If a nation, that is, is recreant to its deeper purpose, individuals, so far as they are well educated, are educated away from the prevailing national habits and traditions; whereas when a nation is sincerely attempting to meet its collective responsibility, the better individuals are inevitably educated into active participation in the collective task.
The reader may now be prepared to understand why the American faith in education has the appearance of being credulous and superstitious.

The good average American usually wishes to accomplish exclusively by individual education a result which must be partly accomplished by national education.

The nation, like the individual, must go to school; and the national school is not a lecture hall or a library.

Its schooling consists chiefly in experimental collective action aimed at the realization of the collective purpose.

If the action is not aimed at the collective purpose, a nation will learn little even from its successes.