_Democracy changes the function of schools_

It was the attempt of democracy to educate all of its children
which was the initial and important event that provoked large
changes in our notions of the social function of education. As
long as the school was for the few, and such it was in the less
liberal periods of history, the school tended to be an
authoritative institution with more or less rigid methods of
procedure. With fixed ideas of truth and the means of acquiring
truth, it was to a considerable degree unbending in its attitude
toward youth. Even if freedom from economic toil and social
regulation permitted, only the type of mind that could fit the
school's established institutional ways could endure its discipline
and achieve its rewards. Other types of mentality it would not
receive or retain as students. Under such an organization the
school was selective of a special kind of talent. It was not an
instrument, so adjustable in its methods of appeal and instruction,
that every manner of child could gain considerable of the wisdom of
the world. But when a more democratic order was established, the
function of the school underwent a considerable change. Democracy
granted to all men freedom in manhood; to safeguard its privileges,
it had to educate all men in childhood. The school for selected
scholars had to be transformed into a school for every variety of
citizen. With every child sent to school by order of the state,
the teacher had to forego his traditional aloofness, and to adjust
his methods of teaching so that every member of the enlarged school
community could come into a knowledge of the civilization in which
he lived. With the inclusion of the blind, the deaf, the slow of