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The document discusses the complexity and diversity of societies, highlighting the ambiguity of terms like society and community, which can denote both unity and plurality. It emphasizes the importance of education in a democratic society, arguing that mutual interests and social interactions necessitate a focus on systematic education to foster a well-informed electorate. Additionally, it critiques existing social institutions and customs, suggesting that they often hinder natural human development and education.

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30 views2 pages

Blank Template

The document discusses the complexity and diversity of societies, highlighting the ambiguity of terms like society and community, which can denote both unity and plurality. It emphasizes the importance of education in a democratic society, arguing that mutual interests and social interactions necessitate a focus on systematic education to foster a well-informed electorate. Additionally, it critiques existing social institutions and customs, suggesting that they often hinder natural human development and education.

Uploaded by

juttawara07
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Are political parties with differing aims, social sets, cliques, gangs, corporations,

partnerships, groups bound closely together by ties of blood, and so on in endless


variety. In many modern states and in some ancient, there is great diversity of
populations, of varying languages, religions, moral codes, and traditions. From this
standpoint, many a minor political unit, one of our large cities, for example, is a
congeries of loosely associated societies, rather than an inclusive and permeating
community of action and thought. (See ante, p. 20.)

The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both a eulogistic or
normative sense, and a descriptive sense; a meaning de jure and a meaning de
facto. In social philosophy, the former connotation is almost always uppermost.
Society is conceived as one by its very nature. The qualities which accompany this
unity, praiseworthy community of purpose and welfare, loyalty to public ends,
mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at the facts which the
term denotes instead of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find
not unity, but a plurality of societies, good and bad.
Men banded together in a criminal conspiracy, business aggregations that prey
upon the public while serving it, political machines held together by the interest of
plunder, are included. If interests as a factor in social control. The second means
not only freer interaction between social groups (once isolated so far as intention
could keep up a separation) but change in social habit-its continuous readjustment
through meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse.
And these two traits are precisely what characterize the democratically constituted
society.Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a form of
social life in which interests are mutually interpenetrating, and where progress, or
readjustment, is an important consideration, makes a democratic community more
interested than other communities have cause to be in deliberate and systematic
education. The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact.
The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage
cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are
educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority,
it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created
only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is more than a
form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint
communicated experience. The following nature was a political dogma. It meant a
rebellion against existing social institutions, customs, and ideals (See ante, p. 91).

Rousseau's statement that everything is good as it comes from the hands of the
Creator has its signification only in its contrast with the concluding part of the
same sentence: "Everything degenerates in the hands of man." And again he says:
"Natural man has an absolute value; he is a numerical unit, a complete integer and
has no relation save to himself and to his fellow man. Civilized man is only a
relative unit, the numerator of a fraction whose value depends upon its dominator,
its relation to the integral body of society. Good political institutions are those
which make a man unnatural." It is upon this conception of the artificial and
harmful character of organized social life as it now exists 2 that he rested the
notion that nature not merely furnishes prime forces which initiate growth but also
its plan and goal. That evil institutions and customs work almost automatically to
give a wrong education which the most careful schooling cannot offset is true
enough; but the conclusion is not to education apart from the environment, but to
provide an environment in which native powers will be put to better uses.2. Social
Efficiency as Aim. A conception which made nature supply the end of a true
education and society the end of an evil one, could hardly

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