The New Ideal in Education eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 15 pages of information about The New Ideal in Education.

The New Ideal in Education eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 15 pages of information about The New Ideal in Education.
letters from the children of America to the children of Serbia.  This wonderful mail produced the greatest imaginable excitement among the Serbian children.  They were busy, very busy for some weeks, reading the friendly letters from so far, and answering them.  I am sure they will forget many sad events of the war, but they never can forget this wonderful and surprising mail, which made for peace more than any of the costly commissions for the investigation of war cruelties, or any of Carnegie’s empty, although wonderful, luxurious halls of peace.

Let the children, the representatives of all the countries in the world, come to The Hague to hold the International Peace Congress.  The programme of this Congress should be:  Singing, playing, dancing, smiling and praying.  They will meet as friends and speak every one in his native language, and they will understand each other very well as friends always understand each other.  This Children’s Hague Conference will promote the world peace more than The Hague Conference composed of enemies, mutually annoying themselves by obligatory politeness and bad French.

But, you will ask, who is going to arrange and execute all this?  The International Board of Education.

But, you will say, it will be very expensive?  Yes, but, supposing it will be as expensive as the war, for which of the two do you prefer to give money—­for such a salvatory experiment or for the war?  Yet, I am sure of one thing, it will cost less than a war.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION.

If you do not watch the education of a country all other international precautions for peace and mutual understanding will be wholly illusory.

An International Board of Education should control the programmes of education of all countries.  It should watch that one principle prevails in every educational programme, i.e., the principle of Panhumanism.  It should not interfere as to the form of education, no, far from that, but look to the unity of the principle of education upon the whole globe.  It should carefully avoid all the watchwords which make for separations and wars, like “Germany, Germany over all!” The child must love its own country, but it must know also that its country is not the thing over all other things.  It must be taught that God and mankind are something which stands above its country.

It should control not only the governmental programmes of education, but it should also watch the mothers, patriots and priests.  It should try to have these three world-powers not for the enemies but for the allies and missionaries of a higher, and a panhuman education.

THE THIRD STAGE OF THE EUROPEAN EDUCATION.

There are three stages of the Christian European education:—­

1.  Compulsory obedience.  This was in the Middle Ages when men were compelled to do the common work by the authority of the church and nobility.

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The New Ideal in Education from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.