The Long Range Plan
Let us formulate a more extended plan for the future education of the children of the world. We have noted that in spite of universal educational processes and many centers of learning in every country, we have not yet succeeded in giving our young people the kind of education which will enable them to live wholly and constructively. In the terms of the last two of three thousand years, the development of world education has been progressively along three main lines, starting in the East and culminating today in the West. In Asia we had an intensive training, down the centuries, of certain carefully chosen individuals a complete neglect of the masses. Asia and Asia alone has produced those outstanding figures who are, even today, the object of universal veneration - Lai Tze, Confucius, the Buddha, Shri Krishna and the Christ. They have set Their mark upon millions and still do.
Then in Europe, we have had educational attention concentrated upon a few privileged groups, giving them a carefully planned cultural training but teaching only the necessary rudiments of learning to the masses. This produced periodically such important epochs of cultural expression as the Elizabethan period, the Rennaisance, the poets and writers of the Victorian era and the poets and musicians of Germany, as well as the clusters of artists whose memory is perpetuated in the Italian School, the Dutch and the Spanish groups.
Finally, in the newer countries of the world, such as the United States, Australia and Canada, mass education was instituted and was largely copied throughout the entire civilized world. The general level of cultural attainment became much lower; the level of mass information and competency considerably higher. The question now arises: What will be the next evolutionary development in the educational world? What will happen after this complete world breakdown and the recognized failure of the educational system to avert it?
Let us remember one important thing. What education can do along undesirable lines has been well demonstrated in Germany with its wrecking idealism, its inculcation of wring human relations and attitudes and its glorification of all that is most selfish, brutal and aggressive. Germany has proved that educational processes organized and supervised, systematically planned and geared to an ideology, are potent on effect, especially if the child is taken young enough and if he is shielded from all contrary teaching for a long enough time. Since the time Russia has used the same system. Let us remember that this demonstrated potency can work two ways and that what has been wrought out along wrong lines can be equally successful along right ones in a wholesome atmosphere of freedom.
We need also to do two things: We must place the emphasis educationally upon those who are under sixteen years of age, and the younger the better and, secondly, we must begin with what we have, even while recognizing the limitations of the present systems. We must strengthen those aspects which are good and desirable, we must eliminate those which have proved inadequate in fitting men to cope with their environment; we must develop the new attitudes and techniques which will fit a child for complete living and so make him truly human - a creative, constructive member of the human family. The very best of all that is past must be preserved but should only be regarded as the foundation for a better system and a wiser approach to the goal of world citizenship.
It might be of value at this point to define what education can be, if it is impulse by true vision and made responsive to sensed world need and to the demand of the times.
Education is the training, intelligently given, which will enable the youth of the world to contact their environment with intelligence and sanity and adapt themselves to the existing conditions. This is of prime importance and is one of the signposts in the world today.
Education is a process whereby the child is equipped with the information which will enable him to act as a good citizen and perform the functions so a wise parent. It should take into consideration his inherent tendencies, his racial and national attributes and then endeavor to add to these that knowledge which will lead him to work constructively in his particular world setting and prove himself a useful citizen .The general trend of his education will be more psychological than in the past and the information thus gained will be geared in his peculiar situation. All children have certain assets and should be taught how to use them; these they share with the whole of humanity, irrespective of race or nationality. Educators will, therefore, lay emphasis in the future upon:
1. A developing mental control of the emotional nature.
2. Vision or the capacity to see beyond what is to what might be.
3. Inherited, factual knowledge upon which it will be possible to superimpose the wisdom of the future.
4. Capacity wisely to handle relationships and to recognize and assume responsibility.
5. The power to use the mind in two ways:
a. As the "commonsense" (using this word in its old connotation), analyzing and synthesizing the information conveyed by the five senses.
b. As a searchlight, penetrating into the world of ideas and of abstract truth.
Knowledge comes from two directions. It is the result of the intelligent use of five senses and it is also developed from the attempt to seize upon ad understand ideas. Both of these are implemented by curiosity and investigation.
Education should be three kinds and all three are necessary to a needed point of development.
It is, first of all, a process of acquiring facts - past and present - and of then learning to infer and gather from this mass of information, gradually accumulated, that which can be of practical use in any given situation. This process involves the fundamentals of our present educational systems.
It is, secondly, a process of learning wisdom as an outgrowth of knowledge and of grasping understandingly the meaning which lies behind the outer imparted facts. It is the power to apply knowledge in such a manner that sane living and an understanding point of view, plus an intelligent technique of conduct, are the natural results. This also involves training for specialized activities, based upon innate tendencies, talents or genius.
It is a process whereby unity or a sense of synthesis is cultivated. Young people in the future will be taught to think of themselves in relation to the group, to the family unit and to the nation in which their destiny has put them. They will also be taught to think in terms of world relationships, and of their nation in its relation to other nations. This covers training for citizenship, for parenthood, and for world understanding, it is basically psychological and should convey an understanding of humanity. When this type of training is given, we shall develop men and women who are both civilized and cultured and who will also possess capacity to move forward (as life unfolds) into that world of meaning which underlies the world of outer phenomena and who will begin to view human happenings in terms of the deeper spiritual and universal values.
Education should be the process whereby youth is taught to reason from cause to effect, to know the reason why certain actions are bound inevitably to produce certain results and why - given a certain and mental equipment, plus an ascertained psychological rating - definite life trends can be determined and certain professions and life careers provide the right setting for development and a useful and profitable field of experience.
Some attempts along this line have been undertaken by certain colleges and schools in an effort to ascertain the psychological aptitudes of a boy or a girl for certain vocations but the whole effort is still amateurish in nature. When made more scientific it opens the door for training in the sciences; it gives significance and meaning to history, biography and learning and thus avoids the bare impartation of facts and the crude process of memory training which has been distinctive of past methods. (by A. Bailey)