What Professor Dewey says in reference to the growth of children and adults is as abundantly significant in its application to society.  “Normal child and normal adult alike ... are engaged in growing.  The difference between them is not the difference between growth and no growth, but between the modes of growth appropriate to different conditions.  With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be growing in manhood.  With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiassed responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness."[A]

[Footnote A:  John Dewey—­Democracy and Education, p. 59.]

As America and the greater part of Europe have been for over a century devoting their attention to coping with specific scientific and economic problems, is their manhood due to appear?  Is the raw, immature character of present day association and interdependence to be enriched by sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness and openness of mind?  In the midst of this world war I venture no prediction on the appearance of manhood.  But clearly there is a line of action for educators to pursue.  Clearer than ever before it is evident that it is the business of educators to see that schemes of education are introduced which do not fit children into a system of industry that serves either Empire or business, but a system that serves whole-heartedly creative enterprise as it might be pursued in the period of youth as well us in adult life.  Within the past century and particularly in the past generation we have made brave efforts at cooeperation, but our failures to realize the spirit of cooeperation are as notorious as the efforts themselves.  The effort to work together in industry has been brutal rather than brave.  We shall account for this brutality in industry and recognize why the spirit for cooeperation in other fields has failed, as we distinguish between a puerile desire of individuals to express themselves and their impulses for creative enterprise.

As industry through the ages has changed from the isolated business of provisioning a family to the associated work of provisioning the world, it has blazed a pathway for relationships which are socially creative.  But art in social relationships will not be realized until a passionate desire for the unlimited expression of creative effort overcomes inordinate desires of individuals for self-expression.  Art in living together is possible where the intensive interest of individuals in their personal affairs and attainments, in their social group, in their vocation, in their political state, is deeply tempered by a wide interest and sympathetic regard for the life of other groups and people.  Art in social relationships is contingent on broad sympathies and extended relationships, and it is contingent as well on ability to work for social ends while remaining in large measure disregardful of the personal stakes involved.  Because of our inability to lose our personal attachment for our own work, because of what it may yield us in personal ways, the world never yet has experienced the joy and creative possibility of associated effort And because it has not we have still to experience art in social contact.