Within every larger social organization there are numerous minor groups: not only political subdivisions, but industrial, scientific, religious, associations. It often seems as if they had nothing in common except that they are modes of associated life. One man is concerned in a multitude of diverse groups, in which his associates may be quite different. Men associate together in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of purposes. To make the general ideas set forth applicable to our own educational practice, it is, therefore, necessary to come to closer quarters with the nature of present social life.ġ. Particularly is it true that a society which not only changes but-which has the ideal of such change as will improve it, will have different standards and methods of education from one which aims simply at the perpetuation of its own customs. To say that education is a social function, securing direction and development in the immature through their participation in the life of the group to which they belong, is to say in effect that education will vary with the quality of life which prevails in a group. We have now to make explicit the differences in the spirit, material, and method of education as it operates in different types of community life. For the most part, save incidentally, we have hitherto been concerned with education as it may exist in any social group.
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