The Schools and Citizenship

Abstract

A. W. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE has chosen “Education and Freedom” as the title of his presidential address to Section L (Educational Science). In Germany, Italy and Russia the suppression of freedom is largely carried out by the control of education, of which the aim is to teach the individual not to think. If freedom is to be maintained, it can only be by an education designed to teach the young to think freely and accurately, and to act as responsible citizens of democracy. The ideal community will bo one which allows all to take a share in the formation of public opinion (and trains them to do so), and in which no one is simply a means to the ends of others, but each is free to realise the highest values and able to make his contribution to the common good. In the individual life, freedom, which is at first possessed only in a small measure, cannot usually be acquired without discipline and the presentation of the higher values by authority, and one function of education is to give the young a chance of appreciating these higher values, both by suggestion and example, and also in school work, for example, in the study of literature and history and the much-neglected study of the Bible.