]
II
INDIRECT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP
After all is said and done the ideal training for citizenship in the
schools depends more upon the wisdom engendered in the pupil than upon
the direct study of civics. If the spirits of men and women are set in
a right direction they will reach out for knowledge as for hid
treasure. "Wisdom is more moving than any motion; she passeth and
goeth through all things by reason of her pureness[1]."
It happens also in natural sequence that the spirit developed in a
school will lead to the construction of institutions in connection
with school life calculated to secure its adequate expression.
Elementary schools, however, are much handicapped in this way. If it
comes about that work other than educational or recreative is
forbidden to children during the years of attendance at school, and
also that the period of school life is lengthened, there will be
opportunity for the development of games on a self-governing basis.
Elementary school children have a large measure of initiative; all
they need is a real chance to exercise it. They would willingly make
their schools real centres of child life. Many children at present
have little else than narrow tenements and the streets, out of which
influences arise which war continually against the social influences
of the school.
The opportunity afforded by well-ordered leisure would be accentuated
by the more complete operation of movements such as boys' brigades,
boy scouts, girl guides, and Church lads' brigades, which are in their
several ways doing much to develop citizenship.
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