Does a child become more or less dependent upon others as he grows older?  Explain your answer.

Show that as a person becomes more “self-dependent” other people become more dependent upon him; for example, in the home, and in school.

Watch the newspapers for items illustrating interdependence, or conflicts due to it.

READINGS

Lessons in Community and National Life (see note on reference materials in Introduction)

Series A:  Lesson 1, Some fundamental aspects of social organization. 
          Lesson 2, The western pioneer.

Series B:  Lesson 1, The effect of the war on commerce in nitrate. 
          Lesson 2, The varied occupations of a colonial farm. 
          Lesson 12, Impersonality of modern life.

Series C:  Lesson 1, The war and aeroplanes. 
          Lesson 2, Spinning and dyeing in colonial times. 
          Lesson 9, Inventions. 
          Lesson 11, The effects of machinery on rural life.

Dunn, Arthur W., The Community and the Citizen, Chapters i, v.

Tufts, James H., The Real Business of Living, Chapter xxxi
(Problems of country life).

Earle, Alice Morse, Home Life in Colonial Days (Macmillan).

Finley, John H., “Paths of the Pioneers,” in Long’s American
Patriotic Prose, pp. 1-4.

Pioneer stories from any available source, especially local history stories.

CHAPTER III

THE NEED FOR COOPERATION IN COMMUNITY LIFE

THE NEED FOR TEAMWORK

When people have common purposes and are dependent upon one another in accomplishing them, there must be cooperation, which is another name for “teamwork.”  A team of horses that does not pull together can not haul a heavy load.  A baseball team, though composed of good players, will seldom win games unless its teamwork is good.  A few soldiers may easily disperse a large mob because they have teamwork, while a mob usually does not.  This principle of “pulling together,” “teamwork,” or “cooperation,” is of the greatest importance in community life.  There can be no real community life without it.

SIMPLE TYPES OF COOPERATION

In the early days there were “barn raisings,” when neighbors came together to help one of their number to “raise” his barn; and all the men of a pioneer community contributed their labor in building the community church or schoolhouse.  This was a simple form of cooperation.  It may be seen now at threshing time, when neighboring farmers combine to thresh the grain of each, the same group of men and the same threshing machine doing the work for all.  The United States Department of Agriculture reports that: