CHAPTER II WHAT IS A COMMUNITY? THE story of the founding of the colony in the West illustrates certain things that we should know about communities. Each one of us is a member of a community. We wish to know just what our community is, and how it grew. We wish especially to know what it does for us, and what we owe to it. The community whose beginnings we noticed in the last chapter consisted of a group of people who settled together in a single locality, and who were Definibound to each other by common interests. They tion of a were also subject to common laws. This community may be taken as a definition of any community. munities Communities may be large or small; that is, the people may be many or few, and the locality in which they live may include à large area or a small one. A group Large and of neighboring farmers with their families may small comconstitute a community. In this case the area occupied may be large, while the people are few in number. Or the community may be a city, with a dense population in a comparatively small area. Each state in our Union is a community, and so is our nation, because each is composed of a group of people occupying a common territory and governed by common interests and common laws. The nation is composed of state communities, and each state is made up of many city and rural communities. You may live in a small city which is a community in Communities unite into larger ones itself, with its group of people, its boundaries, its common interests, and its common laws. A few miles outside of your city is a community of farmers, whose houses are far apart, but who have common interests, such as keeping up the roads and the bridges in their neighborhood. The farmers bring their produce to the city for the use of the people there, and in turn depend upon the city for many of their necessities and pleasures. The country and the city communities thus have certain interests in common, and their dealings with each other are regulated by common laws. You are, therefore, a member not only of your city community, but also of a larger community including the farmers. You belong also to the community of the whole state, and to a still larger one including the nation. ties grow No community ever began its existence fully formed, but each has grown from small beginnings. It is like the Communi- growth of a plant from the seed. You may have seen a tangled mass of vines growing from a from small beginnings common root, with the branches and tendrils so interwoven that it is difficult to trace one of them back to the main trunk. So in a great community like a city, or like our nation, we find the structure and the organization so complicated that it is often difficult to understand them. It is easier to take a community in its earlier and simpler stages, like that of the last chapter, for a beginning of our study, and then to trace its growth into the more complicated forms. Member Being a member of a community means that each one of us takes part in, and contributes to, its life. The heart and the arm are members of the human body. They receive life from the body, and contribute to its life. In a similar way your life is closely inter ship in a community .woven with the life of the community in which you live. You can imagine yourself shut off from mankind, like Robinson Crusoe, and living; but what a narrow life it would be! The best of your life comes from participation in the life of your community. When we speak of citizenship, we usually mean this membership in the commuCitizenship nity, with its giving to, and receiving from, the community's life. Citizenship carries with it certain privileges and certain duties. FOR INVESTIGATION 1. Talk over in class the four essentials of a community - the group of people, the site, the common interests, and the common laws. Apply these essentials to your own community. 2. Is your class a community? Explain. What are its common interests? Are its laws written or unwritten? 3. Show how the different classes in your school are bound together by interests common to the whole school. Compare this union of classes into a school with the union of states into a nation. 4. What are some of the things in which your family and your nearest neighbors have a common interest because of living close together? 5. What are some of the things in which the people of a city and the neighboring farmers have a common interest? 6. Name some things in which all the cities of a state have a common interest. What are some things in which the whole nation has a common interest? 7. Show how an injury or a benefit to one person may be an injury or a benefit to the whole community of which the person is a member. Show how an injury or a benefit to a community will injure or benefit the individual members of the community. 8. Can you be a member of your class without doing it either good or harm? If a member of a community contributes nothing to its welfare, can he avoid being harmful to it? Explain. 9. What are some of the things that a citizen receives from his community? 10. Think of some ways in which a citizen may contribute to the welfare of his community. |