There has been much discussion concerning the relative importance of the development of community spirit in the schools and the introduction of the direct teaching of citizenship.  The methods are not mutually exclusive; their operations are distinct.  The school which does not develop community spirit, which does not fit into its place in the work of training the complete man, is obviously imperfect.  The same cannot be said of the school which does not provide direct instruction in citizenship; for teaching may be given in so many indirect ways.  Some consideration of what has happened in this connection both in England and America will perhaps be most helpful, although the intangible nature of the results would render dangerous any attempt to make definite pronouncements on their success or failure.

Largely as the result of the realisation of the immediate relationship between national education and national productivity there are abundant signs that the English educational system is about to be developed.  The ordinary argument has been well put: 

A new national spirit has been aroused in our people by the war; if we are to recover and improve our position at the end of the war, that national spirit must be maintained; for unless every man and woman comes to know and feel that industry, agriculture, commerce, shipping, and credit, are national concerns, and that education is a potent means for the promotion of these objects among others, we shall fail in the great effort of national recuperation.  In plainer words, our great firms will not make money, wages will fall, and wage-earners will be out of work[1].

The possibility of the extension of the educational system to meet the needs of technical training need not cause disquiet among those whose desire is for fulness of citizenship, if they are prepared to insist that teachers shall be trained on broad and comprehensive lines and that every vocational course shall include instruction in direct citizenship.  The argument is ready to hand and simple.  If all men and women must strive to work wisely and well, so also should they learn how to participate in the government, local and national, which their work supports.  Moreover the right study of a trade or profession induces a perception of the inter-relationship of all human activity.

On the other hand it is important that vocational work, at least so far as it is carried out by manual training, should be introduced into schemes of liberal education.  In this connection it is worth recalling that in a recent report, the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education expressed with complete conviction the opinion that manual training was indispensable in places of secondary education: