Whether called
culture or complete development of personality, the outcome is
identical with the true meaning of social efficiency whenever
attention is given to what is unique in an individual--and he
would not be an individual if there were not something
incommensurable about him. Its opposite is the mediocre, the
average. Whenever distinctive quality is developed, distinction
of personality results, and with it greater promise for a social
service which goes beyond the supply in quantity of material
commodities. For how can there be a society really worth serving
unless it is constituted of individuals of significant personal
qualities?
The fact is that the opposition of high worth of personality to
social efficiency is a product of a feudally organized society
with its rigid division of inferior and superior. The latter are
supposed to have time and opportunity to develop themselves as
human beings; the former are confined to providing external
products. When social efficiency as measured by product or
output is urged as an ideal in a would-be democratic society, it
means that the depreciatory estimate of the masses characteristic
of an aristocratic community is accepted and carried over. But
if democracy has a moral and ideal meaning, it is that a social
return be demanded from all and that opportunity for development
of distinctive capacities be afforded all. The separation of the
two aims in education is fatal to democracy; the adoption of the
narrower meaning of efficiency deprives it of its essential
justification.
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