Democracy and Education

- \ DEMOCRACY AND- EDUCATION FREDERICK PHILIP GROVE DURING the -last few months I have asked 'several scores 'of people, in discussions of present issues, just what they mean I by "democracy." I received many stumbling, fumbling answers most of which concerned themselves with inessentials and externals; not one went back to firs't principles;, none could be accepted as more than what, except in inessentials, I should call a distinction without a difference. Most of them took it for granted 'that the answer was obvious; that democracy and totalitarianism could not be mistaken; that their aims were irreconcilable. Some used·tirriehonoured phrases which, on closer enquiry, meant nothing any longer in the welter of die day, though at the time of their formu-·lati0l1 they had been pregnant with revelation. Among those whom I asked were university teachers, politicians, industrialists, business men, farmers, and labourers. My approach, invariably, was that of one who desired to be informed. ,Especially among the labourers there were those who at once resOrted to the term "equality"; and that in spite of the fact that their teeth were decayed, their clothes in rags, their days :filled with toil, their livelihood insecure, their.children ragamuffins, a'nd their . hour to hour status that of slaves. Enquiry elicited the fact that, to them, equality meant exclusively political equality, or the right ' to vote. When I pointed out that, at best, politica~ equality was a means to an end, they did not seem to see what I was driving ,at. My curiosity with r. egard to this particular group ofthe population was enor,mollsly stimulated by my own experience in a factory. Naturally, there as elsewhere, I addressed myself primarily to the older men; it is a fact that the younger men saw their p~esent condition as something temporary which, in due course of time, would automatically' lead to .changes in their social and economic status. Anything else-intellectual and cultural changes ........:....seemed to he beyond their grasp. Yet it was perfectly obvious that it \Vas intellectual and cultural criteria which marked them off from the managerial classes more strikingly than anything else. They knew who I was: a linguist, a speaker, a writer; that the preparation for such of my work as was not manual might have wrought fundamental' and radical changes in my inner consti389 390 THE UNIVERSITY pF TORONTO QUARTERLY "tution-for iI}stance in -the logical processes of my thinking-they fallned to see; and ifsomeone had pointed it out tothem, they would probably have denied it. Yet there is no valid reason why, in an industriar civilization such as ours-and in spite of the preponderance of agriculture in our aggregate occupational constitution, it is essentially industrial, even in agriculture-the labourer should, educationally, culturally and socially, be inferior, let me say, to the manager; and it is to be the contention 'of this esSay"that, until such an equality, intellectual, cultural and social, is established, no true democracy "can exist. ' It has been said that in fifth-century Athens there was $uch an . equality. It has even been said that the Athenian public assembly, the Ecclesia, to which the policies of the leaders had to be submitted for approval, was composed of men ~ith an average of education " and intellectual endowment superior to that of any assembly which, in later centuries and millennia, has been entrusted with the conduct of affairs of state; that·fact, it has been contended, ·formed the basis of the only great and true democracy the world has seen. I doubt the truth of this statement. "By their fruits ye shall·know them." It has always seemed to .me that what constituted the Athenian assembly mprenearly an i~struri1ent of registering the popular will, for better or worse, than, let me say, the House of Commons in Britain, was the fact that the franchise was direct, not delegated by the original voter to certain elected or appointed lllen who acted for him. It is this fact, that except in a plebiscite, the , individual voter does not express his will directly but delegates his vote, which marks the essential difference between such institu.tions as the parliaments of Britain...