THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT
among themselves their common interests and to devise methods of helpful coöperation. It should also be the social center of the community, where all the people come together in a neighborly way on terms of democratic equality, learn to know each other, and extend and enrich their community sympathies.
"To this purpose the schoolhouse is especially fitted; it is non-sectarian and non-partisan; the property of no individual, group or clique, but the common property of all; the one place in every community where all have equal rights and are equally at home. The schoolhouse is also made sacred to every family and the community as a whole by the fact that it is the home of their children and the training place of future citizens; here all members of the community may appropriately send themselves to school to each other and learn from each other of all things pertaining to the life of the local community, the State, the Nation, and the world. The appropriation of the schoolhouse for community uses has well been called a master-stroke of a new democracy.
"These facts are not new, but the emphasis on their importance is new and amounts to a new discovery. The Nation's immediate need
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