If the pressure is
sufficiently strong the people may yield to the introduction of a
system of compulsory continuation schools similar to those of Germany.
If they do, I believe they will eventually fail. But there is danger
through loss of energy and loss of purpose in their introduction. Is
it impossible for us to hold to our native experimental habits of life
and attain standards of workmanship? Is it possible to realize the
full strength of associated effort and at the same time advance wealth
production?
Germany's industrial supremacy was due, as Professor Veblen shows,
to the fact that machine industry was imposed ready-made on a people
whose psychology was feudal. The schools of Germany, an essential part
of her industrial enterprise, were organized on the servility of the
people. We now know what building as Germany has built her educational
and industrial system on the weakness of a people means. We are in the
process of discovering whether in sacrificing the expansion of her
people she can secure a permanent expansion of her Empire. It would
seem the better part of statesmanship in America after the war to
build industrially on the strength of our people and not on the
weakness of another. It is the business of educators to point out the
danger and to discover whether efficiency may not be gained in the
country by giving children in their adolescent period the impulse for
production and high standards of work, not for the sake of the state,
but for themselves, for the sake of the community,--out of love of
work and for the value of its service.
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