THE FOREWORD

NEXT year in America one million young men will celebrate their twenty-first birthday. Next year one million young women will celebrate their twenty-first birthday. Every year two million young people will face the responsibility of assuming the full duties and rights of citizenship.

Is it not a venturesome experiment for a nation to admit to the difficult privilege of being a citizen in a democracy such a multitude of recruits with no special training for their task? Is it not an astonishing fact that for generations we have fought so strenuously for the franchise, but have done so little to prepare ourselves for its exercise?

It sometimes requires a surgical operation to awaken a nation to a realization of its obvious needs. Such an operation was performed for us by the recent World War. It helped us realize what it means to our national welfare, that among candidates for citizenship there is so large a number of resident and unprepared aliens, that the military draft revealed an appalling number of illiterates among the native-born, that less than half the citizens of America have had even a grammar school education.

The war awakened in us the conviction that some

plan of special training for citizenship is a need of paramount national importance. Theodore Roosevelt realized its importance when he said at the Sorbonne in Paris: "The average citizen must be a good citizen, if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore, it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high."

The Citizenship Club movement, which this book aims to inaugurate, is designed to meet this need, over which the nation now manifests serious concern. The movement enters a new and unoccupied field. The method it proposes to use is likewise new. It makes the bold adventure of doing a simple human thing, that is, it attempts to apply democracy to education. It dares to propose that young people take part in writing a book for their own use. It courageously proposes to practice a principle, which everyone says he believes, that education is a process of self-activity. We cannot educate a fellowman; we can only give him a chance to learn. The movement is not designed to teach patriotism to anyone, which is just as impossible as it is to teach love or religion; it aims to give young men and women an opportunity to learn how to equip themselves for the practice of citizenship in a democracy.

This principle of educational procedure is not new; it is the practice of it which is new. Thirty years ago Professor Rein of the University of Jena regarded it as so axiomatic that he stated it in this picturesque fashion: "The truth which has merely been learned adheres to us like a false member, a false tooth or a waxen nose. It has no significance for the mental life. It is a lifeless fund from which streams no animating warmth; only the truth that has been obtained by one's own reflection resembles the natural member; it alone really belongs to us." The course of training for citizenship here suggested proposes the daring and difficult idea of putting it into practice.

The author of a certain book on moral education once handed it to a friend with the request that he express his honest opinion of it. After looking it over, his friend remarked, "I do not see why I should read it-you have stated all sides of the question worked out to the last detail and dropped them on my head in the hope that they will penetrate to the inside of it. You have left nothing for me to do. Why should I study it?" This remark does not mean that the function of an expert is unnecessary. Nor does it mean that the unrelated and unorganized contributions of the people will produce an effective book. It is not a question of one or the other. Both are essential to a helpful product. The remark, however, is highly significant. It means that, if one's real creative interest

in any enterprise is to be secured or retained, he must have some part to play in it. This principle is the distinguishing characteristic of Citizenship Clubs. They are asked to give as well as to get.

The first volume of our series is itself an illustration of this method of procedure. The idea of the Citizenship Club movement came to the writer during a hot sleepless night in an upper berth on a Texas train. The plan was matured in consultation with friends in Boston. The manuscript of the book was finished in San Francisco. On the open road in all sections of the country I discussed the plan with public assemblies for the express purpose of consulting the people. Many elements both of the plan and the book are due to their conscious and unconscious suggestions. All that the writer did was to recognize the value of suggestions, when he met them, and to improve and organize them with what skill he could. But the book is the joint product of the people and the author. It is in fact "our" book.

The Citizenship Club movement proposes a new, and it is believed a better, method of doing Americanization work. It also suggests that we should drop the old term and use instead a term which says what it means. It is hoped that this movement will hasten the discovery that Americanization does not consist in teaching English, that the dishonest and superficial use of the word has murdered it, and that the word either should be

redeemed or else replaced by the term "training for citizenship," which clearly suggests something definite, and something needed alike by the native born and the resident alien. The Citizenship Club movement aims to describe the American way of doing Americanization work.

This book was originally prepared to be issued as a Government document, to meet a need which the Bureau of Education long ago recognized and hoped it might be able to meet. But it soon became evident that the Bureau of Education did not have the facilities necessary to promote the movement. Nor did it have available funds needed to secure a first-class artist to cut the die for America's Coat of Arms. We are, therefore, compelled to depend on a non-Governmental agency to furnish the book and medal, and to handle the large amount of business detail involved in dealing with a territory as large as the United States.

The movement, therefore, will be launched and promoted by the National Community Board, an agency organized to promote throughout the Nation the establishment of Community Centers such as described in the official bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Education. The Board has planned seven departments of work to serve local communities.

Through its department of Citizenship Training, the Board offers to the nation the Citizenship Club as a typical Community Center activity. The Board has selected, as the official organ of the move