and so withdraw their children to vindicate their own autocracy. They
are willing to profit by democracy but are unwilling to help foster its
growth. They not only lower the level of democracy but even compel their
children to lower it still more. The teacher may yearn for the children
and the children for the teacher, but the home is inexorable and
sacrifices the children to a misconception of democracy.

=Coöperation.=--Democracy does not mean fellowship, but it does mean
coöperation. It means that people in all walks of life are animated by
the common purpose to make all their activities contribute to the
general good of society. It means that the railroad president may shake
hands with the brakeman and talk with him, man to man, encouraging him
to aspire to promotion on merit. It means that this brakeman may become
president of the road with no scorn for the stages through which he
passed in attaining this position. It means that he may understand and
sympathize with the men in his employ without fraternizing with them. It
means that every boy may aspire to a place higher than his father has
attained with no loss of affection for him. It does not mean either
sycophancy or truculence, but freedom to every individual to make the
most of himself and so help others to make the most of themselves.

=The democratic teacher.=--Democracy is learned not from books but from
the democratic spirit that obtains in the school. If the teacher is
surcharged with democracy, her radiating spirit sends out currents into
the life of each pupil, and the spirit of democracy thus generated in
them fuses them into homogeneity. Thus they become democratic by living
in the atmosphere of democracy, as the boy grew into the likeness of the
Great Stone Face.