FOREWORD.

The challenge of the World War to all thoughtful people is to organize human life on saner and juster lines in the construction of a better sort of world. This bulletin aims to make a suggestion toward an answer to this challenge.

The sorrow and tragedy of the war cause men and women everywhere to ask themselves not only what sort of a world they ought to work for, but also how and where they can begin to work for it. To find a practical answer to these questions is the persistent prayer of all who believe in democracy. Honest prayer is the expression of a dominant desire for what we believe is best and also the willingness to cooperate in bringing it to pass. The following pages are addressed to those who are willing to cooperate in answering their own prayers, to those who know what sort of world they ought to work for but are at a loss to know what is the best instrument to be used for constructing it. This bulletin suggests such an instrument.

It is a curious fact that usually it is comparatively easy to interest ten men in an indefinite scheme about which they have nothing to do but talk, whereas it is difficult to induce one man to undertake a more modest but definite piece of constructive work. [But the war has awakened the desire of all people of good will to do something. They want to make a motor-reaction to the war's challenge. They say: "We see what needs to be done. What is the best instrument with which to do it? That is the difficult thing to find." The suggestion here made is intended for such people, who have discovered the futility of attempting to purify the water in a well by painting the pump, and who therefore seek a constructive plan in the process of building a better world.

The instrument here suggested is The Community Center, which may be put into operation anywhere, in city, village, or countryside. If we desire to get anywhere, we have to start from somewhere. The place to start from is where we are. The best point of contact with the world problem, raised anew by the war, is to be found in the community where we live, for the world problem exists in every community in America. All political questions, if considered fundamentally, will be found to apply to human needs which are at once

local, national, and international. The international problem is now, and has always been, how to organize and keep organized a method of mutual understanding by which nations may cooperate rather than compete with each other. The national problem is to do the same for the social and economic forces within the Nation itself. The problem in any local community is to do the same for the forces operating in that community. With reference to this present and permanent world problem the writer has attempted to answer two questions-what is a community center, and how ought it to be organized. He has endeavored to make the answer as brief as may be consistent with clearness.

Our three most urgent national needs are to mobilize intelligence, food, and money. But it is not possible to mobilize them until we first mobilize the people. The Nation's present need has made apparent the necessity of organizing local communities. The Council of National Defense discovered it through its experience in the war. The Bureau of Education had begun the task before we entered the war. These two organizations have now united their forces for the accomplishment of their common purpose to promote community organization throughout the Nation. The slogan of the one is," Every school district a community council for national service.". The slogan of the other is, "Every schoolhouse a community capitol and every community a little democracy."

President Wilson has clearly indicated the profound significance of this movement in the letter he wrote to commend it. He elsewhere says that our present need is "to arouse and inform the people so that each individual may be able to play his part intelligently in our great struggle for democracy and justice." This is a perfect statement of the aim of our movement. With the addition of one word it would be a complete description of it. That one word is "organize." The aim of the movement-to arouse and inform the people, to enable each individual to play his part intelligently-can be achieved only when the people organize themselves.

The creation of a democratic and intelligent social order is essentially the same task, whether our approach to it be local, national, or international. This fact has been clearly understood by thinkers as far back as Socrates, who said: "Then, without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, this much we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all the evil in States, private as well as public." Anyone, therefore, who attempts to remove these causes in a local community is working at a world problem, and he who attempts to remove them as between nations is obliged, in order to preserve his honesty and self-respect, to make the same effort within his own.

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nation and in his own community. It magnifies the value and stimulates one's zest in working for it to remember that a community center is the center of concentric circles which compass not only the local community but also the larger communities of the Nation and the world. To establish free trade in friendship in all three communities is the goal of the community center movement. HENRY E. JACKSON.

FEBRUARY 1, 1918.

A COMMUNITY CENTER-WHAT IT IS AND HOW

TO ORGANIZE IT.

PART I.

WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CENTER?

THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY.

"All men naturally desire knowledge," is the buoyant sentence with which Aristotle begins his great book on Ethics. It states our ground of hope for the possibility of progress and for the success of democracy. No democratic form of government can long endure without popular education or the means of acquiring it. The first and chief aim of the community center movement is to deepen the content and broaden the scope of the term "education" and to extend the activities of the public schools so that they may evolve into people's universities.

When it is remembered that only 10 per cent of the adult citizens have had a high-school education and only 50 per cent have ever completed the grammar grades, it becomes apparent that one of our greatest national needs is a university for the education of grown men and women. The public school as a community center is the answer to this national need. The community center movement recognizes the fact that the mind matures more slowly than the body and that education is a life-long process. While the public school is dedicated primarily to the welfare of the child, it is be- 3 coming daily more evident that the Nation's welfare requires it to be used for adults and youths as well. Notwithstanding the fact that it is our finest American invention and the most successful social enterprise ever undertaken, its golden age lies before it. It is now being discovered anew in its possibilities for larger public service. The fact that all men naturally desire knowledge is the fact which has justified the investment of $1,347,000,000 in the publicschool equipment; it is the fact which now justifies the use of this

equipment by adults. In every part of the country there is a manifest tendency for the public school to develop into a house of the . people to be used by them for "mutual aid in self-development." This is the significant fact at the heart of the community center movement and the touchstone of its value for the national welfare.

THE COMMUNITY CAPITOL.

"The walls of Sparta are built of Spartans," sang an old poet. The walls of America likewise are built of Americans. The primary function of the public schools is to make, not merely good men and women, but good citizens for the Republic. From the standpoint of citizenship, therefore, every schoolhouse ought to be used as a polling place. This is the first logical step toward making it the community capitol, although it may not be the first step chronologically. This use of the schoolhouse would save every State many thousands of dollars each year. When the people already own these houses, conveniently distributed in every section of the country, why should public funds be wasted in rent for other buildings? But economy, while a sufficient, is not the chief reason for making the schoolhouse a polling place. The best reason is the ideal for which the ballot box stands. It is the symbol of citizenship in America. As such it deserves a worthy place. In the last presidential election, President Wilson voted in a fire-engine house in Princeton, and Candidate Hughes voted in a laundry in New York City. Hitherto any kind of a place has been considered fit for the highest act of citizenship. In the Hebrew republic the symbol of the nation was a small richly decorated box called the "Ark of the Covenant." It was kept in the most honored place in the national Temple at the capital. The corresponding emblem in the American Republic is the ballot box. It ought to occupy a place befitting its importance. The one fitting place is the public schoolhouse, the community capitol and the temple of American democracy. Moreover, the voting instrument, which is the chief national emblem in every democracy, should be constructed with architectural dignity and established permanently in the schoolhouse, because of the ideals it embodies and the supreme function it serves. It would thus be a perpetual reminder that the function of the school is to make citizens for the Republic. It would cause the question repeatedly to be asked, What kind of school subjects are best calculated to make good citizens? It would help to keep the curriculum vitalized, by connecting it with practical and national

processes.

It can continue to be vital only by the continued process of adapting itself to meet the Nation's expanding needs. A fixed curriculum is a false curriculum. The significant fact about a school is not the