Educational Adjustments Necessitated by Changing Ideological Concepts

Abstract

N o MORE important problem faces educational administrators than that of planning appropriate adjustments of the school to the marked socio-economic changes now in progress. The tremendous modifications in American life during the past ten years which we have called the depression have had serious effects on the schools; the present war and the post-war reconstruction are likely to involve changes even more profound and more significant to education than those of the past ten years. Hence it is as necessary for educational administrators to begin comprehensive planning for the war and the post-war period as it is for our national leaders in political, social, and economic life to plan in their fields for corresponding alterations necessitated by the war and post-war reconstruction. In considering significant changes in our social and economic life, we are likely to overlook transformations in ideological concepts and to underestimate their significance. Any catalogue of recent social change includes data about such phenomena as unemployment, technological improvements in our modes of production, migrations between city and country, differential birth-rates, and increased concentration of wealth. These data represent tangible changes of great significance to our welfare, but we must not forget that the ideas which people hold-their attitudes and beliefs, their conceptions of the world and of society-are none the less real and significant because they are intangible. To a considerable degree ideological concepts govern the actions of people. Whether or not federal aid will be provided for rural schools depends more on the public's conception of the need of the rural schools and the public's belief concerning the continuing availability of federal funds than it does