506
PARTISAN REVIEW
as self-evident assumptions without being aware of the consequences
they must necessarily have for the life of the child. It is the peculiarity
of modern society, and by no means a matter of course, that it re–
gards life, that is, the earthly life of the individual as well as the
family, as the highest good; and for this reason, in contrast to all
previous centuries, emancipated this life and all the activities that
have to do with its preservation and enrichment from the conceal–
ment of privacy and exposed them to the light of the public world.
This is the real meaning of the emancipation of workers and women,
not as persons, to be sure, but insofar as they fulfill a necessary func–
tion
in the life process of society.
The last to be affected by this process of emancipation were the
children, and the very thing that had meant a true liberation for the
workers and the women-because they were not only workers and
women but persons as well, who therefore had a claim on the public
world, that is a right to see and be seen in it, to speak and be heard–
was an abandonment and betrayal in the case of the children, who
are still at the stage where the simple fact of life and growth out–
weighs the factor of personality. The more completely modern society
discards the distinction between what is private and what is public,
between what can only thrive in concealment and what needs to be
shown to all in the full light of the public world, the more, that
is,
they introduce between the private and the public a social sphere
in
which the private is made public and vice versa, the harder they make
it for their children, who by nature require the security of conceal–
ment in order to mature undisturbed.
However serious these infringements of the conditions for vital
growth may be, it is certain that they were entirely unintentional; the
central aim of all modern educational efforts has been the welfare of
the child, a fact that is, of course, no less true even if the efforts
made have not always succeeded in promoting the child's welfare
in the way that was hoped. The situation is entirely different in the
sphere of educational tasks no longer directed toward the child but
toward the young person, the newcomer and stranger, who has been
born into an already existing world which he does not know. These
tasks are primarily, but not exclusively, the responsibility of the
schools; they have to do with teaching and learning; the failure in
this field is the most urgent problem in America today. What
lies
at the bottom of it?
