EDUCATION, RELIGION, AND THE ARTS OF LEISURE
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Education, Religion, And The Arts Of Leisure By HARRY ELMER BARNES AS A RESULT of the second World War and the fourth world-revolution, we are likely to witness striking changes in both education...
...The first million years of human experience have been devoted to conquering the problems of subsistence, peace, and security...
...Education And Planning If we are to bring our institutions up to date and make them conform to our technological equipment, we shall need to pay more attention to the social sciences...
...What effect this will have on education will depend upon the character of any particular government at a given time...
...To recognize and attain this role in the course of the fourth world-revolution is the great challenge to religion today...
...We may expect much greater state support of educational activities in this field...
...The Government has already taken over the great majority of the higher education of males and guides the content and nature of the instruction...
...This will mean the greatest revolution in the history of human experience...
...If we are going to educate for democracy, we must teach material that will fit people to live in democratic society and teach it in ways compatible with democratic processes...
...While we have had free public education for a century, we have not even begun to educate for democratic living and politics...
...Challenge To Religion The sorry mess in which we find ourselves today, as a result of faulty international ideals, emphasizes the need for sound and realistic education in the international field...
...The ideology of the state may, indeed, become the new theology...
...The press...
...There is a real need for a socially-oriented religion which will unify and galvanize the idealism of mankind and place the moral force of the community behind social justice and peace...
...We cannot...
...It cannot survive if it remains a powerful buttress of the status quo and exploitation, and the blesser of every great explosion of mass-murder that breaks forth on the planet...
...If we ultimately find new secular religions arising to take the place of supernaturalism, there is every prospect of a renewal of intolerance...
...This was in the air even before 1939...
...This will probably be brought about through greatly extending social education and making it conform more directly and immediately to social planning and managerial control...
...The low standards of health and physique revealed by the draft, and the necessity of repairing the physical ravages wrought by warfare, will unquestionably lead to an impressive extension of physical education, in the effort to improve the bodily and mental stamina of the population, These trends are already markedly in evidence in the new programs of military education set up in our colleges and universities...
...The immediate impact of the second World War on education will inevitably increase the intolerance of dissent from the prevailing civic ideology...
...But there has been no hesitancy in making little John Husses and Savonarolas out of those who have challenged it...
...Of one thing we may be sure, and this is that the ideology which prevails in any state will be vigorously and somewhat intolerantly inculcated in the schools thereof...
...When this has been achieved, the rest of the human experiment may, with good luck, be devoted to mastering the problems of good living...
...The influence of the priesthood over education will be lessened, if not terminated...
...Our new technology is capable of providing plenty for everybody...
...The New Curriculum We still go on with a curriculum which has as its foundation the ideals and subject-matter which were worked out by Italian educational reformers of the 15th and 16th Centuries for the instruction of the children of the decadent feudal nobility and the rising town oligarchy of those days...
...Rather, education in the social studies is likely to be more directly related to preparing students to participate immediately and effectively in operating a planned economy...
...That there have been relatively few acts of overt intolerance has been due mainly to the fact that, as a result of the popular acceptance of the official mythology relative to Pearl Harbor, there has been little public questioning of the quasi-religious theory of the war...
...We may well rejoice that the ideals and perspective of Mark Van Doren's intellectually vicious book, so well reviewed by Wisconsin's famed Max Otto, are an educational epitaph rather than a prophecy...
...A start was made in the WPA Art Project...
...Education, Religion, And The Arts Of Leisure By HARRY ELMER BARNES AS A RESULT of the second World War and the fourth world-revolution, we are likely to witness striking changes in both education and religion, and to find much more attention given to the problems of leisure...
...But this need not prove too disconcerting, since this field of human endeavor will constitute the chief challenge to human ingenuity and effort during the remainder of the existence of the race on the planet...
...If it fails, this will be due only to its unwillingness to come to grips with the new era which is dawning...
...It is unlikely that education in the social studies will be permitted to continue eulogizing and buttressing an outmoded social order...
...A book like John Roy Carlson's Under Cover may be fairly compared to the Malleus Malifiearum (Witches Hammer), Mather's Wonders Of The Invisible World, and other classics of the early modern witchcraft delusion and the witch-hunting mania...
...The same may be said for the specific content, if not the moral aspirations, of President Hutchins' educational program...
...Naturally, the stater is likely to insist that the trends and activities, even here, shall conform, in at least a general way, to the concepts of the new managerial era...
...Already, the American Legion is moving in to assert an ever greater control over civic instruction in schools and colleges...
...Hitherto, the efforts of mankind have been devoted primarily to gaining mere ' subsistence for the many and riches for the few...
...It is obvious that these new trends in religious development will offer a powerful obstacle to the realization of one of President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, namely the freedom of religion...
...The secular omnipotence of the state cannot tolerate dissenting theologies, in other words, ideological concepts and practices which threaten those of the country in question...
...allow our communication agencies to be monopolized by the servants of reaction and exploitation...
...Since our political ideology is democracy, it behooves us to improve education for democracy, if we wish to preserve it...
...Most of those tried or imprisoned for sedition were not proceeded against because of any overt acts, but rather for their ideas and opinions...
...The shock administered to conventional education and educational institutions by the war will hasten the transformation...
...If vital social and moralistic religions do not arise to satisfy the emotional cravings of mankind, we are likely to witness the growth and triumph of secular cults...
...We can see similar trends developing even in the democratic states under the pressure of war...
...And education is not limited to the schools...
...While there are many advantages to be discerned in the increase of Federal support of education, it contains an ominous threat to educational freedom and independence...
...Leisure And New Social Values If western civilization endures the shock of social crisis and war and does not lapse into chaos, one of the greatest changes brought about by the fourth world-revolution will, as I have suggested above, be the increased amount of attention given to the problems of leisure...
...Such a tendency has shown a marked development in the new totalitarian societies...
...If, on the other hand, we do run our productive equipment with full efficiency to produce for use, riot only mere subsistence, but a high standard of living, will be made available to everybody with a minimum of time and physical effort...
...There will not only be more patriotic education, in terms of the new concepts of patriotism, but we are also likely to see a marked increase in the relative attention given to scientific, technical, vocational, and physical education...
...Hence, if we produce with efficiency, the great problem of the future will not be to provide mere subsistence through long hours of hard labor, but rather to assure the sane utilization of the large amount of leisure-time which will remain after security and abundance have been readily provided for all...
...If we wish this influence to cherish and promote democracy, we must open all these channels of communication to all groups and shades of opinion...
...Indeed, it may well open the way to a new flowering of religion...
...Whether or not developments go as far as this, the trend is surely in this direction...
...But there is grave reason to fear that the preposterous excesses of globaloney in the last few years will bring a lamentable reaction into just as extreme a nationalism in our outlook in education as well as in politics...
...Nothing else can do this so well as a socially-minded religion...
...As increased productive efficiency confers upon society an ever greater degree of leisure, education will be compelled to reckon more and more with the socalled arts of leisure, namely, recreation, music, the arts, and the like...
...With the growing interest in a planned economy, greater economic security, and the secularization of education, the hold of supernatural religion on the masses is bound to be undermined...
...Unless we operate our new mechanical economy efficiently to produce" for use, there is little prospect that civilization can endure on its present technological foundations...
...The savagery and ruthlessness of the purges carried out by Stalin and Hitler are all too convincing evidence of this fact...
...This will be in harmony with the tendencies toward social planning and managerial control in the economy of the future...
...The returning soldiers will have much to say about the future content of instruction...
...Federal support and control of education are.on the march...
...The truth of this assertion is amply attested to by the fact that the popularity and growth of Bolshevism and Fascism have been due mainly to their quasi-religious nature...
...Our Wartime Theology In the United States, since 1941, the official theory of the war, of our reasons for entering it, and of our aims therein, have literally become the new religion of the country...
...Our higher education is at least temporarily on a militarized WPA subsidy basis...
...The immediate future is bound to witness conspicuous changes in the character of education...
...The one vice that educators do not have is that of biting the hand that feeds them...
...To question these beliefs exposes one to prosecution for sedition, which is becoming the new type of heresy...
...If religion is to succeed, it must frankly assume the role of a liberal force, helping us on to a better type of living...
...If schools and colleges have to feed at the Federal trough and face starvation if they cannot do so, there is every likelihood that educators will fawningly conform to the ideology of the administration in power...
...Alexander Meiklejohn, in his important work, Education Between Two Worlds, predicts that one inevitable transformation will be the further secularization of education and its complete domination and direction by the state...
...If there is to be political freedom there must be freedom of communication...
...Great changes irreligious orientation and activities may be expected as the fourth world-revolution moves along...
...We need not expect perfection in mastering the arts of leisure in any immediate future...
...radio, movies, and the like, are exerting an increasing force over the minds of citizens...
...But the inroads upon supernatural ism need not reduce the prestige or influence of organized religion...
...Our Chief Executive has even assumed to compose a state prayer embodying this militant and global ideology and instructing the Deity as to the fundamental issues of the conflict...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 30
