Social Value of Expression.—The criterion of an education once was, how
much does he know? The world did not expect an educated man to do anything;
he was to be put on a pedestal and admired from a distance. But this criterion is
now obsolete. Society cares little how much we know if it does not enable us to
do. People no longer admire mere knowledge, but insist that the man of
education shall put his shoulder to the wheel and lend a hand wherever help is
needed. Education is no longer to set men apart from their fellows, but to make
them more efficient comrades and helpers in the world's work. Not the man who
knows chemistry and botany, but he who can use this knowledge to make two
blades of grass grow where but one grew before, is the true benefactor of his
race. In short, the world demands services returned for opportunities afforded; it
expects social expression to result from education.
And this is also best for the individual, for only through social service can we
attain to a full realization of the social values in our environment. Only thus can
we enter fully into the social heritage of the ages which we receive from books
and institutions; only thus can we come into the truest and best relations with
humanity in a common brotherhood; only thus can we live the broader and more
significant life, and come to realize the largest possible social self.
3. EDUCATIONAL USE OF EXPRESSION
The educational significance of the truths illustrated in the diagram and the
discussion has been somewhat slow in taking hold in our schools. This has been
due not alone to the slowness of the educational world to grasp a new idea, but
also to the practical difficulties connected with adapting the school exercises as
well to the expression side of education as to the impression. From the fall of
Athens on down to the time of Froebel the schools were constituted on the
theory that pupils were to receive education; that they were to drink in
knowledge, that their minds were to be stored with facts. Children were to "be
seen and not heard." Education was largely a process of gorging the memory
with information.
Easier to Provide for the Impression Side of Education.—Now it is evident
that it is far easier to provide for the passive side of education than for the active
side. All that is needed in the former case is to have teachers and books
reasonably full of information, and pupils sufficiently docile to receive it. But in
the latter case, the equipment must be more extensive. If the child is to be
allowed to carry out his impressions into action, if he is actually to do something