CRISIS IN EDuCATION
495
against the old, was and is the doing away with poverty and slavery.
But at the same time its magnificence consists in the fact that from
the beginning this new order did not shut itself off from the outside
world-as has elsewhere been the custom in the founding of Utopias
-in order to confront it with a perfect model, nor was its purpose
to enforce imperial claims or to be preached as an evangel to others.
Rather its relation to the outside world has been characterized from
the start by the fact that this republic, which planned to abolish
poverty and slavery, welcomed all the poor and enslaved of the
earth. In the words spoken by John Adams in 1765-that is, before
the Declaration of Independence- "I always consider the settlement
of America as the opening of a grand scheme and design in Provi–
dence for the illumination and emancipation of the slavish part of
mankind all over the earth." This is the basic intent or the basic law
in accordance with which America began her historical and political
existence.
The extraordinary enthusiasm for what is new, which is shown
in almost every aspect of American daily life, would presumably
have resulted
in
any case in greater attention being paid and greater
significance being ascribed to the newcomers by birth, that is, the
children and young people, whom the Greeks simply called the
neoi.
There is the additional fact, however, a fact that has become de–
cisive for the meaning of education, that this pathos of the new,
though it antedates the eighteenth century, only developed conceptu–
ally and politically in that century. From this source there was derived
at the start an educational ideal, tinged with Rousseauism and in fact
directly influenced by Rousseau, in which education became an in–
strument of politics, and political activity itself was conceived of as
a form of education.
The role played by education in all political utopias from an–
cient times onward shows how natural it is to start a new world
with those who are by birth and nature new.
So
far as politics is
concerned, this involves of course a serious misconception: instead
of joining with one's equals in assuming the effort of persuasion and
running the risk of failure, there
is
dictatorial intervention, based
upon the absolute superiority of the adult, and the attempt to pro–
duce the new as a
fait accompli,
that is, as though the new already
existed. For this reason
in
Europe, too, the belief that one must begin
