One Final Thought

By thinking critically, you promote one of the most precious com­modities known to mankind — the building of a free world. Emotional­izing will not do it; this has been proved in the past. We must resort to critical thinking about mankind's problems. This means not moving ahead blindly, but taking into account the showers of sense data that come to us, and fitting them to our assumptions. The basic assumptions we cherish most will shift least under these showers. The questionable practices, ac­cepted on a trial basis or entrenched uncritically as valueless tradition are the generalities that have to be modified. For example, that the top-flight intellects among educators should confine their influence to the upper college and graduate levels is a generalization which is contestable: It is very likely that much more attention than before should be focused by our keenest minds upon the elementary and pre-school years. This is why space was devoted on page 47 to the "Primogens Principle" with its specu­lative diagram.

It may be, as some would have us believe, that the human race is destined forever to find new problems arising to replace the old ones as soon as they are solved. It may be, as some have said, that history is filled with examples of the way progress has been forced upon us because we could not do anything else! But most of us have faith that through education we can solve problems and they will stay solved, and that we can progress intelli­gently.

As we proceed through life, our optimism may appear to decline a little. The realization that freedom is not all sweetness and light, but that responsibilities

surge over us just as we have settled back to enjoy our­selves; the nagging sense, shared by almost every living soul, of never being able to do all we would like

to do in a life that speeds along faster and faster; the handicaps that seem to stand in our way as we struggle toward goals — goals sometimes moving away from us a little as we approach them; the problems of interpersonal relationships that reach down into our daily lives and all too frequently alter well-laid plans — adjust­ments that never seem to end; all these can be eased, we are confident, by improving the methods of our own, personal self-education. Insulating ourselves from these things by ignoring them or taking refuge in a "pre­tend-world" or a "pass-the-buck-world" neither helps US progress toward maturity nor benefits those who come after us.

It has been said by cynics that "life is a series of disappointments linked together by little sparkles of joy." But the generations which came before us would look upon our comparatively comfortable and interesting lives as Utopia. For them the "little sparkles of joy" must have been far apart, indeed. Through self-education we can at least place our discomforts in intelligent perspective. We can recognize the great role played by the self-education of those who went before us in making our lives not merely more tolerable but sprinkled much more liberally with moments of joy. We owe it to ourselves and to our descendents to push forward in the same optimistic way. Why do we feel such "sparkles of joy" when we do some­thing well — even when at times no one but ourselves knows of our per­sonal successes? I believe there may be something transcendent about inner satisfactions that match with what we believe to be "correct and proper" actions. They may some day be found to have a function in human societies to promote the success of the social order, like the more easily measured advantages we can see. These illuminated moments of satisfac­tion may prove to be phenomena which contribute their share to the survival of groups which stress their importance in the common welfare. "Let us have more of them!" is implied, since there may be selection and adaptation favoring cultural groups capable of responding to events in this way! There may be community and national overtones to these "sparkles of joy!"

If more and longer moments of joy come to you because you take this book seriously, it will have been worth writing!