THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT
justice, and to give justice has come to be a bigger and more appealing ideal than to get rights."
And this is the ideal, this is the variety of democracy that can live and flourish in the soil of the Community Center.
The School as the Center.—If the neighborhood is the logical unit of organization for a real democracy, it seems almost obvious that the public school is the logical center. The United States Government has invested in the Public School system the impressive sum of $1,347,000,000, a fact which undoubtedly justifies the wider use fo the public school buildings—the use of them all the year through and the use of them by adults as well as by children. There has been during recent years a marked and growing tendency for the public school to develop into a house of the people to be used by them, for mutual aid in self-development. This idea is at the very heart of the Community Center movement and it is the touchstone of its value for the national welfare.
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