of education uniquely appropriate as centers for mass communication in a democracy of worth.

There are at least four reasons why intellectual life supports democratic ideals. First, intellect is a universal human property; all human beings have the power of reason. It is this power that sets mankind off into a separate species, homo sapiens. No individual or class of people can claim a special position by virtue of a rational capacity that others totally lack. No human beings can be excluded from the family of man because they have no intelligence, for rationality is the mark of our common humanity. 

To be sure, intellectual abilities differ greatly from one person to another. The range of capabilities is impressive, reaching from the genius of an Einstein or a Leonardo to the near-vegetative mentality of the feebleminded. Such obvious differences make it evident from the outset that if intelligence is to have any place in democracy, it cannot be on the basis of intellectual equality. Particular powers of mind are not universal. The ability to compose great music or to invent useful new machines is a rare endowment. What is universal in mankind is the potentiality of engaging in the characteristic activities of mind -- such as remembering, imagining, conceptualizing, and purposing -- regardless of the rate or quality of the actual intellectual performance.

Second, intellectual life is crucial to democracy because it is the source of the human community. The power of reason is developed in and through communication. A person thinks only insofar as he learns to employ the meaning-bearing symbols of language, which arise in social intercourse. Man is not defined only as the reasoning animal: he is also the talking animal, and this is not a mere coincidence; it is due to the intimate connection between thinking and speaking.

Communication is important for any society in which all the people are to have a share in the control of the common life. Participation in a democratic commonwealth depends upon the ability of every person to make his intentions known to others and to take account of the well-being of others. In short, there can be no democracy without common knowledge, and common knowledge is founded upon the universal human power of reason manifest in speech.

In the third place, intelligence is the source of human freedom. Decision among different possibilities presupposes their imaginative envisagement and evaluation. The very idea of "possibilities" rests upon the assumption of a conceptual domain or dimension that in some sense transcends the realm of realized fact. Furthermore, the process of judging is a distinctively intellectual function, for it involves a kind of standing outside of both actualities and possibilities in order to take their measure. When the people in a society are denied freedom, they lack the privilege of guiding their lives by intelligent choice among possibilities; since decisions are made for them, reason is reduced to the subordinate role of directing activity along prescribed lines. On the other hand, democracy advances when reason ventures beyond the bounds set by arbitrary authority and proposes different possibilities for consideration and decision.

Fourth, intelligence is the foundation of individuality, which is another central ideal of democracy. It is by virtue of mentality that the significant differences between persons are effected. Having a self or being a self is a consequence of intellect, for a self is reflective in essence: it has the distinctive power of being aware of its own being. Only by virtue of human mentality does a person become more than an object, a thing. He is a unique somebody, like every other person in having the power of thought, but different from any other person in the singularity of personal identity. This is the soul of democracy -- this combination of universality and individuality -- and the life that animates it is intelligence. Reason not only unites all mankind into one intelligent species but also negates that undifferentiated sameness of interchangeable human units which -- often parading in the guise of a "people’s democracy"-- constitutes a denial of true democracy.

Democratic education is founded upon the nurture of intelligence. Everyone needs education to make good his membership in the common humanity, to participate in the responsible conduct of corporate life (through the power of communication), to exercise wisely the obligations and privileges of choice, and to achieve identity as a person. In the democratic commonwealth, therefore, education should be universal, socially oriented, aimed at the development of mature judgment, and cognizant of individual differences.

For the contemporary human situation, the most serious issues go beyond these general democratic principles. The critical problems concern the proper function of intelligence and the appropriate object of rational activity. It is here that the contrast between the democracy of desire and the democracy of worth becomes evident.

In the life of reason the decision in favor of worth rather than desire takes the form of a commitment to truth. The principle of devotion to truth, whether or not anyone’s interests are served by it, is the cardinal presupposition of intellectual activity. Truth is not something that is fashioned in response to human wants. It is not created, but discovered. Neither individuals nor groups can will the truth into being, for truth is what is so, whether or not anyone wills it. Truth is not determined by popular assent. Hence the notions of popular sovereignty, of human autonomy, of the will of the people as the ultimate authority -- all of these ideas cherished by exponents of the democracy of desire -- are alien to the concept of truth. Even complete consensus does not determine truth, for it is implicit in the idea of truth that any persons or all persons may be in error. The truth is not something that conforms to mankind, but that mankind is obliged to acknowledge and respect.

This priority and givenness of truth are often summed up in the concept of objectivity. Truth is not what anyone subjectively wishes or determines, but what objectively is. Right thinking is said to be objective rather than based on personal desires or preferences. However, the idea of objectivity must be used with caution. While truth is not made by persons, neither is it wholly independent of them. The forms of knowledge are necessarily conditioned by the structure of the human apparatus of perception and cognition. All human knowledge arises from a relationship between intelligent creatures and the world of intelligible objects. Therefore, knowledge is never purely objective, nor purely subjective, but a product of object-subject relationships.

In calling attention to the human components in knowledge, pragmatists and other critics of naive realism have performed a valuable service. They have convincingly shown that knowledge is not an absolute representation of the objective world, but that it is relative to the particular conditions of observation and conventions of language. The content of human knowledge is therefore to some extent subject to human interests and determinations. But it does not follow that truth is man-made. Within any particular humanly chosen context of observation and discourse, the outcome of inquiry is not subject to human volition, but is a revelation of fact. This is what is meant by the truth, which everyone is obliged to acknowledge and which is not subject to the will of any person or of all the people, but to which all are subject.

Thus, the relativistic critics of simple objectivism and absolutism in knowledge do not by any means establish complete human autonomy and sovereignty in the intellectual sphere, nor do they alter the priority and authority of truth. Their analysis serves to show that man himself is an essential ingredient in the truth. Knowledge is hypothetical and conditional rather than absolute, in the sense that any true statement is an assertion about what is the case under certain specified circumstances of observing, experimenting, and language usage. Instead of negating the idea of truth, these insights enrich it. They refute only the pretensions of those who prematurely claim possession of complete and infallible knowledge.

The democratic nature of the intellectual life is evident in the universality of truth. Universality is not intended here in the absolutist sense -- as independence of all conditions -- but rather as confirmability by any and all persons. Truth is in principle public, not private, property. Knowledge is not to be accessible only to a favored few; it is open to everyone. Yet care is necessary in interpreting this public character of knowledge. There are many facts that relatively few people understand, and much knowledge that most people will never comprehend. No simple egalitarian rule applies in matters of knowledge. If truth were limited to what everyone knows, there would be no truth at all, and if it were circumscribed within the domain of "common knowledge" or "public information," the depth and scope of truth would be disappointing indeed. The great ideas, through which civilization is lifted to new levels, are grasped by comparatively few people. High intellectual attainment is the achievement of only a small proportion of people.

Does a realistic appraisal then force us to abandon intellectual democracy in favor of aristocracy? Not at all, provided we affirm the democracy of worth. For the universality of truth means only that knowledge is no respecter of persons, that anyone who will meet the necessary conditions and undertake the necessary disciplines may test facts to see if they are actually as represented. In practice few people have the patience or the ability to undertake the tests required to confirm any but the most ordinary and simple claims to knowledge. The wish and the will to know are not sufficient to establish truth. Knowledge is not subject to desire or to demand. Anyone who would understand must take upon himself the yoke of truth, acknowledging its worth and devoting himself to the disciplines requisite to the mastery of truth.

For example, knowledge of the grammar and syntax of the obscure and long-extinct Akkadian language is certainly not public in the sense of being common knowledge. But it is nonetheless in principle public, in that anyone may study the language and investigate the evidence for assertions made about it. The Einstein formula "E = mc²" is more generally "known," but it is not really understood thoroughly by most people. It is confirmable only by the few trained investigators who have the theoretical insight and experimental skill required by modern physical science.

Intellectual democracy does not mean that everyone is entitled to his own opinion and that opinions are equally valid. Nor does it hold to the principle of equal hospitality to all beliefs. The only equality is that of obligation to the truth. The demand for public confirmability is made in the name of that requirement. Esoteric knowledge, guarded from public scrutiny, is subject to distortion arising from personal bias and private interest. Openness to investigation of truth claims is essential to counteract the tendency to utilize the powers of reason for private purposes.

In the democracy of worth, intellectual authority is not eliminated, as extreme egalitarians would have it. Nor does the authority reside in the people, but only in the truth itself. In such a democracy, experts -- men of high learning and unusual intellectual skill -- play an important part. They are not privileged persons, exercising authority autonomously over less gifted people. Nor, on the other hand, are they merely servants of the people, using their knowledge to fulfill the purposes of the majority. They are properly custodians and trustees of the truth as always becoming revealed, and representatives of the people in the dedicated pursuit of knowledge.

This picture of intellectual democracy suggests the intimate connection between democracy and science. A fundamental tenet of modern scientific investigation is the public nature of valid knowledge. In the advance of enlightenment the tyranny of untestable traditional authority was thrown off, and the unwarranted pretensions of private revelations were brought to light. Superstitious beliefs, tenaciously held because they were incapable of verification, were widely abandoned in favor of more reasonable convictions. By insisting on public confirmability, the scientific movement to a considerable extent has freed mankind from the burdens and confusions caused by self-proclaimed authorities and seers. At the same time it has demonstrated the unparalleled truth-revealing power of inquiry which is in the public domain and in which everyone with the requisite ability and concern cooperates in the common cause of the advancement of understanding. In such an enterprise persons with special gifts make their special contributions to the knowledge that belongs to everyone.

The implications of the foregoing analysis for democratic education are far-reaching. First, democracy is inconsistent with the exclusive, aristocratic type of education, in which intellectual accomplishments are reserved for a privileged class of "gentlemen." Such education belongs only in a slave society, where learning is a mark of freedom from the burdens of manual labor. Second, the democracy of worth also excludes the opposite extreme -- education designed primarily for the pursuit of success and satisfaction through knowledge. Both the aristocratic and the utilitarian forms of education subordinate knowledge to human wants -- of a class, of individuals, or of a whole society. Instead, democratic education should foster concern and respect for the truth.

In the truly democratic school or home it is not assumed that the ideas of everyone are equally valuable, nor is it assumed that what is so is determined by voting or "group process." Nor is the parent or teacher regarded as the ultimate source of authority. Everyone stands under the same authority, that of truth, and everyone is both responsible to it and welcome to make it his own. Since truth is for each and every person, it should be the goal of education to teach every person to appropriate knowledge, not in order to grasp it for his private purposes but to make it really his own. In democratic education, knowledge should, therefore, as far as possible be gained first-hand rather than taken on the word of someone else. Hence the importance of direct experience in contrast to purely verbal instruction. Obviously much, if not most, knowledge cannot be acquired through immediate personal experience, but must be mediated through language.

This restriction on direct knowledge makes it all the more imperative that the learner secure a thorough grounding in the ways of inquiry, so that he understands how he should go about testing the truth of what must be acquired at second-hand because of limitations of time and resources. It is far more important to know well the methods of investigating the truth of alleged facts than simply to accumulate information, for it is solely by having this ability to verify, or to comprehend the process of verification, that a person really understands the meaning of any information and thus makes it his own. Instruction centered about the methods of inquiry, rather than about its products, is the basis for education that fulfills the democratic ideal of the universality of truth.

For all who teach, the public character of knowledge entails a further responsibility -- namely, the will to communicate what is known. It is not enough that knowledge be confirmable by anyone with the requisite ability and training. The growth of a democratic community of shared meanings depends upon a sustained effort to enlarge the company of those who understand. In a democracy there is a clear duty for novices in the mysteries of knowledge to take the initiative in bringing still others within the fold. They should not have to be urged or persuaded to yield up their secrets, but should freely, gladly, and continually serve as missioners of the truth they discern.

This will to communicate has at least four implications. First, skilled professional thinkers -- scholars, scientists, learned men in all fields -- have an obligation to render their knowledge in the most intelligible possible form; they should not glory in obscurity. Specialists who seek to secure special power and prestige for themselves and to, protect their group from possible competition and criticism, tend to create their own secret societies which are not open to the people at large. The approved method of insuring this exclusiveness is to develop special techniques and vocabularies that outsiders cannot understand. While the necessity for technical methods and languages cannot be denied, this is no warrant for calculated obscurity. Intellectual democracy requires no leveling of knowledge for effortless popular consumption. It does demand of those with great insight the true teacher’s sense of mission -- to impart that insight to others.

Second, in the division of labor in a complex civilized society this diffusion of insight requires not only the devotion of the key men of learning to the common good, but also the development of a corps of interpreters, whose special skill lies in translating the knowledge of the specialists into more commonly understood thought forms. These interpreters must work in close cooperation with the specialists and must themselves have a high degree of technical competence in the fields they intend to mediate to the wider public. While the frontier thinkers in a democracy should possess the spirit of the teacher, the interpreters are by the nature of their work wholly concerned with teaching. Often they are not specifically designated as teachers, since they may function best as writers or lecturers and they may not serve in any of the regular institutions of formal education. They are nonetheless educators by vocation, and they are essential to the democratization of learning through the widespread mediation of intellectual values and the evocation of popular loyalty to truth. They also provide excellent models and resources for parents, schoolteachers, and others engaged in the more formal work of instruction.

Third, the will to communicate involves serious concern for the teaching of language. Communication takes place through meaning-bearing symbols, which are the foundation for shared cultural life. The most important phase of the curriculum is the provision for the mastery of these symbolic systems. No other skill is so crucial for the maturing child as the ability to use language easily, accurately, and forcefully, for it is this power that opens up to him the boundless riches of the cultural inheritance and is the key also to mutually significant associations with other people.

Fourth, concern for communication should lead teachers to emphasize the process of critical analysis. The purpose of intellectual criticism is to discern meanings and to make symbolic usage more effective as an instrument for imparting meanings to others. Analysis can be employed, and often is employed, to denigrate what others have said, but this is ordinarily not its proper purpose, which should be the improvement of understanding. When analysis is central in education, the student is expected always to interrogate what he reads or hears, to make certain through the exploration of related ideas that he really understands what is meant. He is not expected merely to accept and store knowledge received from his teachers. Everything must be tested so that, as a proud citizen in the democracy of inquiry, he may recognize and hold fast to that which is true.

Most of what has been said above about the primacy of truth and the public character of knowledge may appear to negate the democratic ideals of freedom and individuality. It is a fact that those who insist most on truth often believe they are in possession of it and all who differ from them are in error. Champions of the truth have frequently engaged in acts of tyranny and oppression in the name of truth. The democratic concern for freedom forbids any such perversion of this ideal. Democratic truth is the object of free and glad allegiance. It wins solely by persuasion and never by coercion. To be free is not to believe anything one wants to believe. Such a condition is one of enslavement to shifting impulses and impressions, which may be even more oppressive than doctrinaire authorities. Truth is the source of freedom only as it has commended itself to the inquirer as worthy of devotion.

The principle of freedom in inquiry means not only that assent must be by uncoerced persuasion, but also that arbitrary limitations on the domains open to investigation are excluded. Truth invites its devotees to follow the path of argument wherever it may lead. No map of presently accepted facts is to be used to set bounds to thought and experiment. Of course, other than intellectual considerations may make certain investigations undesirable. For example, scientifically valuable full-scale testing of nuclear devices may be excluded on moral, political, economic, and medical grounds. The point here is that there should be no orthodox prescription of the content of truth which on intellectual grounds predetermines the areas accessible to study. This does not mean that men are free to make of truth anything they will, but means rather that no human agency is to prevent, the persuasive power of the truth itself from acting.

Just as devotion to truth is the ground of intellectual freedom, so is it the source of individuality. Being an individual is not simply a matter of being different. In the personal sense it means having a determinate and dependable character rather than being controlled by a mass of inconstant and inconsistent impulses. Living by reference to truth is the means of achieving such character. The universality of knowledge is in no way incompatible with personal uniqueness, for the individual personality is marked by its own special content, organization, and creative uses of knowledge. If the whole of truth were contained in some limited set of doctrines, the ideal of universality might be in conflict with individuality. But actually the domain of truth appears to be boundless. It contains resources for the endless enrichment of unique lives and for generating an infinity of personal individualities. Significant forms of human character emerge through devotion to truth, as release is gained from stultifying self-centeredness, which cuts off the creative springs of personal life.

Furthermore, human individuality draws strength from the human community, not from estrangement and isolation. Private, esoteric, nonpublic knowledge might create human differences, but it could not contribute to genuine individuality, which thrives on association. Universal knowledge, on the other hand, not only provides resources for the growth of unique persons, but also (because of its public nature) constitutes a powerful and enduring link with other persons.

The emphasis on democratic ideals of freedom and individuality is important at the present time, because of the tendency for new intellectual orthodoxies to arise, cutting off inquiry and restricting experience, usually in the name of science. Some positivists and other types of empiricist have defined certain criteria for testing the validity of assertions and have excluded all other criteria as inappropriate. In this way they have greatly narrowed the content of truth, for example, to those propositions that can be tested by the methods of natural science. While it is important that means be devised for making good the public nature of knowledge, in order that orderly progress in investigation may be assured and irresponsible subjectivism may be eliminated, it is just as important that the many kinds of knowledge and the wide variety of symbolic forms by which it may be expressed and mediated should be acknowledged and utilized.

There are as many modes of truth as there are ways of defining the means of potentially universal confirmability. Moralists, art critics, and theologians, for example, propose truths that they believe can be verified by anyone following the appropriate procedures and with the requisite competence -- just as do physicists and mathematicians. Granted that the truth criteria of the former groups are frequently less serviceable than those of the latter and may need to be partially abandoned or modified, it would be a mistake and undemocratic to declare one particular method of inquiry, such as the current procedure in physical science, the only road to truth. We are less in danger today from the restrictions imposed by religious orthodoxy or a revered philosophic tradition than from those imposed by the dogmatism of certain scientists or scientific philosophers who make ex laboritorium pronouncements about the canonical tests of truth.

Languages, concepts, and theoretical structures in each field of inquiry are devices to coordinate and interpret sharable human experience. There is no single public with a body of knowledge. There are many publics, each consisting of all those persons for whom a given set of symbolic forms provides a shared body of meanings. Each of these publics is limited, but in an open society is potentially unlimited, in that all who can and will are welcome to enter. Some of these communities are faulty, because the entrance conditions are not clear, so that many who try earnestly to understand the language of the initiates fail to do so. These publics need to be reformed by the revision of their symbolic structures. But, in order to avoid these faulty systems of language, democracy would not be served by the creation of a single vast public with a single admissible language of truth. To be faithful to the truth in its infinite depth and variety, an unlimited plurality of symbolic modes and communities of meaning is essential.

In regard to education, the considerations above suggest the proper meaning of academic freedom. It means neither academic license, nor unrestricted teaching of whatever one wishes. Academic freedom presupposes loyalty to the truth and should be granted only for the sake of the truth. There is no reason why scholars and teachers should receive special privileges making them immune from ordinary social regulations and enabling them to do and say whatever will advance their own purposes. What is important is that they be free to study, and teach the truth, so long as they demonstrate their good faith through willingness to examine and present evidence which is open to all qualified persons to consider.

Education should also be so organized that belief is coerced not by external influences, but only by its own intrinsic power of conviction. For the teacher this requirement presents a high challenge. The easy way of instruction by giving answers must be avoided, as must the use of those grading systems and other forms of reward and punishment that focus attention on "right" conclusions rather than on the process of investigation and fidelity to the evidence. Responsible dissent from majority findings should be welcomed, and those who differ should be given an opportunity to explain the grounds for their convictions. But the conflict of beliefs should not simply be accepted as a result of the relativity of all knowledge. Differences should be used as a stimulus to further investigation, with a view to reaching deeper understandings in which all may share.

The individuality of students should be encouraged, not by releasing them from the discipline of responsible thought in order that they may think what they please, but by opening to them the inexhaustible resources of truth by which they may be formed and transformed. Paradoxically, the source of student conformity today is not the imposition of standard traditional beliefs but the triviality of much in our variegated curriculums. This superficiality stems partly from overemphasis on a restricted problem-solving which limits inquiry to matters relating to personal demands and their satisfaction. Real individuality thrives rather on dedication to truth. The inveterate problem-solver often attempts to reduce the truth to man size, while the devotee of truth wants man to be expanded to truth size.

The superficiality of much in the curriculum also comes from a narrow view of what comprises valid knowledge. There is no single admissible method of thinking to which all must conform. If individuality and freedom are to thrive, the plurality of valid intellectual disciplines and ways of inquiry must be asserted and defended, and administrative policies in academic institutions must foster this pluralism.

We turn, finally, to a consideration of the uses of educated intelligence. Democratic ideals are opposed both to education that creates an exclusive intellectual aristocracy and to a sharp class distinction between those who think and those who work -- a distinction that has become meaningless in the age of technology, where most work demands considerable intellectual competence. What, then, are the proper uses of trained mentality, and what purposes does education for intellectual excellence serve?

The answer lies partially in the disinterested pursuit of truth in and for its own sake.